Elder Taylor and his family crossed the river on the 16th of February, and joined the Camp of Israel in the wilderness of the Territory of Iowa. For his own family and those who had lived with him in Nauvoo, he had eight wagons and a carriage, with the necessary force of teams. Snow was on the ground when he left Nauvoo, and shortly after crossing the river a thaw set in, which made travelling difficult. An encampment was made at a place where wood was plentiful, and there the exiles made themselves as comfortable as possible, until traveling should become less disagreeable.
There they lay, exposed to the inclement season, while only a short distance away—almost in view—were their comfortable houses, their beautiful city and magnificent temple! These homes which they had left, and that city were still theirs, for so hurried had been their departure that they had no time to dispose of property.
Elder Taylor had left a large, two-story brick house well furnished, with a brick store on one side and a new brick building that he had erected for a printing office on the other, and a large barn in the rear. This lot and the buildings were worth $10,000. In addition to this property, a short distance east of Nauvoo he had a farm of 106 acres of unimproved land, another of 80 acres, 40 of which was under cultivation and the remaining 40 timber. He also had a corner lot 101 x 85 feet on Main and Water street, opposite the Nauvoo Mansion. All this—to say nothing of breaking up his printing and book-binding establishment—he had been compelled to leave with but small hope of ever receiving anything for it; while he himself was driven forth an exile to wander, perhaps to perish, in the wilderness, a victim of religious intolerance.
This was in an age of boasted enlightenment—in the 19th century! In the great American Republic—the vaunted asylum of the oppressed!
To facilitate travel and for the better regulation of the people, the exiles were divided into companies of from seventy to a hundred wagons; but these companies followed each other so closely that they formed an almost unbroken procession across the Territory of Iowa.
To tell in detail the story of that journey from Nauvoo to Council Bluffs—how the Saints struggled on through trackless prairies converted into vast bogs by the spring thaws and rain and sleet which seemed to fall continuously; how the bleak winds from the pitiless northwest were more cruel than the sharpest frosts; how the young and strong left the main companies to go into Missouri and districts in Iowa remote from their line of march to exchange household furniture for corn or flour; how those who had merely enough provisions for themselves—no one had a surplus—divided with those who had none; how heroically they struggled against weakness and disease brought on through exposure; how they laid away their dead in nameless graves—to tell all this would fill a volume of itself, and belongs rather to a history of the whole people than to this biography.
RESIDENCE OF JOHN TAYLOR, NAUVOO, ILL., 1846
The 5th of June found Elder Taylor with his company at Mount Pisgah, in Iowa, about one hundred and sixty miles from Nauvoo, where the companies under Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball had encamped and were putting in crops for those who would come on later to harvest.
From Mount Pisgah to the "Bluffs" he met numerous squads of Pottawattomie Indians, all of whom he treated kindly, and generally distributed tobacco among them, a thing with which they were highly pleased. These Indians had been removed from their lands east of the Mississippi some years before, and were themselves exiles. Perhaps it was that fact which led them to treat kindly the exiled Saints. At any rate they gave them permission to pass through their reservation, and finally permitted them to settle for a time upon their lands and use what timber they needed to build temporary abodes.