Back up the Great River Road with Mark Twain and the Reorganized LDS, aka “Hippie Mormons”

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 19^th 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.