The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901

by William Alexander Linn

The next morning Captain Willie was assigned to take count of the dead. An examination of the camp showed thirteen corpses, all stiffly frozen. They were buried in a large square hole, three or four abreast and three deep. "When they did not fit in," says Chislett, "we put one or two crosswise at the head or feet of the others. We covered them with willows and then with the earth." Two other victims were buried before nightfall. Parties passing eastward by this place the following summer found that the wolves had speedily uncovered the corpses, and that their bones were scattered all over the neighborhood.

Further deaths continued every day until they arrived at South Pass. There more assistance from the valley met them, the weather became warmer, and the health of the party improved, so that when they arrived at Salt Lake City they were in better condition and spirits. The date of their arrival there was November 9. The company which set out from Iowa City numbered about 500, of whom 400 set out from Florence across the plains. Of these 400, 67 died on the way, and there were a few deaths after they reached the end of their journey.

Another company of these hand-cart travellers left Florence still later than the ones whose sufferings have been described. They were in charge of an elder named Martin. Like their predecessors, they were warned against setting out so late as the middle of August, and many of them tried to give up the trip, but permission to do so was refused. Their sufferings began soon after they crossed the Platte, near Fort Laramie, and snow was encountered sixty miles east of Devil's Gate. When they reached that landmark, they decided that they could make no further progress with their hand-carts. They accordingly took possession of half a dozen dilapidated log houses, the contents of the wagons were placed in some of these, the hand-carts were left behind, and as many people as the teams could drag were placed in the wagons and started forward. One of the survivors of this party has written: "The track of the emigrants was marked by graves, and many of the living suffered almost worse than death. Men may be seen to-day in Salt Lake City, who were boys then, hobbling around on their club-feet, all their toes having been frozen off in that fearful march." * Twenty men who were left at Devil's Gate had a terrible experience, being compelled, before assistance reached them, to eat even the pieces of hide wrapped round their cart-wheels, and a piece of buffalo skin that had been used as a door-mat. Strange to say, all of these men reached the valley alive.

* "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 337.

We have seen that Brigham Young was the inventor of this hand-cart immigration scheme. Alarmed by the result of the experiment, as soon as the wretched remnant of the last two parties arrived in Salt Lake City, he took steps to place the responsibility for the disaster on other shoulders. The idea which he carried out was to shift the blame to F. D. Richards on the ground that he allowed the immigrants to start too late. In an address in the Tabernacle, while Captain Willie's party was approaching the city, he told the returned missionaries from England that they needed to be careful about eulogizing Richards and Spencer, lest they should have "the big head." When these men were in Salt Lake City he cursed them with the curse of the church. E. W. Tullidge, who was an editor of the Millennial Star in Liverpool under Richards when the hand-cart emigrants were collected, proposed, when in later years he was editing the Utah Magazine, to tell the facts about that matter; but when Young learned this, he ordered Godbe, the controlling owner of the magazine, to destroy that issue, after one side of the sheets had been printed, and he was obeyed.* Fortunately Young was not able to destroy the files of the Millennial Star.

* "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 342.

There is much that is thoroughly typical of Mormonism in the history of these expeditions. No converts were ever instilled with a more confident belief in the divine character of the ridiculous pretender, Joseph Smith. To no persons were more flagrant misrepresentations ever made by the heads of the church, and over none was the dictatorial authority of the church exercised more remorselessly. Not only was Utah held out to them as "a land where honest labor and industry meet with a suitable reward, and where the higher walks of life are open to the humblest and poorest," * but they were informed that, if they had not faith enough to undertake the trip to Utah, they had not "faith sufficient to endure, with the Saints in Zion, the celestial law which leads to exaltation and eternal life." Young wrote to Richards privately in October, 1855, "Adhere strictly to our former suggestion of walking them through across the plains with hand-carts";** and Richards in an editorial in the Star thereupon warned the Saints: "The destroying angel is abroad. Pestilence and gaunt famine will soon increase the terrors of the scene to an extent as yet without a parallel in the records of the human race. If the anticipated toils of the journey shake your faith in the promises of the Lord, it is high time that you were digging about the foundation of it, and seeing if it be founded on the root of the Holy Priesthood," etc.

* Thirteenth General Epistle, Millennial Star, Vol. XVIII, p. 49.

** Millennial Star, Vol. XVIII, p, 61.

The direct effect of such teaching is shown in two letters printed in the Millennial Star of June 14, 1856. In the first of these, a sister, writing to her brother in Liverpool from Williamsburg, New York, confesses her surprise on learning that the journey was to be made with hand-carts, says that their mother cannot survive such a trip, and that she does not think the girls can, points out that the limitation regarding baggage would compel them to sell nearly all their clothes, and proposes that they wait in New York or St. Louis until they could procure a wagon. In his reply the brother scorns this advice, says that he would not stop in New York if he were offered 10,000 pounds besides his expenses, and adds "Brothers, sisters, fathers or mothers, when they put a stumbling block in the way of my salvation, are nothing more to me than Gentiles. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, and when we start we will go right up to Zion, if we go ragged and barefoot."