Importation of Arms and the 1912 Mormon "Exodus" from Mexico

In the hot, dry days of late July and early August 1912, thousands of North Americans raced north across the border into the United States at El Paso, Texas  and Hachita, New Mexico.  Due to revolutionary violence in Mexico, refugees had filtered north for months.  This latest, unexpected wave was by far the largest.  It consisted mostly of polygamous families from Mormon colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. Crowded into makeshift facilities at the El Paso lumberyard and a quickly constructed tent city at Hachita, their presence soon became the object of curious journalists.  Many outside the area became aware for the first time that Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, lived south of the United States-Mexican border and had resided there for a generation. 1

The earliest arrivals consisted chiefly of women and children shepherded by male guardians.  Subsequent crossings into both Texas and New Mexico involved larger numbers of men, always well armed. 2 The episode was the reverse play of the Mormons' entry into Mexico a quarter century earlier.  In the mid-1880s, Mormon polygamists fled from United States marshals who, enforcing statutes prohibiting bigamous marriage, jailed "cohabs" by the hundreds.' Church leaders erroneously believed plural marriage was legal in Mexico and recommended that men having more than one wife go there as a way to continue the practice.4 Acting on such advice, and driven by fear of imprisonment, hundreds of' Latter-day Saints abandoned their properties or sacrificed them at great loss. 

Because of their haste and the large number of weapons they carried, the Mormons gave the appearance of hostile invaders.  Mexican officials reacted in the spring of 1885 by demanding that they withdraw to the United States.5 The settlers responded by sending representatives to Mexico City where they met with government ministers, asking that the demand for their removal be reconsidered.  After a series of conferences, President of the Republic Porfirio Díaz rescinded the expulsion order and encouraged the Mormons to remain.6 The Mormons eventually established nine major colonies, most within a day's journey of the border.  By the time of the Mexican Revolution, those living in these communities amounted to between four and five thousand resi­dents.7 Scholars have known for decades that they were the largest group of alien farmers to settle in the Mexican republic during the porfiriato.  Mormonism's southward reach constituted what was, perhaps, the most conspicuous North American salient in all Mexico: their well-cultivated fields and tidy villages contrasted sharply with the surrounding communities.8

Despite Mormon prosperity and socially exclusive behavior, revo­lutionary hostility toward them was never as great as might have been expected.  This is not to say that resentments arising from their wealth and nationality went unexpressed.  When contending armies were in their areas, Mormons sometimes experienced abuse.9 But the injuries and indignities inflicted upon them were distinctly less than those suffered by others, such as the Chinese.10 The relative safety enjoyed by the Mormons was remarkable even to themselves.  Only when armaments became an issue did abandonment of their settlements become necessary.

Evidence of the colonists' general immunity during the Madero phase of the Revolution is found in Mormon commentary itself.  The settlers interpreted this immunity as proof of the truth of their religion and an instance of providential favor.  Writing in mid-1911, one settler confided in his diary that, while the Revolution would likely continue for years, "we as a people will be preserved by the hand of the Lord as we have in the past for our preservation has already been miraculous."11 A Mormon authority speaking in Mexico City in late 1911 told how prospects were never brighter for the spread of the gospel in this land, and we look forward to a bright and prosperous future for the Mexican Mission."12

Circumstances changed, however, during the early months of 1912.  Although Diaz was driven from office, violence flared under Emiliano Zapata in the south and Pasqual Orozco, Jr. in the north, who charged the new government of Francisco I. Madero with betrayal of promises made to the people.  Orozco, a celebrated guerrillero from western Chihuahua, joined dissenters calling for Madero's overthrow."  In the words

of Chihuahua's Maderista governor, Abraham González, his state became the "foco principal" of this new rebellion." The colorados, or Red Flaggers, who f'ollowed Orozco swept into their ranks many who, indifferent to the ideals of the Revolution, looked upon disorder as an opportunity to enrich themselves.  Banditry and easy slogans to justify it quickly led to attacks on anyone and anything that held the possibility of' loot.  As one Mormon colonist later recalled: "The Revolution started as a great adventure for everybody.  Then [with the rise of the Orozquistas] they got nasty with each other and [started] fighting in little groups."15

By late February 1912, the crisis reached such proportions that Governor González warned civilians in the countryside to arm themselves against the "terrible cancer of anarchy" sweeping his state.16 González himself was soon forced into hiding, when a rump legislature assumed power in Chihuahua City in early March.  Accusing the Madero regime failing to implement needed reforms, the new rebel governor Félipe R. Gutiérrez told how, reposing their trust in "30-30s," they would take their rightful due.17 Matters rapidly deteriorated into what one contemporary described as "genuine anarchy."18 Responding to the upheaval, the United States government warned its citizens to leave Mexico if they were endangered.  Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who described growing anti-American feelings, added to the alarm.19

With growing anti-Madero sentiment and an emboldened Mexican population, Mormon colonists became concerned.  Despite orders from rebel leaders telling their soldiers to respect the Mormons, belligerents sometimes took what they wanted with little regard for compensation.20 They seized horses, stole supplies, and forcefully entered homes and stores.21 During the late spring and early summer of 1912, at least two Mormons, James D. Harvey and William Adams, were killed, one by a resentful Mexican farmer, the other by a rebel soldier.22  After the murders, a few colonists returned to the United States.23 Most, however, found circumstances tolerable and, still believing their presence in Mexico to be divinely approved, remained.  The Mormons had believed since the time of their first entry into Mexico that they were a special, polygamous remnant and that God would be their shield.  Despite increasing violence associated with the Orozquista uprising, the theme of providential protection continued to be heard at church meetings.  They need not fear the Revolution, they were told, for they had a "mission" to fill and the Lord would fight their battles for them.24

Church leaders, in keeping with the recommendation of both Mexican and United States government authorities, advised Mormon settlers to remain strictly neutral, obey whomever was in charge within their districts, pay their taxes, and relinquish whatever material goods were asked of them.25 For the most part, the colonists did what they could to
 

follow this advice.  Some of the few who had become Mexican citizens, men like Anson Bowen Call and Joseph C. Bentley, who feared that all colonists would be endangered if conscripted into the ranks of opposing armies, spent time hiding in Arizona.26 Children in the colonies were told not to carry mock weapons in their play for fear they would be interpreted as favoring one faction or another.27

Unavoidably, however, some colonists were overcome with aggra­vation.  One wrote to his church leader that if he were asked one more time for a gun by Mexicans, he "would give them the smokey [sic] end of it."28 Some warned Mexican soldiers that if they did not leave them alone, the United States government would avenge them.  Yet others, confused by the situation, said they favored everybody: "vive Madero y Orozco también"29  As a result, rebels grew cynical, doubting that Mormons could be trusted.  As often happens in such circumstances, by taking the part of no one, the colonists alienated all sides.  As the revolutionary José Inés Salazar later put it: "The Mormon colonists are not wanted in Mexico.  They have not been neutral, but two-faced.30

It was the matter of guns, however, that led to the most trouble.  The colonists had always been well-armed.  As already mentioned, their conspicuous possession of firearms alarmed local officials when they first entered Mexico in 1885.  Due to self-reliance and the extensive practice of hunting wild game, the quantity of weaponry acquired by the colonists over the years was surprisingly large.  Amy Pratt Romney remembered that, by the time of the Revolution, her father (Helaman Pratt) owned so many guns that their home resembled an arsenal.31 Returning to his house one evening in the summer of 1912, Alexander Jameson, Jr., found his home surrounded by Mexicans who, dressed in his own shirts and trousers, confronted him with two of his own guns.  Knowing one rifle to be in disrepair and the other unloaded, but that a pistol was hidden and ready for use in the living room, he simply elbowed the thieves aside and waited for them to leave.32 Had Jameson wanted to replace the guns that were stolen, he could have purchased them from the Mormon-owned Union Mercantile in Colonia Dublán where firearms were sold.  The store manager, Henry Bowman, assured colonists that whenever such items were taken by revolutionaries they could easily be replaced by others from his store.33 Colonists owned many weapons, and their Mexican neighbors knew it.

The impoverished condition of rebel armies and their frequent presence near Mormon towns and farms made confiscation inevitable.  Soldiers always demanded food, but they needed horses and weaponry more than anything else.  Mormon colonists long remembered the extraordinary indigence of soldiers marching through their properties looking for horses and guns.34 The special dangers associated with firearms arose from the potential for injury in the event of a scuffle but, once

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taken, they could be turned on the colonists themselves.  Beyond this, word of Mormon arms in the hands of any belligerent would erode their image as neutrals.  This is undoubtedly why Madero, when visiting the colonists in 1911, urged them to remain neutral and whenever possible to avoid the use of guns.  Mormon leaders sometimes told settlers the same thing, adding that they should represent themselves as poorly armed.35 The ample store of Mormon weaponry, however, was public knowledge.  And Red Flaggers were desperate.

The situation was further complicated by differences between Mexico and the United States over the sale and passage of guns across the border.  While munitions passed over the international line into Mexico throughout the Revolution, the legality of such activities was obscure.  When the uprising against Diaz commenced, United States neutrality laws were interpreted to prohibit only the outfitting on North American soil of organizations hostile to foreign powers.  Individual purchases taken into Mexico were considered entirely lawful.36 There were also differences between officials along the border over jurisdiction and interpretation that led to inconsistencies of enforcement.37 Finally, the United States was caught between the tottering Diaz regime and growing support in the border region among both Mexicans and North Americans for the Maderistas.38 As a consequence, the border became little more than a sieve, allowing a steady flow of armaments into Mexico, directly aiding those partisan to Madero.39 Responding to the situation in March 1911, United States President William Taft mobilized more than 20,000 soldiers along the boundary.  The new policy was intended to intimidate rebels against destruction of' American properties in Mexico while providing symbolic support for the failing dictatorship of Díaz.40

After Diaz's overthrow by Madero, arms continued to move across the border, but instead into the hands of anti-Madero Orozquistas, alarming Mexico's new leaders.  Pointing to the freedom with which armaments arrived from the north, Mexican officials took up the cry of the Díaz regime, blaming nonenforcement by the United States of its neutrality laws for growing violence in Mexico's northern provinces.41 Mexican consternation was increased by alarmist comments from Ambassador Wilson who exaggerated threats to North Americans living in Mexico.42

Once again, President Taft acted to assuage Mexico's leaders by obtaining a joint resolution of Congress imposing an embargo on all firearms destined for Mexico.  The proclamation, dated 14 March 1912, preempted relevant provisions of the neutrality laws by banning all arms from export to any destination in the hemisphere where violence, promoted by such arms, existed.  Only the president was authorized to make exceptions to the ban.43 United States border officials, especially Colo-
 

nel Edgar Z. Steever, commander of the Fourth Cavalry at Fort Bliss near El Paso, interpreted their responsibilities so strictly that they refused passage into Mexico of anything useful to soldiers, including food, clothing, and blankets.44

Rather than diminishing the violence, the embargo augmented it.  Not only did the embargo stimulate greater efforts at smuggling, but rebel demands made on foreigners living in Mexico increased .45 As requisitions and violence grew, the "exception" clause in Taft's proclamation came under strain.  The numbers of requests grew asking for permission to import guns and ammunition into Mexico.46 Ambassador Wilson, who before had requested arms for United States citizens in the Mexican capital, now renewed the petition.  He asked that firearms be given him for Americans and foreigners alike in Mexico City.  The request was approved and guns were sent.47 Soon United States consular officers in other parts of Mexico asked that weaponry be sent to protect North American citizens in their districts as well, including some on the Pacific coast. Unaccountably, however, no consular requests were made on behalf of the Mormons.

In this circumstance, the colonists' leaders began thinking in more practical terms.  They did not abandon their hope for providential protection.  But sensing, perhaps, that they should be as defensively prepared as others, they undertook steps to provision themselves for violent encounter.  This was a departure from decisions made in 1910. At that time, an inventory was conducted to determine the extent and quality of guns owned by church members in Mexico.  Although the arms possessed by colonists were found to be of insufficient caliber for effective defense, it was concluded that no alteration in preparedness should occur." In the spring of 1912, when anti-Madero activity emerged, Mormon leaders reversed themselves and decided that a lethal response to Orozqista attackers was appropriate.  Church authorities in Salt Lake City agreed and offered to assist with the purchase of whatever weap­ons the colonists wanted.50 This decision, to provision and posture them­selves more defiantly than before, constituted an important and dangerous shift in Mormon defensive strategy.

At least some of the Mormons' difficulty arose from the lack of consistent advice by their religious leaders.  Sometimes superiors told colonists "not to furnish [the revolutionaries with] guns or ammunition under any circumstances."51 On other occasions, however, they told colo­nists to comply with rebel demands for what was asked, including guns.  But the leaders said they should surrender only poorer weapons, keeping those that were best for themselves.52 The confusing implications of such comments were heightened by admonitions that while they should defend their homes they were not to shed blood." One female colonist remembered that Anthony W. lvins, the apostle in Salt Lake

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City assigned to oversee Mormon affairs in Mexico, "advised us to arm ourselves and if it came to a case of shooting-to shoot first.  My husband and I each slept with a gun under our pillow."54 While Ivins agreed that assistance from church headquarters in Salt Lake City was neces­sary and that upgraded weapons should be purchased, he also wrote in his journal in early April 1912 that he feared the consequences if the colonies received improved arms.55 The equivocal, sometimes removed nature of their stewardship led Junius Romney, resident leader of the Mexico Mormons, to later complain that church authorities in Utah left the colonists too much to themselves and failed to provide adequate guidance.56

Once the decision was made to upgrade their weaponry, however, local leaders moved quickly to implement it.  Orson Pratt Brown, a colonist residing in Sonora, was chosen to obtain high-grade Mauser rifles from suppliers in the United States.  Brown was the son of James Brown, Jr., who with 3,000 Spanish doubloons, had purchased from Miles Goodyear the site for the city of Ogden, Utah.57

Given the name of one of Mormondom's greatest apologists, Orson was both a fierce defender of the faith and a pioneer whose adventures carried him from Utah to Arizona and in 1887 into Mexico.  By the time of the Mexican Revolution, he had married four wives and fathered twenty-two children.58 In addition to filling important leadership positions among the colonists, and unlike the majority of his church brethren, Brown took a lively interest in Mexican affairs.  He named one son Porfirio Díaz and another Francisco Madero.59 As the Revolution gained momentum, Brown sided with those seeking to overthrow the Diaz government, assisting Maderista forces as a scout and courier.  Aligned with the revolutionaries, he became personally acquainted with Madero and Chihuahua's Maderista governor, González.  After commencement of the Orozco revolt, Madero officials arranged with Brown to purchase guns, ammunition, and saddles in the United States for federal soldiers sent north to counter rebel activities.60 While some colonists resented Brown's involvement in Mexican revolutionary events, fearing it compromised their image as neutrals, it was probably because of such experience that he was chosen to purchase improved arms for the Mormons. 61

In early March 1912, under direction of church leaders, Brown asked Reed Smoot, one of Utah's United States senators and an apostle of the Mormon Church, to obtain official authorization for him to ship 250 new rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition into Mexico for the colonists' use.  Due to the fear that rebels would seize such shipments, the necessary permits were not issued, and Brown was unable to complete the assignment .62  With funds provided by the church yet in hand it was decided a month later that another attempt would be made to obtain Mauser rifles-but this time by smuggling. 63   Inasmuch as President
 

Taft's arms embargo had been put in place since Brown's earlier a­tempt, gun running was now both more difficult and more dangerous.  Nevertheless, Romney approved of taking the risk and authorized Brown to select reliable assistants who could work with him in complete con­fidence.64

After spending part of the money at his disposal on fifty guns and ammunition in El Paso, Brown arranged to move everything across the border on 2 April 1912.  He sent the shipment by rail to Hermanas, a small station west of Columbus, New Mexico, where a Mormon con­federate, Ernest G. Taylor, was to receive them using the pseudonym "T.G. Ernest." Numbers of Mexican and United States agents worked in the area doing all they could to intercept arms on their way to Orozquista rebels.  Always alert to smuggling attempts, the agents learned of the Brown shipment and took possession of it at Hermanas.  When Taylor saw that agents had discovered the shipment's contents, he left the cased rifles and slipped away from the scene.  Soldiers returned the shipment to El Paso, and Taylor hastened to warn Brown that authorities were on his trail.  Next morning, the El Paso Times published a front-page account of the seizure, speculating that the guns were intended for the Mormon colonies in Mexico.65 As the individual who signed for and sent the shipment, an indictment was quickly issued for Brown's arrest.66

Brown, who stayed in a hotel room in El Paso, immediately wired Smoot in Washington, D.C. Smoot had been involved in refusing Brown's earlier request for permission to ship weapons into Mexico.  On receiving Brown's telegram on 3 April 1912, the Senator returned word that no such smuggling attempt should have been made without the government's permission, and that there was little he could do to keep Brown from being arrested and punished.67 This rebuke notwithstanding, Smoot immediately went to the White House and spoke with President Taft.  After describing dangers facing the Mormon colonies, Smoot persuaded Taft to make an exception to the arms embargo, ordering release of the guns in El Paso and granting permission to ship them across the international line.  Smoot was told to see Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson who would implement the President's decision."

Stimson and other military authorities feared that if the guns were allowed to pass over the border, rebel soldiers would find a way to seize them.69 Stimson also told Smoot that arms trafficking required coordi­nation with Mexican authorities, and that he therefore needed to work with the Department of State.70 Ordinarily Smoot would have looked on this as an advantage inasmuch as the State Department's solicitor was J. Reuben Clark, a young Mormon lawyer from Utah.  Clark, also
 

hesitant, feared opposition to the idea from the Mexicans and compli­cations of relations between the two governments.71 Persuaded of the problems, Smoot communicated his hesitancy in a telegram to Joseph F. Smith, president of the Mormon Church .72

Ten days later, however, the church president telegraphed Smoot that the colonists were so threatened that something needed to be done." Thereupon Smoot recommenced his efforts, making whirlwind visits to the Departments of War, State, and Treasury.  The next day, 15 April 1912, the senator recorded in his diary that the State Department under­took coordination of diplomatic permission and that word was sent to Colonel Steever in El Paso directing that the seized rifles be released.  Smoot telegraphed the news to both Mormon President Smith in Salt Lake City and Brown in El Paso.74 These efforts constitute strong evi­dence that both the United States government and the Mormon hierar­chy, whatever private misgivings existed, were willing to take formal steps to arm church members in Mexico.

The War Department sent a permit to Brown authorizing release of the guns and permission to move them across the border.  With papers in hand, a jubilant Brown had the indictment for his arrest quashed and repossessed the impounded arms.  His journal entries indicate that, free of legal difficulties, he purchased additional rifles.  The total number purchased by Brown is uncertain but probably amounted to 250 new Mausers.75 Even though President Madero opposed such a plan because in many instances the rebels had secured the guns for themselves, American officials convinced Madero to let the shipment pass.76

Official permission from Mexican officials notwithstanding, Brown found it necessary to transport the firearms to the Chihuahua colonies as inconspicuously as possible.  With the help of discreet assistants and traveling under cover of night, the guns were taken in false-bottomed wagons to the colonies of Dublán and Juárez.  There they were placed in the hands of Junius Romney who dispersed them to lesser leaders with directions that they were to be hidden .77 Later in the summer, more rifles were smuggled by other colonists in wagons of hay from Douglas, Arizona into the Mormon colony of Morelos in Sonora.  The daughter of one of those participating remembered that her father had lied to Mexican border guards about his cargo, and that he and other Mormons involved had acted as "contrabanderellos."78

Despite efforts at secrecy, word of the gun purchases found their way into United States and Mexican newspapers.79  Beyond this, in the months following the April importation of their weapons, Mormon spokesmen publicly used defiant language to describe the defensive capacity of the colonists, referred to their determination to fight, and explicitly pointed to their ample supply of armaments.80  It is not surprising, therefore, that Orozquistas responded as they did.  Retreating
 

before advancing federal forces in early July, rebels under the com­mand of José Inés Salazar settled in at Casas Grandes, near the Mormon colony of Dublán.  Salazar immediately demanded that the Mormons reveal to him all they possessed in the way of guns.  When Mormon leaders stalled, hoping federal forces would arrive and save them, Salazar insisted the colonists surrender their firearms at once.81  A large, imposing man who had himself engaged in gun running along the border, Salazar knew the circumstances of the Mormons.82 Failing to persuade him that they were poorly armed and needed their weapons for self-protection Junius Romney reported to church members on 25 July that no choice was left, that they were surrounded by 2,000 Red Flaggers with canon and "must either surrender their arms or . . . fight."83

While still hoping for the arrival of federals or some other deliverance, Romney sent word to all the colonies to give their guns to the Orozquistas.  At the same time, he secretly communicated that the colonists' better weapons, including those recently smuggled from the United States, were to be retained and kept hidden.84  Still, with fewer guns than before and their villages swarming with colorados, Romney de­cided that all women and children should be evacuated to the border immediately, accompanied by enough men to assure their safety.  This decision, approved by Salazar, led to the first refugees arriving in border towns like El Paso, Texas in late July and early August, 1912." Then, as Romney later recalled to an investigating committee of the United States Congress, rebel soldiers further pressured the men remaining behind.86  Salazar knew the Mormons were withholding newer, high caliber rifles.  United States Consul Thomas D. Edwards spoke directly to Salazar at this time, and Salazar claimed that he had no inten­tion of either harming the Mormon colonists or provoking the United States.  Salazar stated he only wanted to provision his soldiers with badly needed guns.87

At this point, with women and children safely removed, Romney was faced with either putting the new weapons to use or surrendering them.  For their part, Utah authorities seemed unable to advise him what to do.  Days before the colonists fled, Mormon president Smith in Salt Lake City told Ivins, who was in El Paso, and Romney, who was in the colonies, simply to do as they felt best.  Smith then left for a vacation in California.88 In his absence, the church's Council of Twelve Apostles voted on 25 July to appropriate an additional $5,000 for the colonists' defense.89 Clearly, most church leaders in Utah remained committed to an armed and forceful posture in the Mexican settlements.

Romney, however, decided that rather than risk lives by making a fight of it, all male colonists should follow the women, evacuate their villages, and escape to safety north of the border.90 Reminiscent of the hurried nature of their entry into Mexico a quarter-century earlier, the
 

Mormon departure occurred so quickly that most left with only the clothes they wore and the high-powered rifles smuggled for their protection.  Household goods and livestock were left behind.91 While Romney gave instructions that men were to carry the new Mausers with them, in one instance the departure was so sudden that some of the guns were buried in a large bin of wheat.92  Eventually, special expeditions of colonists retrieved all rifles left behind and, as property of the church, trans­ported them to Salt Lake City.93

With no one in the settlements, bandits ransacked them at will.  Crowded into tents and shacks on the north side of the Texas-New Mexico border, Mormon refugees became discouraged as word of destruction in the colonies reached them.  A meeting in El Paso, called to assess the situation, led to outbursts of anger.  The colonists criticized those decisions that authorized the smuggling of firearms and precipitated abandonment of their homes.94 Ivins asked Romney why he considered the colonists to have been defenseless when they arrived at the boundary bearing "hundreds of guns and thousands of cartridges."95 The question seemed to intimate that the colonists should have stayed and fought.  Yet, shortly after making this remark, Ivins wrote the president of the church that it would have cost thousands of lives to have resisted, and that departure of the colonists had been the only "proper course to pursue ."96

Brown, an active participant in the El Paso discussions, not only approved of the colonists' leaving but wrote to the El Paso Times that retribution was in order.  His long-time attachment to Mexican society now gave way to other feelings.  The colonists' misfortunes, he said, were owing to the "savagery and brutal indecency" of their "cursed, inbred [Mexican] neighbors."97  Brown urged that, while it was yet unsafe for families, a body of men should be gathered to recross the border and take back their farms from "those brown devils who had driven us from our homes."98 Mormon leaders in Utah expressed no opinion in the matter, telling colonists they could return to Mexico, remain where they were, or settle elsewhere.  Federal authorities in the United States concurred, but warned that anyone who recrossed the boundary must take care with regard to guns, especially avoiding the company of those who were no more than filibusterers.99 Aided by an appropriation of $100,000 from the United States government, most colonists, uncertain of what awaited them in Mexico, dispersed to new locations in the western United States.100 

Resettled colonists soon discovered, however, that fellow church members north of the border were not as welcoming as anticipated.  This arose from the fact that the Mexican Mormons were rejoining a religious denomination that no longer approved the practice of plural marriage.  When in Mexico, the colonists considered themselves a stalwart,

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Mormon elite.  Now, returned to the body of the church, they were an embarrassing, polygamous minority from an earlier period of Mormon life.  Church leaders relegated hundreds to an inferior status within their new congregations.101 In this sense, the refugees were twice dispossessed.

If Mormon attempts to remain neutral-feigning pacifism while preparing to right, surrendering guns while smuggling, and holding others in reserve failed to secure their homes in Mexico, they were no less compromised by the official policies of the United States.  The capricious enforcement of neutrality laws in the period preceding the Mormon departure continued after it.  Favoring first one than another faction in Mexico, pretending neutrality, federal officials in Washington followed an uneven course.  Writing to Ivins late in 1912, Smoot said he favored a complete and free flow of arms into Mexico so revolutionary regimes like that of Madero could more easily be overthrown. 102  While Smoot's suggestions were never implemented, armaments continued to move across the border.  By 1919, it was alleged that $20,000,000 of guns and ammunition were smuggled into Mexico yearly.  Every ruse conceivable, from legal loopholes to hiding ammunition in watermelons, was exploited to supply warring parties."' While it has been argued that only by alternately tightening and relaxing control over the arms traffic could the United States influence events in Mexico, there is no doubt that American munitions fueled violence in that country for years to come.104

The few Mormons who returned to Mexico found most of the colonies had been pillaged.  By abandoning their communities, soldiers and local inhabitants straggled through, doing as they pleased, destroying structures, smashing sewing machines and musical instruments, shooting domestic animals, and indiscriminately burning crops.105  In September 1912, when a few men crossed the border to survey the situation in Colonia Morelos, they found that rebel soldiers had either looted or destroyed every home in the town. 106 Even after decades of waiting for the Special Mexican Claims Commission to act, few received compensation for their losses.107 Only two Mormon colonies survive today: Colonias Juárez and Colonia Dublán.  Abandoned, overrun by weeds and sand, the rest became, in the words of one former occupant, "never to be inhabited save by an occasional ranchero or some wandering nomad."108 What led to the Mormon exodus was less Mexican yanquiphobia, less revolutionary assaults on their properties and persons, than policies of their own making.  The losses they sustained occurred overwhelmingly after, rather than before, their departure.  The decision to smuggle guns into their colonies, not the generalized terrors of revolution, was what precipitated their "exodus."109 This conforms to a growing sense by historians that hostility toward and suffered by North Americans

 B. CARMON HARDY and MELODY SEYMOUR                               Page  309

during the early years of the Revolution has been overstated.110 Evidence supports the case for a moderated view of Mexican behavior for it was Mormons who smuggled weapons into Mexico, withheld arms, and ultimately abandoned their communities. Wavering between dependence on providence and measures of self-defense, the importation of improved firearms only inflamed the Orozquista soldiers.  Attempts by Senator Reed Smoot and President William Taft to clear the way for the trans-border shipment of such weapons invited, as others warned it would, the rapacity of José Inés Salazar and his men.  Caught between contending armies, Mormon leaders made decisions that invited commanders to take advantage of military assets possessed by the settlers.  The consequence, as one former colonist put it, was that, having gone to Mexico "as refugees," they came back as refugees" again."110 Possessing little more than the guns they smuggled, displaying the same bereft, driven appearance of their crossing into Mexico in the 1880s, thousands of Mormons returned to the nation they had fled a generation before.
 

      (Orson Pratt Brown was true to his duty and obedience to Mormon leaders and the Mormon religion.)

NOTES

1. Consul Thomas D. Edwards to Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, 29 July 1912, record group 59, M-274, file no. 812.00/4514, Records of the Department of State Relating to internal Affairs of Mexico, 1910-1929 (hereafter cited as RDS), U.S. National Archives. See also Knox to Senator Charles A. Culberson, 30 July 1912, 812.00/ 4514, RDS; and Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to Knox, 29 July 1912, 812.00/4519, RDS. The surprise created by the discovery that Mormons lived in Mexico in such numbers was yet being discussed fours years later in "The Mormons of Mexico," World's Work 31 (March 1916), 484.

The 1912 "exodus" is better remembered and more extensively documented than any event associated with the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Contemporary non-Mormon accounts may be read in "Red Flaggers Drive Americans from their Mexican Homes." El Paso Morning Times, 29 July 1912, 1; "Americans Flee from Chihuahua," New York Times, 30 July 1912, 5; untitled notice, El Correa [Chihuahua City], 30 July, 1912, 4; "Emigran a El Paso," El Correa, 5 August 1912, 3; "Las colonial desiertas," El Correa, 10 August 1912, 3; the testimonies of Mormons and non­Mormoms alike scattered throughout U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings, Revolutions in Mexico: Hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 62nd Cong., 2d. sess., pursuant to S. Res. 335 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913); and anecdotal accounts such as that of Clifford Alan Perkins, Border Patrol with the U.S. Immigration Service on the Mexican Boundary, 1910-54 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1978), 26. Yet others are Eva Jane Robeson, "The Mormon Exodus from Mexico in 1912 and the Subsequent Settlement in Southern New Mexico" (M.A. thesis, New Mexico State University, 1960); Joseph Barnard Romney, 'The Exodus of the Mormon Colonies from Mexico, 1912" (M.A. thesis, University of Utah. 1967); and appropriate sections of Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1938); Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, Colonia Juárez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Nook Co., 1954); Karl E. Young, Ordeal in Mexico: Tales of Danger and HardshipCollected from Mormon Colonists (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1968); Annie R. Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz (Mesa, Arizona: privately published, 1972); and F. LaMond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987).

The Mormon record as it relates to this event, located predominantly in the church's archives in Salt Lake City, Utah, is too extensive for description here. One document, however, written shortly after the event, is especially important: Alonzo L. Taylor, "Record of the Exodus of the Mormon Colonies from Mexico in 1912," forty-page, handwritten manuscript, no date, Archives, Church Office Building, Salt Lake City, Utah (holdings in this facility will, hereafter, be referred to as Church Archives).

2. "Reach Border after Long Ride," El Paso Morning Times, 12 August 1912, 1.

3. Federal anti-polygamy legislation dates from the Civil War: U.S. Statutes at Large, 12, ch. 126: 501-2 (1862). This law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879). Yet harsher laws and those chiefly responsible for Mormon migration to Mexico were US. Statutes at Large, 22, ch. 47: 30-32 (1882) and U.S. Statutes at Large, 24, ch. 397: 635-41 (1887). The most complete accounts of the crusade against Mormon polygamy are Gustet O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1971); and Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

4. See the discussion of this matter in B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 173­78.

5. A translated copy of the expulsion order along with accounts of Mormon conster­nation is found in Andrew Jenson, comp., "Juarez Stake Manuscript History," non­paginated compilation of church records, newspaper reports, diary entries, and Jenson's field notes, 17 March 1885, Church Archives. Also see Levi Mathers Savage Journal, 4 April 1885, Church Archives. There is evidence that some church leaders believed the colonists should enter Mexico heavily armed so as to "command the respect of booth [sic] Indians and Mexicans." Helaman Pratt Diaries, 10 May 1885, Church Archives.
For descriptions of the hurried manner characterizing the Mormon entry into Mexico see "Joseph Fish Autobiography," typewritten manuscript, 31 January 1885, Arizona Historical Society Library, Tucson, Arizona; John Morgan Journals, 2 March 1885, Church Archives; Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records, 1907-1932," 324-25, Church Archives; non-paginated entries from section titled "Diaz Ward," in Jenson, "Juarez Stake Manuscript History," Church Archives; Jesse N. Smith, Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith: The Life Story of a Mormon Pioneer, 1834-1906 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Jesse N. Smith Family Association, 1953), 301-3; and A Record of the Ancestry and Descendants of Daniel and Mary (Shockley) Haymore of Pittsylvania Co., Virginia (privately published), 31.

6. A record of Mormon negotiations with Mexican authorities in Mexico City is found in the Pratt Diaries, 12-13 May 1885.

7. This number is based on'an estimate made by Junius Romney, leading Mormon authority residing in the colonies. See his testimony in U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, Investigation of Mexican Affairs. Report and Hearing pursuant to Sen­ate Resolution 106, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., Doe. 285, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Gov­ernment Printing Office, 1920), 2: 2575 (hereafter referred to as Investigation). Also see Romney's estimate in his "Remarks," 7, typewritten copy of address given before the Rose Park Stake Priesthood Meeting, 13 July 1966, Salt Lake City, Utah, in pos­session of the authors; and figures provided in Anthony W. Ivins to Reed Smoot, 6 December 1912, box 7, fol. 6, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, Utah State His­torical Society (hereafter USHS), Salt Lake City, Utah. Six of the colonies were in Chihuahua: Juárez, Dublin, Pacheco, Garcia, Diaz, and Chuichupa. Three were in Sonora: Morelos, Oaxaca, and San Jose.
8. Moisés González Navarro, La colonización en México, 1877-1910 (México: Talleres de Impresión de Estampillas y Valores, 1960), 63; Nathan L. Whetten, Rural Afexico (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 155-59; and Harold Eugene Holcombe, "United States Arms Control and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1924" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alabama, 1968), 5. G.W. Bartch, in his 1920 testi­mony before the U.S. Senate, quoted the Orozquista revolutionary, Jose Inéz Salazar, to say that "Mexicans lived in huts while the Americans [Mormons] lived in man­sions." Investigation, 2: 2723.

9. See "Statement of Margaret Carlin," in Investigation, 2: 2593-94; and Jane-Dale Lloyd, "Rancheros and Rebellion: The Case of Northwestern Chihuahua, 1905-1909," Daniel Nugent, ed., Rural Revolt in Mexico and U.S. Intervention, Monograph Series 27, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (San Diego: University of California at San Di­ego, with assistance of the Tinker Foundation, 1988), 110-11. For attitudes apart from the Mormons, see The Mexican Situation (New York, 1912), 19; Frederick Sherwood Dunn, The Diplomatic Protection of Americans in Mexico, vol. 2: Mexico in Interna­tional Finance and Diplomacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), 308-09; Charles C. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution: Genesis under Madero (Austin: Univer­sity of Texas Press, 1952), 194-202; and John Mason Hart, "U.S. Economic Hege­mony, Nationalism, and Violence in the Mexican Countryside, 1876-1920," Rural Revolt in Mexico, 78-79.

10. Charles C. Cumberland, "The Sonora Chinese and the Mexican Revolution," Hispanic American Historical Review 40 (May 1960), 191-211.

11. Ammon Meshach Tenney Diary, 1 July 1911, pt. 6, 73, typewritten copy of origi­nal, Arizona State Historical Society Library, Tucson, Arizona. For further commen­tary on the colonists' belief that they were providentially protected, see B. Carmon Hardy, "Cultural 'Encystment' as a Cause of the Mormon Exodus from Mexico in 1912," Pacific Historical Review 34 (November 1965), 439-54.

12. Rey L. Pratt, "History of the Mexican Mission," Improvement Era 15 (April 1912), 498.

13. Stanley R. Ross, Francisco I. Madero: Apostle of Mexican Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 256-75; Michael C. Meyer, Mexican Rebel: Pascual Orozco and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1915 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), .53-66; William Howard Beezley, Insurgent Governor: Abraham GonzaIez and the Mexican Revolution in Chihuahua (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 118-37; and, Francisco R. Almada, La Revolución en el Estado de Chihuahua, 2 vols. (Chihuahua City, México: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1964), 1: 285-338. The best overview of the many complex factors accounting for the upris­ing in the north against Madero is found in Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols.. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 2: 274-301. Regard­ing Zapatistas, see John H. McNeely, "Origins of the Zapata Revolt in Morelos," Hispanic American Historical Review 46 (May 1966), 153-69.

14, "Informe," El Periódico Oficial del Estado de Chihuahua, 22 September 1912, non-paginated (hereafter Periódico Oficial).

15. Harold W. Bentley, interview by Tillman S. Boxell, 15 August and 9 September 1978. Oral History, 77, Sandy, Utah, Polygamy Oral History Project, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter OHP). Further evidence of Mormon alarm due to Orozquista triumphs in Chihuahua City can he read in Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records," 339-42.

16. "La suspensión de¡ artículo 7 constitucional" and "Al pueblo chihuahuense," periódico Oficial, 22 February, 1912; "Excitativa á los ciudadanos que viven en los campos." Periódico Oficial, 29 February 1912; "Una excitativa," El Correo, 1-2 March 1912, 1. Abraham Gonzdlez imported military supplies from the United States to be used by voluntary militias, especially in remote areas of the state. Beezley, Insurgent Governor, 128; and Almada, La Revolución, 1: 287-88, 293.
17. "Gobierno de¡ Estado," Periódico Oficial, 24 March 1912; "Alocución pronunciada en el salón de sessiones de( H. Congreso. . ." Periódico Oficial, 18 April 1912 and "Informe," Periódico Oficial, 3 June 1912.

18. José Fernández Rojas, La Revolución Méxicana de Porfirio Díaz a Victoriana Huerta, 1910-1913 (México: F.P. Rojas & Cía., 1913), 38. One United States border patrol officer described roving bandit groups as about "as predictable as snakes." Perkins, Border Patrol, 28. Another commentator remarked that, outside the capital, Mexico simply reverted to what was "normal" before the rule of Porfirio Díaz, and that ín porthern Mexico circumstances were "both Revolutionary and Brigandary." The Mexican Situation, 19.

19. See the communications from Wilson to Knox, 7 March 1912, 812.00/3090, 15 March 1912, 812.113/216a; 22 March 1912, 812.113/241, 242, RDS. Also see, "Fair Warning Is NOW GIVEN: Americans Cannot Look To Their Government, Must Come Out Of Mexico," El Paso Morning Times, 4 March 1912. The animus of Ambassador Wilson toward the Madero regime is a long-remarked-upon ingredient in events dur­ing this period of Mexican-American relations. See Frank Tannenbaum, Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), 254; and Manuel González Ramírez, Las ideas, la violencia, vol. 1: La revolución social de México (México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), 368. '

20. Wilson to Knox, 23 January 1912, 812.00/2710, and 7 February 1912, 812.00/ 2755, RDS; and Edwards to Knox, 7 February 1912, 812.00/2751, RDS. Before be­coming president, Madero visited the Mormons ín Colonia Juárez, advised them to remain neutral in the conflict, and promised he would direct his soldiers to ask as little as possible from them. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Record," 322. Also see Marion G. Romney, interview by James B. Allen, Salt Lake City, Utah, 18 December 1972, 4, 10 January 1973, Oral History, 14, Church Archives. For a similar directive from losé Inds Salazar, after commencement of the revolt against Madero, see Consul Luther T. Ellsworth to Knox, 22 February 1912, 812.00/2899, RDS.

21. Mormon testimony of encounters with Orozquistas ís extensive. For testimony, see the following: inclusions in Andrew Jenson, comp., "Juarez Stake Wards," type­written, non-paginated gathering of church records and prívate memoirs, Church Archives; Joel Hills Martineau, "The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 1876-1929," typewritten manuscript ín 20 parts, 4: 66, Church Archives; Bernal A. Harvey, interview by Jesse Embry, American Fork, Utah, 27 July 1976, Oral History, 1-2, OHP; Iva Naegle Balmer, "Alexander Jameson, Jr.," 4, typewritten biographical sketch ín possession of authors; and "Testimony of Junius Romney," Revolutions in Mexico, 58-74.

22. Acting Secretary of State Huntington Wilson to American Consuls at Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, 5 July 1912, 312.111 Ad 1 l, RDS; Jenson, "Juarez Stake," non-paginated; Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, 311-14; and Bernal A. Harvey, interview, 1-2.

23. Consul Marion Letcher to Knox, 20 February 1912, 812.00/2841, RDS; Hun­tington Wilson to Consul at Chihuahua City, l l April 1912, 812.00/3538, RDS; "Refu­gees Flock Into This City," El Paso Morning Times, 8 March 1912, 1; "Salen los Americanos," El Correo, 7-8 March 1912, 1; "Exodo de extranjeros," El Correo, 12­13 March 1912, 1; and Martineau, "Mormon Colonies ín Mexico," 11:2.

24. See, for example, the reassurances given by Apostle Anthony W. Ivins in Jenson, "Morelos Ward Historical Record, 1901-1912," 10 March 1912, Church Archives; and the same leader's comments to his son, Heber Grant Ivins, 14 April 1912, ín Heber Grant Ivins Collection, box 1, folder 3, USHS. Similar statements were made both privately and from the pulpit during the spring of 1912: "Biographical Sketch of John W. McLaws," 24 April 1912, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University (here­after BYU Library), Provo, Utah; the comments of Theodore Martineau and others ín Jenson, "Pacheco Ward Historical Record, 1911-1912," non-paginated, 19 May, 16 June, and 30 June 1912. At a gathering of all Mexican Mormons ín late June 1912, their leaders told them they should not think of leaving for they had a "mission" to fill in that country, and the Lord would fight their battles for them. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Record, 1907-1932," 23 June 1912, 304; "Family Record of John Jacob A'alser," 86, Church Archives; and recollections in Asenath Skousen Walser, inter­view by Jessie Embry, 26 May 1976, Oral History, 11.

25. Reed Smoot Diaries, 3 March, 1912, Harold B. Lee Library, BYU Library; Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Record," 206, 280, 295-96, 320-23; Ivins Journal, 11 Janu­ary 1911 and 10 April 1911, box 3, folder 16, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS; Tenney Diary, 13 December 1910, 6:59; Romney, "Remarks," 7; "History of James Franklin Carroll," 5, typewritten manuscript, BYU Library Provo, Utah.

Traditionally, Mormons were favorably disposed towards the Diaz regime. See An­thony W. Ivins, "Porfirio Diaz," Improvement Era 4 (April 1901), 433-38. For admis­sions of bias favoring Madero's government over Orozquistas, see Israel Ivins Bentley, interview by Gordon Irving, 9, 10, 14, and 15 May 1973, Oral History, 26, Church Archives; and Ivin R. Jackson, interview by Tillman S. Boxwell, 9 October 1978, Oral History, 18, OHP.

26. Anson Brwen Call, "Life Story of Anson Bowen Call," 7, typewritten manu­script in possession of authors. Also see the experiences of Orson Pratt Brown in "The Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," undated entries, 72-73, 78, 86, typewritten manuscript, USHS. The chief Mormon authority in Mexico at the time later estimated that of the approximately 4,500 colonists in Mexico in 1912, only 250 had become Mexican citizens. Romney, "Remarks," 7.

27. Sullivan C. Richardson, "Remembering Colonia Diaz," Improvement Era 40 (May 1937), 299; Martineau, "Mormon Colonies in Mexico," 4:66.

28. David Black, as quoted in Lester Burt Farnsworth, "Lester B. Farnsworth," 11, autobiographical sketch in possession of authors. "Recorded Recollections And Reminiscences Relative To The Mormon Colonists In Mexico, Before, During And After The First And Second Exodus Of the Colonists As Told By Earl Stowell, Canute Breinholt, Alma Walser, Charles Burrell And Wives, 1960-1964," 7, Oral Interview by Hollis Scott, Archives, BYU Library; and Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies In Mexico, 158, 168-73.

29. As quoted by Genevieve Huish Shupe, "William Claude Huish, Sr.," in Nelle Spilsbury Hatch and B. Carmon Hardy, eds., Stalwarts South of the Border (Anaheim, California: privately printed, 1985), 288.

30. As quoted by Joseph C. Bentley in letter to Ivins, 23 February 1917, printed in "Salazar Ugly In Talk To Colonists; `Mormons' Looted," Deseret Evening News, 21 March 1917, 5.

31. Amy Wilcken Pratt Romney, interview by Gordon Irving, 1973, typescript, Oral History, 30, Church Archives.

32. Iva Naegle Balmer, "Alexander Jameson, Jr.," in Hatch and Hardy, Stalwarts South of the Border, 327.

33. Phoebe Malinda Carling Porter, as quoted by lone A. Pack, "Edson Darius Porter," in Hatch and Hardy, Stalwarts South of the Border, 535.

34. Asenath Skousen Walser Oral History, 10-11, OHP; Esther Jarvis Young, interview by Jessie Embry, 15 June 1976, Oral History, 5-6, OHP; Abraham L. Stout, interview by Tillman S. Boxell, 5 September 1978, Oral History, 2, OHP.

35. For statements by both Madero and Ivins, see Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Record," 206, 320-23. Also see Ivins Diaries, undated statement following entry for 10 April 1911, box 3, folder 16, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS.

36. Edward J. Berbusse, "Neutrality-Diplomacy of the United States and Mexico, 1910-1911," The Americas 12 (January 1956), 265-67; and Michael Dennis Carman, United States Customs and the Madero Revolution (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1976), 32-33, 72-73.

37. Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson to Knox, 12 May 1912, 812.00/1780, RDS; Berbusse, "Neutrality-Diplomacy;" and Dorothy Pierson Kerig, Luther T. Ellsworth: U.S. Consul on the Border During the Mexican Revolution, Monograph No. 47, Southwestern Studies (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1975), 33-45.

38. Regarding North American support for the Maderistas, see Holcombe, "U.S. Arms Control," 18-19; and Peter V.N. Henderson, "Mexican Rebels in the Borderlands, 1910­1912," Red River Valley Historical Review 2 (Summer 1975), 207-19.

39. Mexican Ambassador Francisco Leon de la Barra to Knox, 3 January 1911, 812.00/ 613, RDS; consular dispatches from Ciudad P. Diaz, 21 March 1911, and Ensenada, 23 May 1911, 812.00/1072 and 812.00/1919, RDS.

40. P. Edward Haley, Revolution and Intervention: The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson with Mexico, 1910-1917 (Cambridge: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1970), 25-32; Alan Knight, U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1910-1940: An Interpretation, Monograph Series, No. 28, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (San Diego: University of California, San Diego, with assistance from the Tinker Foundation, 1987), 95-96; Linda B. Hall and Don M. Coerver, Revolution on the Border: The United States and Mexico, 1910-1920 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 44­45.

41. In the words of the Mexican ambassador, the Orozco uprising was entirely ow­ing to "the ease with which arms, munitions, and war material can be obtained from private persons" in the United States. Ambassador Gilberto Crespo y Martinez to Hun­tington Wilson, 11 March 1912, 812.00/3194, RDS. Also see Henry Lane Wilson to Knox, 5 March 1912, 812.00/3054, RDS; and Holcombe, "U.S. Arms Control," 23-27.

42. Henry Lane Wilson to Knox, 24 February 1912, 812.00/2888, RDS; and Knox to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, 25 April 1912, 312.11/293a, RDS. For a docu­mented account of the quibbling between governments, and of Ambassador Wilson's alarmist behavior, see Luis G. Zorrilla, Historia de Jas relaciones entre México y los Estados Unidos de America, 1800-1958, 2 vols. (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1966), 2: 198,213-22.

43. Proclamation by President William Howard Taft, 14 March 1912, 812.113/ 216, RDS; U.S. Statutes at Large, 37, Part 2, 1732 (1912).

44. Consul Marion Letcher to Knox, 22 March 1912, 812.00/3348, RDS; Huntington Wilson to Letcher, 24 March 1912, 812.113/249b, RDS; and Attorney General George W. Wickersham to President William Howard Taft, 25 March 1912, 812.113/291, RDS. Also see Timothy G. Turner, Bullets, Bottles, and Gardenias (Dallas, Texas: South­west Press, 1935), 81.

45. "Orozco Gets Rifles," El Paso Morning Times, 17 March 1912, 1: "Ransacking Residences in Search of Arms," El Paso Morning Times, 24 March 1912, 8; and Holcombe, "U.S. Arms Control," 33-37. Regarding Orozquista response to the em­bargo as it affected Mormons, see the testimony of Junius Romney, Investigation, 2: 2581; and Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 151-62. One colonist said Orozquistas felt greater bitterness toward the Mormons than toward Madero. They charged the colonists, he said, with responsibility "for the U.S. embargo on firearms into Mexico." Wayne Dunham Stout, A History of Colonia Dublan and Guadalupe, Mexico (Salt Lake City, Utah: published by the author, n.d.), 23. Also see Letcher to Knox, 31 May 1912, 812.00/4091, RDS; Frank Romney, interview by Jessie Embry, 2 June 1876, Oral History, 4, OHP; and Elizabeth Hoel Mills, "The Mormon Colonies in Chihuahua after the 1912 Exodus," (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1950), 171.

46. See the numerous cases described under "Prohibition of shipment of arms, ammunition, etc., from U.S. into Mexico," March-April 1912, 812.00/225-302, RDS. For the complicated steps by which exceptions to the Taft proclamation on arms were obtained, see Holcombe, "U.S. Arms Control," 31-32.

47. Huntington Wilson to Henry Lane Wilson, 25 March 1912, 812.113/242, RDS. 48. Ibid., 9 April 1912, 812.113/350, RDS; Huntington Wilson to Taft, 13 April 1912, 812.00/3610, RDS; Huntington Wilson to American Consul at Nogales, 14 April 1912, 812.113/405, RDS; and Huntington Wilson to Henry Lane Wilson, 16 April 1912, 812.113/407, RDS; Knox to American Consul at Hermosillo, 19 April 1912, 312.11/ 252, RDS; and 20 April 1912, 812.113/440, RDS.
49. Eldon Payne, interview by Jessie Embry, 5 May 1976, Oral History, 7, OHP; "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 72-73.

50. For evidence of church approval and assistance in the purchase of arms, see undated note, box 10, folder 4, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS. One colo­nist recollected that Anthony W. Ivins "was the means of getting guns and ammunition in for the Mormons." Hyrum Albert Cluff, "History of My Life and Family," 25-26, typewritten copy in possession of authors.

51. As recalled by Junius Romney, "Remarks," 7.

52. Stout, Our Pioneer Ancestors, 12-13; Amy Wilcken Pratt Romney Oral History, 30-31.

53. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records," 17 December 1910, 206, 16 Decem­ber 1911, and 23 March 1912, 275-76; Ivins Journal, 11 January and 10 April 1911, box 3, folder 16, and 5 April 1912, box 4, folder 16, Anthony Woodward Ivins Journal Collection, USHS; "History of James Franklin Carroll," 5, BYU Library; and "Mor­mon Colonists Are Facing Crisis," Salt Lake Tribune, 10 July 1912.

54. Ashsah Stout McOmber, "David F. Stout Takes His Family To Mexico," Kate B. Carter, comp., Treasures of Pioneer History, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1952-57) 3:226. Visiting the colony Juarez in February 1912 after its occupation by rebels, Anthony W. Ivins seemed disgusted that Mormon settlers had permitted Orozquistas to enter their village "without even firing a shot." Anthony W. Ivins Journal, 29 February 1912, box 4, folder 1, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS.

55. Ivins Journal, 5 April 1912, box 4, folder l, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collec­tion, USHS.

56. Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 25, 28, 31.

57. Brigham H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press, 1930) 3:378-79. 58. W. Aird Macdonald, "Orson Pratt Brown," Hatch and Hardy, Stalwarts South of the Border, 72.

59. [bid.

60. "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 72-86. ' 61. Macdonald, "Orson Pratt Brown," 73-74.

62. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Manuscript History and Historical Reports," 28, Church Archives; "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 72-73, 78-79; Smoot Diary, 3 March 1912. Mormon records indicate that when Smoot first asked Taft for permission to ship guns to the colonists, Taft told him that when the United States was ready to send guns into Mexico it would do so with men to use them. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records," 280, 339-42.

63. While the amount of money cannot be determined, Anthony W. Ivins, in a memo­randum written in the spring of 1912, indicated that $5,000 would be sufficient to purchase the needed guns. Undated note, box 10, folder 4, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS. Later, in a diary entry, Smoot mentioned the Shelton and Payne Arms Company in connection with the guns purchased by Brown. Smoot Diary, 15 April 1912.

64. Junius Romney, "Remarks," 13-14.

65. "Arms and Ammunition Seized at Hermanas," El Paso Morning Times, 3 April 1912, I. The article did say that military authorities believed that instead of Mormon colonists, the guns were more likely intended for Red Flaggers.

66. "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 80-81.

67. "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown, 80-81; and Reed Smoot Diary, 3 April 1912. 68. Smoot Diary, 3-4 April 1912.

69. See enclosure from Colonel Edgar G. Steever in Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to Knox, 31 July 1912, 812.00/4524, RDS; and Senator Smoot's later com­ment that, when discussing shipment of arms to the Mormons, War Department officials "were very blue over the situation and expect trouble." Smoot Diary, 20 April 1912. 70. Smoot Diary, 4 April 1912.

71. Ibid., 4 April 1912. See also Frank W. Fox, J. Reuben Clark: The Public Years (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), 178-79.

72. Smith gave the telegram to Ivins who summarized its contents. Ivins Journal, 5 April 1912, box 4, folder 1, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, USHS.

73. Smoot Diary, 14 April 1912.

74. Actual release of the arms seems not to have .occurred until 20 April. Smoot Diary, 14-16, 20, 25, April 1912.

75. According to Smoot, the intercepted shipment consisted of fifty rifles and twenty thousand rounds of ammunition. Smoot Diary, 15 April 1912: Our estimate of the total number of guns purchased is based on Brown's statement in his journal, when first petitioning Smoot for permits, that he wanted to import 250 guns into the colonies. The intercepted shipment, he later said, was an advance installment on the total pur­chase intended. "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 78-81.

76. Record of approval is provided in "Prohibition of shipment of arms, ammuni­tion, etc., into Mexico from the United States," 14-16 April 1912, 812.113/415a and 812.113/426, RDS. Also see Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records," 339-42 and Fox, J. Reuben Clark, 179.

77. "Journal of Orson Pratt Brown," 81; Jenson, "Juarez Stake Historical Records," 341-42; Amy Wilcken Pratt Romney Oral History, 30-31; Junius Romney, "Remarks," 13-14.

78. Estelle Webb Thomas, "I Smuggled Guns Across the Border," Frontier Times 33 (Winter 1958-59), 42; Barney T. Burns and Thomas H. Naylor, "Colonia Morelos: A Short History of a Mormon Colony in Sonora, Mexico," Smoke Signal 27 (Spring 1973), 174-75.

79. "Arms and Ammunition Seized at Hermanas," and "Los Mormones se defienden," El Correa, 16 July 1912, 1. A wife of one of the colonists later recalled that her husband was permitted to carry one of the new guns in public for his safety. Sarah Ellis Day Coombs, "History of My Life," 51 a, mimeographed manuscript, Church Archives.

80. "Mormon Slain By Mexican At Colonia Diaz," Salt Lake Tribune, 6 May 1912; "Colonists Mobilizing To Defend Homes," Salt Lake Tribune, 9 July 1912; "'Mormons' Made Victims," Deseret Evening News, 10 July 1912.

81. American Consul at Ciudad Juárez to Knox, 31 July 1912, 812.00/4531, RDS; Joseph T. Bentley, Life and Letters of Joseph C. Bentley: A Biography (Provo, Utah: privately published, 1977), 135-36; Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 1-3.

82. Ralph H. Vigil, "Revolution and Confusion: The Peculiar Case of José Inés Salazar," New Mexico Historical Review 53 (April 1978), 146-47.

83. Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 3. United States military intelligence indicated that rebel forces at Casas Grandes consisted of 1,500 men with six pieces of artillery. Stimson to Knox, 31 July 1912, 812.00/4524, RDS.

84. See Romney's testimony in Investigation, 2: 2584-85, and Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 2-3.

85. Investigation, 2: 2584-85. 86. Investigation, 2: 2585-87.

87. Consul Edwards to Knox, 31 July 1912, 812.00/4531, RDS. Reports that Salazar was seeking to provoke military intervention on the part of the United States in order to frustrate Mexican federal forces, and that he would accomplish this by massacring North Americans and treating them as they had the Chinese, were, Edwards told reporters in El Paso, overstated. "Americans Flee from Chihuahua," New York Times, 30 July 1912, 5. A few days before the women left the colonies, Anthony W. Ivins, after conferring with Junius Romney in El Paso, also said he believed fears concerning Salazar's likely behavior were exaggerated. Anthony W. Ivins to Joseph F. Smith, 23 July 1912, box 10, folder 7, Anthony Woodward Ivins Collection, Church Archives.

88. "President Smith at Ocean Park," Deseret Evening News, 30 July 1912. Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 174; Junius Romney, "Remarks," 9-10; Anthony W. Ivins' comments in Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 28; and Anthony W. Ivins to Smith, August 1912, box 10, folder 11, Church Archives.

89. "Minutes of Meeting of First Presidency and Council of Twelve, Thursday, 25 July 1912," 2, Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (multivolume compilation of minutes, news clippings, diary extracts, and typescript), Church Archives.

90. Describing his decision two weeks later, Junius Romney said "he had gone out and prayed humbly and according to his impressions and judgment the ordering of a general move of the men was the only thing to be done." Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 26.

91. Excellent accounts of the departures of the men, colony by colony, art provided in Joseph Barnard Romney, "The Exodus of the Mormon Colonists Fron Mexico," 66-108. Also see Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies of Mexico, 182-200.

92. James Burtrum Harvey Oral History, 11-12.

93. "Recorded Recollections and Reminiscences Relative To the Mormon Colonist: in Mexico," 3-5.

94. Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 1-2, 23-40. 95. Ibid., 27.

96. Ivins to Smith, 20 August 1912, box 11, folder 2, Anthony Woodward Ivin: Collection, USHS.

97. "Meet Today To Decide Action . . . O.P. Brown Makes Statement," El Paso Morning Times, 13 August 1912, 1.

98. Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 23-24, 34-35. Brown told those assembled it El Paso that he refused to repent of the "unchristian" comments about Mexicans in his letter to the El Paso Morning Times.

99. Filibusterers gathered at the border, amassed weapons, threatened to invade north­ern Mexico for the purpose of creating an independent republic, and tried to recruit the colonists to join them. See "Reports of Agents of the Bureau of Investigation," 3 September 1912, 812.00/4915, RDS. For advice given to colonists at this time by government and Mormon officials, see Acting Secretary of War Leonard Wood to Knox, 3 September 1912, 812.00/4766, RDS and unsigned comments accompanying conftdential memorandum of Steever, Fort Bliss, Texas, 25 August 1912, 812.00/4918, RDS Also see Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 39; and W. Derby Johnson, Jr. to John W. Young, 24 November 1912, W. Derby Johnson, Jr. Letterbook H, in possession of Mrs Beth Simper, Holbrook, Arizona.

100. U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 129, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (1912). 101. See the discussion in Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 295-301.

102. Smoot to Anthony W. Ivins, 21 December 1912, box 7, folder 6, Anthony Wood ward Ivins Collection, Church Archives. A partial review of American policies toward Mexico's revolutionary leaders as seen from the Smoot Diary can be read in A.F. Cardon "Senator Reed Smoot and the Mexican Revolutions," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (Spring 1963), 151-63. Some Mexican scholars see in this, as one put it in describing the policies of Woodrow Wilson, nothing but "hypocrisy and mendacity." Josi E Iturriaga, Mexico en el Congreso de Estados Unidos (Mixico, fondo de cultur, economics, 1988), 20. For more balanced treatments, see Knight, U.S.-Mexican Rela tions, 1910-1940, 91-130; Haley, Revolution and Intervention; and Hall and Coerver Revolution on the Border.

103. Investigation, 1: 466-67. See the contradictory statement by President Woodrow Wilson on this subject in "Shipment of Munitions to Mexico," Commerce Reports, no. 247 (Washington, D.C., 21 October 1915), 305.

104. Holcombe, "U.S. Arms Control," 216-21.

105. The destructive behavior of rebels after the Mormons left is one of the most prominent features in Mormon memory of the experience. See Martineau, "The Mormon Colonies in Mexico," 4:67-72; 6:46, 51; Luella R. Haws, "Memories of Mexico," Treasures of Pioneer History, 3:211-12; [Lester Burt Farnsworth], The Story of Lester Burt Farnsworth and His Wife, Rosine (n.p., n.d.), 8; Barbara Barrett Brown, "William Derby Johnson, Jr.," in Hatch and Hardy, Stalwarts South of the Border, 364; testimony of the non-Mormon Captain S.H. Veater in Investigation, 1: 1482-83; Catherine S. Brown, interview by Jessie Embry, 3 May 1976, Oral History, 35, OHP. One colonist, after the exodus, said he then knew how his parents felt when, with other Mormons, they were despoiled and driven from Missouri and Illinois. Benjamin Franklin LeBaron, "Autobiography," 28, typewritten copy, BYU Library.

106. Thomas Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 200. Also see "Death to Mormons by the Mexicans," an anonymous account of depredations in Sonora, 5 October 1912, Nelle Spilsbury Hatch Collection, BYU Library.

107. Edith McD. Levy, Secretary, Special Mexican Claims Commission to Presiding Bishop [Sylvester Q. Cannon], Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 14 August 1937, Law Department, Mexican Refugee Claims, folder 13, Church Archives; J. Reuben Clark to Bishop Cannon, 25 August 1936, Law Department, Mexican Refugee Claims, folder #14, Church Archives; "Interview between Bishop Parley P. Jones and Eva Jane Robeson," 29 January 1960, Eva Jane Robeson Collection, folder 1, Church Archives.

108. Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 200. Romney was a youth in Colonia Morelos at the time of the Revolution.

109. For expressions of this point of view by both colonists and their children see Taylor, "Record of the Exodus," 23-40; Jenson, "Juárez Stake Historical Records, 1907­1932," 339-42; Martineau, "The Mormon Colonies in Mexico," 11:20-24; Franklin Spencer Gonzalez, "The Restored Church In Mexico" (Lubbock, Texas: unpublished manuscript, 1967), 82, 101, Church Archives; Harold W. Bentley, interviewed by Tillman S. Boxell, 15 August 1978 and 9 September 1978, Oral History, 2, 28, 32, OHP.

110. Frederick Turner, after an impressive survey of anti-American rhetoric, concluded that historians have overestimated the extent o£ such sentiment and the number of hostile incidents that actually occurred. Frederick C. Turner, "Anti-Americanism in Mexico, 1910-1913," Hispanic American Historical Review 47 (November 1967), 516­18. Also see the comments of Alan Knight, "The United States and the Mexican Peasantry c. 1880-1940," Rural Revolt in Mexico, 25-29. For examples of the comparative immunity enjoyed by United States citizens during some Orozquista campaigns, see Edwards to Knox, 28 February 1912, 812.00/2956, RDS; and the comments of Letcher to Knox, 10 April 1912, 812.00/3546, RDS.

111. Harold W. Bentley Oral History, 49.

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Sources:

Blaine Carmon Hardy is professor of history at California State University, Fullerton. He has published in the fields of Mormon history, Latin American history, and American constitutional history. 

Melody Seymour received her M.A. degree at California State University, Fullerton in 1994. Her research interests include Mormon history and U.S. social history.