The Year of Decision 1846, page 14
In March of 1846, then, Young and the Apostles knew that Zion was to rise somewhere in the Great Basin. They knew that certainly; they were less clear about the site of Zion and still less certain when they could get there. As late as January 1, 1847, at Winter Quarters, Hosea Stout, who was in the confidence of the Twelve, heard that a pioneer company was to push out from the Niobrara River to the headwaters of the Yellowstone to put in a crop. (Faulty information: crops could not be raised there.) Such a pioneer party, to go ahead of the Church proper and select Zion and put in crops, was discussed throughout 1845 at Nauvoo, and actual preparations for it were made, in the expectation that it could start late that summer. After the Saints began leaving Sugar Creek in March of ’46, another call for such a party was made. (Actually the company under the unruly individualist Bishop George Miller did pull ahead of the main body with an intention of going all the way, as we shall see.) But neither Brigham nor his counselors could determine, at the beginning, whether any could cross to the mountains this year, or if any could, how many could be spared. It was the principal question to be answered while Israel toiled through the mud.7
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“West Side of the Mississippi, Feb. 19th, 1846,” Eliza Snow dated her poem, huddled with a foot warmer in Elder Markham’s buggy. And the poetess wrote:
The Camp, the Camp — its numbers swell —
Shout! Shout! O Camp of Israel.
The King, the Lord of Hosts is near,
His armies guard our front and rear.
Chorus
Though we fly from vile aggression,
We’ll maintain our pure profession,
Seek a peaceable possession
Far from Gentiles and oppression.
The ridgepole of Sister Green’s tent broke under the weight of snow, and she and the children were half-buried. All their clothes got wet. All the clothes of all the children were wet all the time; fingers, toes, cheeks, were discolored with frostbite; children were lethargic, cried easily, played little in the wind, gave out at their chores. There was so little to eat! Sister Green was pregnant but the family could apportion her a daily ration of less than half as much bread and milk as she needed. There were, however, enough wild onions for them all, chipped from the frozen soil.
The Saints kept arriving from Nauvoo. Tents, wagons, huts, spread over the discolored snow. Great portions of the grove had been felled, Sugar Creek was overcrowded, some of the faint-hearted were trying to return to Nauvoo, and clearly it was time for the Mormons to go. Orson Pratt’s thermometer did not fall below zero for several days. So Young organized his people as the Camp of Israel and, on the model of Joseph’s nightmare expedition against the Missourians years ago, set “captains of tens” and “captains of fifties” over them. (The entire scheme of organization used here and revealed in January ’47 as the Lord’s plan for the journey had been worked out in Nauvoo in ’45.) Elder Markham, who had succeeded in trading his buggy for a wagon, took a hundred pioneers to prepare the road. “Colonel” Hosea Stout commanded a guard of a hundred riflemen, and “Colonel” John Scott with two more fifties watched over the artillery, which was mostly homemade and had been hidden under lumber piles in Nauvoo. And on March 1, the first detachment started west, between two and three thousand of them, about five hundred wagons of all kinds, in all conditions of repair. The first day they made five miles. Day by day behind them other detachments left Sugar Creek and others arrived there from Nauvoo to follow after, till by late spring about fifteen thousand Saints were on the march.
They were a full two months ahead of the time when, as the mountain men and the Santa Fe traders knew, it was safe for caravans to cross the prairies. Apart from sudden whirlwinds of sleet out of the north the snows were over now, but the rains had come. Rain nearly every day for about eight weeks — a chill, monotonous downpour that soaked everything and brought out mildew in the center of packed crates. It saturated the prairies; after saturation, it turned them into a universal shallow lake. Through that slough the horses and oxen, gaunt after the winter, had to haul the unwieldy wagons, frequently with men and women helping at the wheels. The season was significantly known on the prairies as “between hay and grass.” Prairie craft forbade you to travel before the grass came, but Israel had to travel and so the stock grew weak. A wagon would mire to the hubs or deeper. Then neighbors must help out, double or triple teaming, perhaps hitching on a couple of the family cows. If there was brush at hand, it could be cut and spread under the wheels. The wagons would be sucked out to a somewhat firmer stretch, the extra teams unyoked, the slow, sodden progress resumed. Babies howled under drenched blankets. Everyone who could walk slithered through the mud, “shoe-mouth deep,” boot-top deep sometimes, clinging in five-pound masses to each foot.
Six miles was a big day, one mile a not uncommon one. Prairie creeks that would be five feet wide in July were now five rods wide, bottomless, swift, and impassable. Reaching one, a “fifty” — or a whole caravan — would have to camp beside it till it should subside or a ford be found, which might be two weeks. If there were no timber, then there might be no fires for two weeks, no cooked food, no dry clothes or bedding except as the sun might come out for an hour or two. No brush, either, to spread a bed on or to build a hut for an obstetrical ward. The historian Tullidge has a tableau: blankets stretched to poles and roofed over with bark, a woman in labor within, and intent sisters holding tin pans to catch the rain that leaked through the bark.
Supplies were scanty, though this first group was better off than any that followed it. They were feeding the stock on cottonwood bark, when they could get it, and they themselves were living on what they had amassed in Nauvoo. Hunters ranged the prairies for deer, turkeys, grouse, but the season was too early. Terror, winter, rain, and malnutrition now assessed their tax and the Saints sickened. Frostbitten feet could become gangrenous, knees and shoulders stiffened with rheumatism, last autumn’s agues were renewed. William Clayton’s legs pained him so that he could hardly walk; he tried to restore their function by jumping and wrestling but made himself sicker and had to go to bed. Heber C. Kimball, one of the Apostles, caught a fever and took to the swaying wagon, where a sick wife and two sick children, one of them only a few days old, were alternately shaking and burning; an older child could work a little but was too weak to carry a two-quart pail.
Sister Ann Richards’ husband, who had already served five missions in the United States, was called to a mission in England. He had to leave his family a few miles from Sugar Creek and go “without purse or scrip” to bear his testimony overseas. This was Franklin D. Richards, a nephew of Apostle Willard Richards who had been with the prophet Joseph when he was killed in Carthage jail. A brother of Franklin’s had been killed by the Missourians at the Haun’s Mill massacre, and another one would die on the march of the Mormon Battalion. He had married Sister Ann four years before, had been sealed to her in the temple in the everlasting covenant, just this January, and a week later had taken Sister Elizabeth McFate as his second wife. Sister Ann had her two-year-old daughter, Wealthy Lovisa, with her in the wagon — and Sister Ann was big with another child and her hour was near. There was no suitable food for her or Wealthy Lovisa. Many days they could not have a fire, either because night overtook them in the open prairie or because, if they got one started, the rain put it out. But sometimes they managed to keep one going and then Sister Ann could brew a pinch of tea from the pound which a neighbor had given her before she left Nauvoo. The Word of Wisdom forbade it but she could warm her body and cheer her mind with it, and “through sickness and great suffering [it] was about all the sustenance I had for some time.”
Twenty days out from Sugar Creek her term was full. The wagons stopped and a midwife was summoned, a Gentile whom the Saints had heard about. The hag demanded a fee in advance; Sister Ann had no money; a woolen bedspread would do, and “I might as well take it, for you’ll never live to need it.” Little Isaac was born, and he died at once. The priesthood anointed the small body and buried it; the wagons got started again. Little Wealthy Lovisa had been sick when they left Sugar Creek, and week by week her strength failed. Presently she was altogether listless on a roll of blankets in the wagon, and could not be induced to eat. Once, however, they passed a prairie farm and Wealthy revived enough to ask for some potato soup. Her grandmother went to the house, but the farm wife had heard the stories. “I wouldn’t sell or give one of you Mormons a potato to save your life,” she said, and set the dog on the grandmother. Wealthy lived till they got to the Missouri River, and then died. Brigham told Sister Ann, “It shall be said of you that you have come up through much tribulation.”
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But the summer was past and September had come when Wealthy Richards died. Many other children and many men and women had died too. All this time Saints had been coming across the Mississippi and taking to the trail. And Israel’s outlook was not hopeful.
The emigration had begun too soon, was insufficiently prepared and inadequately financed. A family had what equipment it could get, and no matter how much the Saints might help one another, there were the most serious inequalities. The wealthiest among them might have three or four wagons and a sizable herd of cattle. Even such as these suffered severely, and Apostles Pratt, Kimball, and Richards had to see their families weakening with a never-satiated hunger. But also a family might have only one wagon and no cattle, or merely a light cart, perhaps merely a buggy. Many a Saint trundled his entire possessions westward in a wheelbarrow — a sack of meal or flour, a roll of blankets, a change of clothing for the children.
Moreover, this was the migration not of certain individuals coming together in a temporary organization while they crossed the plains but of an entire people. The Camp of Israel was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, past, present, and to come. The Mormons carried with them not only their goods but also their church and social institutions — the hierarchy, the various priesthoods, the rituals and sacraments, the co-operative associations, the United Order, the mission system. An Oregon train had no social fabric to preserve, and when it reached the Willamette its members had crossed the country once and for all. No other train had any relation to it; the country closed in behind with no marks except the litter of the nightly camp. But Israel had to maintain its nervous system and could support its venture in the West only by constant accessions. It had to be a continuing emigration.
So for the sake of many who could go no farther, of those still in Nauvoo, and of the as yet unconverted all over the world, facilities of some permanence had to be provided. The problem had to be solved at once; Brigham solved it. His little eyes lacked the gift Joseph’s had, of piercing the heavens and beholding the glories there, but it is exceedingly unlikely that Joseph could ever have got his people beyond Sugar Creek.
At Richardson’s Point, fifty-five miles from Nauvoo, they built a permanent camp, which would always have a garrison. Companies coming in from the east would find wood, supplies, blacksmithing tools, experienced help — and the priesthood making sure that they “accepted counsel,” obeyed, kept discipline, and lived their religion. Another one was established farther on, at a crossing of the Chariton River, and here the first crops were sowed. The first companies planted crops, a permanent personnel cultivated them, later arrivals would harvest them. There were other farms on the way and other permanent camps on Locust Creek, at Garden Grove on Grand River, and lastly “Mount Pisgah,” a hundred and forty miles east of Council Bluffs. At Winter Quarters on the west bank of the Missouri and near Council Bluffs on the east bank much more ambitious camps were built, permanent settlements really, with a vigorous trade, large herds of horses and cattle, and farms of several thousand acres worked by hundreds of the Saints. All these plantations except those on the Missouri made crops in ’46. Even before Brigham led his people to the mountains in ’47, they were making the land in part support them as they traveled.
The prairies dried out. Clothing and bedding were dry at last, but now there were other plagues. The prairie mosquitoes settled in solid layers on men and oxen. The prairie rattlesnakes terrified everyone and killed many cattle. If there was now purchase for the wheels there was not yet fodder for the oxen, which grew still weaker on a diet of buds and twigs. The hunters could not get game enough; they were hundreds of miles east of the buffalo that the other movers could count on. Each permanent camp was a hospital, its garrison composed of those who were too weak, too sick, or too poor to go farther.
But this was the Church of Christ. They were escaping from their oppressors, Moses had led them out of the land of Egypt, they were going to establish Zion and build up the Kingdom. Eliza Snow’s heart was merry, and in Brother Markham’s wagon she easily flowed into song.
And it matters not where or whither
You go, neither whom among,
Only so that you closely follow
Your leader, Brigham Young.
Captain Pitts’s band was a great solace — and a help with the Gentiles. One day, after traveling eight miles, it split a hundred and thirty rails before dark and traded them to a farmer for corn, then gave a concert in the evening. Throughout the settlements it played wherever Gentiles would gather and for any fee, a pail of honey, eight bushels of corn, seven dollars in one place where the parsons opposed it, twenty-five dollars and meals for everyone at another place, and once for ten dollars and ten cents contributed to it by a village of awed, admiring Indians. Still more helpfully, it played for the Saints — Israel’s hymns, the current balladry, quadrilles and minuets and hoedowns. For Israel danced every night. The wagons made their rough park, the fires blazed up and supper was prepared, then the band got out the instruments and by firelight and after prayer the pudgy, rubicund prophet clapped his hands and sashayed up to some favored sister, while Israel formed sets under the stars.
This was the English band, the largest one. Behind it smaller ones did the same service for other parts of Israel. (There were so many Saints and they were so far from the Indian country that there was no need to organize the trains tightly.) There were many fiddles too, and their music might rise above the wheels’ shrieking on the march. There were glee clubs, quartettes, choirs. Parties freckle all the journals, at night when the wagons halt in the rain, in the huts of the permanent camps, and in “boweries” or arbors when there is a few days’ pause. News came from the other divisions, from Nauvoo, from the European missions. The “teachers” called their groups together to study the everlasting mysteries, praise Joseph, and curse his murderers. The priesthood quorums met for their rituals. And the vigilant mothers in Israel extemporized their schoolrooms; many a Mormon child learned his alphabet to the turning wheels and practised it in a hornbook at night, scrawling the misspelled word ten times over before he was permitted to crawl into the blankets.
They were prodigious, the mothers in Israel. They trudged through mud or dust or, a sick child on their knees, drove teams when father had been drafted to build a bridge or cut grass. They sewed, knitted, patched, spliced, while the wagons bumped and swayed. They spun and wove, and even found time to make the dyes and color the homespun. They learned to let the wagon’s jolting churn a pail of cream to butter. They learned to identify edible prairie roots and make them palatable. They learned to extemporize a household economy in wagons and to maintain family order on the march. And if by night father left them after a patriarchal prayer, to visit another wagon or go back ten miles on the trail to where another, younger wife prayerfully awaited him, why that also was their portion and they learned to live their religion.
And the brethren also were performing prodigies. Universal human cussedness, pricked by hunger and doubt, had Brigham and his lieutenants thundering at them a good part of the time. They would not accept counsel, they would fight for position and advantage, they kept tumbling by scores into the stupidest predicaments. But, spread out over Iowa, they were laboring strenuously if not concertedly for the Lord. They prepared the permanent farms and wagon shops, dug wells, got the crops planted. They found time to make nails, burn charcoal, shape oxbows, and manufacture harness and even wagons as they traveled. At farms and little settlements they would hire out for any job at any wage. Some Gentiles were friendly, some suspicious, some hostile. Some had to be overawed by a show of pistols; but the Lord moved others to pity and contributions. Sometimes the brethren held instruction for them, expounding the holy mysteries.… And always there were the endless harangues and reorganizing that Israel had found essential. A brother might prove false in that he outbid another brother for corn or refused the use of a team which a Seventy wanted to borrow. Then Brigham or some minor prophet opened the floodgates of exhortation. Much refreshed, this particular division of the Camp of Israel accepted counsel and got going again.
And Brigham and his staff were learning to manage an emigration while doing their other jobs. The journal of William Clayton, who was clerk of the Camp, shows the headquarters at work. An immense bookkeeping, a constant dispatch and arrival of couriers, an almost nightly convocation of the counselors, the prophet’s fingers on the controls of an organization that stretched from the Missouri River all the way eastward across America and halfway across Europe. The largest mission, the one in the British Isles, was reorganized while the Camp crossed Iowa. Treaties and arrangements with local officials had to be made. Nearly half the Camp were sick; they must be ministered to somehow, medicine and care must be got for them, they must be buried when they died.8 Supplies dwindled; they must be replaced somehow, bought, bartered for, worked for, begged, freighted endless miles going and coming. Weak, shoddy, and ill-built equipment was giving out; it must be restored or replaced somehow, more wagons brought up, more stock, more tools, bedding, ammunition.
