Pioneer Day celebrations and Mormon historical pageants periodically emerge and dissipate in cyclical fashion; and pioneer art, museums, and monuments steadily and consistently provide inspirational touchstones for historically-minded Mormons. But these genres of pioneer remembrance are by no means straightforward representations of historical events—nor are they intended as such. They are the products of a selective combing through history that has chosen certain aspects for highlighting while omitting and downplaying others. The genres of what David Glassberg calls “public historical imagery” and what Michael Kammen calls the “social production of memory” described in the previous section have been the central arenas for articulating, maintaining, and reshaping Mormon historical consciousness.1 This chapter examines the content of that consciousness and the “combing process” that created it.
In discussing this process, University of Utah historian Davis Bitton draws a distinction between “history by historians,” whose purpose is to instruct and “tell it all,” and popular history, whose purpose is to revere, celebrate, display, and transfer cultural values. According to Bitton, ritualized popular history such as pageants, plays, and parades serve the Durkheimian function of “upholding and [84] reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and collective ideas which make [a society’s] unity and personality.”2 In performing this role, Bitton says history is “simplified” to be made easily memorable, and it is presented in a impressive and entertaining way.3
Simplification implies a selective elision and highlighting of past events. It is a process with political implications and ramifications. The construction of the pioneer myth is no exception. Simplification raises questions such as these: Whose experience qualifies them for being reverenced as a pioneer? Which parts of the pioneer past have been forgotten, and which events become draped in sacred significance for later remembrance and why? What has been the end result of nearly a hundred and fifty years pioneer reverencing? In short, what kind of cultural memory has been produced by the interwoven activities of pioneer-honoring institutions and genres, and what does it tell us about today’s Mormon and Utah communities?
On the eve of the twentieth century, the time between 1847 and 1869 is understood as the pioneer period in Mormon history. This has not always been the case. According to late Mormon historian Eugene Campbell the “time window” in which one might be classified as a pioneer expanded in the following manner:
In the Great Basin they [the Mormons] were no longer outcasts but “pioneers.” Although the term initially referred to members of the 1847 advance company, Mormons who made the journey later the same year also came to be known as the “Pioneers of ’47.” And by the 1870s, virtually everyone who had “gathered [85] to Zion” before the completion of the transcontinental railroad could lay claim to the title “pioneer.”4
The completion of the railroad in 1869 shut the time window for pioneer romance.5 Nevertheless, between 1869 and about 1900, tens of thousands of Mormon immigrants continued to make great sacrifices to “gather” to Utah and join with their fellow saints.6 Because the 1869–1900 immigrants took the train, their experience does not carry the same valence for succeeding generations, and descent from them does not qualify one for membership in any special organization such as the DUP or SUP. (Many Mormon rail immigrants would step off the train and walk for a small portion of the journey just so they could say in jest that they too had “walked across the plains to Zion.”) During the Great Depression, Church leaders made a permanent policy change and encouraged Mormon converts not to come to Utah. Today in fact, Mormons who have recently immigrated to Utah—far from being honored as pioneers—often feel a [86] slight stigma associated with failing to stay abroad and help “build up the Church” in places where it is new and struggling.7
It should be remembered that even before the extension of rail service to Utah that most Mormon converts traveled by rail for at least part of the way to their destination—as close to Utah as the then current rail service could take them. Many also took ships from Europe or steamers up the Mississippi before reaching the destination from whence they would “walk across the plains” to Zion. The rail and waterborne stages of Mormon immigrant journeys are little celebrated and rarely appear in popular historical expression. Only the final stage of Mormon pioneer journeys has inspired much reenactment and celebration.
Of the groups that came to Utah during the 1847–1869 period, two in particular emerged as stereotypical in the Mormon imagination—Brigham Young’s 1847 advance party and the handcart companies of 1856–60. Both account for only a small fraction of all immigrants during the pioneer period. The advance party numbered only 147, and the handcart pioneers accounted for fewer than 3000 out of an estimated 85,000 pre-railroad immigrants, yet these two groups, especially the latter, are disproportionally represented in art, sculpture, and eulogy.8 The advance company was of course important because it was first and the handcarts stand out because of their uniqueness in American history. Two [87] of the handcart companies became stranded in winter blizzards and were rescued only after many had perished. This tragedy, coupled with the presumed difficulty of all handcart travel, made the handcart companies ripe for romantic remembrance.9 Yet, only in the case of the first Saints expelled from Nauvoo and the two stranded handcart companies did deaths occur in uncommon numbers by nineteenth-century traveling standards.
Moreover, Mormon pioneers on the whole probably suffered less angst and hardship on their journeys than did their westering Gentile counterparts due to the atypically well organized and corporate nature of their migratory enterprise and the fact that a community of fellow believers awaited their arrival.10 Nevertheless, the stereotype of pioneers suffering greatly and burying their kindred dead on the trail to Zion is a particularly enduring one in Mormon popular consciousness. Because the saga of the Mormon pioneers serves as heroic sacred history that exemplifies the spirit of sacrifice that Mormons still today regard as being expected of them by God, the experiences of the least typical, but most exceptional, groups form the basis of many Mormons’ mental constructions of pioneer reality.11 [88]
The handcart pioneer has become the quintessential Mormon folk hero and occupies a place in Mormon culture somewhat analogous to the trail drive era cowboy in American culture—a repository of all the culture’s self-perceived unique traits and values in a limited historical experience that is atypical in the broader cultural experience but nevertheless regarded as unique to it.
While the processes of constructing Mormon popular historical consciousness has highlighted certain parts of the pioneer experience, other episodes in Mormon history have been almost studiously forgotten. Drama and Biblical parallel alone do not explain the inclusion of past events into celebrated public history. To constitute a usable past for Mormons, drama and historical recapitulation must conclude triumphantly. For example, Mormons do not commemorate their brave and resilient struggle against the United States government during the polygamy raids of the 1880s. During this time the government confiscated all of the Church’s property and froze its assets; the Church leadership went underground for years, and hundreds were thrown in jail for practicing plural marriage. Thousands of men, women, and children endured long separation from their families, near starvation, severe disruption of their livelihoods, and ridicule in the national spotlight to protect a way of life they felt God had required of them.
Under extreme duress, the Church officially discontinued the practice by revelation in 1890. Jan Shipps suggests that the polygamy raids and the eventual abandonment of the practice complete the parallel with Israelite history by [89] providing Mormons with a “Babylonian captivity phase” and a “restitution phase.”12 However, Mormons do not exploit this potential parallel in constructing their popular historical consciousness. The martyrological potential inherent in these events, which arguably caused more suffering than the westward migration, was lost when the Church officially curtailed plural marriage. To celebrate resistance now would be to memorialize a “lost cause” that many modern Mormons would rather forget—a struggle for a practice that the Church now vehemently opposes. Also, since Mormons have always regarded themselves as the consummate patriots, the fact that Mormons once practiced radical civil disobedience to what they regarded as unconstitutional anti-polygamy legislation is difficult to square on a popular historical level with the image Mormons hold of themselves as a people who regard obedience to civil authority as a serious religious principle. As a result, the polygamy raids in spite of their tempting Biblical parallel and heroic underdog drama, have virtually vanished from Mormon popular memory.
Challenges and Responses to Mythic Unity
Traditional historical and anthropological analyses of Mormonism have interpreted public celebration of the pioneers as an expression of shared cultural [90] values and concerns.13 Eugene Campbell called the Mormons’ pioneer heritage “a source of pride and unity in Mormon culture.”14
Such characterizations concern the 230,000 member Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints based in Independence, Missouri. RLDS historians point out that between a half and a third of the Mormon population of Nauvoo (some of whom later joined the RLDS Church when it was founded in 1860) chose not to follow Brigham Young to Utah.15 In this light, the trek of the pioneers of ’47 was at first not a unifier at all, but an aspect of the greatest schism and the worst era of cultural disintegration ever faced by Joseph Smith’s followers.
To say that pioneer nostalgia unifies the Salt Lake City headquartered church is problematic as well. The most significant challenge to the unifying potential of traditional modes of pioneer commemoration has been the breakdown of the isomorphism between Mormondom’s cultural region and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At one time, regional history and identity and Church history and identity were virtually inseparable. This is no longer the case. Today, due to emigration and convert growth, less than 16 percent of LDS Church members reside in Utah and about only 25 percent live in Rocky Mountain [91] States.16 Most of today’s ten million Mormons, particularly those in the fast growing international church, are not descendants of Utah pioneers. Also, Utah is no longer a functionally independent theocracy but a state in a religiously pluralistic America. Today over 50 percent of Salt Lake City’s population are not Mormons, with more Gentiles moving in all the time.
These situations provide the multiple challenge of finding ways of celebrating the pioneer story that make it a community-building experience both for all Mormons (in and out of Utah), and for all Utahans (Mormon and non-Mormon). This has been difficult, but has resulted in creative reinterpretations of how “pioneers” should be understood in a heterogeneous Utah and a multi-national Diasporic and convert Mormondom.
Pioneers for All Utahns: The Days of ’47 in Salt Lake City: In her book Parades and Power, Susan Davis points out the inadequacy of the “common sense” way of viewing parades as “straight forward reflections” of consentual notions held by all performers and observers. What she says about Philadelphia’s 1832 parade in honor of George Washington’s birthday could also be said about the Salt Lake City’s Days of ’47 parade. “Upon closer examination . . . the procession’s meanings for performers and audience seem less unified. This performance was a selective version of local social relationships that hardly represented all communities [and] all points of view.”17 In Salt Lake City as well, [92] all do not share the same interpretation of the pioneer story, and some feel that Pioneer Day is lacking as a community event because it has traditionally featured only the dominant group’s collective historical memory.18
In the Days of ’47 parade, notions not only about social relationships but also about the sacredness of certain historical events and the divine destiny of Utah’s dominant culture have been literally paraded in public. But as parade organizer’s sensitivity to Salt Lake City’s Gentile population has increased, the “tone” of the parade has changed. Mormon themes still dominate the Pioneer Day Parade, but parade entries in recent years have employed symbols that bridge the Mormon/Gentile divide or are specifically non-Mormon in character.
One theme that has emerged as a “bridge” is the completion of the transcontinental railroad.19 As the railroad closed off the time window of the 1847–69 pioneer era, it opened the possibility for a new “progressive romanticism” celebrating the modern world coming to Utah. Today the railroad is remembered on Pioneer Day as ushering in a new age of Mormon/Gentile cooperation in Utah—a memory open for appreciation by a larger percentage of Utahns.
The inclusion of floats that celebrate the transcontinental railroad is of course antithetical to older understandings of what “Pioneer Day” was designed to [93] celebrate, and it is a sign that the parade is being secularized and broadened to allow for the inclusion of more non-Mormon participants. Other signs of the breakdown of Mormon religious exclusiveness have been the inclusion of floats honoring the establishment of Salt Lake City’s Catholic cathedral and Jewish synagogue.
When speaking to the gathered crowds at the 1992 Days of ’47 celebration, LDS church leader Loren C. Dunn acknowledged the contributions of “pioneers of other faiths” who also came to Utah.20 The official theme of 1994’s Days of ’47 celebration was “All are Welcome Here.” Certainly this theme was chosen, in part at least, as a corrective to what some see as the Parade’s past exclusivity and Mormon-centeredness. Religious themes—while still important—have lost their former dominance in Salt Lake City’s Days of ’47 celebration. Floats that promote business establishments and bear corporate logos have become more prominent as well. Many feel that reasons other than the remembrance of sacred history, including fun in and of itself, threaten to under-gird the Days of ’47 celebration rather than be only ancillaries to it.21 [94]
These changes have coincided with shifts in responsibility for organizing the parade. In pioneer Utah, relationships between public events and authority were intimate. Mormon leaders initiated and delegated the planning and performance of Pioneer Day celebrations. Gradually, responsibility for the parade passed into the hands of the SUP and DUP, even though the Church continued to provide financial support. In 1936, Days of ’47 Inc. grew out of the SUP as a non-profit, unaffiliated organization responsible for organizing the Pioneer Day festivities. Today Church leaders no longer organize, even indirectly, Pioneer Day affairs but participate as honored guests in their important symbolic function as the living heirs and continuing administrators of Brigham Young’s kingdom. Thus, even though the Pioneer Day Queen must still be a descendant of the 1847–69 pioneers, and Brigham Young impersonators and representatives of the current LDS leadership still occupy important positions in the parade, community organizations have been allowed to take control of a tradition of public historical celebration once centrally controlled by the Church. Mormon leaders, realizing Pioneer Day’s expanded significance, have willingly released control and have encouraged inclusiveness.
In this context, the Mormons’ sacred Exodus-recapitulation has been refashioned into a secular “origin myth” for a diverse cultural region. The hopeful statement of LDS Utah governor Mike Leavitt at the occasion of the sesquicentennial trek reenactors arrival in emigration canyon reflects this changing role for the Mormon pioneers in Utah: “Whether you celebrate this as a [95] remembrance of the coming into the valley of your own ancestors, or if you’re a newcomer to this state, I invite you to embrace this as part of your heritage.”22
Despite these developments, it will probably always be impossible to completely separate church from state in public functions in Utah. Popular public expressions of significant events in Utah’s history will always face the fact of Mormon dominance in that history, and Mormons will probably always see sacred significance in Utah’s pioneer heritage. Also, even with a continued influx of Gentiles, demographic trends indicate that Utah will likely retain its Mormon majority indefinitely. There is, and will continue to be, a high correlation between prominence in Utah society and leadership in the LDS Church. For these reasons, attempts to provide public displays of history that meet the spiritual needs of Mormons as well as the community-building needs of Utah’s increasingly Gentile urban areas will continue to be challenging.
Pioneers for all Mormons: The pioneer myth faces challenges abroad as well. Borne by ever-increasing legions of Mormon missionaries, the pioneer myth has escaped the bounds of the Mountain West and has become a part of a belief system that engages the members of a fast-growing, world-wide religious tradition.23 Today, Mormonism’s traditional heartland in the American West contains about only 25 percent of total Church membership, and over half of all Mormons live outside the United States.24 The increased cultural and national [96] diversity of Mormonism has placed heavy demands upon the pioneer symbology that sprang from, and is specific to, the American West. In the worldwide Mormon community of faith, the place of the pioneers has become problematic. As some Mormons begin to question and reconceptualize the hagiographic status of the Utah pioneers, it is increasingly difficult to claim that “group consciousness” is unambiguously being maintained by honoring, celebrating, and reenacting pioneer history.
Thanks to missionary effort, the pioneer myth and its accompanying celebratory cultural practices are spreading around the world. However, intimate knowledge of pioneer history, and especially elaborate forms of public pioneer reverence, have not spread as fast as the Mormon gospel, and a very small percentage of today’s Mormons participate in Pioneer Day festivities; some have never even heard of the celebration at all. One hundred years ago, when pioneer-honoring events formed the centerpiece expression of Mormon community identity, non-participation in, and unfamiliarity with, pioneer stories and celebrations would have been unthinkable for faithful Mormons. Today, as living in a nearly exclusively Mormon agricultural village in the Mountain West has become the exceptional rather than typical Mormon experience, pioneer-honoring cultural expressions have necessarily taken on new forms and new meanings for Mormons.
Part of this “pioneer problem” springs from the Mormon heartland itself and changing perceptions of Utah in Mormon popular consciousness. Once upon a time Utah was Zion—the place where Mormons gathered to build their social and spiritual Utopia in preparation for Christ’s immanent Second Coming. As is [97] evident in early versions of “The Handcart Song” the land and its people were the supreme object of desire for the converts that streamed to it. Today, in the post-gathering Mormon world, Utah Mormons, and pioneer descendants in general, are sometimes rightly or wrongly seen by Mormons outside of Utah not as examples of righteousness, but of self-righteousness, and as too often lazily resting on the laurels of their impressive genealogy. Utah is also perceived by some as provincial and embarrassingly narrow-minded for being the center of a worldwide religion. On the other hand, others are shocked that liquor is sold in the state, and that many stores are open on Sunday like anywhere else in America. However, Utah is still a central point of attention and all faithful Mormon eyes turn there when the prophet speaks at the tabernacle in Temple Square. Despite this fact, the region is by no means regarded as the idealized place of piety it once was.
The problematization of Utah and its people in the Mormon imagination has caused many to question what they regard as the overly sentimentalized, unrealistic, and “tacky” reverencing of pioneers often displayed by those whose roots in Mormonism go back generations. As the pioneer era retreats further into the past, as new generations of Mormons emerge, and as the number of people who knew pioneer grandparents diminishes, this sentiment is growing—even in Utah. Many younger Mormons view the trappings of “the cult of the pioneers” as “kitsch,” “old-timey” and irrelevant. Membership in the SUP and DUP is declining. Some adults call for a more “realistic” treatment of the pioneers in [98] Mormon discourse and historical writing.25 They fear that Utah’s colonizers have come to represent a false ideal—superhuman paragons of a pious perfection never attainable by modern Mormons.
To some, another problem with the pioneer legacy is the fact that the honor acquired by participants in great migrations often passes on to succeeding generations of their offspring—especially in the minds of those who are themselves descendants of migrating cultural heroes. This tends to create a social distinction between those descended from cultural-historical figures and those not descended from cultural-historical figures. This is certainly the case in Mormondom. In Utah especially there exists a quasi-caste system that distinguishes between (1) post–pioneer era convert Mormons and their descendants, (2) families descended from pioneers, and (3) families descended from pioneers who were also Church leaders. The continued insistence by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers on biological descent as a requisite for membership contributes to this system.26 In prestigious social circles in Utah, the question, “Who did you say your ancestors were?” occasionally serves the same function as “What do you do for a living?” would serve elsewhere. Richard Gomez, a former Catholic who converted to the LDS Church and who is the bishop of a Spanish-speaking congregation in the Salt Lake City area, explains [99] that he “‘feels left out’ when Pioneer Day celebrations in Salt Lake City are opened by asking who among the assembled people was descended from one of the original (Anglo) founders [of Utah].”27
Officially, the LDS Church has sought to down-play these kinds of distinctions in recent years and has always emphasized that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ’s atonement and correct individual choices—not lineage. Nevertheless, efforts at building egalitarian sentiments on this topic are difficult to achieve without diminishing the importance of what the pioneers did in bequeathing a legacy of faith to the modern LDS Church.
The Relevance of Pioneer Day to an International Church
Considering these issues, will the 1847–1869 pioneer experience survive as a central touchstone in Mormon popular historical consciousness? Some predict its demise with the internationalization of the Church. Anthropologist and Dutch LDS Church leader Walter E. A. van Beek recently voiced concerns similar to those of Bishop Gomez and reflective of a stream of LDS thought that is not uncommon outside of the United States about the pioneer experience. In a recent letter to the editor of an unofficial LDS magazine, van Beek discounted the Utah pioneers’ relevance to the International Church in general and the Netherlands’s seven and a half thousand LDS people in particular.28 He casts the Mormon pioneer epic as an “unusable past” for the international Church that unduly [100] privileges “American history.” He suggests that during the 1997 sesquicentennial, Mormons in Holland ought to have celebrated local national heroes that displayed heroic Christian virtues. Conversely, Dietrich Kempski, an LDS Church leader from neighboring Germany responded to van Beek’s letter by explaining the many ways in which Latter-day Saints in his American West– infatuated country were going to enthusiastically celebrate the sesquicentennial.29
Concern over such privileging of an American experience in an international Church is understandable. However, Kempski’s response suggests there are ways of understanding the Mormon pioneer story that van Beek does not consider. These interpretations may allow the myth to survive internationally, if perhaps in truncated or modified form, well into the future.
More than American history, the Mormon pioneer experience is primarily Latter-day Saint history—the history of a community of which van Beek is a part. The Great Salt Lake Valley was in Mexico when the Mormons first arrived, a fact that pleased some Mormons happy to be out of a country that had rejected them. Most of the hardship Mormons endured in Utah was at the hands of the United States government. Most of those who made the trek were not native-born Americans but European immigrants who were coming specifically to gather with the Saints in Zion and only incidentally to America. These Europeans included many from van Beek’s homeland of the Netherlands. The pioneer epic was the story of a Church already international in the nineteenth century. It was an [101] international church in the process of consolidating its resources and establishing a homeland from which it became solidly international again later. In sum, rather than being primarily a part of American history for which the international Church has no use, the historical moment of 1847 may in fact find Mormonism at its least typically American.
Not recognizing possible interpretations of the pioneer epic as sacred “time out of time” and transcendent over concerns of nationality, Van Beek questions official Latter-day Saint attention to “American history.” As time passes and Mormons come to more fully understand the foundational history of their new religious tradition, might arguments such as the following be made? Jews and Christians regard the Hebrew scriptures as much more than merely Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli, and Palestinian history. Christians regard the New Testament as much more than merely Greek, Italian, and Turkish history. Do Mormons and other Christians begrudge the privileges that these geographic regions and the nation-states that currently administer them receive in sacred history? Are the stories contained in the Acts of the Apostles any less meaningful or universal to Christian believers because of their location? Mormon leaders and the Mormon multitude will shape the answers to questions similar to these about the place of the 1847–69 pioneer trek.
At this point in the ongoing formation of the Mormon scriptural canon, only Brigham Young’s revelation—section 136 of the Doctrine and Covenants—of organization, encouragement, and instruction given to the Nauvoo Saints as they prepared to move west is officially considered scripture. No further canonization seems immediately forthcoming. This leaves the place of the nineteenth-century westward migration in Mormon sacred history open to reevaluation even by orthodox Latter-day Saints who would never think to [102] question essential pillars of their sacred history such as the place of Joseph Smith’s first vision or the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.
This openness to reevaluation will be especially well exercised in a religion where more and more adherents participate with multiple cultural allegiances. The days of Mormons’ shared multiple cultural identity as American, Western, and Anglo-Scandinavian are over. The internationalization of Mormonism occasions a differentiation of these identities that Mormondom has not before had to see as separable. Teasing out a usable Mormon historical past that does not seem to privilege white Americans’ experience will be difficult. Bishop Gomez the Mexican-American Mormon, Dietrich Kempski the German Mormon, and Wouter van Beek the Dutch Mormon are only a small slice of the diverse multiple cultural allegiances that will grapple with this issue.
As the Church has grown, leaders and members have had to decide what aspects of Mormon Regional Culture need to be exported and what can be left behind in bringing the Latter-day Saint gospel to the world. This situation recapitulates the development of early Christianity. To a certain extent early Christianity became inseparable from some aspects of the Roman Empire, and Europe became “Latinized” to a certain degree as it was Christianized; this continued even after the political and military might of the Roman Empire had disappeared. Likewise, expanding Mormondom extends and transplants elements of American culture as it transforms peoples and places with not only Latter-day Saint religion but American hymnody, sports, church architecture, organizational principles, styles of dress, and a religious historical consciousness grounded in events that happened along the American frontier. [103]
Responses to the Pioneer Dilemma
So far several responses have emerged to the dilemmas faced by the pioneer myth and its associated cultural practices within Mormonism. These responses have relied on the following general strategies: abandonment, exportation, substitution, and reinterpretation.
Abandonment: In many ways, challenges to the pioneer myth’s relevance and usefulness have already caused it to slip into popular historical un-consciousness. While once conversion almost required immigration to Utah and thus actual participation in pioneer sacred history, today the pioneer trek and the establishment of Zion are not even mentioned in the program of instruction that Mormon missionaries teach to potential converts. While dramatic varieties of pioneer reverence once formed a frequent and central part of virtually all Mormons’ community experience, such practices now engage only a small percentage. The further one gets from the Mormon West, the less one hears about pioneers, and it is in many of these far away places that the Church is growing the fastest. Even in Utah, the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers may be on its last leg. Women in their fifties are no longer joining in the numbers that they once did.30
A college friend of mine, Brent, remembers the decline of Pioneer Day in his hometown of Tucson—Arizona’s second largest city.31 Tucson lies outside of the [104] state’s Mormon cultural areas but witnessed some important scenes in Mormon history and has a long-established and sizable LDS minority. Until recently, Tucson’s LDS population would traditionally congregate at a Church-owned stadium on Pioneer Day. There thousands would sing, eat, participate in sports tournaments, and view a “pioneer spectacular” where covered wagons circled the stadium track. A large fireworks display crowned the evening’s events. In the course of my friend’s lifetime this event was abandoned and individual LDS wards (congregations) began with less extravagance to celebrate several smaller celebrations.32 Usually, this involved little more than a ward potluck dinner and children dressed in pioneer garb pulling kiddy-wagon sized floats around the church building in a children’s parade. [105]
Brent remembers the day Pioneer Day died in his ward. The ward held a potluck but no one came in pioneer costume or with a float. For tradition’s sake the baffled kids were induced to circle the church. Brent does not remember any ward Pioneer Day celebrations after this empty event and assumes Pioneer Day faded because people ceased to find motivating meaning in pioneer commemorative symbols. This experience may not reflect the experience in all Tucson wards. Many waning pioneer celebrations world-wide were revived at least temporarily in anticipation of and during the sesquicentennial.33 It has yet to be seen what, if any, lasting effect the sesquicentennial will have on the slipping of pioneers from Mormon popular memory in many quarters.
Exportation: Another response to the pioneer dilemma has been for Mormondom to export the pioneer reverence and its manifestations. Though it is by no means as common as in the Mormon West, Mormons from places as diverse as Samoa and Japan have dressed up as Utah pioneers and paraded with handcarts for Pioneer Day festivities.34 In 1993 the Church’s magazine reported major Pioneer Day celebrations in Papillion, Nebraska; Sacramento, California; and New York City. Four thousand people attended the Church’s first annual Missouri Youth Pioneer Pageant in Branson, Missouri.35 So public historical forms of pioneer reverence are expanding and growing, although not at a fast [106] enough pace to penetrate fully all corners of an even faster-growing religious tradition. Wouter van Beek’s views represent one rationale for resisting exportation that may prevail worldwide. Dietrich Kempski suggests reasons to expect its continued exportation.
Replacement: Another response to the increasing problematization of the pioneers has been to turn to an even older source for a uniquely-Mormon unifying mythic history—the Book of Mormon. The ancient history recounted in the Book of Mormon, like the Bible and pioneer stories, is replete with miraculous occurrences and emulable examples of faith, obedience, and sacrifice. In the past few decades, the Book of Mormon has gained on the pioneer saga as the chief resource for sacred and instructive history.
Recent Church President Ezra Taft Benson played a pivotal role in this shift. He repeatedly emphasized the Book of Mormon’s centrality in Mormon faith. He encouraged a “Book of Mormon Renaissance” by calling on Mormons to read it daily, use it as a proselytizing tool, and make it the object of increased scholarly, literary, and artistic emphasis. His call caused an upsurge in art based on Book of Mormon themes, which may push pioneer topics to the sidelines of the Mormon art scene. A Mormon-run company produces a popular animated video series that features several stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon but none about the pioneers.
Book of Mormon sacred history is well suited for an international religion of many cultures and regions because even though its content could be read as privileging the Western hemisphere and Native Americans, its history is so ancient that it is detached enough from any modern Mormon subgroup to be [107] equally accessible to all Mormons and potential converts. The pioneer sacred history, with its close ties to Mountain West regional culture and the family memories of “ethnic” Mormons, does not provide the same equal access.
Reinterpretation: The most innovative response to the pioneer dilemma has been to expand the term “pioneer” to apply not only to the traditional 1847–69 pioneer period, but to any Mormon today facing a new or difficult situation.36 For example, at a church social in Austin, Texas, two Mormon women performed a set of dramatic monologues entitled “Pioneers: Now and Then.” One woman dressed in traditional pioneer garb and spoke of the hardships of pioneer life such as weeding the garden, preparing food, and mending clothes. The other woman wore modern clothes and discussed new challenges such as violence on television, protecting her children from drugs, and managing a busy schedule.37
Mormons of African descent are a special case for pioneer designation. Since 1978, Mormons of all races have been allowed full access to the ordinances of the Church. This change—instituted by prophetic revelation—reversed over a century of restricted temple access and a ban on priesthood ordination for Mormon males of African descent. Since 1979, African Americans have converted to Mormonism in unprecedented numbers and Mormon missionaries have enjoyed much success in Africa and the Caribbean. Brigham Young University historian Jessie Embry—reflecting a widespread positive attitude about [108] the 1978 revelation among Mormons—has suggested that African American Mormons are “just as much pioneers as those who crossed the plains to Zion.”38
It has also been increasingly common to refer to converts in regions of the world new to Mormonism as pioneers. One of many examples of this appears in “Ng Kat Hing: Hong Kong Pioneer,” Kellene Ricks’s recent article in The Ensign, the Church’s official devotional publication.39 Almost all Ensign articles about Church members outside of the American West draw this modern pioneer parallel. This kind of reinterpretation of the term “pioneer” has been officially promoted by the Church, and was a focus of the Church’s 1997 sesquicentennial celebration of the Mormon arrival in Utah.40 These expansions of the term “pioneer” beyond its traditional designation of “the first of those to cross the plains” can be seen as attempts within Mormon culture to seal potential points of fissure within a community that has always valued equality and unity in faith.
Not only does the “pioneerification” of modern Mormon converts show that the Church’s leadership is sensitive to the concerns of Mormons like Bishop Gomez, but perhaps more importantly this concept of “modern pioneers” is a way of keeping the Mormon present in sacred time—a situation where Mormons are really the most comfortable—by redeploying a symbol from a previous sacred time. This strategy helps give the Mormon present a sense of being “sacred [109] history in the making.” As new Mormon converts in Nigeria struggle to build a community of believers in the face of prejudice and misunderstanding, they recapitulate the trials of the Utah pioneers—who in their time recapitulated the trials of the Israelites. This recent reworking of the pioneer concept takes Jan Shipps’s notion of the sacralization of the present through the recapitulation of a sacred past to another degree of separation. The lives of modern Mormons become sacred history in the making by living through again what is already a recapitulated sacred history. It is important to note, however, this backward-looking aspect of Mormonism is only one aspect of Mormonism—the one that happens to be the subject at hand. Mormonism, more importantly even than being a history reverencing religion, is a millennial religion with a prophetic forward-looking stance.
Implications and Conclusions to Section 1
In the last decade or so, analyzing the relationship between collective memory and group identity in large-scale societies such as nations, ethnic communities, and religious institutions has been a matter of intense interest among scholars. Accompanying sharp insights into the means and purposes of socially constructed folk and popular historical conceptions, the temptation has existed among many to be overly cynical in their debunking of “invented traditions,” and they thereby perhaps damage the societies to whom they are obligated in the reciprocal ethical relationship that arises in scholar-subject [110] interaction.41 Historian Michael Kammen warns against cynical analyses of popular history and states that the “invention of tradition” is often done for benign reasons.42
This study strives to be at once critical while retaining respect for its subject matter and the people who hold it dear. I would add to Kammen’s observation that, even in the cases where we may suspect the “foisting of false consciousness,” our analysis can be critical and charitable at the same time. Rather than regarding invented traditions and identities as pathological false consciousness, as some studies do, they can alternately be viewed as creative responses to new situations and innovative strategies for providing a meaningful existence to their creators.43
In the environment of mutual hostility that sometimes exists between the members of the academy and members of conservative religious bodies like the LDS Church, it is especially tempting to exploit the story of the invention of [111] popular Mormon historical consciousness to stoke the fires of existing antagonisms and strengthen the walls of academic self-righteousness. This would be a mistake and would blind us to numerous insights attainable only through humbly trying to grasp the Mormon version of pioneer heritage on its own terms and occasionally letting Mormons speak for themselves.
In so doing, we find that because it typologically recapitulated Biblical history and occurred in the context of America’s romanticized westward expansion, the trek of the Mormon pioneers became the defining historical motif of the Mormon experience in America. As in other societies, Mormon highlighting and romanticization of the pioneer story provided a mythic historical “rallying point” for a newly emerging cultural identity. Pioneer mythology, as it has been passed on to modern Mormons, has been shown to be a construction created, reinforced, and maintained by popular public displays and celebrations. Changing conditions in Utah and worldwide Mormonism have demonstrated that the usefulness of traditional renditions of the pioneer story are showing some wear, and its associated rituals are no longer quite—and perhaps never really were—the unifying principles some scholars have described them as being. The significance, meaning, and worth of the pioneer myth will continue to be matters of reinterpretation and discussion among members of an expanding worldwide religion and a diversifying Mormon geographic region. While this tradition of popular historical expression has slipped somewhat from its once illustrious position in Mormon thought and practice, the Mormon pioneer concept is being innovatively reworked and is showing continued vitality in the face of its challenges. [112]
1. “Public historical imagery” is a term coined by David Glassberg to refer to popular mobilizations of historic or traditional themes in public performative events. Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry, 2. See also Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 9.
2. Durkheim, The Elementary forms of the Religious Life.
3. Bitton, “The Ritualization of Mormon History,” 67–85.
4. Campbell, Establishing Zion.
5. The Utah Genealogical Society extends the pioneer designation by offering “Utah Pioneer Certificates” to two classes of people who can prove direct descent from pioneer ancestry: “Founding Pioneers” from July 1847–9 September 1850 (the time it took for all of the organized parties of Nauvoo Mormons to come to Utah) and “Territorial Pioneers” whose ancestors lived in Utah before 4 January 1896 (the date of statehood). Utah Genealogical Society Pioneer Certificate application form in author’s possession.
6. Robert W. Sloan, Utah Gazetteer & Directory of Logan, Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City for 1884 (Salt Lake City: Herald Printing and Pub. Co., 1884). Sloan’s figures show only a slight drop in the numbers of immigrants after the 1869 completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and sustained immigration for several decades.
7. As a student at BYU, several international fellow students told me of their encounters with concerned American BYU students who had served as missionaries abroad. These missionaries expressed their frustration that after having worked hard to establish Mormonism abroad, the “best and brightest” immigrated to the United States.
8. Richard D. Poll, History & Faith: Reflections of a Mormon Historian (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989).
9. Handcart nostalgia, as one might imagine, benefits from the assumption that handcart travel must have been extremely difficult compared to ox-drawn wagons. This is a debatable point; one of Brigham Young’s justification for the handcart idea is that it would be easier because it eliminated the difficulties of using animals. See Hafen, Handcarts to Zion.
10. For a general examination of the idea of a perilous Mormon pioneer journey see Richard H. Jackson’s “The Overland Journey to Zion,” in Richard H. Jackson, ed., The Mormon Role in the Settlement of the West (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978). Jackson points out that most pioneer journals relate their crossing of the plains as a mixture of monotonous walking with moments of adventure and discovery, not unlike a pleasure trip or one-way family vacation.
11. The various groups of pioneers can be put into a “hagiographic hierarchy” of importance. Such a list would descend roughly as follows: handcart pioneers who died, anyone who died, handcart company members who survived, the advance company of 1847 pioneers, all 1847 pioneers, and finally anyone who crossed the plains before the railroad.
12. Shipps, Mormonism.
13. Steven L. Olsen, “Celebrating Cultural Identity: Pioneer Day in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,” BYU Studies 36, no. 1 (1996–97): 159–177.
14. Similar assertions have been made many times by many authors. Especially well thought out are the works of Bitton, “Ritualization of Mormon History”; Olsen, “Community Celebrations”; Shipps, Mormonism; and Stegner, The Gathering of Zion.
15. See Alma R. Blair, “The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: Moderate Mormons,” in The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History, eds., F. Mark McKiernan, Alma R. Blair, and Paul M. Edwards (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1973).
16. For contemporary statistics see Deseret News 1997–98 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1996).
17. Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1986), 4.
18. I once had a discussion with a non-Mormon former professor at a Utah university who claimed to have hidden in his room during the whole week of Pioneer Day because public displays of Mormon cultural identity disgusted him. Unfortunately, this man’s reluctance to appreciate Utah’s cultural life made his stay in Utah short and unpleasant.
19. “Saints Celebrate Pioneer Day,” Ensign 23 (October 1993): 75.
20. “Pioneer Day Activities Celebrate the Heritage of Early Saints,” Ensign 22 (October 1992): 74.
21. Mirroring the changes made in Pioneer Day celebrations, Pioneer Trail State Park’s “Old Deseret” model pioneer village and Lagoon’s “Sons of the Utah Pioneers Village” have sometimes downplayed the “Mormonness” of the history they seek to recreate, and enact generic frontier community scenes. The perceived “secularization” of Pioneer Day celebrations is not uncontroversial to some. A community leader in Sanpete County, Utah complained to me that he regarded the demolition derby and ATC pull that had become the premier Pioneer Day activities in his community as inappropriate modes of Pioneer Day celebration. His sentiment is understandable, but it ignores the long history (and still current practice) of holding rodeos and baseball tournaments on Pioneer Day. Demolition Derbies are a modern version of the kind of recreational activities Mormons have always regarded as wholesome and appropriate even, and perhaps especially, when done in conjunction with pioneer remembrance. Spring City, Utah informant, interview by author, 20 July 1995.
22. Christopher Smith, “Triumph, Tears at Sentimental Journey’s End,” Salt Lake Tribune website, 23 July 1997.
23. Jan Shipps, Mormonism.
24. Deseret News 1993–94 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1993).
25. I have frequently encountered such sentiments expressed by LDS people in many contexts—particularly fellow teenagers growing up in Mesa, Arizona, and later by my students at BYU.
26. The kind of relationship the DUP has to Utah society is not unique to that state. In Texas, the social prestige associated with descendant from the former republic’s first Anglo families is fostered in an aggressive manner by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. The DUP and the DRT and their philosophy of history can be seen as regional versions of the nativism and historical “preservationism” of the national organization the Daughters of the American Revolution.
27. Emily Gurnon, “Latinos and Latter-day Saints: Minority Mormons,” Christian Century, 16 Feb. 1994, 157–159.
28. Walter E. A. van Beek, “O Pioneers!” Sunstone 20, 1 (April 1997): 2.
29. Dietrich Kempski, “Pioneers? Yes!” Sunstone 20, 2 (July 1997): 2.
30. Kristi Bell, interview by author, April 1997. Kristi Bell is a columnist for the Provo Daily Herald.
31. Brent Bingham, interview by author, Provo, Utah, January 1995. Brent Bingham is a Tucson native.
32. A word about the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in order. Like Catholic parishes, LDS congregations are determined by geographic boundaries rather than the individual preferences of Church members for one congregation or another. Wards are typically kept to only 200–500 members to help create an “extended family” community environment in which volunteer Church responsibilities are available to all members. Wards are frequently divided due to Church growth. Wards are presided over by a Bishop who, like all local LDS Church volunteers, receives no salary and keeps his regular job.
LDS stakes (analogous to a diocese) are usually comprised of 5–15 wards and are administered by a stake president.
Bishops and stake presidents are appointed through inspiration to their hierarchical superiors, according to LDS belief. What little distinction between laity and clergy that exists among Mormons is fluid and transitional as people enter and leave positions of Church authority after periods of service usually more than a few years but rarely as much as a decade.
The LDS usage of the term “ward” evolved from an urban political administrative unit particularly common in Illinois. Chicago still uses them and Nauvoo, which was larger than Chicago in the 1840s, did before the Mormon exodus. In Utah, Church leaders divided Salt Lake City and other urban areas into wards for administrative and ecclesiastical purposes. Wards in the Mormon West lost their political significance and became increasingly important as a Church administrative unit for the organization of Sunday worship and other religious activities. In rural areas many villages tended to be about the size of one ward. While most Mormons are unfamiliar with the semantic history of the term ward, they do think of their congregations in terms of a neighborhood or village community.
The term “stake” refers metaphorically to stakes in the expanding tent of Zion.
33. Matthew Brown, “World Media Shine Spotlight on Wagon Train Hoopla,” Salt Lake Tribune website, 21 July 1997.
34. “The Church in the Pacific,” Ensign 28 (February 1997): 79–80.
35. “Saints Celebrate Pioneer Day, ” 75.
36. This shift is considered in Matthew Brown, “World Media Shine Spotlight on Wagon Train Hoopla.”
37. These events occurred during the Austin Oak Hills Stake Pioneer Day Celebration on 24 July 1994 in Austin, Texas.
38. Jessie L. Embry, Black Saints in White Church: Contemporary African American Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994).
39. Kellene Ricks, “Ng Kat Hing: Hong Kong Pioneer,” Ensign 22 (September 1992): 51–52.
40. Church administrator in the Office of the Presiding Bishopric, interview by author, Salt Lake City, Utah, January 1994.
41. Richard Handler’s treatment of nationalism in Quebec typifies this cynical approach to the cultural creativity expressed through “invented traditions.” Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison: the University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
42. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 31.
43. I believe a root cause of these kinds of problematic analyses is the ascension of “cultural studies” as the discipline most vigorously theorizing culture. Emerging from 1950s British Marxist theory and focusing on the politics of cultural forms in complex post-modern societies, cultural studies has become a, if not the, dominant method of cultural analysis in Western scholarship. Recognizing class, gender, ethnicity, nation, race, and sexuality as a limited set of sufficiently explanatory human concerns, cultural studies has failed to even acknowledge religion as a significant aspect of human experience and identity let alone provide any useful theorization of its operation. Cultural Studies has not moved far beyond Marx’s facile “opiate of the masses.” Without acknowledgment, religion and religion-like cultural forms tend to be marginalized and grossly misunderstood by scholars influenced by cultural studies. A more productive counter-trend among historians and folklorists has been to take religious movements seriously on their own terms and phenomenologically investigate religious experiences while bracketing their truth claims.
