A Mormon Sorghum Mill and Evaporating Pans.
Photograph by F. S Dellenbaugh.
A Setback.
Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.
It was not till July, 1847, they were able in numbers to reach the Salt Lake, and doubtless the dry, barren, region appeared discouraging. But Brigham Young, who followed a little later, had not begun this move blindly. His astute mind had shown him that irrigation by means of the mountain torrents would transform into gardens the arid plains, exactly as had been done in that dreamland of the Wilderness, the Rio Grande Valley. At first the devotees of the Mormon faith had a severe time, starvation was close to their thresholds, but perseverance, grit, and industry gradually conquered the antagonism of nature and the once forbidding valley was presently offering the Latter Day Saints abundance; Salt Lake City became a centre of order and prosperity. Other portions from this as a base were brought under cultivation and the soil was rendered prolific. It must be acknowledged that these people were Wilderness breakers of high quality. They not only broke it, but they kept it broken; and instead of the gin mill and the gambling hell, as corner stones of their progress, and as examples to the natives of white men's superiority, they planted orchards, gardens, farms, schoolhouses, and peaceful homes.[107] There is to-day, no part of the United States where human life is safer than in the land of the Mormons; no place where there is less lawlessness. A people who have accomplished so much that is good, who have endured danger, privation, and suffering, who have withstood the obloquy of more powerful sects, have in them much that is commendable; they deserve more than abuse, they deserve admiration, no matter what may have been their shortcomings in the earlier stages of their career.
The fortunes of the Mexican War, which the Mormons helped to decide for the American arms, as far as they were able, soon threw them again within the jurisdiction of the United States, and eventually, in place of their desired State of Deseret, Congress established the Territory of Utah, and made Brigham Young first governor, an appointment which should never have been made if the Mormons were as bad a people as by some was maintained. By it the Government really sanctioned the Mormon creed.
Besides the Mormons other sects pushed into the Wilderness. The Methodists and Presbyterians were early in Oregon, the first under the Lees and the second under Whitman. The Catholics also began missionary work in that quarter, and their chief worker was Father De Smet, whose name is forever welded into the history of the Wilderness, by his earnest labours for one thing, but more particularly by his careful observation and the records which he made of all he saw. He went everywhere in the northern parts of the Wilderness, always welcome, always doing good, and never in danger. More ought to be related here concerning his career, but the limits of this volume prevent.
Meanwhile the settlers in California startled the sleepy atmosphere of the old Mission régime; yet the region was so inaccessible from the East that few ventured to go there. But Fortune was holding something in reserve. A blindfold was on all eyes; no one could see the future indicated by the discovery of gold near San Fernando Mission. It had been washed out as early as 1841, but only in a small way, and it was not till one day in 1849, when nuggets were found in repairing a mill race on Sutter's ranch at the mouth of the American River, that the blindfold was dropped and the people saw. In a general way this was the end of what may be termed the Frémont period and the beginning of another, which was to have a tremendous influence upon the destinies of the Wilderness. Emigrants crossed the oceans; they crossed the Wilderness; they came from round the globe by thousands and by thousands again, to wash from the golden soil of California their everlasting fortunes. It became a stampede.