Dishonor or Pride?

I’ve always been proud of my Mormon pioneer ancestors. I grew up with stories of their courage, faith, and determination. 

I know many of these stories by heart. One tale tells of a little girl bravely crossing the ocean and then a continent, only accompanied by a much older family friend. 

Another grandfather was friends with Joseph Smith and even protected him against his enemies in the middle of the night. He later was with Brigham Young when the first wagons clattered down into the Salt Lake Valley.

A grandmother wrote about the plague of crickets that threatened their meager food supply. She told how God answered their prayers by sending a flock of seagulls to gobble up the crickets and thus saved their lives.

Yet another ancestor recounted how she lost her baby in the dark among the tall grass of the prairie. Just as she was about to miss her train and be stranded, a flash of lightning out of a clear sky momentarily illuminated her view just long enough for her to find her child and then make it back to her boxcar.

These and many other stories I grew up with helped me to remember not only where I came from but also emboldened me to try hard things. They gave me confidence that “everything will work out.”

They also served as seemingly tangible evidence of God’s love and support. As a boy I often thought,  “God has watched over my family for hundreds of years — why wouldn’t He help me now?”

These stories served as examples of how to live an exemplary life — the kind of life that Heavenly Father would want me to live and the kind of life that would make my ancestors proud.

From the time I was a little boy, I felt this pressure. Pressure that I needed to live up to their examples and not be a weak link in a chain of generations of faithful Saints. These ancestors, I knew, did whatever it took to do what God wanted them to do, and so can I.

For much of my life, this narrative has served me well.

I think of Mulan and how she did not want to bring dishonor to her family. Eventually, though, she realized that to decide for herself what was best for her, for her living family, and for all of China, she had to stop worrying so much about what her pantheon of ancestor spirits thought of her. 

It was because she excised herself from the narrow bounds of the honor / dishonor binary that she was able to bring about peace. Ironically, in the end, her ancestors gave her their approval anyway.

Living within that kind of old-fashioned honor culture is great — until you realize that the past is not quite what it seemed.

Over time, I’ve begun to realize that the stories which have survived have endured mostly because they fit the faith-promoting, everything-is-ok narrative.

In so many ways, I’m grateful for that.

However, I have started to be able to read between the lines at points in which the rigid self-censorship let through troublesome details and left clues.

There’s a story of my 3rd-great-grandmother who was devastated when her husband took a second, younger, “smart and good-looking” wife.

When the US authorities began to crack down on polygamy, they combed Utah, catching and incarcerating polygamist men. Around this time, her husband took his younger wife and fled to Arizona. She was left in Utah to care for the family’s many children.

They were gone for eleven long years.

When her husband fell gravely ill, he wrote, saying he wanted to come home. My grandmother recalled, “We were looking for a telegram to tell us when to meet my dear husband and son at the depot, but we got a telegram that my dear husband was dead. Oh! It hit so hard for us. He said, ‘He wanted to see my dear face again, but it could not be.’ Oh! I cannot write.”

While meant to be faith-promoting, when I read this story now, I see the uncomfortable bits. I see the tragedy.

There are more stories that are meant to be uplifting that, when more carefully considered, have a dark side.

There’s an account of my ancestor’s participation in massacring Native Americans, and the next day adopting one of the newly-orphaned Indian children to raise as their own. How awful!

In other accounts, you can glimpse the wanton destruction of animals and environments — such as killing massive buffalo for one meal, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot.

Also, occasionally, a reminiscence euphemistically states something like, such and such ancestor was “a hard man”.

Even just writing about these examples almost feels like a betrayal by “not sticking to the narrative”. I share such details not to detract from the stories, but to add dimension.

These weren’t perfect people. If I had known them in the flesh, who knows? I almost certainly wouldn’t see every pioneer ancestor as an example I’d want to emulate. 

I think that by allowing myself to consider my forefathers as multi-dimensional, I’ve been able to release myself from the often crushing weight of perceived expectations.

Would my ancestors be proud of me today?

Would they be proud of me today, on Pioneer Day, for reading their stories?

For visiting a pioneer museum and pioneer cabins?

For writing about them in this way?

For taking mental health seriously?

For living in a rented room instead of making a dugout, sod-roofed house to call my own?

For painting my nails?

What about for going on a date tonight with a man (a Native American man, no less)?

It may be impossible to tell.

However, I do know that I’m proud of them — however messy, however dark their real stories may be. 

Sure, there are definitely parts of their life stories I’m not proud of. There are parts I might even feel are dishonorable or disgusting.

I am thankful, however, to have these stories.

I’m also thankful to finally realize my ancestors’ complexity.

Most of all, I’m thankful to see that these weren’t always-perfect, mythological demi-Gods. These were real people.

I feel that I can finally see their humanity, as uncomfortable and complex it may be.