CHAPTER VII

THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES - LAST DAYS ON THE MISSOURI

WHEN the pioneers set out from the Missouri, instructions were left for the organization of similar companies who were to follow their trail, without waiting to learn their ultimate destination or how they fared on the way. These companies were in charge of prominent men like Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, Bishop Hunter, Daniel Spencer, who succeeded Smith as mayor of Nauvoo, and J. M. Grant, the first mayor of Salt Lake City after its incorporation.

P. P. Pratt set out early in June, as soon as he could get his wagons and equipment in order, for Elk Horn River, where a sort of rendezvous was established, and a rough ferry boat put in operation. Hence started about the Fourth of July the big company which has been called "the first emigration." It consisted, according to the most trustworthy statistics, of 1553 persons, equipped with 566 wagons, 2213 oxen, 124 horses, 887 cows, 358 sheep, 35 hogs, and 716 chickens. Pratt had brought back from England 469 sovereigns, collected as tithing, which were used in equipping the first parties for Utah. This company had at its head, as president, Brigham Young's brother John, with P. P. Pratt as chief adviser.

Nothing more serious interrupted the movement of these hundreds of emigrants than dissatisfaction with Pratt, upsets, broken wagons, and the occasional straying of cattle, and all arrived in the valley in the latter part of September, Pratt's division on the 25th.

The company which started on the return trip with Young on August 26 embraced those Apostles who had gone West with him, some others of the pioneers, and most of the members of the Battalion who had joined them, and whose families were still on the banks of the Missouri. The eastward trip was made interesting by the meetings with the successive companies who were on their way

to the Salt Lake Valley. Early in September some Indians stole 48 of their horses, and ten weeks later 200 Sioux charged their camp, but there was no loss of life.

On the 19th of October the party were met by a mounted company who had left Winter Quarters to offer any aid that might be needed, and were escorted to that camp. They arrived there on October 31, where they were welcomed by their families, and feasted as well as the supplies would permit.

The winter of 1847-1848 was employed by Young and his associates in completing the church organization, mapping out a scheme of European immigration, and preparing for the removal of the remaining Mormons to Salt Lake Valley.

That winter was much milder than its predecessor, and the health of the camps was improved, due, in part, to the better physical condition of their occupants. On the west side of the river, however, troubles had arisen with the Omahas, who complained to the government that the Mormons were killing off the game and depleting their lands of timber. The new-comers were accordingly directed to recross the river, and it was in this way that the camp near Council Bluffs in 1848 secured its principal population. In Mormon letters of that date the name Winter Quarters is sometimes applied to the settlement east of the river generally known as Kanesville.

The programme then arranged provided for the removal in the spring of 1848 to Salt Lake Valley of practically all Mormons who remained on the Missouri, leaving only enough to look after the crops there and to maintain a forwarding point for emigrants from Europe and the Eastern states. The legislature of Iowa by request organized a county embracing the camps on the east side of the river. There seems to have been an idea in the minds of some of the Mormons that they might effect a permanent settlement in western Iowa. Orson Pratt, in a general epistle to the Saints in Europe, encouraging emigration, dated August 15, 1848, said, "A great, extensive, and rich tract of country has also been, by the providence of God, put in the possession of the Saints in the western borders of Iowa," which the Saints would have the first chance to purchase, at five shillings per acre. A letter from G. A. Smith and E. T. Benson to O. Pratt, dated December 20 in that year, told of the formation of a company of 860 members to

enclose an additional tract of 11,000 acres, in shares of from 5 to 80 acres, and of the laying out of two new cities, ten miles north and south. Orson Hyde set up a printing-press there, and for some time published the Frontier Guardian. But wiser counsel pre

vailed, and by 1853 most of the emigrants from Nauvoo had passed on to Utah,1 and Linforth found Kanesville in 1853 "very dirty and unhealthy," and full of gamblers, lawyers, and dealers in "bargains," the latter made up principally of the outfits of discouraged immigrants who had given up the trip at that point.

Young himself took charge of the largest body that was to cross the plains in 1848. The preparations were well advanced by the first of May, and on the 24th he set out for Elk Horn (commonly called "The Horn ") where the organization of the column was to be made. The travellers were divided into two large companies, the first four "hundreds" comprising 1229 persons and 397 wagons; the second section, led by H. C. Kimball, 662 persons and 226 wagons; and the third, under Elders W. Richards and A. Lyman, about 300 wagons. A census of the first two companies, made by the clerk of the camp, showed that their equipment embraced the following items: horses, 131; mules, 44; oxen, 2012; cows and other cattle, 1317; sheep, 654; pigs, 237; chickens, 904; cats, 54; dogs, 134; goats, 3; geese, 10; ducks, 5; hives of bees, 5; doves, II; and one squirrel.2

The expense of fitting out these companies was necessarily large, and the heads of the church left at Kanesville a debt amounting to $3600, "without any means being provided for its payment." 3

President Young's company began its actual westward march on June 5, and the last detachment got away about the 25th. They reached the site of Salt Lake City in September. The incidents of the trip were not more interesting than those of the previous year, and only four deaths occurred on the way.

1 On September 21, 1851, the First Presidency sent a letter to the Saints who were still in Iowa, directing them all to come to Salt Lake Valley, and saying: "What are you waiting for? Have you any good excuse for not coming? No. You have all of you unitedly a far better chance than we had when we started as pioneers to find this place." - Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, p. 29.

2 Millennial Star, Vol. X, p. 319.

8 Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 14.

BOOK VI

IN UTAH

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDING OF SALT LAKE CITY

THE first white men to enter what is now Utah were a part of the force of Coronado, under Captain Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas, if the reader of the evidence decides that their journey from Zuni took them, in 1540, across the present Utah border line.1 A more definite account has been preserved of a second exploration, which left Santa Fé in 1776, led by two priests, Dominguez and Escalante, in search of a route to the California coast. A two months' march brought them to a lake, called Timpanogos by the natives - now Utah Lake on the map - where they were told of another lake, many leagues in extent, whose waters were so salt that they made the body itch when wet with them; but they turned to the southwest without visiting it. Lahontan's report of the discovery of a body of bad-tasting water on the western side of the continent in 1689 is not accepted as more than a part of an imaginary narrative. S. A. Ruddock asserted that, in 1821, he with a trading party made a journey from Council Bluffs to Oregon by way of Santa Fé and Great Salt Lake.2

Bancroft mentions this claim "for what it is worth," but awards the honor of the discovery of the lake, as the earliest authenticated, to James Bridger, the noted frontiersman who, some twelve years later, built his well-known trading fort on Green River. Bridger, with a party of trappers who had journeyed west from the Missouri

1 See Bancroft's "History of Utah," Chap. 1.

2 House Report, No. 213, 1st Session, 19th Congress.

with Henry and Ashley in 1824, got into a discussion that winter with his fellows, while they were camped on Bear River, about the course of that stream, and, to decide a bet, Bridger followed it southward until he came to Great Salt Lake. In the following

spring four of the party explored the lake in boats made of skins, hoping to find beavers, and they, it is believed, were the first white men to float upon its waters. Frémont saw the lake from the summit of a butte on September 6, 1843. "It was," he says, "one of the great objects of the exploration, and, as we looked eagerly over the lake in the first emotions of excited pleasure, I am doubtful if the followers of Balboa felt more enthusiasm when, from the heights of the Andes, they saw for the first time the great Western Ocean." This practical claim of discovery was not well founded, nor was his sail on the lake in an india-rubber boat "the first ever attempted on this interior sea."

Dating from 1825, the lake region of Utah became more and more familiar to American trappers and explorers. In 1833 Captain Bonneville, of the United States army, obtained leave of absence, and with a company of 110 trappers set out for the Far West by the Platte route. Crossing the Rockies through the South Pass, he made a fortified camp on Green River, whence he for three years explored the country. One of his parties, under Joseph Walker, was sent to trap beavers on Great Salt Lake and to explore it thoroughly, making notes and maps. Bonneville, in his description of the lake to Irving, declared that lofty mountains rose from its bosom, and greatly magnified its extent to the south.1 Walker's party got within sight of the lake, but found themselves in a desert, and accordingly changed their course and crossed the Sierras into California. In Bonneville's map the lake is called "Lake Bonneville or Great Salt Lake," and Irving calls it Lake Bonneville in his "Astoria."

The day after the first arrival of Brigham Young in Salt Lake Valley (Sunday, July 25), church services were held and the sacrament was administered. Young addressed his followers, indicating at the start his idea of his leadership and of the ownership of the land, which was then Mexican territory. "He said that no man should buy any land who came here," says Woodruff; "that he had none to sell; but every man should have his land measured

1 Bonneville's "Adventures," p. 184.