ATL 125, Sec. 002
Final draft due: 20 Nov 2000
Paper three
Source: school/arts/atl125/paper3.draft1a.wpd

Sainthood as an Ethnicity

John Pack had forty-nine children by seven wives. He was the great-grandfather of my mother's father. One of my younger brothers is named after him. Why is he still remembered today? His whole life he was a farmer. He immigrated into the United States with his parents when he was older than eight but before he married his first wife, which happened when he was twenty-three. He died fifty-three years later. However, soon after he married, he and his family became involved with a movement of people that forged a unique ethnic identity out of different groups, and continues to provide a culture for many people. As one historian put it, "Larger forces were at work in the earth." (David Bitton, The Redoubtable John Pack, 5). John, his parents and his children joined the Latter-Day Saint church in 1835 and followed the Saints to Utah. During his life, he left the boundaries of the United States to live in Mexico, but then the U.S. government conquered that land, and he again became a citizen of this country. The land he farmed until he died eventually was in the state of Utah, so he was an immigrant twice in his life. My ancestor John Pack's experiences when he joined the LDS church, when he lived in Missouri, when he crossed the plains and when he was a citizen in Deseret Territory helped him and his family to identify themselves as a unique ethnicity, even if they did not use that word.

In examining the experiences in his life that built group identity, it seems best to focus on four distinct phases. First, there was his act of joining the LDS church and becoming acquainted with its doctrines. This is something that people still do today, enough people that the U.S. membership of the church grows by 4.9% per year (Van Biema 55). However, when he settled in Missouri, and even when he and the other Saints lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, which they had built, he was persecuted. Some new doctrines and practices were introduced in Nauvoo, but since the church did not fully understand them at the time, and the Saints had been accused of many crimes and unorthodoxies even before they came to Missouri, it seems best to consider them during the third phase, when the Saints traveled across the plains as an organized group, making a new trail and without an exact idea of where they were going, or the fourth phase, when they settled and farmed in the valleys of what became Utah.

As soon as he joined the LDS church, John became aware of several of its doctrines that related to lineage or family. First of all, there was the Abrahamic covenant. The Bible records that God told Abraham: "...in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall posess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." (Holy Bible Gen. 22:17--18 [online]) This was made even clearer when, about eight years later, Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the LDS church, stated that Abraham had written a document in Egyptian and that one thing he had written was "...I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who posessed great knowledge, ... to be the father of many nations, ... I became ... a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers." (Pearl of Great Price Abr. 1:2 [online]) Even at the end of John's life the office of "High Priest" did not have the respect and definition it does today, but John was ordained one in 1877 (Bitton 200). My own father, his late father, and my grandfather Pack are all high priests. Since there is a possibility that I will be called as one some day; I can identify with him in that regard.

The Book of Mormon added another dimension to the question of lineage. It claimed to be "written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel" (Book of Mormon Title page [online]). The term "Lamanites" is normally thought to represent the ancestors of all of the American Indians (Sorenson). The Book of Mormon describes a civilization that had records brought from Jerusalem, and which were descendants of the tribe of Manasseh, one of the tribes of Israel. These people eventually stopped following the commandments of God, which meant that they had broken that covenant. Even though their civilization lasted for over 1,000 years, its territory never covered more than 360 miles in the longest direction (Sorenson 17), and it was destroyed at the end of the book. Most modern LDS scholars consider the Isthmus of Tehuatapec in southern Mexico to be the probable site of Book of Mormon events (Sorenson 30). Because of these events, when the truth of the Gospel was restored, that covenant was extended to the people who were called to spread that truth. However, the Saints still had a responsibility to try to redeem the lost tribe of Manasseh. While early attempts to proselyte among the Indian tribes were limited and only partially successful (Bennett **), the place where the LDS church is currently growing fastest is among the mixed Indian/White populations of Latin America, such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Honduras (Van Biema 55; Mauss).

When John Pack joined the LDS church he also would have been alienated from mainstream American society. For instance, the New York Evening Star printed this opinion about the three-story building that the Saints put together out of wood and plaster so that they could hold their Sunday meetings and other activities: "That bold-faced imposter, Joseph Smith, of Gold Bible and Mormon memory, has caused his poor fanatic followers to erect on the shores of Lake Erie, near Painesville, Ohio, a stone building, 58 by 78 feet, with dormer windows, denominating the same 'the Temple of the Lord'. We should think this work of iniquity extorted of the pockets of his dupes, as it reflects its shadows over the blue Lake, would make the waters crimson with shame at the prostitution of its beautiful banks to such unhallowed purposes." (qtd. in Smith and Young 2:350). The restored structure does look like stone ("Kirtland Temple"), but the actual dimensions were 87 feet by 61 feet (Smith and Young 1:363). Some people gave out tales that the Mormons had a cave where they hid their treasure; others that their bank had coffers full of lead to give the appearance of having money (Nibley p. 136). With invective like that floating around, it was hard for a man to turn back, except as an actual traitor.

Another unpopular doctrine of the church was that the Saints should gather in one place to establish Zion. Even today, reporters are often suspicious of the motives behind Church organization, but at least they can see it in historical context. For instance, David van Biema writes, "The explanation for this policy of ecclesiastical entrepreneurism lies partly in the Mormon's early experience of ostracism" (54). The Pack family was not unusual in attempting to gather with the Saints, nor in being viewed with suspicion by their old and new neighbors as they did so. John Pack originally traveled to Kirtland, but within a year his family moved on to western Missouri (Bitton 15).

John tried to settle in western Missouri. There, violence by lynch mobs and the indifference of the government further helped him identify himself as a member of a unique group. At one time John was kidnaped by a group of armed men led by a Baptist minister while traveling to visit his sick mother, and threatened with death (Pack 17; Bitton 22). According to his wife Julia Ives, a man told her "You can bid your husband goodbye. You will never see him again" (qtd. in Bitton). However, John did some quick talking and was released without actual harm.

After the Saints were driven out of Missouri, they settled in Nauvoo, Illinois. John was made a major in the local militia, or "Nauvoo Legion". It was also at this time that he was brought into the Council of Fifty, an organization which no longer exists but was quite important at the time (Bitton p. ??). That was how he became a close compatriot with such characters as Brigham Young and O. P. Rockwell. Brigham Young became the president of the church after Joseph Smith died. Orrin Rockwell was an illiterate man, but he made himself into Joseph's bodyguard. He is the subject of a large body of folklore.

One of the divisive issues in Missouri was fear that the Saints — coming from New England — would be an abolitionist voice in the local political milieu. It is not clear how the Saints in general felt about African-Americans. The Book of Mormon records the policy of one of the righteous peoples: "It is against the law of our brethren, which was established by my father, that there should be any slaves among them" (Book of Mormon Alma 27:9 online]). However, Orrin Rockwell once gave an official report of his stay in a jail and said his corn-dodger was "hard enough to knock a negro down with" (Smith and Young 137). A church that regarded itself as being selected from Abraham's descendants also entertained the theory that dark skin was the mark of Cain. While the current policy, teaching and practice of the church is absolute racial equality and interracial peace, from some time after Joseph Smith died (Mauss 30) until 1978 the policy of the Church was not to ordain any man with any African ancestors to any office in the priesthood. This did not apply to any non-African non-White race, or at least the policy never did -- there may have been racial or ethnic discrimination by church leaders, and even today there are members who exhibit racial bias in their conversation and action. However, most members would probably regard it as impolite to repeat another of Rockwell's statements: "Nowlin's son-in-law (by marrying one of his mulatto wenches), a Mexican, stepped up to me to lay hold of me, when I told him to stand off, or I would mash his face" (Smith and Young 6:137). Since John came from New England, he was probably less racist than the Missourians, but that may not have been saying much. We have no record of John Pack saying something racist, but we have no personal statement of his nonracism either.

One thing we do have is his signature on a covenant to "stand by and assist one another, to the utmost of our abilities, in removing from this state in compliance with the authority of this state; and we do hereby acknowledge ourselves bound to the extent of all our available property" (Smith and Young 3:251, 253). Travel from Missouri to Nauvoo was not done all at once: it was a group endeavor.

When John Pack did cross the plains, he started out making multiple trips to and from Winter Quarters, the real staging-point for the Westward Trek. He was called to join the small group that would make a trail to the destination in the Rocky Mountains, and find it first. That they did. John Crossed the plains several more times. He went to France as a missionary (Bitton **). He went back to the Eastern States to search for information about his family after the transcontinental railroad was built. (Bitton **) From time to time he interacted with Indians (Pack 14).

The first year he lived in Salt Lake, brother Pack and his family lived in cramped quarters, which would have made them identify more with each other as a family. After all, modern research in sociology suggests that people who live in densely-populated areas cope by attempting more positive interaction (De Waal et al.) He had four wives at the time. He had been sealed to three of them in Nauvoo, but for some reason the practice was publically denied until the 1850s. Polygamy was not against the law in Mexico, and after publically acknowledging and teaching it the church leaders fought the U.S. laws against it in court for about 30 years. However, John and his family were further separated from mainstream society because they practiced what easterners regarded as one of the "twin relics of barbarism" (Young 1).

According to historians, polygamy as taught and practiced by Brigham Young, Joseph Smith and others during that time was not the same as in Eastern societies (Bitton), nor was it like the practices of current extralegal groups in Utah (Bachman and Esplin 1095). Except in the case of the president of the church, the leaders in authority over a certain man would approach him and ask him to take another wife. In some cases they would ask him to marry a specific woman; in most cases it was a more general call (Bachman and Esplin 1094). It was very important that the husband be able to provide a reasonable standard of living to all his wives and children. Often these were the men who were also called to make the sacrifice of going on a mission to Europe or the Pacific Islands; at least in John Pack's case, we learn about how he felt about all his wives partly from his letters to them. He treated them all equally (Bitton p??). In general, "order, mutual agreements, regulation and covenants were central to the practice" (Bachman and Esplin 1094).

One other factor that complicates study of polygamous marriages is that the temple records sometimes reflect the marriage of a living woman to a dead husband. This is especially the case with Joseph Smith (Compton 174), but there were many cases where, according to Kimball Young, "Many spinsters were married to Mormons for hereafter but not on earth" (32). My Jewish grandmother once maintained that some women had done this in order to escape the physical risk of childbearing in this life. Bachman and Esplin state that "Plural marriage made it possible for wives to have professional careers that would not otherwise have been available to them" (1095), although this probably applied also to wives with living husbands.

Plural marriage was not the only thing that made John and his family feel different while in Utah. They farmed. The initial settlers of the Salt lake valley had a fairly neutral view of their ability to farm it, but over the next decade stories of that settlement portrayed the initial land condition as harsher and harsher (Jackson). However, farming had challenges. The land had to be irrigated, from nearby mountain streams, to produce any sort of crop.

In fact, John Pack himself was called on a mission to France from 1849 to 1852 (Bitton 138), so his family had to establish and take care of a farm. We know that they hosted a school (Bitton 140). They got by.

From that time, we have a good example of how equally John treated his wives. He married another woman, Eliza Jane Walker, a little more than a month after he came home. She and three of his wives bore children the next summer. Here is a table of the relevant dates, based on Frederick J. Pack's data (*25--26):

John continued to father children until 1878, seven years before he passed away. Eventually he spread his family out; some of them lived in salt Lake, some on a farm near Bountiful, and some on a ranch near Kamas (Bitton 173). With so many children, perhaps he was challenged to have a personal relationship with each of them. Bitton writes: "Lieutenant J. W. Gunnison, whose book on Utah and the Mormons was published in 1860, told of seeing a small boy and asking, 'Whose son are you' 'I am brother Pack's son,' was the answer. The visitor was amused by the use of the title 'brother' even by a little child" (* 168). It would have been lonely for a boy to talk about "brother X" instead of "my dad", but it would also have been clear, immediate evidence of good lineage.

After all, in ancient mythologies, the story was often that the important people (the king and other royalty) were literal descendants of the Gods. My mother's computer database of our geneology includes an entry for the Norse god Odin, probably because that was the terminal end of a family legend when their society became literate. The first LDS members defined their relationship with God by being born again through baptism and the infilling of the Holy Ghost. Later, they learned the doctrines that they were each spirit children of the one God as well, and also had individual eternal natures. However, since that time a pioneer ancestor has always been a very interesting person to study. John Pack was no exception.

Works Cited

Bennett, Richard E. Mormons at the Missouri, 1846-1852. **: U of Oaklahoma Press, 1987.

Bitton, Davis. The Redoubtable John Pack: Pioneer, Proselyter, Patriarch. *** : Eden Hill, 1982.

"Kirtland Temple, Kirtland Ohio, The". 19 Nov. 2000. <http://www.kirtlandtemple.org/>

Pack, Frederick J. The Life of John Pack. 1937. ***: Janice Pack Beatty, 1993.