On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape

Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no "Indian" legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it -- once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion's Mount tells the story of this curious shift. It is a quintessentially American story about the fraught process of making oneself "native" in a strange land. But it is also a complex tale of how cultures confer meaning on the environment -- how they create homelands. Only in Utah did Euro-American settlers conceive of having a homeland in the Native American sense -- an endemic spiritual geography. They called it "Zion." Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, originally embraced Indians as "Lamanites," or spiritual kin. On Zion's Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians -- and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Timpanogos with "Indian" meaning. This same pattern was repeated across the United States. Jared Farmer reveals how settlers and their descendants (the new natives) bestowed "Indian" place names and recited pseudo-Indian legends about those places -- cultural acts that still affect the way we think about American Indians and American landscapes. - Publisher

Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no “Indian” legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it—once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion’s Mount tells the story of this curious shift. It is a quintessentially American story about the fraught process of making oneself “native” in a strange land. But it is also a complex tale of how cultures confer meaning on the environment—how they create homelands.

Only in Utah did Euro-American settlers conceive of having a homeland in the Native American sense—an endemic spiritual geography. They called it “Zion.” Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, originally embraced Indians as “Lamanites,” or spiritual kin. On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning.

This same pattern was repeated across the United States. Jared Farmer reveals how settlers and their descendants (the new natives) bestowed “Indian” place names and recited pseudo-Indian legends about those places—cultural acts that still affect the way we think about American Indians and American landscapes.

John P. Bowes - American Historical Review

Just as Mt. Timpanogos is more than a simple landmark, this book is far more than the history of a mountain peak...Farmer weaves together multiple historical narratives to produce a book that is both intellectually rigorous and pleasurably accessible...This work is a study in American and Mormon pioneering and Mormon-Indian relations even as it serves to explicate the intricate relationship among geography, memory, and societal construction in the years following that initial pioneering...He has written a book that will engage historians of multiple fields and will make significant contributions to multiple historiographies.

Pt. 1. Liquid Antecedents -- Ute Genesis, Mormon Exodus -- Brigham Young And The Famine Of The Fish-eaters -- The Desertification Of Zion -- Pt. 2. Making A Mountain : Alpine Play -- Rocky Mountain Saints -- Hiking Into Modern Times -- Sundance And Suburbia -- Pt. 3. Marking A Mountain : Indian Play -- Renaming The Land -- The Rise And Fall Of A Lover's Leap -- Performing A Remembered Past. Jared Farmer. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents Illustrations Introduction I. Liquid Antecedents II. Making a Mountain: Alpine Play III. Marking a Mountain: Indian Play Notes Acknowledgments Index