Page 237 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER PLACE: COLONIALISM TRI UMPHANT

More typical, however, was the fierce statement of a woman who was
also in Salt Lake City during the mid- 8 50s: "To-morrow we turn our
r
back upon the Mormon capital, with its wretchedness, abominations,
and crimes," she wrote, "how we rejoice to escape from a region of
human depravity, the terrible f e atures of which have opened more and
more distinctly to view the longer our sojourn has continued."88
Bitter and pitiless, these women could not see the positive side of
Mormons.Virtually no one characterized the Saints as industrious fo lks
who had turned persecution to their advantage and wrested a living
fr om an area marred by salt flats and a desert climate. Through grueling
effort, Mormons had crowned Salt Lake City with an intricately engi­
neered tabernacle, whose acoustics are still considered remarkable in our
Y
technological age. e t Gentile women usually held the conviction that
the Mormon oasis was not Zion, but the center of degeneracy and
depravity. Although many entered American Indian villages with disap­
proval and left with good words on their lips, they could not transform
their views of Mormons.
It is not difficult to discern the main reason fo r Gentile women's
hostility. The reason was plural marriage, even though only a portion­
about 25 percent-of Mormons practiced it. Gentile women saw plural
marriage as a threat to their monogamous marriages.89 They f e ared
that Mormon men would give their own men ideas. In r 8 56, Mary
Powers said that Mormon women warned her to be vigilant lest her
husband be "sucked into the system" before she could prevent it.90
Moreover, as the carriers of white civilization, Gentile women were
committed to a social construction of marriage as one woman and one
man. As a result, Gentile women termed plural marriage as "wicked"
and "demoralizing." Although they excused "primitive" and "ignorant"
American Indians f o r engaging in plural marriage, they could not
accept it among Mormons, who were white, somewhat educated, and
Christian.Women thus denounced Latter-day Saints in blistering terms
f o r their "depravity."
Lucene Parsons was one of these. She spent the winter of 8 5r in
r
Salt Lake City before continuing on to California. For her, getting to
know Mormons did not mean coming to like them. Parsons thought that
"a meaner set lives not on this earth." She was dismayed to experience

229