Zane Grey and the Mormons

By TOM RUE

After Riders of the Purple Sage was released in 1912, it was labeled "scandalous" by Heber J. Grant, then president of the Mormon church.

Grey reportedly lived several years in Utah, in the society of the saints, in a small cabin he built. Surrounded by Mormon guides and farmhands, he came to hear of secret blood-oaths taken in temples to which only the faithful could gain admittance. He heard of binding loyalties to a priesthood patriarchy, and of plans for the Mormon "political Kingdom of God" to eventually consume all others.

From his writing, it appears that Grey joined other 19th and other early 20th century eastern writers and editors in their moral outrage at the "patriarchal order" of the Latter-day Saints. The antebellum eastern press unitedly condemned slavery and polygamy as "the twin relics of barbarism."

Set in 1872 in a fictituous souther Utah town of Cottonwoods, Purple Sage became the best selling of Grey's western novels.

The book is a clasically-romantic double love-story, replete with cattle rustling clergy and other Mormon scoundrels. It is set in some of the most majestic scenery of the United States, "where the clear blue sky arches over the vales of the free," a Mormon hymn asserts.

The plot starts with lovely Jane Withersteen, faiful saint of Cottonwoods, saving sagerider Bern Venters, a gentile friend, from lynching by local church leaders. Jane is then robbed and scourged by her wicked churchmen -- punishment for refusing to become the plural wife of her bishop.

She subsequently falls in love with a Mormon-hating gunfighter known and feared across the territory as Lassiter.

Venters spends much of the story sequestered in isolated Surprise Valley with a reformed "masked rider" called Bess. They also fall deeply in love and plan for marital felicity.

Grey's character development is believable, but much of the dialogue stereotyped. For example, Mormon missionaries were once popularly fancied to have some sort of mysterious, irresistable "power over women" (p. 228). Grey plays to this prejudice.

But Grey's dark picture of life as a non-Mormon in 1871 Utah actually pales in comparison to some historical accounts of the settlement of Saint George, Cedar City, and other southern destert towns.

Political power emanated from on high -- from the prophet of God in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young. And faithful saints "followed counsel" unquestioningly.

Purple Sage's Bishop Dyer seems to resemble somewhat Cedar City, Utah's historical personage of Bishop John D. Lee, who is best remembered for his role in the infamous "Mountain Meadows Massacre" of 1857.

A pioneer caravan of 137, traveling from Missouri to California, was attacked -- some historians say under priesthood orders. Adults and children who could speak were all slaughtered and left in the desert sun. Remaining infants were shisked off to church headquarters, destined for "good" Mormon upbringings.

Grey succeeds in portraying the easterner's view of Mormonism, typical of his era. However, both he and his protagonists were clearly outsiders among the saints. While Grey may have lived in Utah, he could never have been privy to the real inner politics and workings of the priesthood councils of "the brethren" who ran the territory as an oligarchic theocracy.

Unless a man takes the covenants of the priesthood and temple endowments, even today, he is an outsider among the saints. Women have never been allowed a significant role in Mormon church or political government.

On a literary level, purely as entertainment, Purple Sage is first-rate.

With artful twists of suspens and irony, Grey weaves a story which is at once riveting and plausible.

Mixed with his characters' prairie dialect: Proselyter, I reckon you'd better call quick on that God who reveals Hisself to you on earth, because he won't be visitin' the place you're goin' to" (p. 244) is Grey's own quick-paced narration.

Purple Sage is must reading for anyone interested in the life of Zane Grey, or seeing through the eyes of an Upper Delaware resident what life was supposed to have been like on the 19th century western frontier.

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[Note: The reviewer spent seven years as an active member of the Mormon church, including two years as an elder and missionary. He lived in central Utah for a year and a half, and studied church history and doctrine at BYU.]

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