What do you think?
Rate this book
House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre
On September 11, 1857, some 120 men, women, and children from the Arkansas hills were murdered in the remote desert valley of Mountain Meadows, Utah. This notorious massacre was, in fact, a mass having surrendered their weapons, the victims were bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range. The perpetrators were local Mormon militiamen whose motives have been fiercely debated for 150 years.In House of Mourning, Shannon A. Novak goes beyond the question of motive to the question of loss. Who were the victims at Mountain Meadows? How had they settled and raised their families in the American South, and why were they moving west once again? What were they hoping to find or make for themselves at the end of the trail? By integrating archival records and oral histories with the first analysis of skeletal remains from the massacre site, Novak offers a detailed and sensitive portrait of the victims as individuals, family members, cultural beings, and livin
248 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2008
48 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 26, 2012
I enjoyed this book but wanted it to be so much more than it was. The author is a forensic anthropologist who examined the bones (in 1999) of some of the victims of the MMM when their remains were inadvertantly disinterred during the excavation for a new monument. I realize she was only able to give the bones a quick and cursory examination. And I find it remarkable that so much information can be determined simply by a few bones. But I still feel like her book is incomplete somehow. When I finished the last chapter and the book was done, I wanted there to be more...or at least some sort of summary chapter to tie it all together.
The author does an excellent (and perhaps unprecedented) job of giving faces/lives to the MMM victims. She has figured out (as well as is possible) who was in each wagon train, where they likely came from, what their occupations may have been, what their health and diet were like, and how they likely died. I was intrigued with the fact that their rural diets were not much better than our modern one...probably lots of corn and sugar!
I was very sobered by the photos of the actual bones of the victims. Not to mention that they bear the marks of violent trauma and gunshot. There is no question of the culpability of the saints who participated in the murders. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this shames me but certainly does not reflect the modern church. I am glad to see that the church has finally agreed to seek federal jurisdiction over the monument. Perhaps healing can thus be accelerated.
I recommend the book to those who are interested in the MMM, with the hope that more members of the church will become familiar with this incident so that they can competently talk about it to concerned individuals, members and non-members alike.
The author does an excellent (and perhaps unprecedented) job of giving faces/lives to the MMM victims. She has figured out (as well as is possible) who was in each wagon train, where they likely came from, what their occupations may have been, what their health and diet were like, and how they likely died. I was intrigued with the fact that their rural diets were not much better than our modern one...probably lots of corn and sugar!
I was very sobered by the photos of the actual bones of the victims. Not to mention that they bear the marks of violent trauma and gunshot. There is no question of the culpability of the saints who participated in the murders. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this shames me but certainly does not reflect the modern church. I am glad to see that the church has finally agreed to seek federal jurisdiction over the monument. Perhaps healing can thus be accelerated.
I recommend the book to those who are interested in the MMM, with the hope that more members of the church will become familiar with this incident so that they can competently talk about it to concerned individuals, members and non-members alike.
February 17, 2010
A captivating and first-rate interdisciplinary study of the Mountain Meadows massacre that happened in Utah in 1857.
Shannon Novak bases her study in part on familiar documentary sources, but she also presents the results of her own examination of some of the victims' skeletal remains. (Novak is a biological anthropologist working at Syracuse University.) Unlike previous authors, who have emphasized the events of the crime, Novak chooses to describe the lives of the murdered settlers; much of her story takes place in Arkansas. She describes their health, their marriage ways and family life, their possessions, and their structures of leadership. Additionally, she introduces readers, in a very lucid way, to the methods and reasoning of her discipline.
Only near the end of the book does the reader learn what Novak's archaeological work reveals about who perpetrated the murders and how. By that point, however, the reader may have forgotten about that question altogether in the fascination of learning about the settlers' lives and times.
Shannon Novak bases her study in part on familiar documentary sources, but she also presents the results of her own examination of some of the victims' skeletal remains. (Novak is a biological anthropologist working at Syracuse University.) Unlike previous authors, who have emphasized the events of the crime, Novak chooses to describe the lives of the murdered settlers; much of her story takes place in Arkansas. She describes their health, their marriage ways and family life, their possessions, and their structures of leadership. Additionally, she introduces readers, in a very lucid way, to the methods and reasoning of her discipline.
Only near the end of the book does the reader learn what Novak's archaeological work reveals about who perpetrated the murders and how. By that point, however, the reader may have forgotten about that question altogether in the fascination of learning about the settlers' lives and times.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews