Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman is the comprehensive biography of Utah’s 1857 war hero and one of Arizona’s early settlement leaders. With over fifty years of combined research, mother and daughter co-authors Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper take on many of the myths and legends surrounding this lesser-known but significant historical figure within Mormonism.
Lot Smith recounts the Mormon frontiersman’s adventures in the Mormon Battalion, the hazardous rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, the Utah War, and the Mormon colonization of the Arizona Territory. True stories of tense relations with the Navajo and Hopi tribes, Mormon flight into Mexico during the US government’s anti-polygamy crusades, narrow escapes from bandits and law enforcers, and even Western-style shoot-outs place Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman into both Western Americana literature and Mormon biographical history.
An excellent and effective example of a ‘life-and-times’ biography, this history of the legendary Lot Smith as an imposing figure in the Mormon settlement of the West provides a fresh and very interesting retelling of that story. In the hands of two family members, the treatment is understandably friendly but remarkably thorough and complete. We follow Smith not only through his remarkable role as leader of the guerrilla force that harassed and delayed the U.S. Army during the Utah War but also his involvement in such other adventures as the Mormon Battalion, the Handcart Rescue, service in the Union Army, extensive involvement in polygamy, and an ambitious sortie into Navajo country that led to his death. This is a fascinating book worthy of a truly fascinating nineteenth-century frontiersman. – Gene A. Sessions, professor of history at Weber State University and editor of Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant
