In the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre lies the tale of the battle for the West. White men battling other white men for land that was never theirs, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. — Mediocre, pg 35 Note: Yes the Buffalo Bill story of heroic masculinity seems very fabricated, but the massacre story does seem to say that life on the frontier was very different than today. When you had to depend on yourself exclusively — there was no society around to protect the massacred settlers. The day to day fact of their lives were that they were very much on their own and responsible for protecting themselves. Which in some ways is “masculine”, although on the other hand probably most of the dangers they would have had to think about were more mundane things like snake bite or breaking a bone or running out of water. Stuff backpackers today would worry about in isolated areas. No SPOT beacons back then.