Devil's Gate: BrighamYoung and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy - David Roberts

Pretty good summary, but really nothing new.

Funny how these people from Boston and New York write a book and seem to think the subject is their huge discovery. (We've seen this type of attitude in all those Burns documentaries.) Roberts's key point is that Brigham Young was to blame for the handcart disaster. Why, he has been blamed for the disaster, and deservedly so, by many people for 150 years. Nothing new there. Roberts does add a few historical howlers of his own. For instance he states two or three times that in 1856 Fort Laramie was a private fur trading post when if fact it was a U. S Army post and had been since 1849, a fact known to every novice student of frontier history and may be revealing of Roberts's lack of depth in his subject matter. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading book and can recommend it.

The Best Handcart Book

Robert's new book on the Mormon Handcart tragedy of 1856 is well written and very engrossing.

It is far superior to HANDCARTS TO ZION by Leroy and Ann Hafen (1981) or the more recent THE PRICE WE PAID by Andrew D. Olsen (2006).

The Handcart migration was, despite Brigham Young's press releases to the contrary, a disaster during its short, but messy, five year (1856-1860) history. The 1856 Willie and Martin companies lost somewhere between 200-240 people (by conservative estimates) to starvation and the bitter cold of an early Wyoming winter.

Roberts chronicles the sad story with a deft hand. He does not buy into the Mormon mythology that turns the hapless victims into grateful Saints who somehow got to know God better by freezing and starving.

Disregard R.B. Johnson's review. He continues the traditional rant that only Mormons can understand Mormons or Mormon history. Such statements as, "A couple years as a dilettante and talks with a maverick scholar [Bagley] and Roberts knows it all," demonstrate this tired refrain. He dumps not only on Roberts, but on other non-Mormon authors who, he tells us, write "poorly informed, superficial accounts of complex issues."

There is nothing complex about the deaths of the Willie and Martin pioneers. These foreign immigrants, on their way to Zion, were poorly provisioned, were required to push unwieldy and poorly constructed vehicles over extremely difficult terrain, and were told by high Church officials that, despite the lateness of the season, they would get through with no significant problems beyond a few chilled limbs. So much for misguided prophecy.

Excellent history of Preventable Tragedy...

Devil's Gate by David Roberts proves to be a well written account of the Mormon Handcart expeditions. Although the handcart expeditions constituted only about 10% of new Mormons coming into Utah Territory during this period, the legends and mythology of the trials and suffering of the members of these handcart expeditions make them a near demi-gods to Mormon historians. The book explained very well the essence of these handcart expeditions and their history.

However the key elements of this book lies in the Willie and Martin Handcart expeditions, both handcart trains that left on their journey to Utah Territory late in the season and how they were caught in the on-coming winter storms. Over 200 Mormons died due to exposure, weakened by lack of food, clothing and burdened with physical and mental hardship. The author's intent was to proved that these deaths did not have to happened and could have been preventable. Once more, the deadly finger of blame lies toward the leadership of the LDS Church who created the handcart expedition plan for that year. Brigham Young, ultimately stand in the center of this since he was the leader of the Church, helped initiate and plan the handcart expeditions. Thus as the leader, the buck stops with him. The blames can equally be shared with lower level of Mormon command structures, the elders who shared Young's plans and encouraged by his mindset. They encouraged Willie and Martin handcart companies forward into the wilderness. The people who made up these companies were just new arrivals from England, knowing nothing of the terrain they were about to go over nor the weather they could be expecting. They relied solely on their American Mormon breathens and the leadership from Salt Lake City that took them this far. They were sorely let down by all of them.

Still, this is an amazing story of courage and valor that would make anyone proud. The book is very descriptive of their activities, relying greatly on journals and notes of the people involved. Despite of the hardship, despite of deaths, they never give up, and even after they were rescued, they never blamed a soul for their suffering. They were the true heroes of the story. I am sorry to say that I can't say much about the people who sent them on nor the leadership in Salt Lake City that urged that mindset.

Overall, a great history book that tell a story that needed to be told. Its scattered the mythology created by the modern day Mormons regarding the Willie and Martin handcart expeditions that highlights their rescue but not the reason why they needed rescuing. And its a great book for anyone interested in American western history as it shows that not all wagon trains were pulled by four-legged animals.

I am afraid, those of the LDS faith will probably have troubles with this book. While the book talked highly of Mormons of Willie and Martin handcart companies, it does not talk very highly for the Mormon leadership at any level. Brigham Young defenders will not doubt go up in arms by his portrayal in this book. Others may go up in arms because the author mentioned Will Bagley quite a few times. I think for a Mormon, Bagley and Sally Denton are the anti-Christ of their faith based history.

Still for the rest of us, this is an easy to read, highly interesting and quite educational book that should be an eye-opener for many.

Fools rush in...

David Roberts reminds me of Sarah Palin, both are wholly out of their depth but don't seem to realize it.

I wish that I had done more research before I bought this book, but I also wish that the author had done more research in writing it. That is the heart of my problem with this book, it is a superficial journalistic account of what happened, I had expected something more. The reviews lead me to expect more.

If (like one reviewer) you had never heard of this incident, this is not a bad book to read in its description of the events surrounding the tragedy. It is well-written and easy to read. Where it fails is in its claim to be about "Brigham Young and the great Mormon handcart tragedy" and in Publishers Weekly claim that this is a "solid and well-researched contribution to Mormon studies." That it is not. The book has a little more than a five-page bibliography; about the same as a solid grad student term-paper, but exceptionally weak for a book of scholarship (Bagley, whom the author seems to idolize has a 25-page bibliography in his Blood of the Prophets).

One thing that shocked me about a book written in 2008, is its reliance on several anti-Mormon polemics long discredited by objective historians (e.g., Jarman's "U.S.A. Uncle Sam's Abscess, or Hell upon Earth for U.S., Uncle Sam" not surprisingly a total rant). On the other hand, he leaves out some of the most important Mormon historians (e.g., Quinn and Shipps). In a time of exploding growth in Mormon history and Mormon studies and decades of Mormon journals (Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies, Dialogue, etc.) Roberts cites only four journal articles.

I think this is symptomatic of an expanding group of non-Mormon writers taking on long-discussed issues in Mormon history which apparently are new to them and therefore they think must be new to the world. The ignorance of these authors blinds them to the subtleties of their subjects, yet seems to give these dabblers a false confidence in their analysis (fools rush in...) Denton's book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Krakhauer's book on violence in Mormonism and now this book on the Handcart disaster are all poorly informed, superficial accounts of complex issues. That Roberts actually praises Krakhauer for his "hard-earned expertise in matters Mormon" reveals the depth of Robert's ignorance of things Mormon rather than Krakhauer's expertise.

There are now many historians who have spent their whole lives trying to understand these things. Roberts for the most part ignores these scholars or tries to tell us that they are wrong. Upon what does he base his criticism? A couple years as a dilettante and talks with a maverick scholar and Roberts knows it all.

Maybe I was expecting too much. I had listened to Bagley's presentation at Sunstone blaming Brigham Young and Mormon finances for the disaster. When I saw this book, I thought it would analyze and research to a fuller extent those issues and develop or critique Bagley's analysis. After all, the book is subtitled "Brigham Young and the...Handcart Tragedy." It turns out that this book adds nothing on Brigham Young and is wholly dependent for its conclusions on Bagley's unpublished manuscript. Maybe someday Bagley will give us a fuller treatment and support of his conclusions.

There were many books on this tragedy before Roberts wrote this one, now there's one more. Apart from the readily apparent bias in its perspective, the book is not a bad account of the tragedy itself. Roberts includes several interesting first-person accounts. In that, it is no worse than the several other books available on this topic (many of which also have original accounts). In terms of deeper research and the analysis of Brigham Young's involvement in, or responsibility for, the tragedy, Roberts promises much and wholly fails to deliver. He is way out of his depth and simply unqualified to make the judgments the analysis deserves. This accounts for his reliance on Bagley. Unfortunately, what we get is a warmed-over analysis of someone else's unpublished paper.

A fascinating account of a little-known part of history

I found Devil's Gate absolutely fascinating! I had never heard of the Handcart Migration, and to discover that the tragedy that befell the handcarters exceeded the suffering of the far-more-famous Donner Party was a revelation. The author does a great job of fleshing out the individuals whose story he tells, from the Mormon leaders down through the handcarters themselves, including children. I especially liked the end of the book, when the author visits the important sites of the migration, and even pulls a handcart himself - a modern replica, much better engineered and built than the originals, and still an almost indescribably difficult mode of travel. I thought his account was very well balanced between admiration and crticism, and between the basic facts of the historical story and the very moving human experience he relates. A real page-turner, and an absorbing story that very much deserves more widespread recognition. Highly recommended!