The Story of the Mormons:

W >> William Alexander Linn >> The Story of the Mormons:

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59

The progress made during April was exasperatingly slow. There was
soft mud during the day, and rough ruts in the early morning.
Sometimes camp would be pitched after making only a mile;
sometimes they would think they had done well if they had made
six. The animals, in fact, were so thin from lack of food that
they could not do a day's work even under favorable
circumstances. The route, after the middle of April, was turned
to the north, and they then travelled over a broken prairie
country, where the game had been mostly killed off by the
Pottawottomi Indians, whose trails and abandoned camps were
encountered constantly.

On May 16, as the two Pratts and others were in advance, locating
the route, P. P. Pratt discovered the site of what was called Mt.
Pisgah (the post-office of Mt. Pisgah of to-day) which he thus
describes: "Riding about three or four miles over beautiful
prairies, I came suddenly to some round sloping hills, grassy,
and crowned with beautiful groves of timber, while alternate open
groves and forests seemed blended into all the beauty and harmony
of an English park. Beneath and beyond, on the west, rolled a
main branch of Grand River, with its rich bottoms of alternate
forest and prairie."* As soon as Young and the other high
dignitaries arrived, it was decided to form a settlement there,
and several thousand acres were enclosed for cultivation, and
many houses were built.

* Pratt's "Autobiography," p. 381.

Young and most of the first party continued their westward march
through an uninhabited country, where they had to make their own
roads. But they met with no opposition from Indians, and the head
of the procession reached the banks of the Missouri near Council
Bluffs in June, other companies following in quite rapid
succession.

The company which was the last to leave Nauvoo (on September 17),
driven out by the Hancock County forces, endured sufferings much
greater than did the early companies who were conducted by
Brigham Young. The latter comprised the well-to-do of the city
and all the high officers of the church, while the remnant left
behind was made up of the sick and those who had not succeeded in
securing the necessary equipment for the journey. Brayman, in his
second report to Governor Ford, said:--

"Those of the Mormons who were wealthy or possessed desirable
real estate in the city had sold and departed last spring. I am
inclined to the opinion that the leaders of the church took with
them all the movable wealth of their people that they could
control, without making proper provision for those who remained.
Consequently there was much destitution among them; much sickness
and distress. I traversed the city, and visited in company with a
practising physician the sick, and almost invariably found them
destitute, to a painful extent, of the comforts of life."*

* Warsaw Signal, October 20, 1846.

It was on the 18th of September that the last of these
unfortunates crossed the river, making 640 who were then
collected on the west bank. Illness had not been accepted by the
"posse" as an excuse for delay. Thomas Bullock says that his
family, consisting of a husband, wife, blind mother-in-law, four
children, and an aunt, "all shaking with the ague," were given
twenty minutes in which to get their goods into two wagons and
start.* The west bank in Iowa, where the people landed, was
marshy and unhealthy, and the suffering at what was called "Poor
Camp," a short distance above Montrose, was intense. Severe
storms were frequent, and the best cover that some of the people
could obtain was a tent made of a blanket or a quilt, or even of
brush, or the shelter to be had under the wagons of those who
were fortunate enough to be thus equipped. Bullock thus describes
one night's experience: "On Monday, September 23, while in my
wagon on the slough opposite Nauvoo, a most tremendous
thunderstorm passed over, which drenched everything we had. Not a
dry thing left us--the bed a pool of water, my wife and
mother-in-law lading it out by basinfuls, and I in a burning
fever and insensible, with all my hair shorn off to cure me of my
disease. A poor woman stood among the bushes, wrapping her cloak
around her three little orphan children, to shield them from the
storm as well as she could." The, supply of food, too, was
limited, their flour being wheat ground in hand mills, and even
this at times failing; then roasted corn was substituted, the
grain being mixed by some with slippery elm bark to eke it out.**
The people of Hancock County contributed something in the way of
clothing and provisions and a little money in aid of these
sufferers, and the trustees of the church who were left in Nauvoo
to sell property gave what help they could.

*Millennial Star, Vol. X, p. 28.

** Bancrofts "History of Utah," p. 233,

On October 9 wagons sent back by the earlier emigrants for their
unfortunate brethren had arrived, and the start for the Missouri
began. Bullock relates that, just as they were ready to set out,
a great flight of quails settled in the camp, running around the
wagons so near that they could be knocked over with sticks, and
the children caught some alive. One bird lighted upon their tea
board, in the midst of the cups, while they were at breakfast. It
was estimated that five hundred of the birds were flying about
the camp that day, but when one hundred had been killed or
caught, the captain forbade the killing of any more, "as it was a
direct manifestation and visitation by the Lord." Young closes
his account of this incident with the words, "Tell this to the
nations of the earth! Tell it to the kings and nobles and great
ones."

Wells, in his manuscript, "Utah Notes" (quoted by H. H.
Bancroft), says: "This phenomenon extended some thirty or forty
miles along the river, and was generally observed. The quail in
immense quantities had attempted to cross the river, but this
being beyond their strength, had dropped into the river boats or
on the banks."*

* Bancroft's "History of Utah," p. 234, note.

The westward march of these refugees was marked by more hardships
than that of the earlier bodies, because they were in bad
physical condition and were in no sense properly equipped.
Council Bluffs was not reached till November 27.

The division of the emigrants and their progress was thus noted
in an interview, printed in the Nauvoo Eagle of July 10, with a
person who had left Council Bluffs on June 26, coming East. The
advance company, including the Twelve, with a train of 1000
wagons, was then encamped on the east bank of the Missouri, the
men being busy building boats. The second company, 3000 strong,
were at Mt. Pisgah, recruiting their cattle for a new start. The
third company had halted at Garden Grove. Between Garden Grove
and the Mississippi River the Eagle's informant counted more than
1000 wagons on their way west. He estimated the total number of
teams engaged in this movement at about 3700, and the number of
persons on the road at 12,000. The Eagle added:--

"From 2000 to 3000 have disappeared from Nauvoo in various
directions, and about 800 or less still remain in Illinois. This
comprises the entire Mormon population that once flourished in
Hancock County. In their palmy days they probably numbered 15,000
or 16,000."

The camp that had been formed at Mt. Pisgah suffered severely
from the start. Provisions were scarce, and a number of families
were dependent for food on neighbors who had little enough for
themselves. Fodder for the cattle gave out, too, and in the early
spring the only substitute was buds and twigs of trees. Snow
notes as a calamity the death of his milch cow, which had been
driven all the way from Ohio. Along with their destitution came
sickness, and at times during the following winter it seemed as
if there were not enough of the well to supply the needed nurses.
So many deaths occurred during that autumn and winter that a
funeral came to be conducted with little ceremony, and even the
customary burial clothes could not be provided.* Elder W.
Huntington, the presiding officer of the settlement, was among
the early victims, and Lorenzo Snow, the recent head of the
Mormon church, succeeded him. During Snow's stay there three of
his four wives gave birth to children.

* "Biography of Lorenzo Snow," p. 90.

Notwithstanding these depressing circumstances, the camp was by
no means inactive during the winter. Those who were well were
kept busy repairing wagons, and making, in a rude way, such
household articles as were most needed--chairs, tubs, and
baskets. Parties were sent out to the settlements within reach to
work, accepting food and clothing as pay, and two elders were
selected to visit the states in search of contributions. These
efforts were so successful that about $600 was raised, and the
camp sent to Brigham Young at Council Bluffs a load of provisions
as a New Year's gift.

The usual religious meetings were kept up during the winter, and
the utility of amusements in such a settlement was not forgotten.
Ingenuity was taxed to give variety to the social entertainments.
Snow describes a "party" that he gave in his family mansion--"a
one-story edifice about fifteen by thirty feet, constructed of
logs, with a dirt roof, a ground floor, and a chimney made of
sod." Many a man compelled to house four wives (one of them with
three sons by a former husband) in such a mansion would have felt
excused from entertaining company. But the Snows did not. For a
carpet the floor was strewn with straw. The logs of the sides of
the room were concealed with sheets. Hollowed turnips provided
candelabras, which were stuck around the walls and suspended from
the roof. The company were entertained with songs, recitations,
conundrums, etc., and all voted that they had a very jolly time.

In the larger camps the travellers were accustomed to make what
they called "boweries"--large arbors covered with a framework of
poles, and thatched with brush or branches. The making of such
"boweries" was continued by the Saints in Utah.

CHAPTER III. The Mormon Battalion

During the halt of a part of the main body of the Mormons at Mt.
Pisgah, an incident occurred which has been made the subject of a
good deal of literature, and has been held up by the Mormons as a
proof both of the severity of the American government toward them
and of their own patriotism. There is so little ground for either
of these claims that the story of the Battalion should be
correctly told.

When hostilities against Mexico began, early in 1846, the plan of
campaign designed by the United States authorities comprised an
invasion of Mexico at two points, by Generals Taylor and Wool,
and a descent on Santa Fe, and thence a march into California.
This march was to be made by General Stephen F. Kearney, who was
to command the volunteers raised in Missouri, and the few hundred
regular troops then at Fort Leavenworth. In gathering his force
General (then Colonel) Kearney sent Captain J. Allen of the First
Dragoons to the Mormons at Mt. Pisgah, not with an order of any
kind, but with a written proposition, dated June 26, 1846, that
he "would accept the service, for twelve months, of four or five
companies of Mormon men" (each numbering from 73 to 109), to
unite with the Army of the West at Santa Fe, and march thence to
California, where they would be discharged. These volunteers were
to have the regular volunteers' pay and allowances, and
permission to retain at their discharge the arms and equipments
with which they would be provided, the age limit to be between
eighteen and forty-five years. The most practical inducement held
out to the Mormons to enlist was thus explained: "Thus is offered
to the Mormon people now--this year --an opportunity of sending a
portion of their young and intelligent men to the ultimate
destination of their whole people, and entirely at the expense of
the United States; and this advance party can thus pave the way
and look out the land for their brethren to come after them."

There was nothing like a "demand" on the Mormons in this
invitation, and the advantage of accepting it was largely on the
Mormon side. If it had not been, it would have been rejected.
That the government was in no stress for volunteers is shown by
the fact that General Kearney reported to the War Department in
the following August that he had more troops than he needed, and
that he proposed to use some of them to reenforce General Wool.*

* Chase's "History of the Polk Administration," p. 16.

The initial suggestion about the raising of these Mormon
volunteers came from a Mormon source.* In the spring of 1846
Jesse C. Little, a Mormon elder of the Eastern states, visited
Washington with letters of introduction from Governor Steele of
New Hampshire and Colonel Thomas L. Kane of Philadelphia, hoping
to secure from the government a contract to carry provisions or
naval stores to the Pacific coast, and thus pay part of the
expense of conveying Mormons to California by water. According to
Little, this matter was laid before the cabinet, who proposed
that he should visit the Mormon camp and raise 1000 picked men to
make a dash for California overland, while as many more would be
sent around Cape Horn from the Eastern states. This big scheme,
according to Mormon accounts, was upset by one of the hated
Missourians, Senator Thomas H. Benton, whose Macchiavellian mind
had designed the plan of taking from the Mormons 500 of their
best men for the Battalion, thus crippling them while in the
Indian country. All this part of their account is utterly
unworthy of belief. If 500 volunteers for the army "crippled" the
immigrants where they were, what would have been their condition
if 1000 of their number had been hurried on to California ? **

* Tullidge's "Life of Brigham Young," p. 47

** Delegate Berahisel, in a letter to President Fillmore
(December 1, 1851), replying to a charge by Judge Brocchus that
the 24th of July orators had complained of the conduct of the
government in taking the Battalion from them for service against
Mexico, said, "The government did not take from us a battalion of
men," the Mormons furnishing them in response to a call for
volunteers.

Aside from the opportunity afforded by General Kearney's
invitation to send a pioneer band, without expense to themselves,
to the Pacific coast, the offer gave the Mormons great, and
greatly needed, pecuniary assistance. P. P. Pratt, on his way
East to visit England with Taylor and Hyde, found the Battalion
at Fort Leavenworth, and was sent back to the camp* with between
$5000 and $6000, a part of the Battalion's government allowance.
This was a godsend where cash was so scarce, as it enabled the
commissary officers to make purchases in St. Louis, where prices
were much lower than in western Iowa.** John Taylor, in a letter
to the Saints in Great Britain on arriving there, quoted the
acceptance of this Battalion as evidence that "the President of
the United States is favorably disposed to us," and said that
their employment in the army, as there was no prospect of any
fighting, "amounts to the same as paying them for going where
they were destined to go without."***

* "Unexpected as this visit was, a member of my family had been
warned in a dream, and had predicted my arrival and the
day."--Pratt, "Autobiography," p. 384.

** "History of Brigham Young," Ms., 1846, p. 150.

*** Millennial Star, Vol. VIII, p. 117.

The march of the federal force that went from Santa Fe (where the
Mormon Battalion arrived in October) to California was a notable
one, over unexplored deserts, where food was scarce and water for
long distances unobtainable. Arriving at the junction of the Gila
and Colorado rivers on December 26, they received there an order
to march to San Diego, California, and arrived there on January
29, after a march of over two thousand miles.

The war in California was over at that date, but the Battalion
did garrison duty at San Luis Rey, and then at Los Angeles.
Various propositions for their reenlistment were made to them,
but their church officers opposed this, and were obeyed except in
some individual instances. About 150 of those who set out from
Santa Fe were sent back invalided before California was reached,
and the number mustered out was only about 240. These at once
started eastward, but, owing to news received concerning the
hardships of the first Mormons who arrived in Salt Lake Valley,
many of them decided to remain in California, and a number were
hired by Sutter, on whose mill-race the first discovery of gold
in that state was made. Those who kept on reached Salt Lake
Valley on October 16, 1847. Thirty-two of their number continued
their march to Winter Quarters on the Missouri, where they
arrived on December 18.

Mormon historians not only present the raising of the Battalion
as a proof of patriotism, but ascribe to the members of that
force the credit of securing California to the United States, and
the discovery of gold.*

* "The Mormons have always been disposed to overestimate the
value of their services during this period, attaching undue
importance to the current rumors of intending revolt on the part
of the Californians, and of the approach of Mexican troops to
reconquer the province. They also claim the credit of having
enabled Kearney to sustain his authority against the
revolutionary pretensions of Fremont. The merit of this claim
will be apparent to the readers of preceding
chapters."--Bancroft, "History of California," Vol. V, p. 487.

When Elder Little left Washington for the West with despatches
for General Kearney concerning the Mormon enlistments, he was
accompanied by Colonel Thomas L. Kane, a brother of the famous
Arctic explorer. On his way West Colonel Kane visited Nauvoo
while the Hancock County posse were in possession of it, saw the
expelled Mormons in their camp across the river, followed the
trail of those who had reached the Missouri, and lay ill among
them in the unhealthy Missouri bottom in 1847. From that time
Colonel Kane became one of the most useful agents of the Mormon
church in the Eastern states, and, as we shall see, performed for
them services which only a man devoted to the church, but not
openly a member of it, could have accomplished.

It was stated at the time that Colonel Kane was baptized by Young
at Council Bluffs in 1847. His future course gives every reason
to accept the correctness of this view. He served the Mormons in
the East as a Jesuit would have served his order in earlier days
in France or Spain. He bore false witness in regard to polygamy
and to the character of men high in the church as unblushingly as
a Brigham Young or a Kimball could have done. His lecture before
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1850 was highly colored
where it stated facts, and so inaccurate in other parts that it
is of little use to the historian. A Mormon writer who denied
that Kane was a member of the church offered as proof of this the
statement that, had Kane been a Mormon, Young would have
commanded him instead of treating him with so much respect. But
Young was not a fool, and was quite capable of appreciating the
value of a secret agent at the federal capital.

CHAPTER IV. The Camps On The Missouri

Mormon accounts of the westward movement from Nauvoo represent
that the delay which occurred when they reached the Missouri
River was an interruption of their leaders' plans, attributing it
to the weakening of their force by the enlistment of the
Battalion, and the necessity of waiting for the last Mormons who
were driven out of Nauvoo. But after their experiences in a
winter march from the Mississippi, with something like a base of
supplies in reach, it is inconceivable that the Council would
have led their followers farther into the unknown West that same
year, when their stores were so nearly exhausted, and there was
no region before them in which they could make purchases, even if
they had the means to do so.

When the Mormons arrived on the Missouri they met with a very
friendly welcome. They found the land east of the river occupied
by the Pottawottomi Indians, who had recently been removed from
their old home in what is now Michigan and northern Illinois and
Indiana; and the west side occupied by the Omahas, who had once
"considered all created things as made for their peculiar use and
benefit," but whom the smallpox and the Sioux had many years
before reduced to a miserable remnant.

The Mormons won the heart of the Pottawottomies by giving them a
concert at their agent's residence. A council followed, at which
their chief, Pied Riche, surnamed Le Clerc, made an address,
giving the Mormons permission to cut wood, make improvements, and
live where they pleased on their lands.

The principal camp on the Missouri, known as Winter Quarters, was
on the west bank, on what is now the site of Florence, Nebraska.
A council was held with the Omaha chiefs in the latter apart of
August, and Big Elk, in reply to an address by Brigham Young,
recited their sufferings at the hands of the Sioux, and told the
whites that they could stay there for two years and have the use
of firewood and timber, and that the young men of the Indians
would watch their cattle and warn them of any danger. In return,
the Indians asked for the use of teams to draw in their harvest,
for assistance in housebuilding, ploughing, and blacksmithing,
and that a traffic in goods be established. An agreement to this
effect was put in writing.

The arrival of party after party of Mormons made an unusually
busy scene on the river banks. On the east side every hill that
helped to make up the Council Bluffs was occupied with tents and
wagons, while the bottom was crowded with cattle and vehicles on
the way to the west side. Kane counted four thousand head of
cattle from a single elevation, and says that the Mormon herd
numbered thirty thousand. Along the banks of the river and creeks
the women were doing their family washing, while men were making
boats and superintending in every way the passage of the river by
some, and the preparations for a stay on the east side by
others--building huts, breaking the sod for grain, etc. The
Pottawottomies had cut an approach to the river opposite a
trading post of the American Fur Company, and established a ferry
there, and they now did a big business carrying over, in their
flat-bottom boats, families and their wagons, and the cows and
sheep. As for the oxen, they were forced to swim, and great times
the boys had, driving them to the bank, compelling them to take
the initial plunge, and then guiding them across by taking the
lead astride some animal's back.

Sickness in the camps began almost as soon as they were formed.
"Misery Bottom," as it was then called, received the rich deposit
brought down by the river in the spring, and, when the river
retired into its banks, became a series of mud flats, described
as "mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles,
unvaried except by the limbs of half-buried carrion, tree trunks,
or by occasional yellow pools of what the children called frog's
spawn; all together steaming up vapors redolent of the savor of
death." In the previous year--not an unusually bad one--one-ninth
of the Indian population on these flats had died in two months.
The Mormons suffered not only from the malaria of the river
bottom, but from the breaking up of many acres of the soil in
their farming operations.

The illness was diagnosed as, the usual malarial fever,
accompanied in many cases with scorbutic symptoms, which they
called "black canker," due to a lack of vegetable food. In and
around Winter Quarters there were more than 600 burials before
cold weather set in, and 334 out of a population of 3483 were
reported on the sick list as late as December. The Papillon Camp,
on the Little Butterfly River, was a deadly site. Kane, who had
the fever there, in passing by the place earlier in the season
had opened an Indian mound, leaving a deep trench through it. "My
first airing," he says, "upon my convalescence, took me to the
mound, which, probably to save digging, had been readapted to its
original purpose. In this brief interval they had filled the
trench with bodies, and furrowed the ground with graves around
it, like the ploughing of a field."

But amid such affliction, in which cows went unmilked and corpses
became loathsome before men could be found to bury them,
preparations continued at all the camps for the winter's stay and
next year's supplies. Brigham Young, writing from Winter Quarters
on January 6, 1847, to the elders in England, said: "We have
upward of seven hundred houses in our miniature city, composed
mostly of logs in the body, covered with puncheon, straw, and
dirt, which are warm and wholesome; a few are composed of turf,
willows, straw, etc., which are comfortable this winter, but will
not endure the thaws, rain, and sunshine of spring." * This city
was divided into twenty-two wards, each presided over by a
Bishop. The principal buildings were the Council House,
thirty-two by twenty-four feet, and Dr. Richard's house, called
the Octagon, and described as resembling the heap of earth piled
up over potatoes to shield them from frost. In this Octagon the
High Council held most of their meetings. A great necessity was a
flouring mill, and accordingly they sent to St. Louis for the
stones and gearing, and, under Brigham Young's personal direction
as a carpenter, the mill was built and made ready for use in
January. The money sent back by the Battalion was expended in St.
Louis for sugar and other needed articles.