Saints Under Siege: The Texas State Raid on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints

1. The Past as Prologue: A Comparison of the Short Creek and Eldorado Polygamy Raids

| 25 1 The Past as Prologue A Comparison of the Short Creek and Eldorado Polygamy Raids Martha Bradley Evans When the story of the raid on the community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the Eldorado, Texas, Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch rolled out, the past was prologue. The similarities between the Short Creek raid of 1953 and the Eldorado raid of 2008 are striking, resonating in scope, design, and impact. As historians, we teach our students that we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not learn the lessons history has to teach us. This most recent episode reminds us of the profound importance of this idea. In this chapter we compare the 1953 raid on Short Creek to the 2008 raid on the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, focusing on corresponding patterns and dynamics. We also analyze the ways in which FLDS members sought to interpret the meaning of the raids through their religious beliefs and experiences. Next, we explore how we might understand the most recent endeavors of the FLDS to build a sacred landscape in Texas and determine the influence of its prophet, Warren Jeffs. Finally, we ask what lessons have been learned from these raids. Short Creek and Eldorado: A Special Symbiosis Determined to end the practice of plural marriage once and for all, the mastermind of the raid at mid-century was Governor Howard Pyle of Arizona. His accomplices were the State of Arizona’s Attorney General’s Office, the Mohave County Supreme Court, and the Juvenile Court, along with more than one hundred officers of the court and other governmental personnel. This massive response to what Pyle conceived as an “insurrection” within state boundaries was partly inspired by the desire to protect the interests of underage girls who were the victims of the “foulest conspiracy” to ensnare them in marriages before the legal age of consent. 26 | Martha Bradley Evans A career in radio prepared Pyle for his statewide broadcast the morning of July 26, 1953, at 4:00 am, announcing the raid on the Short Creek polygamists. Before dawn today the State of Arizona began and now has substantially concluded a momentous police action against insurrection within its own borders. Arizona has mobilized and used its total police power to protect the lives and futures of 263 children. . . . More than 1,500 peace officers moved into Short Creek. . . . They arrested almost the entire population of a community dedicated to the production of white slaves who are without hope of escaping this degrading slavery from the moment of their birth. (Pyle 1953b) As would be true for the 2008 Eldorado raid more than half a century later, Arizona state officials acted as parens patrea to protect the interests of those unable to protect themselves—the underage, perceived victims of polygamy. Here is a community—many of the women, sadly right along with the men—unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become mere chattel of this totally lawless enterprise. (Pyle 1953a) Pyle anticipated the raid for two years as the state carefully developed a plan, a rationale and support for an unprecedented invasion of a religious community within the confines of the United States. Working in conjunction with the state Attorney General’s Office, Pyle developed ingenious strategies for investigating the behavior and persons involved in the polygamous lifestyle . In April 1951 Pyle hired the Burns Detective Agency in Los Angeles with $10,000 appropriated by the state legislature. “Pretending to be a movie company looking for locations and extras, they packed movie equipment into the town and photographed every adult and child in the community. The polygamists, uneasy but courteous, posed for their pictures, meanwhile cautioning their children to stay nearby.” Pyle was mostly disgusted at what Burns found. “When they brought the facts back, photographic and otherwise , we realized that the judge was right, we had a problem,” Pyle said in 1984. The agency found significant violations of law—tax fraud, misuse of Short Creek and Eldorado Polygamy Raids | 27 state electrical power, and living conditions that were, in his mind, “unfit for animals let alone human beings.” Homes were generally filthy; some families were living in...