People in Missouri were not very creative. For example, the people who moved west from
Florida to Missouri named the town they settled in “Florida.” That’s where Mark Twain was born. Just down the river from Hannibal, Missouri,
where he grew up, is a town called Louisiana, Missouri, named by settlers from
Louisiana. Well, they certainly have a
tourist attraction in Hannibal, MO, the little town on the Mississippi River
where young Sam Clemens grew up, and about which he wrote in Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer, and his most famous work, often called the Great American
Novel, Huckleberry Finn. There isn’t a lot else in Hannibal, Missouri,
other than Mark Twain stuff. There was
the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Mark Twain Casino, Mark Twain State Park, Mark
Twain Lake, the Mark Twain Hotel (and the Mark Twain Motel), the Mark Twain
diner (serving Mark Twain fried chicken) and so on.
In addition to the Mark Twain name, all the
Mark Twain characters had their own commercial establishments: Aunt Polly’s Attic, the Widow’s Antiques,
Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream, and so forth.
I looked for Jim’s Soul Food, but Jim didn’t have any business of his
own in Hannibal, although I did learn about Uncle Dan’l, the middle aged slave
who used to tell stories to the kids in Hannibal when Sam was growing up. Mark Twain said he carried that man around
with him, and put him into his stories, most famously as Jim, the slave who is
Huck Finn’s companion.
It was prom night in Hannibal when we arrived, so we got to
see all sorts of sweet looking teenaged couples with sparkly gowns and matching
ties parading around having their photos taken by the river, which is
definitely the centerpiece of town. The
few blocks down by the river have been restored to their 19
th
century charm, and mostly focus on Mark Twain’s life, with the alleged cabin of
the “real Huckleberry Finn,” who was Sam Clemens boyhood friend and son of the
town drunk, with whom he was forbidden to play because he was the “wrong sort,”
and who represented that freedom that a boy longs for, as the centerpiece. We also saw “Becky Thatcher’s House,” with
stories about the “real Becky Thatcher,” and Mark Twain’s father’s law office,
Tom Sawyer and
Huck Finn.
We used to teach the latter at Northwest, but it was too long, and
too flawed, according to some colleagues, and then we started teaching
Puddinhead Wilson instead, and then we
stopped reading Mark Twain altogether. I
wonder if anyone reads him any more in high school. I was thinking of trying to
have my Visions of America class read
Huck
Finn this upcoming year, especially now that there has been so much discussion
of its use of the “N-word” constantly –
both Jane Smiley and Toni Morrison have written excellent essays, one
criticizing and one defending the teaching of the novel in schools. It might be
fun for the kids, not only to read Huck’s adventures, but to talk about the
ongoing relevance (or lack thereof) of the book. It’s another American Journey book, like
The Grapes of Wrath, but it’s also a
long-ish novel, so I would probably have to do the same thing that I do with
the Steinbeck, and offer several different “tiers” of reading, only discussing
selected sections. Okay, I’ve talked
myself into it. I also want to add some
sections from
Roughing It into my
Western course reader this year, now that I’ve been to Virginia City and all.
where, as a boy, young Sam Clemens hid while playing hooky from school and saw
a dead body. Story after story was
presented to us about Mark Twain’s boyhood home, friends, and activities, as
well as pictures from his later life, his travels on the Mississippi and
farther afield, his many accomplishments and witty sayings. It was very heartwarming, especially when
they had Norman Rockwell’s original paintings that he created to illustrate
both
Tom Sawer and
Huck Finn.
From Hannibal, we couldn’t resist driving up a final portion
of The Great River Road before saying farewell to the Mighty Mississippi and
turning West. The Great River Road winds right along the banks of the
Mississippi, with a couple of sweet little restored 19
th century
towns along the way. During the 19
th
century, they were “boomtowns,” prosperous river boat stops and centers of
trade. Now there is really nothing much
in these towns except for maybe one old restored B and B and a brewpub, but
they do have a ton of eagles! Bald eagles,
that migrate and live there for the winter!
So they have a bunch of preservation and interpretive centers, and eagle
festivals during that time.
. If you go a few blocks up from the river,
however, the areas are really sketchy, depressed, with abandoned businesses and
homes, and apparently lots of Meth. The
route from the fertilizer of Iowa to the meth labs of the Midwest is booming,
and when you combine meth with urban decay, you get some pretty depressing
vistas just half a mile or so from the quaint little restored 19th
century storefronts with tea cozies and local pottery and so forth. That contrast is definitely another potent
vision of America I have come away with on this trip; I’ve seen it all along
the way, not just on the Great River Road. The Mississippi is a wonderful,
American river, a vision of America in so many ways. After this trip, I have many ideas about how
to teach more about this river, its imagery and symbolism, and all the
literature that has been written about it.
But never mind that now because I have to talk about our next stop,
Nauvoo, Illinois, home of the LIBERAL MORMONS!
I was a little hesitant about going to another LDS site
after Utah. I was sick of the smiling
young missionary women with perfect teeth, telling me their memorized lines
about Brigham Young. Matt was afraid I’d
have “PTSD – Post-Traumatic-Smith-Disorder” and start ranting again. I had seen enough giant Mormon art with
shining blond angels to last me many years.
However, when we drove up to the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo I
didn’t know I would be in for Mormons of an entirely different color. The first odd thing I noticed when I drove up
was that there was nothing about “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints.” Instead, all the signs said “Community
of Christ.” What was that all
about? We pulled up and were greeted by
a silver-haired couple; the man had small round glasses and was NOT wearing a
tie. The woman was wearing slacks! Okay, what was going on? I asked them what church they were part of,
and they said it was called the Community of Christ, formerly known as the
Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints, but they had changed the name because
the organization didn’t like the term “Saints.”
(I suspect they thought it was a bit arrogant.) I learned that they are a splinter group that
formed around the son of Joseph Smith after Joseph himself was killed in
1844.
 |
| Our mild-mannered guide at the graves of the Smiths |
Joseph Smith III was only eleven
years old when his father died, and so the adult male leadership (Brigham Young
and his gang of 12, James Strang and Sydney Rigdon mainly) started fighting
over the leadership of the church. They
had lots of disputes, some over polygamy (although most of them ended up
practicing it anyway) and other doctrinal issues, but it was mainly “Joseph
said I was supposed to be the leader!
No, I was! No, it was me! I excommunicate you! No, I excommunicate YOU!” You know how boys are. Many prophecies were read, many proclamations
were made, and eventually Brigham went off to Utah, Joseph went to Michigan and
Sydney went to Pittsburgh.
In the meantime, Emma Smith, Joseph’s first wife, returned
quietly to Nauvoo. She had never liked
the idea of plural marriage; while we were on the tour, we met some “real”
Mormons from Idaho (you can tell real Mormons because they wear suits and ties,
and the silver-haired older men carry themselves with an air of great
arrogance, unlike the humble hippie Mormon tour guide we followed) – one of the
men, who really did know a huge amount about Nauvoo history – told me that his
great-great-great aunt had been “sealed” to Joseph Smith when she was 18 years
old and had been a refugee in the Smith household with her brothers and
sisters. Joseph enjoyed the “access to
the teenage girls” (this was coming from the mouth of an actual devout real
Mormon, mind you) but he promised not to consummate the marriage until after
they had “moved to the mountains.” As
you might imagine, whether he consummated the marriage or not, Emma would not
have been happy about this. It all was a
moot point, because shortly thereafter Joseph and his brother Hyrum were killed
by an angry mob while in jail over in Carthage, Illinois. More later on why, exactly, they were there;
I never got the full story from the not-so-informative official LDS movie we
watched at the Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
Emma moved back to Nauvoo and in 1847 she married Louis
Bidamon, who was NOT a Mormon, and not even very religious. They had met when he was in the Illinois
state militia, trying to defend the Mormon community from angry mobs. I think he was something of a ladies’ man,
because he’d already been married twice (once widowed and once divorced) and
also had a couple of kids with other women to whom he was not married. According to some sources I read, he thought
Joseph Smith was a good man who had somehow been deceived into believing he was
a prophet. Anyway, Emma and Louis lived
in the mansion house in Nauvoo that had been built for the Smiths, and Louis
became the stepfather to Joseph III. In
1860, when Joseph III was in his late twenties and still under the guidance of
his mother, he presented himself to a community of church members who had
settled in Amboy, Illinois, and said that the Holy Spirit had guided him there
and he was now ready to assume responsibility as his father’s successor. And so the Reorganized LDS church was born.
I asked the friendly guide a lot of questions about this
sect of around 250,000 people who now call Independence, MO their church
home. Interesting, isn’t it? That was
one of the main communities that the original Mormon Smithites had tried to
found, but they were kicked out of the entire state. According to the guide, they believe in the
truth of the Book of Mormon BUT they do not practice plural marriage and never
have. In fact, it took the church
leadership, which considers the church to be the real heir of Joseph Smith, a
long time to admit that Smith had practiced polygamy himself – but they can’t
deny it any more, especially when relatives of Smith’s other wives keep showing
up. Their main difference, however, in
my opinion, is theological: they believe
in the Trinity (the main LDS church does not) and they are just more like
mainstream Christians. In fact, they are
a part of the National Council of Churches.
They do believe in the priesthood, but they believe that women are
called to the priesthood as much as men AND last year they voted to ordain
homosexual members of the church to the priesthood, and to celebrate same-sex
marriage! So regular Mormons they ain’t!
What, you may ask, is the relationship like between the
Community of Christ and the regular LDS?
I wondered if there was any animosity, but of course both my tour guide
and the LDS guys on the tour denied it vehemently. They are all friends, even if they don’t
agree on major doctrinal points. It makes
sense that the church that was founded by Emma Smith, a woman, would be much
more egalitarian and less ridiculously patriarchal, right? The question that still remains in my mind is
why Brigham Young got so many people on his side, and why his version of
Mormonism is so much more popular and populated. Once you start reading about the early
history of the church after the death of Joseph and Hyrum, it’s like going down
the rabbit hole. After Sydney Rigdon,
who had been one of Joseph Smith’s closest friends and followers, lost his bid
to be the Big Cheese (Brigham Young had the Quorum of 12, five of whom were in
Illinois at the time, to vote him down), he went to Pittsburgh with a small
group of followers, and later moved to New York. He is a fascinating character, and there is
even a theory that he was one of the original authors of the Book of
Mormon. Meanwhile, James Strang, a newer
convert but a very charismatic fellow (and close associate of Smith) took about
125 followers up to Michigan! On the
way, he went into the woods and discovered a NEW set of bronze plates, said to
be yet another part of the Book of Mormon!
Hah! If you can find one set of
plates, why not another set? There might
be plates and Testaments buried all over this continent! Strang set up a kingdom on Beaver Island,
which is sort of next to Mackinac Island (a lovely place we visited last
summer). Not only was he the king, but
he was later elected to the Michigan state legislature as well. My favorite part of Strang’s story is that
while he was publicly a staunch opponent of plural marriage, he later secretly
married a second wife who traveled with his group disguised as a man. Once he settled on Beaver Island, he did
marry a couple of other women as well.
He was assassinated by some disgruntled followers, one of whom he had
had flogged, or so they say. Strang and
Rigdon’s followers disbursed after their deaths, and really don’t exist any
more (although I did meet a teacher on my Michigan study trip who said that her
great great grandma had been one of Strang’s wives).
Why has Brigham Young’s group flourished and grown? I asked Matt this question and he said it was
because they went WEST instead of north to Michigan or east to
Pennsylvania. The West drew them, and
helped them to grow. I think this is a
great theory, along with the fact that Brigham did anything he could to silence
dissenters after that. His followers did
not allow many “gentiles” even to settle the area - see the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for an
example of Mormon brutality towards white settlers and the Circleville Massacre
for an example of Mormon brutality towards Native Americans. Do I sound a little hostile to the LDS right
now? I guess they look even worse when
set next to their gentler hippie cousins, the Community of Christ, whose
beliefs in peace, divine worth of all persons, inclusivity and true diversity
are laid out on their website.
Read about the Hippie Mormons.
