The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most successful religions to have emerged from the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s. Today it boasts a membership of over 16 million worldwide and an estimated net worth of several billion dollars. Its foundational text, the Book of Mormon, purports to be a story of the peoples of the America prior to European colonization. These peoples supposedly descended from refugees from Jerusalem who came to be divided into Nephites and Lamanites, the latter of whom bested the former and came to populate the Americas.
Although Joseph Smith Jr. founded the LDS church in New York state, under his successor Brigham Young, it came to dominate Utah and the Intermountain West as part of the conceit of Manifest Destiny. The Mormon takeover of the territory of the Ute, Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Navajo was as racist and ruthless...
