• Skip to main content

Dr Lori Taylor

Tagline

  • Home
  • Read
  • Contact
  • Articles
    • Don’t Mourn—Organize!
    • Elder Nigeajasha and Other Mormon Indians
    • Politicized American Legend of the Singing Hero
    • Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians
  • Blog
  • About

conference paper

Oct 29 2019

An Abstract Tailored for Western New York

Join me for a roundtable discussion of Essays on American Indian and Mormon History at the 2020 Mormon History Association conference in Rochester, New York, June 4-7, 2020.

This abstract describes my likely contribution.

Joseph Smith in Iroquois Country: A Mormon Creation Story.

When a colleague told me a story claiming a connection in western New York between Joseph Smith and followers of Haudenosaunee prophet Handsome Lake (Sganyodaiyo), I dug in to find that the story had been told since the 1960s. Joseph Smith, the story claims, got the idea to blend Christianity with the Gaiwiio, the Word of Handsome Lake. As history, the story is plausible, even if no one can prove it true (or untrue). As a story, though, I find myself most interested in how the idea travels and gains momentum. Stories fulfill the wishes and needs of the tellers and of the listeners and readers. They sound true. They fit. We as historians and our subjects in the past all tell stories that we want to be true. We tidy up the edges and reshape our memories, knowingly or not, until our stories become our truth. And yet, the evidence still tells me that all tellings of this particular story lead back to a trickster storyteller in the mid-twentieth century,

Written by Admin · Categorized: Events · Tagged: conference paper, handsome lake, joseph smith, mormon history, mormons, mormons and indians, western new york

Aug 18 2016

Elder Nigeajasha is easier to find Old article newly available

John Whitmer Historical Association Elder Nigeajasha

As a long-term project, I am making my articles available. As I find copies of published articles and as I transfer old formats from conference papers (Jaz disk, anyone?), I will add these.

The latest—actually, the first—is “Elder Nigeajasha and Other Mormon Indians.”

This excerpt from my doctoral dissertation (Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians) was given as a paper at the John Whitmer Historical Association meetings in Independence, Missouri, fall 2000. I remember it well because I brought my 5-month old son and my mother with me. My (now 6′ tall) baby was 5 days old when we walked through my graduation together.

My fellow historians of the Community of Christ (then still RLDS) were welcoming and generous. I received an award for my dissertation, defended earlier that year. Paul M. Edwards, a historian of the restoration movement, had been one of my readers. After hostility from a well-known LDS historian who had also been a reader, I was surprised others received the dissertation positively. Paul said my work gave him “hope for Mormon history.” So, of course I took my baby to Missouri to say thank you.

The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal published the paper several years later.

Within the past few months, a colleague told me she could not find this article either on JSTOR or online. It’s there, in several places, but perhaps some algorithm has hidden it all. So, this article rose to top priority. Now, “Elder Nigeajasha” is easier to find—along with its 73 footnotes.

Written by Admin · Categorized: Articles · Tagged: article, award, conference paper, dissertation, indian, iroquois, mormon, seneca

  • Twitter
  • RSS

Copyright © 2023 — Dr Lori Taylor • All rights reserved. Seriously.