Close Readings and Wide Lenses

Although interdisciplinarity is en vogue in the academy nowadays, differences in the perspectives of various disciplines persist. Most relevant to Amanda Hendrix-Komoto's Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific is a simple fact: historians are not theologians. As a historian myself, I've noticed that our field often tends to think of religion as a symptom rather than a root cause—a vehicle for expressing deeper motivations like paternalism, racism, or economic need. In her fascinating study of nineteenth-century Mormonism and its relationship with racial and family structures, however, Hendrix-Komoto bucks this trend by starting with theology. How did the teachings of the “restored gospel” on polygamy and Lamanites, she asks, impact how Latter-day Saints conducted daily life? Or, to quote the more specific questions that Hendrix-Komoto offers in her introduction, “How did the racialization of Latter-day Saints affect their interactions with Native people? In what ways did Latter-day Saint sexuality shape their missionary work and the colonization of the Great Basin? How did restoration theology change in response to the difficulties of settling Zion?” (10). These are important questions, but Hendrix-Komoto sets herself an additional challenge from the start: she seeks to answer these questions not just from the perspective of White Latter-day Saints but also from the viewpoint of the Indigenous people who came into contact with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like the Shoshone and Native Hawaiians.Hendrix-Komoto's book is divided into six chapters, with an introduction and epilogue, a relatively slim volume considering its expansive physical and temporal territory. The first chapter, “The Race and Sex of God,” focuses on the early growth of Mormonism in the 1830s and 1840s and initial reactions to the revelations of Joseph Smith. The contents of the chapter will be familiar to those acquainted with the history of the Mormon church or the landscape of early nineteenth-century religion in the United States. (Indeed, part of her purpose for including this chapter in the book is to “offer readers a general introduction to the theology of Latter-day Saints and their position in nineteenth-century American society” [46].) Nevertheless, the chapter identifies some key themes that carry throughout the rest of Hendrix-Komoto's analysis. She argues that even among the turn toward a more embodied religious experience common among many new denominations, such as the Shakers, Mormon theology stood out. By describing God as a physical being, and arguing that humans could become divine themselves, Smith's restoration theology collapsed the typical Christian material/spiritual distinction. Non-Mormons reacted to this innovation with concern and quickly turned to racialized language to criticize Mormon sexuality.In contrast, Hendrix-Komoto explains, Mormons asserted that their theology would bring more order to the world, especially to Native Americans. Smith himself sent missionaries to the Shawnee and Delaware in 1830. Lewis Dana (Oneida), who joined the church in the 1840s, traveled and preached in Indian territory. Saints were motivated by both theology and external criticisms in their preaching to Native peoples. Mormons sought to “redeem” Native peoples and usher in a new era of civilization for them, hoping thereby to demonstrate the value of the church.Chapter 2 delves deeper into the unique structures of family life that emerged within the early Mormon church, focusing primarily on gender and kinship networks among women. This chapter shows theology and lived reality functioning in different ways. Hendrix-Komoto mentions that “historians of the Latter-day Saints have often emphasized the vast potential that the restoration's early theology held for women” (48). As a nonspecialist in Mormon history, I would have appreciated Hendrix-Komoto engaging more with the historiography here. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, of course, dealt directly with the question of Mormonism and gender in the nineteenth century in her book A House Full of Females, concluding that Mormon women did draw upon their faith to widen their scope of influence and agency.1 More broadly, historians have often explored the impact of nineteenth-century religious movements on women's roles, and I would have liked to see Hendrix-Komoto join this conversation more directly.2 Where this chapter excels is in its exploration of the affective qualities of kinship networks. Hendrix-Komoto explains that as the practice of polygamy expanded, Mormon women were explicitly discouraged from relying emotionally on their husbands—as Zina Young advised, a Mormon wife must “regard her husband with indifference” (71). Simultaneously, however, broader cultural views of marriage were shifting, emphasizing the importance of an emotional connection between husband and wife. Given these two contradictory influences, Mormon women often channeled both their material and emotional needs into relationships with other women. Male Latter-day Saints’ missionary zeal, which often prompted long absences away from home, created further instability for women. For the LDS Church, however, it was important to demonstrate that Mormonism was compatible with the prevailing patriarchal nuclear family structure. The ability of Mormon women to create new kinship-style relationships among themselves would eventually allow the church to argue for “polygamy's superiority as a marital system” (73).Chapter 3, “Redeeming the Lamanites in Native America and the Pacific,” explores the mostly failed attempts of Mormon missionaries to convert Native peoples in the mid-nineteenth century. These mission projects, however, failed for different reasons in different locations. In the continental US, Mormon missionaries began evangelization projects in the same decade that the US demonstrated its full commitment to the removal of all Native peoples east of the Mississippi River. Conversion no longer offered much protection against removal. While the church celebrated a few notable converts, like Peninah Shropshire Cotton (Cherokee) or Lewis Dana (Oneida), by and large, the Latter-day Saints did not see the type of rapid, massive conversion of Native peoples that they had hoped for.In contrast, Mormonism spread quickly in England and Wales, leading to the immigration of new settlers to America. Hendrix-Komoto argues that these missionary successes and failures caused a shift in how Latter-day Saints talked about the Lamanites. While Mormons continued to think of Native Americans as God's chosen people, they began to emphasize the importance of Euro-Americans within God's plan as well.In the Pacific Islands, Mormon missionaries faced a different set of challenges. Mormons arrived in 1843, decades after emissaries from the London Missionary Society (LMS) had set up missionary outposts in places such as Tahiti. Competition between the LMS and the LDS Church found expression through accusations of disordered sexuality: Latter-day Saint missionaries accused LMS representatives of consorting with prostitutes, while the LMS criticized some Latter-day Saints’ decision to marry Native women. The incursion of Mormon beliefs into Polynesian domestic spheres also had unexpected consequences: Mormon missionaries were expelled from the islands in 1853 by the French government, which suspected them of encouraging Native resistance to French rule.Chapter 4, “Creating Polygamous Domesticities,” focuses on the early years of Mormon migration to Utah. As polygamy became an increasingly public practice, male Mormon leaders worked to ensure that it remained an orderly family structure. Leaders like Brigham Young criticized illicit practices of sexuality outside the bonds of marriage and emphasized that marriage must take place with proper church approval (113). Life in Utah also challenged Latter-day Saint theology regarding Native people. As Hendrix-Komoto explains, “In Missouri and Illinois it had been possible for them to dream of a day when Native Americans would overturn the US federal government and rule in the Latter-day Saints’ anticipated New Jerusalem. In Utah, however, the Saints would not entertain the possibility of an Indian revolution” (115–16). The solution to both challenges was the same: impress upon Latter-day Saints, whether White or Native, the importance of maintaining a respectable domestic order. This included policing the boundaries of familial structures. In some cases, Native people were incorporated into White households, usually either when Native women married White Latter-day Saint men or when Indigenous children were adopted by Latter-day Saint families. While missionary-minded Saints encouraged these bonds as a means of civilizing Native people, many Mormons continued to regard these liminal individuals and racially mixed families with suspicion.Chapter 5, “Making Native Kin,” delves into the fascinating life story of John Garr and his daughter-in-law, Elizabeth. The debates over the estate of John Garr reveal conflict over kinship networks and the types of families that Saints were able to build. The story, encapsulated in court case records that, astonishingly, Hendrix-Komoto found for sale in a Salt Lake City bookstore, centers on the relationship between John Garr, a White settler, and a Shoshone woman. (When the woman is first mentioned, on page 129, she is described as “unnamed”; later, on page 146, Hendrix-Komoto says that family history tentatively identifies her as Susie Wigegee. Hendrix-Komoto notes in the footnotes that she has been unable to verify this name, so I understand why she was hesitant to lead with it—but describing the woman as unnamed also repeats the nineteenth-century erasure of Susie and women like her within documentary records created and preserved by primarily White communities.) Garr had at least one child, Johnny, with this Shoshone woman. Johnny lived with the Garrs until adulthood but died in an accident shortly after marrying his wife, Elizabeth. When the elder Garr died, the other children in the family argued that Elizabeth should not inherit any of the estate, claiming that Johnny was not a legitimate heir.This story allows Hendrix-Komoto to explore how Native and White people lived together in domestic spaces. Latter-day Saint colonization in Utah had disrupted and ultimately colonized Shoshone land, leaving many struggling for survival. Taking Shoshone children into their homes formally as indentured servants, a legal designation required by Utah law, allowed Saints to feel like they were continuing their mission to evangelize and transform Native peoples without halting their process of colonization. Garr's extramarital relationship with the Shoshone woman, however, challenged Saints’ openness to the idea of creating mixed-race families. John Garr had clearly and frequently identified Johnny as his son; Mormon concepts of sealing would have supported the idea that Johnny had been incorporated into John's family, whether or not a biological relationship existed. But Johnny faced discrimination for his racial identity throughout his life, and the courts initially sided against Elizabeth. Although the Supreme Court overturned the case, Hendrix-Komoto concludes that the episode shows that while “white Latter-day Saints had been able to create an orderly polygamous domesticity [as discussed in chapter 4], they found it more difficult to control the Indian children they had adopted or the half-Indian ones they had birthed, who would always remain not quite white and not quite Indian.” This “failure of the Saints to fully assimilate Indian children,” she concludes, required Saints to retool their understanding of the restoration gospel (154). I think it is worth clarifying here that Hendrix-Komoto's analysis in these sentences operates within the worldview of nineteenth-century White Latter-day Saints. The Shoshone, for example, would be unlikely to describe their children's ability to thwart Saints’ control as a “failure.”Chapter 6, “Native Zions,” is the most innovative and compelling chapter—one that could easily be assigned as a stand-alone chapter in undergraduate classes on religion or Indigeneity. Hendrix-Komoto examines ways that Polynesians and Shoshones created their own “Zions,” places where they could “create their own understandings of the restoration” (159). The first Mormon missionaries to Hawaiʻi arrived in 1850 but were recalled to Utah in 1857 due to the outbreak of the Utah War. In the absence of White missionaries, a Hawaiian-led Mormonism took root, leading to the foundation of Lāʻie in 1864, an agricultural settlement for Hawaiian Mormon families. When Hawaiians and other Polynesians began to travel to Utah to visit the temple in the 1880s, they faced discrimination in Salt Lake City and eventually purchased a tract of land about seventy-five miles away from the city to create a new space for Polynesian Mormonism. This new town, called Iosepa, blended Mormonism, some White agricultural practices and cultural norms, and Polynesian heritage. For example, “residents painted sea turtles on nearby boulders, and named the streets after important figures within the history of the church in the Hawaiian islands” (171).A similar settlement led by Native Americans also emerged in Idaho. In the aftermath of the Bear River Massacre, some Shoshone people and leaders turned to Mormonism, hoping that “conversion to the restored gospel would provide [the Shoshone] with a respite from the relentless assaults of colonialism” (175). The Mormon practice of baptizing deceased family members was perhaps particularly compelling for the Shoshone survivors of the massacre. Their settlement, called Washakie, flourished for several decades between its foundation in 1880 and the 1940s, when World War II and the resulting industrialization prompted many Washakie residents to move to larger cities. Iosepa also came to an end in the twentieth century when the LDS Church built a temple in Hawaiʻi. With no need for Mormon Hawaiians to travel to Utah anymore, the Iosepa community dwindled. Lāʻie, however, maintains its identity as a Native Hawaiian Mormon stronghold. I hope future work builds upon Hendrix-Komoto's exploration of Lāʻie, Iosepa, and Washakie. As Angela Tarango noted in 2014, “There remains a lacuna of scholarship on Native Christians in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.”3 Comparisons with earlier Native Christian communities, like Brothertown, Stockbridge, or the Moravians (all from the early 1800s), or more recent movements like the Native American Church or Tarango's Native Pentecostals, would be fertile ground for future scholarship as well.One of the challenges for me in reading this book is that I never quite got a clear sense of the scholarly community with which Hendrix-Komoto sees herself in dialogue. In her introduction, she explicitly mentions the work of Sarah Barringer Gordon and W. Paul Reeve from the early 2000s as foundational scholarship on the question of Mormonism and racial identity, but I would be curious to know if the field has evolved in the past twenty years. Throughout the book, she occasionally references how her analysis differs from previous “historians of the Latter-day Saints” (see, for example, page 48), usually without offering further detail. Still, as an outsider to the field of Mormon studies, I did not come away with a clear understanding of how Hendrix-Komoto's book engages with the field. Perhaps this simply reflects my own background—nor am I arguing that the book needed to include a dissertation-esque historiographical litany—but bringing some of the secondary works out of the footnotes and into the main text would have been helpful.More importantly, however, how Hendrix-Komoto set up the framework of her analysis means that the book would have benefitted from deeper engagement with scholars of American religion outside of Mormonism. Hendrix-Komoto makes big claims throughout her book, underscoring her commitment to taking the practices and beliefs of the Latter-day Saints seriously. For example, in chapter 1, she states: “Latter-day Saint theology compelled Saints to travel to the Pacific and the American West to try to redeem the indigenous peoples they found there” (23). As I said in the opening paragraph of this essay, I think this is a laudable way to approach the study of people affiliated with religious groups. It seems to me, however, that this type of statement is arguing, at a certain level, for a form of Mormon exceptionalism. If it was Latter-day Saint theology, in and of itself, that compelled Saints to evangelize to far-flung Native tribes, did it do so in a way that was different from Protestant Christianity? From Catholicism? Was the Book of Mormon's prophecy that Native people would be “redeemed and restored to their previous status as God's chosen people” (5) really all that different from the frequent Protestant belief that Native Americans were one of the lost ten tribes of Israel?4 Or White Presbyterian minister Gideon Blackburn's suggestion that the Cherokees “were of the same race with ourselves”?5 How did Latter-day Saint schooling for Native children differ from the Foreign Mission School of Cornwall, Connecticut (admirably analyzed by John Demos in his 2014 book The Heathen School)?6 There are times that Hendrix-Komoto's examples do highlight differences: Latter-day Saints seemed slightly more accepting of mixed-race marriages than most nineteenth-century Protestants (although not more than French or Spanish Catholics!), and less concerned, obviously, about polygamy in Native communities. Still, it would have been to these more some cases, the potential allow for fertile to be For example, Hendrix-Komoto argues that restoration's early theology had a in which of of Native people would the of the Latter-day gospel Native were few general among Latter-day Saints in the to in her book on Christian missionaries, had come to this work Native few among the and for the work from the American and turned their toward see a similar process among and Latter-day by a few this a other Hendrix-Komoto seems to against an of one she mentions that Latter-day Saint of Native people in Utah “were not different than those of Or, when describing the away from with Native tribes, she explains that of the White Latter-day Saints toward these marriages to within American about She argues that like those of John Garr it clear that the theology of the Book of Mormon would be more difficult to than the Saints had Most is her of change over white Latter-day Saints to be fully included within American they the that had emphasized the Native Americans would in the of this answer to one of Hendrix-Komoto's initial questions, “How did restoration theology change in response to the difficulties of settling Zion?” (10). If the seems to be that Mormonism much of what it unique over the of the nineteenth and early twentieth did The book with an epilogue, not a This allows Hendrix-Komoto to carry some of the themes of the book into the twentieth and for Indigenous the of a Mormon past in Utah, and and the erasure of many Native with that It also toward the potential for The of restoration theology, as Hendrix-Komoto has so in Imperial from place to place and to it motivated White Mormons to evangelize and out to Native groups. But it also Mormons on the of White themselves, for both their racial and domestic challenges to Protestant By how the of faith lived Hendrix-Komoto offers ground for and a for future