The Story of the Mormons:

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The route on July 5 kept along the right bank of the Green River
for about three miles, and then led over the bluffs and across a
sandy, waterless plain for sixteen miles, to the left bank of
Black's Fork, where they camped for the night. The two following
days took them across this Fork several times, but, although
fording was not always comfortable, the stream added salmon trout
to their menu. On the 7th the party had a look at Bridger's Fort,
of which they had heard often. Orson Pratt described it at the
time as consisting "of two adjoining log houses, dirt roofs, and
a small picket yard of logs set in the ground, and about eight
feet high. The number of men, squaws, and halfbreed children in
these houses and lodges may be about fifty or sixty."

At the camp, half a mile from the fort, that night ice formed.
The next day the blacksmiths were kept busy repairing wagons and
shoeing horses in preparation for a trail through the mountains.
On the 9th and 10th they passed over a hilly country, camping on
Beaver River on the night of the 10th.

The fever had compelled several halts on account of the condition
of the patients, and on the 12th it was found that Brigham Young
was too ill to travel. In order not to lose time, Orson Pratt,
with forty-three men and twentythree wagons, was directed to push
on into Salt Lake Valley, leaving a trail that the others could
follow. From the information obtainable at Fort Bridger it was
decided that the canon leading into the valley would be found
impassable on account of high water, and that they should direct
their course over the mountains.

These explorers set out on July 14, travelling down Red Fork, a
small stream which ran through a narrow valley, whose sides in
places were from eight hundred to twelve hundred feet high,--red
sandstone walls, perpendicular or overhanging. This route was a
rough one, requiring frequent fordings of the stream, and they
did well to advance thirteen miles that day. On the 15th they
discovered a mountain trail that had been recommended to them,
but it was a mere trace left by wagons that had passed over it a
year before. They came now to the roughest country they had
found, and it became necessary to send sappers in advance to open
a road before the wagons could pass over it. Almost discouraged,
Pratt turned back on foot the next day, to see if he could not
find a better route; but he was soon convinced that only the one
before them led in the direction they were to take. The wagons
were advanced only four and three-quarters miles that day, even
the creek bottom being so covered with a growth of willows that
to cut through these was a tiresome labor. Pratt and a companion,
during the day, climbed a mountain, which they estimated to be
about two thousand feet high, but they only saw, before and
around them, hills piled on hills and mountains on
mountains,--the outlines of the Wahsatch and Uinta ranges.

On Monday, the 18th, Pratt again acted as advance explorer, and
went ahead with one companion. Following a ravine on horseback
for four miles, they then dismounted and climbed to an elevation
from which, in the distance, they saw a level prairie which they
thought could not be far from Great Salt Lake. The whole party
advanced only six and a quarter miles that day and six the next.

One day later Erastus Snow came up with them, and Pratt took him
along as a companion in his advance explorations. They discovered
a point where the travellers of the year before had ascended a
hill to avoid a canon through which a creek dashed rapidly.
Following in their predecessors' footsteps, when they arrived at
the top of this hill there lay stretched out before them "a
broad, open valley about twenty miles wide and thirty long, at
the north end of which the waters of the Great Salt Lake
glistened in the sunbeams." Snow's account of their first view of
the valley and lake is as follows:-- "The thicket down the
narrows, at the mouth of the canon, was so dense that we could
not penetrate through it. I crawled for some distance on my hands
and knees through this thicket, until I was compelled to return,
admonished to by the rattle of a snake which lay coiled up under
my nose, having almost put my hand on him; but as he gave me the
friendly warning, I thanked him and retreated. We raised on to a
high point south of the narrows, where we got a view of the Great
Salt Lake and this valley, and each of us, without saying a word
to the other, instinctively, as if by inspiration, raised our
hats from our heads, and then, swinging our hats, shouted,
'Hosannah to God and the Lamb!' We could see the canes down in
the valley, on what is now called Mill Creek, which looked like
inviting grain, and thitherward we directed our course."*

* "Address to the Pioneers," 1880.

Having made an inspection of the valley, the two explorers
rejoined their party about ten o'clock that evening. The next
day, with great labor, a road was cut through the canon down to
the valley, and on July 22 Pratt's entire company camped on City
Creek, below the present Emigration Street in Salt Lake City. The
next morning, after sending word of their discovery to Brigham
Young, the whole party moved some two miles farther north, and
there, after prayer, the work of putting in a crop was begun. The
necessity of irrigation was recognized at once. "We found the
land so dry," says Snow, "that to plough it was impossible, and
in attempting to do so some of the ploughs were broken. We
therefore had to distribute the water over the land before it
could be worked." When the rest of the pioneers who had remained
with Young reached the valley the next day, they found about six
acres of potatoes and other vegetables already planted.

While Apostles like Snow might have been as transported with
delight over the aspect of the valley as he professed to be,
others of the party could see only a desolate, treeless plain,
with sage brush supplying the vegetation. To the women especially
the outlook was most depressing.

CHAPTER VII. The Following Companies--Last Days On The Missouri

When the pioneers set out from the Missouri, instructions were
left for the organization of similar companies who were to follow
their trail, without waiting to learn their ultimate destination
or how they fared on the way. These companies were in charge of
prominent men like Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, Bishop Hunter,
Daniel Spencer, who succeeded Smith as mayor of Nauvoo, and J. M.
Grant, the first mayor of Salt Lake City after its incorporation.

P. P. Pratt set out early in June, as soon as he could get his
wagons and equipment in order, for Elk Horn River, where a sort
of rendezvous was established, and a rough ferry boat put in
operation. Hence started about the Fourth of July the big company
which has been called "the first emigration." It consisted,
according to the most trustworthy statistics, of 1553 persons,
equipped with 566 wagons, 2213 oxen, 124 horses, 887 cows, 358
sheep, 35 hogs, and 716 chickens. Pratt had brought back from
England 469 sovereigns, collected as tithing, which were used in
equipping the first parties for Utah. This company had at its
head, as president, Brigham Young's brother John, with P. P.
Pratt as chief adviser.

Nothing more serious interrupted the movement of these hundreds
of emigrants than dissatisfaction with Pratt, upsets, broken
wagons, and the occasional straying of cattle, and all arrived in
the valley in the latter part of September, Pratt's division on
the 25th.

The company which started on the return trip with Young on August
26 embraced those Apostles who had gone West with him, some
others of the pioneers, and most of the members of the Battalion
who had joined them, and whose families were still on the banks
of the Missouri. The eastward trip was made interesting by the
meetings with the successive companies who were on their way to
the Salt Lake Valley. Early in September some Indians stole 48 of
their hoses, and ten weeks later 200 Sioux charged their camp,
but there was no loss of life.

On the 19th of October the party were met by a mounted company
who had left Winter Quarters to offer any aid that might be
needed, and were escorted to that camp. They arrived there on
October 31, where they were welcomed by their families, and
feasted as well as the supplies would permit.

The winter of 1847-1848 was employed by Young and his associates
in completing the church organization, mapping out a scheme of
European immigration, and preparing for the removal of the
remaining Mormons to Salt Lake Valley.

That winter was much milder than its predecessor, and the health
of the camps was improved, due, in part, to the better physical
condition of their occupants. On the west side of the river,
however, troubles had arisen with the Omahas, who complained to
the government that the Mormons were killing off the game and
depleting their lands of timber. The new-comers were accordingly
directed to recross the river, and it was in this way that the
camp near Council Bluffs in 1848 secured its principal
population. In Mormon letters of that date the name Winter
Quarters is sometimes applied to the settlement east of the river
generally known as Kanesville.

The programme then arranged provided for the removal in the
spring of 1848 to Salt Lake Valley of practically all Mormons who
remained on the Missouri, leaving only enough to look after the
crops there and to maintain a forwarding point for emigrants from
Europe and the Eastern states. The legislature of Iowa by request
organized a county embracing the camps on the east side of the
river. There seems to have been an idea in the minds of some of
the Mormons that they might effect a permanent settlement in
western Iowa. Orson Pratt, in a general epistle to the Saints in
Europe, encouraging emigration, dated August 15, 1848, said, "A
great, extensive, and rich tract of country has also been, by the
providence of God, put in the possession of the Saints in the
western borders of Iowa," which the Saints would have the first
chance to purchase, at five shillings per acre. A letter from G.
A. Smith and E. T. Benson to O. Pratt, dated December 20 in that
year, told of the formation of a company of 860 members to
enclose an additional tract of 11,000 acres, in shares of from 5
to 80 acres, and of the laying out of two new cities, ten miles
north and south. Orson Hyde set up a printing-press there, and
for some time published the Frontier Guardian. But wiser counsel
prevailed, and by 1853 most of the emigrants from Nauvoo had
passed on to Utah,* and Linforth found Kanesville in 1853 "very
dirty and unhealthy," and full of gamblers, lawyers, and dealers
in "bargains," the latter made up principally of the outfits of
discouraged immigrants who had given up the trip at that point.

* On September 21, 1851, the First Presidency sent a letter to
the Saints who were still in Iowa, directing them all to come to
Salt Lake Valley, and saying: "What are you waiting for? Have you
any good excuse for not coming? No. You have all of you unitedly
a far better chance than we had when we started as pioneers to
find this place."--Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, p. 29.

Young himself took charge of the largest body that was to cross
the plains in 1848. The preparations were well advanced by the
first of May, and on the 24th he set out for Elk Horn (commonly
called "The Horn") where the organization of the column was to be
made. The travellers were divided into two large companies, the
first four "hundreds" comprising 1229 persons and 397 wagons; the
second section, led by H. C. Kimball, 662 persons and 226 wagons;
and the third, under Elders W. Richards and A. Lyman, about 300
wagons. A census of the first two companies, made by the clerk of
the camp, showed that their equipment embraced the following
items: horses, 131; mules, 44; oxen, 2012; cows and other cattle,
1317; sheep, 654; pigs, 237; chickens, 904; cats, 54; dogs, 134;
goats, 3; geese, 10; ducks, 5; hives of bees, 5; doves, 11; and
one squirrel.*

* Millennial Star, Vol. X, p. 319.

The expense of fitting out these companies was necessarily large,
and the heads of the church left at Kanesville a debt amounting
to $3600, "without any means being provided for its payment."*

* Ibid, Vol. XI, p. 14.

President Young's company began its actual westward march on June
5, and the last detachment got away about the 25th. They reached
the site of Salt Lake City in September. The incidents of the
trip were not more interesting than those of the previous year,
and only four deaths occurred on the way.

BOOK VI. In Utah

CHAPTER I. The Founding Of Salt Lake City

The first white men to enter what is now Utah were a part of the
force of Coronado, under Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardinas, if the
reader of the evidence decides that their journey from Zuni took
them, in 1540, across the present Utah border line.* A more
definite account has been preserved of a second exploration,
which left Santa Fe in 1776, led by two priests, Dominguez and
Escalate, in search of a route to the California coast. A two
months' march brought them to a lake, called Timpanogos by the
natives--now Utah Lake on the map--where they were told of
another lake, many leagues in extent, whose waters were so salt
that they made the body itch when wet with them; but they turned
to the southwest without visiting it. Lahontan's report of the
discovery of a body of bad-tasting water on the western side of
the continent in 1689 is not accepted as more than a part of an
imaginary narrative. S. A. Ruddock asserted that, in 1821, he
with a trading party made a journey from Council Bluffs to Oregon
by way of Santa Fe and Great Salt Lake.**

* See Bancroft's "History of Utah," Chap. I.

** House Report, No. 213, 1st Session, 19th Congress.

Bancroft mentions this claim "for what it is worth," but awards
the honor of the discovery of the lake, as the earliest
authenticated, to James Bridger, the noted frontiersman who, some
twelve years later, built his well-known trading fort on Green
River. Bridger, with a party of trappers who had journeyed west
from the Missouri with Henry and Ashley in 1824, got into a
discussion that winter with his fellows, while they were camped
on Bear River, about the course of that stream, and, to decide a
bet, Bridger followed it southward until he came to Great Salt
Lake. In the following spring four of the party explored the lake
in boats made of skins, hoping to find beavers, and they, it is
believed, were the first white men to float upon its waters.
Fremont saw the lake from the summit of a butte on September 6,
1843. "It was," he says, "one of the great objects of the
exploration, and, as we looked eagerly over the lake in the first
emotions of excited pleasure, I am doubtful if the followers of
Balboa felt more enthusiasm when, from the heights of the Andes,
they saw for the first time the great Western Ocean." This
practical claim of discovery was not well founded, nor was his
sail on the lake in an India-rubber boat "the first ever
attempted on this interior sea."

Dating from 1825, the lake region of Utah became more and more
familiar to American trappers and explorers. In 1833 Captain
Bonneville, of the United States army, obtained leave of absence,
and with a company of 110 trappers set out for the Far West by
the Platte route. Crossing the Rockies through the South Pass, he
made a fortified camp on Green River, whence he for three years
explored the country. One of his parties, under Joseph Walker,
was sent to trap beavers on Great Salt Lake and to explore it
thoroughly, making notes and maps. Bonneville, in his description
of the lake to Irving, declared that lofty mountains rose from
its bosom, and greatly magnified its extent to the south.*
Walker's party got within sight of the lake, but found themselves
in a desert, and accordingly changed their course and crossed the
Sierras into California. In Bonneville's map the lake is called
"Lake Bonneville or Great Salt Lake," and Irving calls it Lake
Bonneville in his "Astoria."

* Bonneville's "Adventures," p. 184.

The day after the first arrival of Brigham Young in Salt Lake
Valley (Sunday, July 25), church services were held and the
sacrament was administered. Young addressed his followers,
indicating at the start his idea of his leadership and of the
ownership of the land, which was then Mexican territory. "He said
that no man should buy any land who came here," says Woodruff;
"that he had none to sell; but every man should have his land
measured out to him for city and farming purposes. He might till
it as he pleased, but he must be industrious and take care of
it." *

* "After the assignments were made, persona commenced the usual
speculations of selling according to eligibility of situation.
This called out anathemas from the spiritual powers, and no one
was permitted to traffic for fancy profit; if any sales were
made, the first cost and actual value of improvements were all
that was to be allowed. All speculative sales were made sub rosa.
Exchanges are made and the records kept by the
register."--Gunnison, "The Mormons" (1852), p. 145.

The next day a party, including all the Twelve who were in the
valley, set out to explore the neighborhood. They visited and
bathed in Great Salt Lake, climbed and named Ensign Peak, and met
a party of Utah Indians, who made signs that they wanted to
trade. On their return Young explained to the people his ideas of
an exploration of the country to the west and north.

Meanwhile, those left in the valley had been busy staking off
fields, irrigating them, and planting vegetables and grain. Some
buildings, among them a blacksmith shop, were begun. The members
of the Battalion, about four hundred of whom had now arrived,
constructed a "bowery." Camps of Utah Indians were visited, and
the white men witnessed their method of securing for food the
abundant black crickets, by driving them into an enclosure fenced
with brush which they set on fire.

On July 28, after a council of the Quorum had been held, the site
of the Temple was selected by Brigham Young, who waved his hand
and said: "Here is the 40 acres for the Temple. The city can be
laid out perfectly square, east and west."* The 40 acres were a
few days later reduced to 10, but the site then chosen is that on
which the big Temple now stands. It was also decided that the
city should be laid out in lots measuring to by 20 rods each, 8
lots to a block, with streets 8 rods wide, and sidewalks 20 feet
wide; each house to be erected in the centre of a lot, and 20
feet from the front line. Land was also reserved for four parks
of to acres each.

* Tullidge's "Life of Brigham Young," p. 178.

Men were at once sent into the mountains to secure logs for
cabins, and work on adobe huts was also begun. On August y those
of the Twelve present selected their "inheritances," each taking
a block near the Temple. A week later the Twelve in council
selected the blocks on which the companies under each should
settle. The city as then laid out covered a space nearly four
miles long and three broad.*

* Tullidge says: "The land portion of each family, as a rule, was
the acre-and-a-quarter lot designated in the plan of the city;
but the chief men of the pioneers, who had a plurality of wives
and numerous children, received larger portions of the city lots.
The giving of farms, as shown is the General Epistle, was upon
the same principle as the apportioning of city lots. The farm of
five, ten, or twenty acres was not for the mechanic, nor the
manufacturer, nor even for the farmer, as a mere personal
property, but for the good of the community at large, to give the
substance of the earth to feed the population . . . . While the
farmer was planting and cultivating his farm, the mechanic and
tradesman produced his supplies and wrought his daily work for
the community." He adds,"It can be easily understood how some
departures were made from this original plan." This understanding
can be gained in no better way than by inspecting the list of
real estate left by Brigham Young in his will as his individual
possession.

On August 22 a General Conference decided that the city should be
called City of the Great Salt Lake. When the city was
incorporated, in 1851, the name was changed to Salt Lake City. In
view of the approaching return of Young and his fellow officers
to the Missouri River, the company in the valley were placed in
charge of the prophet's uncle, John Smith, as Patriarch, with a
high council and other officers of a Stake.

When P. P. Pratt and the following companies reached the valley
in September, they found a fort partly built, and every one busy,
preparing for the winter. The crops of that year had been a
disappointment, having been planted too late. The potatoes raised
varied in size from that of a pea to half an inch in diameter,
but they were saved and used successfully for seed the next year.
A great deal of grain was sown during the autumn and winter,
considerable wheat having been brought from California by members
of the Battalion. Pratt says that the snow was several inches
deep when they did some of their ploughing, but that the ground
was clear early in March. A census taken in March, 1848, gave the
city a population of 1671, with 423 houses erected.

The Saints in the valley spent a good deal of that winter working
on their cabins, making furniture, and carting fuel. They
discovered that the warning about the lack of timber was well
founded, all the logs and firewood being hauled from a point
eight miles distant, over bad roads, and with teams that had not
recovered from the effect of the overland trip. Many settlers
therefore built huts of adobe bricks, some with cloth roofs. Lack
of experience in handling adobe clay for building purposes led to
some sad results, the rains and frosts causing the bricks to
crumble or burst, and more than one of these houses tumbled down
around their owners. Even the best of the houses had very flat
roofs, the newcomers believing that the climate was always dry;
and when the rains and melted snow came, those who had umbrellas
frequently raised them indoors to protect their beds or their
fires.

Two years later, when Captain Stansbury of the United States
Topographical Engineers, with his surveying party, spent the
winter in Salt Lake City, in "a small, unfurnished house of
unburnt brick or adobe, unplastered, and roofed with boards
loosely nailed on," which let in the rains in streams, he says
they were better lodged than many of their neighbors. "Very many
families," he explains, "were obliged still to lodge wholly or in
part in their wagons, which, being covered, served, when taken
off from the wheels and set upon the ground, to make bedrooms, of
limited dimensions, it is true, but exceedingly comfortable. In
the very next enclosure to that of our party, a whole family of
children had no other shelter than one of these wagons, where
they slept all winter."

The furniture of the early houses was of the rudest kind, since
only the most necessary articles could be brought in the wagons.
A chest or a barrel would do for a table, a bunk built against
the side logs would be called a bed, and such rude stools as
could be most easily put together served for chairs.

The letters sent for publication in England to attract emigrants
spoke of a mild and pleasant winter, not telling of the
privations of these pioneers. The greatest actual suffering was
caused by a lack of food as spring advanced. A party had been
sent to California, in November, for cattle, seeds, etc., but
they lost forty of a herd of two hundred on the way back. The
cattle that had been brought across the plains were in poor
condition on their arrival, and could find very little winter
pasturage. Many of the milk cows driven all the way from the
Missouri had died by midsummer. By spring parched grain was
substituted for coffee, a kind of molasses was made from beets,
and what little flour could be obtained was home-ground and
unbolted. Even so high an officer of the church as P. P. Pratt,
thus describes the privations of his family: "In this labor
[ploughing, cultivating, and sowing] every woman and child in my
family, so far as they were of sufficient age and strength, had
joined to help me, and had toiled incessantly in the field,
suffering every hardship which human nature could well endure.
Myself and most of them were compelled to go with bare feet for
several months, reserving our Indian moccasins for extra
occasions. We toiled hard, and lived on a few greens, and on
thistle and other roots."

This was the year of the great visitation of crickets, the
destruction of which has given the Mormons material for the story
of one of their miracles. The crickets appeared in May, and they
ate the country clear before them. In a wheat-field they would
average two or three to a head of grain. Even ditches filled with
water would not stop them. Kane described them as "wingless,
dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like
goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock spring, and
with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in
comparing them to a cross of a spider and the buffalo." When this
plague was at its worst, the Mormons saw flocks of gulls descend
and devour the crickets so greedily that they would often
disgorge the food undigested. Day after day did the gulls appear
until the plague was removed. Utah guide-books of to-day refer to
this as a divine interposition of Heaven in behalf of the Saints.
But writers of that date, like P. P. Pratt, ignore the miraculous
feature, and the white gulls dot the fields between Salt Lake
City and Ogden in 1901 just as they did in the summer of 1848,
and as Fremont found them there in September, 1843. Gulls are
abundant all over the plains, and are found with the snipe and
geese as far north as North Dakota. Heaven's interposition, if
exercised, was not thorough, for, after the crickets, came
grasshoppers in such numbers that one writer says, "On one
occasion a quarter of one cloudy dropped into the lake and were
blown on shore by the wind, in rows sometimes two feet deep, for
a distance of two miles."