The Women of Mormondom

by Edward W. Tullidge

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE EXODUS—TO YOUR TENTS, O ISRAEL—SETTING OUT FROM THE BORDERS OF CIVILIZATION—MOVEMENTS OF THE CAMP OF ISRAEL—FIRST NIGHT AT SUGAR CREEK—PRAISING GOD IN THE SONG AND DANCE—DEATH BY THE WAYSIDE.

The heroism of the Mormon women rose to more than tragic splendor in the exodus. Only two circumstances after the martyrdom connect them strongly with their beloved city. These attach to their consecrations in, and adieus to, the temple, and the defence of Nauvoo by the remnant of the saints in a three days' battle with the enemy. Then came the evacuation of the city several months after the majority of the twelve, with the body of the Church, had taken up their march towards the Rocky Mountains.

Early in February, 1846, the saints began to cross the Mississippi in flat-boats, old lighters, and a number of skiffs, forming quite a fleet, which was at work night and day under the direction of the police.

On the 15th of the same month, Brigham Young, with his family, and others, crossed the Mississippi from Nauvoo, and proceeded to the "Camps of Israel," as they were styled by the saints, which waited on the west side of the river, a few miles on the way, for the coming of their leader. These were to form the vanguard of the migrating saints, who were to follow from the various States where they were located, or had organized themselves into flourishing branches and conferences; and soon after this period also began to pour across the Atlantic that tide of emigration from Europe, which has since swelled to the number of about one hundred thousand souls.

In Nauvoo the saints had heard the magic cry, "To your tents, O Israel!" And in sublime faith and trust, such as history scarcely gives an example of, they had obeyed, ready to follow their leader whithersoever he might direct their pilgrim feet.

The Mormons were setting out, under their leader, from the borders of civilization, with their wives and their children, in broad daylight, before the eyes of ten thousand of their enemies, who would have preferred their utter destruction to their "flight," notwithstanding they had enforced it by treaties outrageous beyond description, inasmuch as the exiles were nearly all American born, many of them tracing their ancestors to the very founders of the nation. They had to make a journey of fifteen hundred miles over trackless prairies, sandy deserts and rocky mountains, through bands of war-like Indians, who had been driven, exasperated, towards the West; and at last to seek out and build up their Zion in valleys then unfruitful, in a solitary region where the foot of the white man had scarcely trod. These, too, were to be followed by the aged, the halt, the sick and the blind, the poor, who were to be helped by their little less destitute brethren, and the delicate young mother with her new-born babe at her breast, and still worse, for they were not only threatened with the extermination of the poor remnant at Nauvoo, but news had arrived that the parent government designed to pursue their pioneers with troops, take from them their arms, and scatter them, that they might perish by the way, and leave their bones bleaching in the wilderness.

At about noon, on the 1st of March, 1846, the "Camp of Israel" began to move, and at four o'clock nearly four hundred wagons were on the way, traveling in a north-westerly direction. At night they camped again on Sugar Creek, having advanced five miles. Scraping away the snow they pitched their tents upon the frozen ground; and, after building large fires in front, they made themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Indeed, it is questionable whether any other people in the world could have cozened themselves into a happy state of mind amid such surroundings, with such a past fresh and bleeding in their memories, and with such a prospect as was before both themselves and the remnant of their brethren left in Nauvoo to the tender mercies of the mob. In his diary, Apostle Orson Pratt wrote that night: "Notwithstanding our sufferings, hardships and privations, we are cheerful, and rejoice that we have the privilege of passing through tribulation for the truth's sake."

These Mormon pilgrims, who took much consolation on their journey in likening themselves to the Pilgrim fathers and mothers of this nation, whose descendants many of them, as we have seen, actually were, that night made their beds upon the frozen earth. "After bowing before our great Creator," wrote Apostle Pratt, "and offering up praise and thanksgiving to him, and imploring his protection, we resigned ourselves to the slumbers of the night."

But the weather was more moderate that night than it had been for several weeks previous. At their first encampment the thermometer at one time fell twenty degrees below zero, freezing over the great Mississippi. The survivors of that journey will tell you they never suffered so much from the cold in their lives as they did on Sugar Creek.