The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

Behind the advance guard the main body remained in winter quarters, making ready for their difficult search for the promised land; moving at last in the late spring in full confidence that a Zion somewhere would be prepared for them. The successor of Joseph relied but little upon supernatural aid in keeping his flock under control. Commonly he depended upon human wisdom and executive direction. But upon the eve of his own departure from winter quarters he had made public, for the direction of the main body, a written revelation: "The Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their Journeyings to the West." Such revelations as this, had they been repeated, might well have created or renewed popular confidence in the real inspiration of the leader. The order given was such as a wise source of inspiration might have formed after constant intercourse with emigrants and traders upon the difficulties of overland migration and the dangers of the way.

"Let all the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them," read the revelation, "be organized into companies, with a covenant and a promise to keep all the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God. Let the companies be organized with captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens, with a president and counsellor at their head, under direction of the Twelve Apostles: and this shall be our covenant, that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord.

"Let each company provide itself with all the teams, wagons, provisions, and all other necessaries for the journey that they can. When the companies are organized, let them go with all their might, to prepare for those who are to tarry. Let each company, with their captains and presidents, decide how many can go next spring; then choose out a sufficient number of able-bodied and expert men to take teams, seed, and farming utensils to go as pioneers to prepare for putting in the spring crops. Let each company bear an equal proportion, according to the dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the widows, and the fatherless, and the families of those who have gone with the army, that the cries of the widow and the fatherless come not up into the ears of the Lord against his people.

"Let each company prepare houses and fields for raising grain for those who are to remain behind this season; and this is the will of the Lord concerning this people.

"Let every man use all his influence and property to remove this people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion: and if ye do this with a pure heart, with all faithfulness, ye shall be blessed in your flocks, and in your herds, and in your fields, and in your houses, and in your families...."

The rendezvous for the main party was the Elk Horn River, whence the head of the procession moved late in June and early in July. In careful organization, with camps under guard and wagons always in corral at night, detachments moved on in quick succession. Kanesville and a large body remained behind for another year or longer, but before Brigham had laid out his city and started east the emigration of 1847 was well upon its way. The foremost began to come into the city by September. By October the new city in the desert had nearly four thousand inhabitants. The march had been made with little suffering and slight mortality. No better pioneer leadership had been seen upon the trail.

The valley of the Great Salt Lake, destined to become an oasis in the American desert, supporting the only agricultural community existing therein during nearly twenty years, discouraged many of the Mormons at the start. In Illinois and Missouri they were used to wood and water; here they found neither. In a treeless valley they were forced to carry their water to their crops in a way in which their leader had more confidence than themselves. The urgency of Brigham in setting his first detachment to work on fields and crops was not unwise, since for two years there was a real question of food to keep the colony alive. Inexperience in irrigating agriculture and plagues of crickets kept down the early crops. By 1850 the colony was safe, but its maintenance does still more credit to its skilful leadership. Its people, apart from foreign converts who came in later years, were of the stuff that had colonized the middle West and won a foothold in Oregon; but nowhere did an emigration so nearly create a land which it enjoyed as here. A paternal government dictated every effort, outlined the streets and farms, detailed parties to explore the vicinity and start new centres of life. Little was left to chance or unguided enthusiasm. Practical success and a high state of general welfare rewarded the Saints for their implicit obedience to authority.

Mormon emigration along the Platte trail became as common as that to Oregon in the years following 1847, but, except in the disastrous hand-cart episode of 1856, contains less of novelty than of substantial increase to the colony. Even to-day men are living in the West, who, walking all the way, with their own hands pushed and pulled two-wheeled carts from the Missouri to the mountains in the fifties. To bad management in handling proselytes the hand-cart catastrophe was chiefly due. From the beginning missionary activity had been pressed throughout the United States and even in Europe. In England and Scandinavia the lower classes took kindly to the promises, too often impracticable, it must be believed, of enthusiasts whose standing at home depended upon success abroad. The convert with property could pay his way to the Missouri border and join the ordinary annual procession. But the poor, whose wealth was not equal to the moderately costly emigration, were a problem until the emigration society determined to cut expenses by reducing equipment and substituting pushcarts and human power for the prairie schooner with its long train of oxen.

In 1856 well over one thousand poor emigrants left Liverpool, at contract rates, for Iowa City, where the parties were to be organized and ample equipment in handcarts and provisions were promised to be ready. On arrival in Iowa City it was found that slovenly management had not built enough of the carts. Delayed by the necessary construction of these carts, some of the bands could not get on the trail until late in the summer,—too late for a successful trip, as a few of their more cautious advisers had said. The earliest company got through to Salt Lake City in September with considerable success. It was hard and toilsome to push the carts; women and children suffered badly, but the task was possible. Snow and starvation in the mountains broke down the last company. A friendly historian speaks of a loss of sixty-seven out of a party of four hundred and twenty. Throughout the United States the picture of these poor deluded immigrants, toiling against their carts through mountain pass and river-bottom, with clothing going and food quite gone, increased the conviction that the Mormon hierarchy was misleading and abusing the confidence of thousands.

That the hierarchy was endangering the peace of the whole United States came to be believed as well. In 1850, with the Salt Lake settlement three years old, Congress had organized a territory of Utah, extending from the Rockies to California, between 37° and 42°, and the President had made Brigham Young its governor. The close association of the Mormon church and politics had prevented peaceful relations from existing between its people and the federal officers of the territory, while Washington prejudiced a situation already difficult by sending to Utah officers and judges, some of whom could not have commanded respect even where the sway of United States authority was complete. The vicious influence of politics in territorial appointments, which the territories always resented, was specially dangerous in the case of a territory already feeling itself persecuted for conscience' sake. Yet it was not impossible for a tactful and respectable federal officer to do business in Utah. For several years relations increased in bad temper, both sides appealing constantly to President and Congress, until it appeared, as was the fact, that the United States authority had become as nothing in Utah and with the church. Among the earliest of President Buchanan's acts was the preparation of an army which should reëstablish United States prestige among the Mormons. Large wagon trains were sent out from Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1857, with an army under Albert Sidney Johnston following close behind, and again the old Platte trail came before the public eye.