The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883

by Samuel Adams Drake

SALT LAKE CITY AND TABERNACLE.

It was at this time that Fremont's description of the region about the Great Salt Lake arrested the attention of Brigham Young, the Mormon patriarch. Fremont had said the valley of Bear River, a tributary of this lake, made "a natural resting and recruiting station for travellers." Its bottoms were extensive, water excellent, timber sufficient, and soil well adapted to the grains and grasses suited to so elevated a region. The great lake would furnish exhaustless supplies of salt. And he gave it as his opinion, that cattle and horses would thrive where grass and salt were so abundantly provided by nature. With these advantages he recommended it for civilized settlement.

Upon this, the Mormons, who were farmers and graziers, decided to form themselves in one great caravan, and travel to this Great Salt Lake. They started out with one hundred and forty-seven people and seventy-three wagons. On the 24th of July, 1847, as the caravan slowly wound down the Wasatch Mountains, the exiles saw the plain of their New Jerusalem stretching out before them, but when they reached it they found nothing growing upon it but sage-bushes.

They however laid out their city[3] at the foot of the hills, on a river which, as it runs from Utah Lake to Salt Lake, intercepts the streams coming down the eastern hills. The Mormons called this river the Jordan, because of some fancied resemblance to the river of Palestine.

Finding all so barren about them, these people took counsel of the experience of their neighbors, the Pueblo Indians, who for want of wood build their houses of adobe, and for want of rain raise crops by watering them artificially. Thus Salt Lake soon grew out of an arid plain to be a city of gardens and running streams.

In setting forth the advantages of the Utah Basin, Fremont had described a portion of the neighbor republic of Mexico, with which we were then at peace, and in making it their home the Mormons had been moved by a desire to go outside the limits of the United States, but were strangely brought back within them again when California was ceded to us.

Though shut out from the world, this strange colony steadily grew in strength and numbers. The Mormon Church had sent out its missionaries to make converts in other lands, for in the Union its doctrines were detested, and the community itself looked upon as little better than outcasts. So the increase was mostly from this source. Hence it was natural that the Mormon body should have in it less of the spirit of national feeling than other communities, and grow more and more away from the Union by reason of its isolation and the teachings of its rulers.

These teachings were embodied in a hierarchy, or, in other words, Church and State were one with the Church above the civil authority. The bishops, chief priests, and elders were the actual rulers, who both made and gave the law, and each member of the society gave a tenth of his living to the support of the Church. All who did not conform to the Mormon faith were denied any share in civil affairs. Thus the Mormons had set up in Utah[4] a little republic of their own, which, in effect, excluded other citizens of the Union from a full share in its privileges. Though a republic in name it was a despotism at the root. In short, the Mormons had gone to Utah to found a society for themselves alone, in which none but their own people should find a welcome.

It followed that the Mormon state was looked upon as an element of danger, rather than strength, to the Union, for the place where it was founded was a natural stronghold from which the authority of the nation might be set at defiance, as soon happened.

Flourishing only by reason of their isolation, the Mormons looked with little favor upon the passing emigration, though they drew much benefit from it. They could sell their cattle, grain, horses and other supplies to the emigrants at high prices, but the steady march of these people toward the west threatened the security they wished to enjoy apart from the world. Though always hostile to the great westward movement, and sometimes resorting to violence to stay it, the Mormons have been made to contribute to its success, not indeed as free agents, but as instruments in the hands of destiny. Formidable only in their seclusion, they have presented the anomaly of a handful of people throwing themselves before the wheels of progress. Though no longer formidable, they have done a notable work in making productive what was before considered an uninhabitable desert.