Comments | larisa57: Sigh

larisa57

Sigh

Apr 26, 2009 21:47

Another Elsie book. Lulu and Max and their father go west! Where, exactly, I'm not sure. It's not specified, other than "to the West." And, as I feared, they meet some Mormons. And discuss how the Mormons are one of the greatest threats our country has ever faced. The word "evil" is even used, which I don't think was even used when they were ( Read more... )

Comments 3

riani1 April 27 2009, 18:12:51 UTC

While Utah has gold and lots of coal and mountains, they could well be in Arizona near the Mexican border. Lots of polygamists went down there to avoid the government, ready to bolt across the border if things got hairy.

larisa57 April 27 2009, 23:40:06 UTC

Arizona sounds reasonable. It's 1888 or 1889, and wherever they are is a territory, not a state.

And they meet a woman who came over from Scotland with her family. Some Mormon missionaries met them in Scotland and convinced them to become Mormon and come to the US, and then, once they got to the US, they found out about the polygamy (which she says the missionaries never mentioned in Scotland), and her husband takes some more wives, and she objects, and her husband threatens her with blood atonement, and she thinks that this is the cross that she has to bear, until Captain Raymond explains to her that the Bible does not condone polygamy, and the Mormons are wrong.

And then there's a ridiculously long part which is basically everybody talking about how Americans love freedom, and the immigrants (immigrants from Scotland are not included in this) don't understand freedom, and so they're destroying the country.

larisa57 April 28 2009, 02:35:27 UTC

Oh, and there are bears. Stories of buffalo, but no actual buffalo. Plenty of actual bears, though. And I finished the book, and there were no Native Americans! Not even mention of any! They were mentioned in the previous book, though, when they were trying to decide what charities to give to, and one of the young boys decided that he wanted his money to go to sponsor an Indian boy at a mission school, and Elsie said that was a good idea, because the white men have done such horrible things to the Indians, and so we have a lot of make up for. And mission schools, it seems, are the way to do that.