William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[231] Lamanites. This doctrine led to the Mormon expulsion from Ohio and Missouri, and was the cause of Joseph Smith's assassination in Carthage Jail. A suspicion that this doctrine of Retaliation animates Brigham Young, involves him in some degree of responsibility for the Mountain Meadow Massacre, for the murders of Brassfield and Robinson, and for many other misdeeds of Rockwell and the Danite band.

This doctrine of Retaliation-eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood — is not only foreign, but abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon mind. All hunting tribes know the principle, and retain the practice. It is common to Sioux, Apaches, Kickapoos, and Kiowas. It is also common to Bedouins, Tartars, and Turkomans. In every savage tribe, Blood-Vengeance is a necessary act, and the Blood Avenger is regarded as a hero in his tribe. A Pai-TJte who scalps a Shoshone in revenge becomes a chief; a Salhaan who kills an Adouan in revenge becomes a sheikh. Revenge, according to these savage codes, ennobles the shedder of blood. In a Corsican village, the man who has last drawn blood in a great vendetta, struts about in cap and feathers, envied by every village swain, adored by every