The Forty-Niners: A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado

by Stewart Edward White

The founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, Jr., came from a commonplace family.

Apparently its members were ignorant and superstitious. They talked much of hidden treasure and of supernatural means for its discovery. They believed in omens, signs, and other superstitions. As a boy Joseph had been shrewd enough and superstitious enough to play this trait up for all it was worth. He had a magic peep-stone and a witch-hazel divining-rod that he manipulated so skillfully as to cause other boys and even older men to dig for him as he wished. He seemed to delight in tricking his companions in various ways, by telling fortunes, reeling off tall yarns, and posing as one possessed of occult knowledge.

According to Joseph's autobiography, the discovery of the Mormon Bible happened in this wise: on the night of September 21, 1823, a vision fell upon him; the angel Moroni appeared and directed him to a cave on the hillside; in this cave he found some gold plates, on which were inscribed strange characters, written in what Smith described as "reformed Egyptian"; they were undecipherable except by the aid of a pair of magic peep-stones named Urim and Thummim, delivered him for the purpose by the angel at Palmyra; looking through the hole in these peep-stones, he was able to interpret the gold plates. This was the skeleton of the story embellished by later ornamentation in the way of golden breastplates, two stones bright and shining, golden plates united at the back by rings, the sword of Laban, square stone boxes, cemented clasps, invisible blows, suggestions of Satan, and similar mummery born from the quickened imagination of a zealot.

Smith succeeded in interesting one Harris to act as his amanuensis in his interpretation of these books of Mormon. The future prophet sat behind a screen with the supposed gold plates in his hat. He dictated through the stones Urim and Thummim. With a keen imagination and natural aptitude for the strikingly dramatic, he was able to present formally his ritual, tabernacle, holy of holies, priesthood and tithings, constitution and councils, blood atonement, anointment, twelve apostles, miracles, his spiritual manifestations and revelations, all in reminiscence of the religious tenets of many lands.

Such religious movements rise and fall at periodic intervals. Sometimes they are never heard of outside the small communities of their birth; at other times they arise to temporary nation-wide importance, but they are unlucky either in leadership or environment and so perish. The Mormon Church, however, was fortunate in all respects. Smith was in no manner a successful leader, but he made a good prophet. He was strong physically, was a great wrestler, and had an abundance of good nature; he was personally popular with the type of citizen with whom he was thrown. He could impress the ignorant mind with the reality of his revelations and the potency of his claims. He could impress the more intelligent, but half unscrupulous, half fanatical minds of the leaders with the power of his idea and the opportunities offered for leadership.

Two men of the latter type were Parley P. Pratt and Sidney Rigdon. The former was of the narrow, strong, fanatic type; the latter had the cool constructive brain that gave point, direction, and consistency to the Mormon system of theology. Had it not been for such leaders and others like them, it is quite probable that the Smith movement would have been lost like hundreds of others. That Smith himself lasted so long as the head of the Church, with the powers and perquisites of that position, can be explained by the fact that, either by accident or shrewd design, his position before the unintelligent masses had been made impregnable. If it was not true that Joseph Smith had received the golden plates from an angel and had translated them—again with the assistance of an angel—and had received from heaven the revelations vouchsafed from time to time for the explicit guidance of the Church in moral, temporal, and spiritual matters, then there was no Book of Mormon, no new revelation, no Mormon Church. The dethronement of Smith meant that there could be no successor to Smith, for there would be nothing to which to succeed. The whole church structure must crumble with him.

The time was psychologically right. Occasionally a contagion of religious need seems to sweep the country. People demand manifestations and signs, and will flock to any who can promise them. To this class the Book of Mormon, with its definite sort of mysticism, appealed strongly. The promises of a new Zion were concrete; the power was centralized, so that people who had heretofore been floundering in doubt felt they could lean on authority, and shake off the personal responsibility that had weighed them down. The Mormon communities grew fast, and soon began to send out proselyting missionaries. England was especially a fruitful field for these missionaries. The great manufacturing towns were then at their worst, containing people desperately ignorant, superstitious, and so deeply poverty-stricken that the mere idea of owning land of their own seemed to them the height of affluence. Three years after the arrival of the missionaries the general conference reported 4019 converts in England alone. These were good material in the hands of strong, fanatical, or unscrupulous leaders. They were religious enthusiasts, of course, who believed they were coming to a real city of Zion. Most of them were in debt to the Church for the price of their passage, and their expenses. They were dutiful in their acceptance of miracles, signs, and revelations. The more intelligent among them realized that, having come so far and invested in the enterprise their all, it was essential that they accept wholly the discipline and authority of the Church.

Before their final migration to Utah, the Mormons made three ill-fated attempts to found the city of Zion, first in Ohio, then in western Missouri, and finally, upon their expulsion from Missouri, at Nauvoo in Illinois. In every case they both inspired and encountered opposition and sometimes persecution. As the Mormons increased in power, they became more self-sufficient and arrogant. They at first presumed to dictate politically, and then actually began to consider themselves a separate political entity. One of their earliest pieces of legislation, under the act incorporating the city of Nauvoo, was an ordinance to protect the inhabitants of the Mormon communities from all outside legal processes. No writ for the arrest of any Mormon inhabitants of any Mormon city could be executed until it had received the mayor's approval. By way of a mild and adequate penalty, anyone violating this ordinance was to be imprisoned for life with no power of pardon in the governor without the mayor's consent.

Of course this was a welcome opportunity for the lawless and desperate characters of the surrounding country. They became Mormon to a man. Under the shield of Mormon protection they could steal and raid to their heart's content. Land speculators also came into the Church, and bought land in the expectation that New Zion property would largely rise. Banking grew somewhat frantic. Complaints became so bitter that even the higher church authorities were forced to take cognizance of the practices. In 1840 Smith himself said: "We are no longer at war, and you must stop stealing. When the right time comes, we will go in force and take the whole State of Missouri. It belongs to us as our inheritance, but I want no more petty stealing. A man that will steal petty articles from his enemies will, when occasion offers, steal from his brethren too. Now I command you that have stolen must steal no more."

At Nauvoo, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, they built a really pretentious and beautiful city, and all but completed a temple that was, from every account, creditable. However, their arrogant relations with their neighbors and the extreme isolation in which they held themselves soon earned them the dislike and distrust of those about them. The practice of polygamy had begun, although even to the rank and file of the Mormons themselves the revelation commanding it was as yet unknown. Still, rumors had leaked forth. The community, already severely shocked in its economic sense, was only too ready to be shocked in its moral sense, as is the usual course of human nature. The rather wild vagaries of the converts, too, aroused distrust and disgust in the sober minds of the western pioneers. At religious meetings converts would often arise to talk in gibberish—utterly nonsensical gibberish. This was called a "speaking with tongues," and could be translated by the speaker or a bystander in any way he saw fit, without responsibility for the saying. This was an easy way of calling a man names without standing behind it, so to speak. The congregation saw visions, read messages on stones picked up in the field—messages which disappeared as soon as interpreted. They had fits in meetings, they chased balls of fire through the fields, they saw wonderful lights in the air, in short they went through all the hysterical vagaries formerly seen also in the Methodist revivals under John Wesley.