The section header for the celestial & plural marriage revelation (D&C 132) has been modified again:
- 1981 edition: “… Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and principles involved in this revelation had been known by the Prophet since 1831.”
- 2013 edition: “… Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, evidence indicates that some of the principles involved in this revelation were known by the Prophet as early as 1831.”
- Online edition since Oct 22, 2025: “… Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, evidence indicates that some of the principles involved in this revelation were known by the Prophet earlier.”
Why the changes? What happened in 1831 that led the LDS church
earlier to specify that date. And why did they later remove focus from that
date?
I wrote about the historical background of plural marriage ideology of 1831 in a chapter in about plural marriage revelations last year (2024).[1] Quoted below is a section from my chapter about the primary rationale for dating JS’s knowledge of plural marriage to 1831. I’ve added underline to the portions that interpret the question of whether this could constitute a plural marriage revelation. Note that my chapter includes additional discussions about other potential 1831 evidence for revelation on plural marriage such as JS’s 1831 bible translation, and recollections by plural wives of JS and others.
Matrimonial Alliance Revelation: “Should They Form a Matrimonial Alliance with the Natives”—July 17, 1831
Upon Joseph Smith’s arrival in Jackson
County, Missouri in mid-July 1831, efforts were made to work around the difficulties
of obtaining a license to enter Indian territory immediately to the west, in
order to execute the revelatory mandate to convert the “Lamanites.”[2]
A group of Elders crossed over into Indian
Territory on July 17 and Joseph Smith received the revelation some consider the
original plural marriage revelation. Because they had no pen and paper, the
revelation was not recorded. That December, Mormon-turned-critic Ezra Booth[3]
recalled the revelation: “It has been made known by revelation, that it will be
pleasing to the Lord, should they form a matrimonial alliance with the Natives;
and by this means the Elders, who comply with the thing so pleasing to the
Lord, and for which the Lord has promised to bless those who do it abundantly,
gain a residence in the Indian territory.”[4]
Three days later, Joseph Smith received a revelation
on another approach to obtain licensed access. It told Sidney Gilbert to “obtain a
license (behold, here is wisdom & whoso readeth let him understand) that he
may send goods also unto the lamanites even by whom he will as clerks employed
in his service & thus the gospel may be preached unto them.”[5]
Ezra Booth mentioned this additional approach:
“Another
method has been invented”
regarding “goods suited to the Indian trade, and
persons are to obtain license from the government to dispose of them to the
Indians in their own territory; at the same time, they are to disseminate the
principles of Mormonism among them.”[6]
Booth, who was closely involved in the
efforts to convert Indigenous peoples, illuminated the purpose of both
revelations. As a prolific writer trying to destroy the credibility of Smith,[7]
Booth would have taken the opportunity to expose a revelation about a more
expansive doctrine of plural marriage if that indeed, had been verbalized by
Smith. With two methods proposed in a row to gain access to the territory,
plus an absence of theological explanation of the proposed marriage alliance, we
can assume that at a minimum, Smith’s public discussion about the revelation
had to do only with trying to obtain legal access to the Indian territory.
Another revelatory point mentioned by Booth about
the marriage alliance revelation was that "[i]t has been made known" that
Harris "is entirely free from his wife" and can proceed with a
Lamanite marriage. According to Booth, this
confirmed Harris' own revelation that he was free from his estranged wife. But
concern was expressed about potential legal entanglements and that it would be
best for Harris to finalize a divorce before proceeding with a marriage, which
may explain why the matrimonial alliance idea was abandoned.
Nearly fourteen years later, W. W. Phelps
referred to the matrimonial alliance revelation: “Phelps s[ai]d. 6 or 8. went over
the boundaries of the U.S. to preach—Jos[eph]. went to prayer—he then commenced
a revelation that Martin [Harris] was to [marry] among the Lamanites—& that
I was to preach that day—&c &c it was a long revelation.”[8] There is no indication from the meeting
minutes of a theological purpose for Harris to try to take a wife. A
late source “claimed
he [Harris] had a revelation when he first came to Kirtland for him to go to
Missouri, and obtain an Lamanite Indian squaw for a wife to aid them in
propagating Mormonism.”[9]
Within days of arriving in Utah in July 1847,
Brigham Young began casting plural marriage as a method to remove a
dark-skinned curse of the Lamanites described in the Book of Mormon: “The objections of some men to the plurality of Wives
and that the Elders would marry Wives of every tribe of Indians, and showed how
the Lamanites would become a White and delightsome people.”[10]
This initiated a series of statements by Young stating that plural marriage was
a method of changing Indigenous peoples’ skin color.[11]
In 1855, Young promoted “the necessity of our
forming the strong ties of matrimony with the Lamanites” as a method of
converting American Indians.[12]
In 1861, Phelps wrote to Young about the
matrimonial alliance revelation of July 1831, noting that a party of elders had
crossed “over the boundary, west of Jackson Co.
Missouri” into “Indian Country.” The
revelation came while they were praying to know which of the seven elders
should first preach to the “remnants of the
Lamanites and Nephites.” The fourth paragraph (of seven) of Phelps’s
recollection of the revelation had to do with marriage:
Verily I say unto you that the wisdom of man in his fallen state, knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my holy priesthood. but ye shall know when ye receive a fulness by reason of the anointing: For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.
In his letter titled “substance of a revelation,” Phelps remembered Smith saying “the Lord could preserve his words as he had ever
done, till the time appointed” even though they had no pen and paper.
But Phelps failed to list Martin Harris as one of the elders as he had done sixteen
years earlier in his 1845 recollection. And only “part” of the revelation was recalled. Anachronisms in the text of
the revelation also suggest events were not correctly recalled thirty years after
the fact.[13]
The letter continued, saying that in about 1834, Phelps asked Joseph Smith, “How ‘we,’
that were mentioned in the revelation could take wives from the ‘natives’—as we were all married men? He replied
instantly ‘In th[e] same manner that Abraham
took Hagar and Katurah [Keturah]; and Jacob took Rachel Bilhah and Zilpah: by
revelation—the saints of the Lord are always directed by revelation.’”[14]
Evidence of plural marriage is extant later
in the Kirtland period. The 1831 idea of a matrimonial alliance, and Joseph
Smith’s study of the stories of the biblical polygamists could have aided in expanding
the theological connotations of plural marriage in Smith’s mind.
In Mormon thought in 1861, plural marriage
was central to the major events of the past decade, such as the public
announcement of plural marriage, the Reformation, Utah War, Young’s
encouragement to form matrimonial alliances with American Indians, and the saints’
apocalyptic perceptions of the unfolding Civil War. Phelps’s recollection of
the words of the 1831 revelation thirty years earlier was affected by his current
world view, possibly his 1834 questions to Joseph Smith about the revelation,
and Brigham Young’s Utah teaching that plural marriage could change the racial characteristics
of Indigenous peoples.
The 1831 matrimonial revelation provided a potential solution to fulfill Smith’s revelatory mandate to “go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them” (D&C 28:8). The most likely scenario explaining the revelation with available information is that Martin Harris, who was estranged from his wife, was to take an Indigenous wife in order to obtain legal access to Indian territory. Other accompanying Elders may have also been invited to participate in the alliance.
[1] Clair
Barrus “Prologues to Plurality: A
Study of Joseph Smith’s Revelations on Marriage,” in Secret Covenants: New
Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, edited by Cheryl L. Bruno, Salt
Lake City: Signature Books, 2024. The text of the chapter is available here.
The book can be purchased here
or here.
[2]
H. Michael Marquardt, Joseph Smith’s 1828–1843
Revelations, (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2013), 126n53. See D&C 28:8 for a mandate to convert
Lamanites.
[3] Booth was one of fourteen pairs of
missionaries called to Missouri. See D&C 52.
[4]
“Booth to Rev. Ira Eddy, Dec. 6, 1831,” Ohio
Star 2, no. 49 (Dec. 8, 1831): 1.
[5] “Revelations Book 1,” 93–94; JSP. The revelation was altered
in 1835 to remove reference to Lamanites (D&C 55:9–10).
[6] “Booth to Rev. Ira Eddy,” 3.
[7] Booth wrote nine
exposé-style letters to the Ohio Star, later published in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed: Or, A Faithful Account
of that Singular Imposition and Delusion, from Its Rise to the Present Time
(Printed and Published by the Author, 1834). My thanks to Craig Foster for
helping me contextualize Booth.
[8] “Meeting of the
Twelve & others in the Recorder’s office,” Feb. 27, 1845, qtd. in H. Michael Marquardt, “Ezra Booth on Early Mormonism: A Look at His 1831
Letters,” John Whitmer Historical
Association Journal 28 (2008): 51n74. See also Minutes of the Apostles
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910–1951 (Salt Lake
City: Privately published, 2010); and Jedediah Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History
(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2014), 82–83.
[9]
“Statement of Rev. S. F. Whitney on Mormonism,”
in Arthur B. Deming, ed., Naked Truths
About Mormonism 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1888): 3. The statement goes on to say that
at a later point (about 1836) Joseph Smith “named two” women who “would
accommodate” Harris’s single status. Martin and Lucy separated in June 1830 and
Lucy died in the summer of 1836. He remarried in the fall. It was not uncommon
for separated couples to remarry without divorce. Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of
the Mormon Practice of Plural Marriage before the Death of Joseph Smith” (master’s
thesis, Purdue University, 1975), 129–33.
[10] Thomas Bullock Journal, 243–44, July 28, 1847, qtd. in
Richard S. Van Wagoner, ed., The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young
(Salt Lake City: Smith–Pettit Foundation, 2009), 1:287; 2 Nephi 5:21;
Jacob 3:8–9; Mormon 9:6; 1 Nephi 11:13, 13:15.
[11] According to Young,
white Mormon men marrying Indigenous women would have the opposite effect of a
white Mormon man marrying a Black woman. The couple and progeny of a white and Black
couple would be cursed, while the marriage of a white man/Lamanite woman would
bless the Lamanites. Fred C. Collier, The Teachings of President Brigham
Young, Vol. 3, 1852–1854 (Salt Lake City: Colliers Publishing Co.,
1987), 44; Brigham Young, “The Persecutions of the Saints,” Mar. 8, 1863, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols.
(Liverpool: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854–86): 10:110.
[12]
For Young on matrimonial alliances with Native Americans, see Van Wagoner, Complete
Discourses of Brigham Young, Apr. 14, 1855, 931; May 10, 1857, 1265.
[13] For example, it mentions that Zion
will be redeemed, but the concept of redeeming Zion wouldn’t occur until after fall
1833 when the saints were forcibly removed from Jackson County.
[14]
W. W. Phelps to Brigham Young, Aug. 12, 1861, Brigham Young Collection, CR
1234, CHL. For background on this revelation coming to light to the historical
community, see Jerald and Sandra Tanner Mormonism:
Shadow or Reality? (Salt Lake
City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987), 230.
