Mormon pioneers had long been on the hunt for a permanent home. The sect had experienced conflict with its neighbors in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. When they did, they entered territory owned not by the United States, but by Mexico.
Though slavery was technically illegal in Alta California, of which Utah was a part, it was big business. Mexican colonists in the area enslaved Native people and used their labor to work their lands and tend their children. Some groups of Native people, including the Utes, participated in the slave trade, raiding nearby tribes, capturing potential slaves and selling them to the Mexican elite. They also stole horses and sold them to travelers.
By positioning themselves as slave traders, not potential slaves themselves, people like Ute Chief Walkara, or Walker, could evade the enslavement of their own people while maintaining a powerful status relative to other bands and tribes. But Walkara was unprepared for the tenacity of the Mormons.
Many Mormons believed slavery was immoral and opposed any kind of enslavement. Young, who was camped with the Mormons in what would become Salt Lake. The Native people they encountered had just returned from a raid in which they had captured two girls. One of the Mormon settlers intervened, buying the captive girl.
These misunderstandings led to friction and sometimes violence between the peoples. They began as skirmishes between Mormon militias and principally Ute Indians that escalated into larger-scale conflicts. Violence between Mormons and Indians abated as disease and starvation severely reduced Indigenous populations living in the Intermountain West and United States federal action confined many Indians to reservations.
Despite intermittent conflict, Church leaders remained committed to bringing the message of the Book of Mormon to Native Americans and established proselytizing missions and farms. These efforts introduced the gospel and provided education and food for Indians in Utah and Arizona.
Thousands of northwestern Shoshones in the s were baptized and eventually formed the Washakie Ward, which was led by the first American Indian bishop in the Church, Moroni Timbimboo. About 65 years later, Catawba chief Samuel Taylor Blue spoke in general conference. My brothers and sisters, beyond a shadow of a doubt I know that this gospel is true. Latter-day Saint outreach to American Indians continued into the s and s with the expansion of missions in Arizona and New Mexico.
Mormon homes became a tool to aid in the assimilation of Indian children. Originally called the Lamanite Student Placement Program, the project was riddled with ethical and philosophical problems, Boxer said.
Rules distributed to students mandated they put aside their Native traditions in favor of Mormon customs. Be anxious to accept those ways of the church which will help you fit into the modern society of today. Failure to follow the rules could have resulted in expulsion from the program.
The program also came with a prophetic promise. In a speech to the church, Mormon Apostle Spencer W. Elder Spencer W. Ivins standing and Elder Matthew Cowley meeting with group of Lamanites and others soon after the three brethren were called to serve on the Church Indian Affairs Committee. The Indian Student Placement Program was not designed to fully assimilate Native children into the white culture, Boxer said. One solution would be to convert Indian children who would also aid in the process from within their own communities.
But that logic was flawed, Embry said. Students who embraced the Mormon faith and succeeded academically often felt out of place on their reservations or among traditional Native practices.
Such was the case for Wallace, who left the program and her foster family in Colorado after ninth grade. It was more difficult because we dealt with alcoholism and poverty, but it was home and I realized I wanted to be there. He also said the Lamanite story found in the Book of Mormon made him feel better about himself.
Nez credits the Indian Student Placement Program with his continued success today as a graphic designer and a small-business owner. In , the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children—a non-government group that monitors foster placements across state lines— sent surveys to 50 Native American families who had participated in the program. The results were mostly positive: 93 percent believed their children would receive a better education as a result of the program, and 70 percent said they felt their children's foster family helped them understand and identify with their Indian heritage.
In , Jessie Embry, a former history professor now retired from Brigham Young University, conducted an oral-history project that focused on the foster parents in the program.
One interviewee spoke about a placement student abusing one of his biological children. This person also expressed frustration with a lack of response from the Mormon caseworker and discovered that the placement student had abused other children in previous homes. BN, one of the plaintiffs involved in the sexual-abuse lawsuits against the Church, has also alleged in her lawsuit that her Mormon caseworker did not respond to her complaints.
She requested not to be named in this story. Her name is also not included in the lawsuit, because of the sensitive nature of her claims. In a recent interview, she said her father wanted her to be part of the program so that she could attend high school outside of the reservation and graduate from college.
She joined the program in and quickly regretted it, she said. I just kind of held everything in. There, according to the lawsuit, she was sexually abused by her foster father. She also claims that years later, while living with a different foster family, a foster brother raped her. She alleged in her lawsuit that she told her foster parents and a caseworker, who is anonymous in the suit, about what had happened, but the abuse continued. It just fell on deaf ears.
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