Despite its ultimate robust success, the spread of the Latter-day Saint faith into Mexico entailed a bumpy ride for missionaries who carried the message as well as for those who ultimately accepted it.[*] At several points any idea of a positive outcome appeared to waft on an ethereal breeze. The historical synopses in the first chapter of this book broach some of the trauma, including the Church’s total abandonment of its members in central Mexico from 1889 to 1901. The faith’s political troubles with the US government in the Utah and Arizona territories over polygamy and self-governance forced all the Anglo-European missionaries then serving in central Mexico either to withdraw from the country entirely or to retreat to the temporary refuge of their northern Chihuahuan and Sonoran colonies. They did not reappear in central Mexico for a dozen years. In the meantime, Anglo-European Latter-day Saint immigrants from the Utah and Arizona territories continued to pour into the northern Mexican states to secure their own well-being in nine eventual colonies.

Fortunately, several Anglo-European members who had been with the early missionary/explorer party in central Mexico in 1876 never forgot about the Latter-day Saints there. One of them was Ammon Meshach Tenney. Although his personal life eventually left him melancholy, even sad, his role in replanting an institutional and pastoral presence for the Church in central Mexico beginning in 1901 validates his inclusion in a collection of pioneer vignettes of Latter-day Saints in Mexico.

Tenney, a second-generation Latter-day Saint, was born in 1844 on the plains of Iowa. When he was two years old, his family joined the main 1846 Latter-day Saint exodus from Nauvoo and subsequent trek to what the Saints would call Utah Territory.[1] Consistent with the exigencies of being exiled and having to found new frontier settlements, many early Latter-day Saint parents pushed their sons to grow in manly attributes as quickly as possible in order to help the family secure a home in the American West. Cultural and social manhood, if not the presumption of their physical existence, frequently came early as the Latter-day Saints carefully nurtured personal attributes that distinguished their perceptions of themselves as a people of God. With respect to Tenney, his parents named him for the Book of Mormon personality they hoped he would emulate. His mother even used that sacred text to teach her son to read.[2]

In 1851 Ammon was but seven years old when his parents joined a body of 437 Latter-day Saints who left Utah Territory for California. Under the direction of Apostles Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich, and with the uncharacteristically dispirited blessing of Brigham Young,[3] they gathered at Peteetneet (present-day Payson, Utah) with their 150 wagons filled to capacity with possessions and trailing hundreds of cattle and horses. They needed all these for the long, arduous, and (what proved to be) nearly disastrous journey to Southern California to help carve out a new Latter-day Saint settlement there, a new passageway to the Pacific, they said. The trek was as terrible a hardship for the Tenneys as for nearly everyone else. It introduced Ammon to the toil and sacrifice that would characterize the remainder of his life.

Commemorative plaque of the Latter-day Saint founding of San Bernardino, California, in 1851. The plaque is located at the southeast corner of the courthouse gardens in San Bernardino.

The collective euphoria that came about from the Latter-day Saints’ settlement in San Bernardino was short-lived. As a Latter-day Saint community, the village lasted only seven years.[4] However, for Tenney, who spent his formative years there and was baptized there, the experience set an unusual line of thinking for such a young person. For seven years (age seven through fourteen), he put his natural proclivities for conversational language to use and learned Spanish and a smattering of Zuni and many words in four other Native American dialects. It helped that his mother had adopted an orphaned Mexican boy with whom he liked to converse.[5]

While other youth hunkered down in the San Bernardino Latter-day Saint community that was composed of eight European nationalities with their divergent tongues and dialects, with some continuing to speak their mother languages as they struggled to learn English,[6] Ammon expanded his youthful cross-cultural acquaintances sufficiently to acquire basic communication capabilities in the languages of his non–Latter-day Saint friends.

Tenney seemed driven to develop skills in these languages,[7] believing that somehow he was destined to use them for the Lord’s purposes. He later reflected, “My early associations with them [Native Americans] in California taught me their many good traits of character, as also traditions, which were so compatible with the B[ook] of M[ormon] that I was made sure that my mother was right.”[8] The return of Parley P. Pratt from his 1851 mission to Chile probably also influenced the lad and helped set him on his life’s journey.[9]

Tenney carried these sentiments when his family abandoned San Bernardino in 1858 and returned with other Latter-day Saints to Utah Territory. The Tenneys resettled in Harmony in what is now southern Utah.

Tenney’s task for the remainder of his life was to use his phenomenal language skills and cross-cultural sensitivities to foster peace between Native Americans and Latter-day Saint immigrants in the southwestern American territories, to rescue abandoned Latter-day Saints in Mexico, and to announce the message of the restored gospel wherever he could. During the hard times, his embedded values, acquired through his mother’s example and urgings, motivated and sustained him: inclusion rather than prejudicial rejection, linguistic curiosity rather than communication fear, cultural flexibility over closed-corporate hunkering down, and respect for all humans as children of God as opposed to working overtime to create enemies, virtual or real, across ethnic and racial lines

In the Utah Territory of his childhood, but especially in his youth in California, Ammon had little time and less inclination to ponder adolescence or dally over the joys and delightful discoveries of youth. He was engaged in weightier matters, which prepared him for his encounter with Jacob Hamblin as a fourteen-year-old.

A Foreboding Invitation

When Ammon was fourteen years old and weighing barely ninety pounds, the responsibility of manhood fell suddenly on him. In 1858 Jacob Hamblin, whom Brigham Young had called a “special apostle to the Indians” and who already was a living legend among members of the Church of Jesus Christ everywhere in the American West,[10] came to the Tenney home in Harmony[11] to speak with Ammon’s father Nathan and other men in the fledgling settlement. Hamblin was animated and soon had the attentive ears of his listeners. He told them of Native American Moqui (Hopi) elders from northern Arizona who had spoken of three Zuni villages near them whose lighter-complexioned people spoke a language they had never heard and that others said contained Welsh words from the British Isles.[12] Brigham Young had asked Hamblin to investigate, to make peace along the way, and to preach the gospel wherever possible. Hamblin was good at this; the tribes tended to trust him.[13]

Hamblin could communicate well in Ute and Paiute and had rudimentary language skills among other tribes, but the linguistic requirements for the journey on which Brigham Young had sent him this time far exceeded his capabilities. He needed an interpreter. In fact, he was sure he needed two: one for Spanish and sundry Indian dialects other than Ute and Paiute, the other for Welsh. He needed Spanish to navigate the southwestern American terrain where the Zuni lived and where Spanish was a second tongue in many of their settlements, thereby perhaps permitting entry to what Hamblin thought might be isolated remnants of Nephite peoples. He needed Welsh in the event those spoken of were descendants of the people of Madog ab Owain Gwynedd, who, according to widely circulated folklore in the American Midwest and among some Latter-day Saints in the Southwest, was a Welsh prince. In two transatlantic voyages in the decade of AD 1170–80, he reportedly brought thousands of his compatriots to America whose descendants were somewhere on the American frontier living as “Welsh Indians.”[14]

The fourteen-year-old Tenney could speak Spanish and handle himself empathically well in cross-cultural settings, something that Hamblin would especially have appreciated. It also helped that the lad had rudimentary knowledge of Ute, Pauvant, Piute, Moqui,[15] and perhaps Zuni.

Ammon’s parents did not disappoint Hamblin, particularly in light of Brigham Young’s having asked for the boy on the recommendation of Apostle Charles C. Rich, who had watched young Tenney mature during the years they had shared in San Bernardino, California. Nathan Tenney assented to the request; his boy eagerly joined the expedition. The men ordained the fourteen-year-old lad an elder and set him apart as a missionary to what they called “the Indians.”[16]

Durias Davis,[17] familiar with the indigenous language of his native Wales, joined the search expedition to assess the rumored Wales connection in the event they came across people who might still be using words the man could recognize. Davis, being over eighteen, made his own decision to join the expedition, nevertheless recognizing, as did nearly every able-bodied Latter-day Saint, that an adherent to the faith rarely declined a call, no matter the personal sacrifice. It was late autumn 1858.

Expeditions into the Wilderness

As was customary for the time, the men made their exploratory expeditions mainly during the winter so as to be able to give full attention to their farms during the planting, tending, and harvesting months, mainly late March through early November. In the winter they could leave their chores to others as they embarked on numerous journeys to learn of new peoples, places, and opportunities to share the gospel and to establish settlements.

One wonders about winter. From December through February, the American southwestern high sierra can be dangerous. On this occasion, the travelers’ luck nearly escaped them.[18] As their supplies ran desperately low, freezing weather lingered and they faced imminent starvation. One man offered his best horse for food, which barely provided enough sustenance to reach some Moqui settlements in time to save their lives.[19] Young Ammon Tenney’s introduction to missions for the Lord proved profoundly harsh. He would yet experience such bleakness many times.

Zuni girl. The Zunis held a special place in Ammon Tenney's heart. He lived with them for many months during a missionary expedition in the American Southwest.

Among the Zuni, Hamblin and his companions did not find the Welsh connection they sought. Nevertheless, four of the exploring party stayed in the nearby Moqui settlements for a while as missionaries.[20] They departed in late winter to return to their homes.

Tenney as Hamblin’s Understudy

From time to time for the next fifteen years, Tenney accompanied the inveterate peacemaker and explorer Hamblin on horseback. He also made arduous trips on his own, “for Jacob would be gone in other directions.”[21] In a sense, in the early years of this relationship, Hamblin became the lad’s surrogate father as they, frequently with others, pursued peace between Native Americans and Latter-day Saint settlers in the Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico territories. In addition to peacefully resolving many conflicts, they explored uncharted territory, preached the restored gospel to all who desired to listen to them, and tracked rumors that came their way regarding isolated fragment societies that might link contemporary peoples to the historiography of the Book of Mormon.[22] Always, as for example in the case of the putative lost people of Wales, they hoped for a new understanding of transoceanic voyages such as the Lehi expedition chronicled in the Book of Mormon that may have scattered genes[23] in the Americas long before Christopher Columbus astonished the world with his narratives about America’s “Indians” (a few of whom he took back to Europe as captive proof of his exploits).[24]

View of multistoried Hopi homes in Oraibi, in present-day Arizona, ca. 1899.

Twenty-nine years after Nathan Tenney gave permission for his son to assist Jacob Hamblin as a translator in response to Brigham Young’s call, the now mature man’s enduring affection for his mentor was on poignant display. In December of 1887, the forty-three-year-old Ammon was on his way to yet another mission to Native Americans, this time in Sonora, Mexico. As he passed through the disintegrating Latter-day Saint settlement of Pleasanton, New Mexico, he took a whole day to search for Hamblin’s grave. He was disappointed not to find it; it was abandoned, he eventually concluded, in a nondescript and unkempt pioneer cemetery, already nearly forgotten to time if not to understanding. More likely, Hamblin’s remains had already been removed to Alpine, Arizona, where his brother Frederick ultimately reburied him.[25] Regardless, during his grave search, Ammon contemplated the life he had experienced with his beloved mentor who had carefully instructed him for a decade and a half, describing Hamblin as a “noble man” and recalling his “countless sacrifices . . . for the gospel.”[26] He then moved on, doing what Hamblin had taught him—making peace among Native Americans and taking the gospel to them in ways that reached their understanding. As had Hamblin, Ammon continued to baptize hundreds along the trails of his journeys.

Notable Success in Pueblo Isleta

Brigham Young soon saw a larger purpose for Tenney than simply being Jacob Hamblin’s assistant. In October 1875, less than a year following his injunction to always heed Hamblin’s call, Young telegraphed Tenney in Kanab, Utah, his home at the time, asking him to go with Daniel W. Jones and others on the Church’s first extended missionary expedition to Mexico. This was the 1876 journey to Chihuahua in which the missionaries carried on the backs of mules and horses the fifteen hundred copies of the Trozos Selectos del Libro de Mormon (select passages from the Book of Mormon) that Melitón González Trejo had translated.[27] Having traveled the country with Jacob Hamblin, Tenney knew the best southern routes on which to begin their journey. One might keep in mind that there were no trail signs through the mountains, let alone definitive maps showing river crossings and watering holes.

After passing into Mexico through the international border at El Paso del Norte, the party elected to split up. By unanimous consent, on February 7, 1876, the missionaries decided that Tenney and another missionary, Robert H. Smith, should return to the United States, go up the Rio Grande some 250 miles and labor near Pueblo Isleta, just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, “or where ever the spirit may dictate.”[28] From his earlier experiences in the region with Jacob Hamblin, Tenney was convinced that many Native Americans, whom he considered Lamanites, were anxiously awaiting baptism there, much in contrast to the cold shoulder his missionary friends had been receiving in Chihuahua.

Finally arriving in Pueblo Isleta,[29] for the next six weeks, from late February to early April 1876, Tenney and Robert H. Smith tried to survive. Between bouts of intense hunger, Smith taught school (three pupils) and Tenney worked in the fields, activities that ultimately permitted them to pay for their room, feed their one horse, and acquire enough food to reduce their hunger pangs.[30] They did a lot of walking, much of the time on scalded or blistered feet.[31]

About this time, Tenney had a peculiar experience (Smith declared it a vision) that led the pair to a Zuni settlement where they were accepted with great enthusiasm. As they approached, one of the natives recognized Tenney from seventy-five feet away. They had been friends during Tenney’s California days! The man introduced Tenney as a man of God, and by April 2 even the tribal cacique (the maximum political authority) had asked for baptism.[32] Hundreds followed.

The missionaries could scarcely contain their excitement. And so it went in village after village of the 330 square miles that Pueblo Isleta encompassed. Brigham Young was extremely pleased, so much so that after Tenney returned to his home in Kanab, Young called others to go to Pueblo Isleta to continue the Church’s work there. He asked Tenney to return to New Mexico as a guide for the new missionaries and to help get them oriented in their labors, part of which was to maintain the three branches of the Church that Tenney and Smith had organized in Isleta.[33] In addition to performing baptisms, they had ordained men to the priesthood and set up a local administrative structure. As usual, in no time Tenney was on his horse riding out. Again.

Tenney Reopens the Mexican Mission

In 1901 Anthony W. Ivins, president of the mostly Anglo-American Juárez stake in Chihuahua, initiated the Latter-day Saints’ new attention to Mexico. First he made the case to the Church’s leading councils in Salt Lake City, and then he recommended that Ammon Tenney lead out in reopening missionary work in central Mexico (see the previous vignette on Anthony W. Ivins). Ivins had an unfettered commitment to the abandoned Latter-day Saints in central Mexico and an uncommon confidence in Tenney, knowing he would spare no sacrifice in applying his language and personal skills to carrying out this assignment.

With approvals in place, in 1901 Ivins visited Tenney at his home in nearby Colonia Dublán, where he had recently acquired a house for one of his wives and their children, and asked him to reopen the Mexican Mission, which had been abandoned since 1889. Tenney took on the task with the usual dedication of time, talent, and energy he had shown toward every other assignment the Church had given him.

The Church attached a high degree of importance to this effort, just as it had to Apostle Moses Thatcher’s mission in 1879. Apostle John Henry Smith as well as Ivins accompanied Tenney to Mexico City to ascertain commitment issues among Church members and to determine how many of the old members had good prospects of being reignited in the faith. Ivins had personal acquaintances from his own missionary days in central Mexico in the early 1880s. He was anxious to see his friends again.

The trio of Smith, Ivins, and Tenney began their efforts in Cuernavaca, where an expatriate Latter-day Saint by the name of H. L. Hall owned and operated a hotel. Several of Hall’s employees, at varying levels of commitment, had also joined the faith, and others expressed an interest. As if to reinforce the Church’s pledge, in Hall’s hotel Apostle Smith ordained Tenney a high priest and set him apart as president of the Mexican Mission, charging him to work under the direction of Ivins.

Shortly after, Tenney baptized Juan Mairet, the son of a Swiss family that Hall had introduced to the Church. Mairet appears to have been Tenney’s first baptism in his new assignment, and he would later serve a mission under Tenney’s direction.[34] All this notwithstanding, Tenney understood his principal task to be strengthening the abandoned Latter-day Saints in central Mexico as quickly as possible.

Before initiating their rounds of visits to Church members, the threesome (Smith and Ivins remained with Tenney for two weeks) made two overtures to Mexican president Porfirio Díaz. Díaz expressed satisfaction with the Latter-day Saints’ economic exploits in Chihuahua and Sonora and welcomed them back to Mexico City, thereby establishing a relationship that would serve the Church well for a decade (until the fog of civil war fell upon the nation and Díaz’s complete disrepute among a majority of Mexicans culminated in his ouster and exile).[35]

As Smith, Ivins, and Tenney began their visits to several of the old branches, they discovered that some members were overjoyed to see them, that some were dubious as to whether the Church was coming back to stay, and that some had just fallen by the wayside. Regardless, many old members had worked beyond any reasonable expectation to keep their faith and organization alive during the twelve years that missionary efforts had been on hold.

After Ivins and Smith returned to their homes, Tenney rode every conveyance available and walked where none could or would go to visit all the isolated branches and members in central Mexico to teach them and to assure them that the Church had returned to stay. He worked to establish indigenous leaders to head the branches and empower them with priesthood authority and training to carry out their lay leadership tasks.

The challenges that Tenney faced were surmountable but on occasion appeared not to be. It appears that the majority of early members had previously been active Protestants, thus already establishing their credentials as independent thinkers in a Catholic land. Although most Latter-day Saints appear to have stayed with their new faith during the missionaries’ dozen-year absence, it is also true that some had introduced innovations into their worship patterns that Church authorities in Salt Lake City would certainly consider alien to the Latter-day Saint way. Beyond that, some local leaders had founded their own congregations and were extremely reluctant to cede control to the central authority that had returned in the name of Ammon Tenney. Then, aside from matters of doctrinal purity, there were the perennial personal issues of marital fidelity and chastity, both front-burner issues for Latter-day Saints, then and now, in a land filled with rampant cultural machismo and its associated male prerogatives and imperatives.[36]

Day after relentless day for months on end that stretched to more than a year, Tenney doggedly pursued his assignment. He was alone except when local members accompanied him, some of whom he eventually called on short-term missions: Lino Zárate, Julián Rojas, Juan Méndez, Simón Zúñiga, and a Brother Camacho. More soon joined the missionary force: Ángel Rosales, Margarito Bautista, Jacobo González, and Juan Mairet. Others who rendered substantial assistance and whom Tenney acknowledges in his diaries and journals include H. L. Hall, Francisco Barco, Silvestre López, Simón Páez, Juana Páez, and Francisco Miranda.[37]

In the records I have reviewed, Tenney admitted to being homesick only once.[38] No doubt, from his perspective, homesickness was not a manly condition for which one should make admissions. Nevertheless, no day appeared to pass without his family in the northern colonies being on his mind. Thankfully, he was able to visit his loved ones at least once during this rescue mission.[39] His family was always at home, wherever that happened to be, while he did his exploring and peacemaking missions and served for nearly three years on two proselytizing missions in Mexico.

Ammon Tenney in the autumn of his life, ca. 1920. LaMond Tullia archive.

Ammon Tenney was not a perfect man. The price of his old age was loneliness. With his three wives he had twenty-two children. Before his end came in 1925, his spouses were somewhat distant, and some of his children had withdrawn from him, he having been a largely absentee father, evidenced on one occasion when he wrote, “Kanab is my home, whenever I happen to be there.” With some melancholy, he added, “I do not mourn for the dead, but alas, I am called to mourn for the living.”[40]

Sadness about some members of his family notwithstanding, Tenney stood anchored to the bedrock conviction that no mortal sacrifice could countermand a faithful member’s need to share the story of the restoration of the Church with all God’s children, including Native Americans and Mexicans. Quite uniquely raised to this end by his mother Olive Strong and his father Nathan Tenney, endowed by the peculiar circumstances of his youth, and coached by the peerless peacemaker of all peacemakers, Jacob Hamblin, Tenney rose to almost every challenge. He died convinced that in due course, with an eternal perspective in mind, his family would view all their mutual sacrifices to have been worth his being nearly constantly on his Lord’s errand.[41]

Tenney’s distinguished and relentless pursuit to rescue the Latter-day Saints in Mexico from their institutional abandonment, an effort punctuated by a single-minded dedication and disregard for his own personal sacrifice and physical discomforts, must surely go down as one of the most substantial personal sagas in Latter-day Saint history. Many multigenerational Latter-day Saint families in Mexico today owe their permanence in the Church to the intrepid efforts of this itinerant servant and his helpers.

Notes

[*] This vignette draws from my paper “Ammon Meshach Tenney, 1844–1925: Champion of Native Americans and Rescuer of Abandoned Mormons in Central Mexico,” prepared for the Mormon History Association’s 49th Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas, June 5–8, 2014. Sharman Gill, Michael Landon, Richard Thomas, and Eileen Roundy-Tullis made helpful critiques of drafts of that article.

[1] A rich source of information on the Tenney family is contained in the Ammon M. Tenney papers, MSS SC 2214, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

[2] Ammon Tenney, letter from Safford, AZ, to his niece Pearl Udall (later Nelson) in Eagar, AZ, July 12, 1915, 2, Ammon M. Tenney papers, 1875–1921, MS 1484, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Brigham Young had authorized the Saints’ transfer to California, but when he traveled south from Salt Lake City to send them off with his blessing, he was “sick at the sight of so many of the Saints running to California, chiefly after the god of this world.” The sight upset him so that he was unable to give his planned speech, this being “one of the few recorded instances when he was without words.” The episode is noted in Richard O. Cowan and William E. Homer, California Saints: A 150-Year Legacy in the Golden State (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1996), s.v. chap. 10, “Plans for a Southern Colony.” See also Leonard J. Arrington, Charles C. Rich: Mormon General and Western Frontiersman (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), 159; and J. Kenneth Davies, Mormon Gold: The Story of California’s Mormon Argonauts (Salt Lake City: Olympus, 1984), 306.

[4] See Cowan and Homer, California Saints, 167–84.

[5] See Winn Whiting Smiley, “Ammon M. Tenney, Mormon Missionary to the Indians,” Journal of Arizona History 13, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 83.

[6] The alphabetic innovation among Latter-day Saints known as the “Deseret Alphabet” was intended to replace the Latin alphabet with more phonetically accurate symbols for English to help the multitude of new immigrants from various language backgrounds learn English more efficiently. The use of this alphabet was relatively short-lived, but on occasion new material written in its symbols appears. See Wikipedia, s.v. “Deseret Alphabet,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet. I own a copy of extracts from the Book of Mormon in this alphabet.

[7] In the autumn of his life, Tenney, reflecting on the many times his life had been spared, wrote in a July 12, 1915, letter from Safford, Arizona, to his niece Pearl Udall in Eagar, Arizona, “I am a living monument of the protecting hand of the Providence, or giver of all good that has manifested itself, all my life long and I want to add, I am convinced beyond any doubt, that its purpose was for me to perform the labors that I have, among the descendants of Father Lehi.” Tenney to Udall, 1.

[8] Tenney to Udall, 2. I assume that Tenney’s mother had in mind what most Latter-day Saints believed at the time, namely, that Native Americans were descendants of Lehi’s people who voyaged to the New World and therefore out to be respected, not persecuted.

[9] Tenney to Udall, 2. In his letter to his niece, Tenney confuses Peru for Chile. On Parley P. Pratt’s mission to Chile, see LaMond Tullis, “California and Chile in 1851 as Experienced by the Mormon Apostle Parley P. Pratt,” Southern California Quarterly 67, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 291–307.

[10] See Todd M. Compton, A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013); and Hartt Wixom, Hamblin: A Modern Look at the Frontier Life and Legend of Jacob Hamblin (Springville, UT: CFI, 2008).

[11] This occurred just before Tenney’s parents relocated to Grafton, Washington County, Utah, presently a photogenic ghost town.

[12] Tenney refers to the “Welch” in his letter to Pearl Udall (see note 2). Details are offered by James H. McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert (Phoenix: Manufacturing Stationers, 1921), 63–64.

[13] See, e.g., Marlene Bateman Sullivan, Brigham’s Boys: True Stories of 16 Men Who Were Faithful to the Prophet in the Most Crucial Times—Men He Knew He Could Rely On (Springville, UT: CFI, 2009), 62.

[14] See McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 64–65. See also William L. Traxel, Footprints of the Welsh Indian Settlers in North America before 1492 (New York: Algora, 2004); Benjamin Franklin Bowen, America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D. (New York: Firework, 2016); and Frederick Webb Hodge, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1907), 2:931–32.

[15] Tenney to Udall, 2.

[16] Tenney to Udall, 2.

[17] Ammon Tenney refers to him as Durias Davis. See Tenney to Udall, 2. Ammon’s granddaughter, Winn Whiting Smiley, by his wife Anna, calls him James Davis. See Smiley, “Mormon Missionary to the Indians,” 86.

[18] The exploratory party consisted of Jacob Hamblin and his brothers William and Frederick, Durias Davis, Ammon Tenney, Thomas Leavitt, Samuel Knight, Ira Hatch, Andrew S. Gibbons, Benjamin Knell, and a Piute guide named Naraguts. See James Tanner, “Coming to Arizona—The Welsh Legend Expedition,” Walking Arizona (blog), May 13, 2009, www.walkingarizona.blogspot.com/2009/05/coming-to-arizona-welsh-legend.html. See also McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 56–57.

[19] Tenney’s journal has this episode occurring on their outgoing journey; others place it during the homeward trek. On the latter, see, e.g., Smiley, “Mormon Missionary to the Indians,” 88.

[20] Those staying were Hamblin, Leavitt, Gibbons, and Knell. See McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 57.

[21] Tenney to Udall, 2.

[22] The notion of fragment societies unfolding in a pristine land has an established place in the historical literature. See, e.g., Louis Hartz, ed., The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964).

[23] A constellation of factors—early overreaching claims from within the Latter-day Saint community that all Native Americans were descended from the voyages of Lehi, Mulek, or Jared and unwarranted claims that because Middle Eastern genes were not found in a sample of Native Americans, the Book of Mormon is false—have given rise to a new lively twist to the unending debates about the possible historiography of the Book of Mormon. The best short summary that corresponds to my view is Brant A. Gardner, “The Tempest in a Teapot: DNA Studies and the Book of Mormon,” FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/archive/publications/the-tempest-in-a-teapot-dna-studies-and-the-book-of-mormon. Thomas Murphy’s specious claim that scientific evidence disproves the Book of Mormon is summarized in “Simply Implausible: DNA and a Mesoamerican Setting for the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003), 109–31. Plausible locations for Book of Mormon historiography other than in Mesoamerica have been advanced. See, e.g., R. Kent Crookston, Book of Mormon Ecology: What the Text Reveals about the Land and Lives of the Record Keepers (Provo, UT: Village Lane Publishing, 2020). The Church’s position is that science cannot prove or disprove the historiography of the Book of Mormon. That view is summarized in Gospel Topics Essays, “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies.

[24] See Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949). See also this strident blog: Daniel N. Paul, “Christopher Columbus,” Mi’Kmaq, Maliseet, etc., & European Relations with Them, www.danielnpaul.com/ChristopherColumbus.html.

[25] At some point, Jacob Hamblin’s brother Frederick brought his brother’s remains to Alpine, Arizona, a few miles north, and reburied them. A monument has been erected at the grave site bearing this inscription: “In Memory of Jacob V. Hamblin, born April 1, 1819; died August 31, 1886; Peacemaker in the Camp of the Lamanites; Herald of Truth to the House of Israel.” Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Co., 1941), 100–101.

[26] As noted in Tenney’s diary, vol. 8, December 1887–September 1890, entry for December 10 or 11, 1887. Ammon M. Tenney diaries, 1887–1890 and 1901–1921, MS 8277, Church History Library (hereafter Tenney diary).

[27] See generally LaMond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987). The missionaries who arrived in Kanab consisted of Daniel W. Jones (president of the missionary group) his son Wiley, Helaman Pratt, James Z. Stewart, Anthony W. Ivins, and Robert H. Smith. Ammon M. Tenney joined them in Kanab.

[28] Ammon M. Tenney, journal, February 7, 1876, Ammon M. Tenney papers, 1875–1921, MS 1484, Church History Library (hereafter Tenney journal).

[29] Pueblo Isleta was established in the 1200s and is one of the largest (over three hundred square miles) of nineteen pueblos in New Mexico. A historical sketch of the pueblo is found at “Legends of America: Ancient History South of Albuquerque, New Mexico,” https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-isleta/.

[30] See Tenney to Udall (no page no.).

[31] See Tenney journal, May 5, 1876.

[32] See Tenney to Udall, 10.

[33] See Ammon M. Tenney, journal, vol. 1, May–December, 1901, 24, typescript, Ammon M. Tenney diaries, 1887–1890 and 1901–1921.

[34] Julia Mairet, granddaughter of Juan Mairet, interview by LaMond Tullis, Cuernavaca, Mexico, October 13, 2012. Tenney and Juan’s father (also called Juan) were good friends. Tenney stayed with the Mairet family from time to time and rented saddle horses from them to travel to the Church’s branch in San Andrés de la Cal, a locale that in those days was reachable only by horse or by foot. Numerous references regarding this relationship can be found in Mexican Mission manuscript history and historical reports, 1874–1977, Church History Library, under the dates of November 7, 11, and December 1 in 1901, and, in 1902, January 3, 6, February 3, June 8, July 15, and September 30.

[35] Díaz and his porfiriato attempted to modernize Mexico industrially and economically but failed in the management of ensuing social tensions, which were fueled in part by the regime’s political decision to fully write off half the Mexican population as being irrelevant to its interests, thereby allowing, if not fostering, extreme exploitation. A helpful analysis can be found in Paul H. Garner, Porfirio Díaz: Profiles in Power (New York: Longman, 2001).

[36] Machismo, historically an unfettered male supremacy, expressed in its sexual imperative inside and outside marriage by having multiple sexual partners, has been in a decline consistent with the rise of women’s rights” in Mexico. Since it is always antithetical to the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, most Latter-day Saints, especially youth of the current generation, female as well as male, have rejected it as an acceptable cultural norm. An interesting, although preliminary, review of some of the extensive literature on this subject is found in Eunice Mendoza, “Machismo Literature Review,” Center for Public Safety Initiatives, Rochester Institute of Technology, October 15, 2009, https://www.rit.edu/liberalarts/sites/rit.edu.liberalarts/files/documents/our-work/2009-12.pdf.

[37] See Tenney diary, vol. 1, May–December 1901.

[38] See Tenney diary, vol. 1, May–December 1901, 105.

[39] By invitation, on September 16, 1902, Tenney gave an independence-day oration at Colonia Dublán, Chihuahua, Mexico. Its subject was a wide-ranging historical perspective from before AD 720 to the time of Father Miguel Hidalgo’s Cry of Dolores speech in 1810. Tenney took a decidedly populist, anti-Spaniard stance and demonstrated great awareness of extant literature on pre-Columbian civilizations in Mexico. The handwritten text of the speech can be found as Independence day oration, September 16, 1902, LR 528 28, Church History Library.

[40] Tenney to Udall, 1. See also Tenney diary, vol. 1, entry for July 26, 1901, May–December 1901.

[41] Tenney died October 28, 1925, in Thatcher, Graham County, Arizona.