Читать книгу The Coming of the Mormons - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 6

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In order to have a clearer understanding of the mighty task facing the Mormons, it is necessary to know something about their backgrounds and the sort of people they were.

By 1846 Nauvoo was a good-sized city with about twenty thousand inhabitants, most of whom were Mormons. The population was further swollen by Mormons whose farm homes had been burned or who had been harassed by the mob. They had come into Nauvoo because they would be safer there. But, contrary to popular opinion, few of the Mormons were what we like to think of as the rough and ready frontier type, people who were accustomed to taking a rifle and a handful of salt and making a living in the wilderness.

They had gathered from every state in the Union and from many foreign countries. The greater number were gently reared, gentle-thinking people. All their lives many had been accustomed to the finest luxuries of the day. There were mechanics, artists, farmers, poets, teachers, editors, blacksmiths, and many other trades and professions represented among them. A number were college graduates, or had won honors at universities. Many had never shot a rifle, driven a team of horses or a yoke of oxen, and before coming to Nauvoo many had never seen anything that even looked like a frontier.

It was these people, and not a crowd of hardened pioneers, whom Brigham Young proposed to lead across two thousand miles of almost uninhabited wilderness to homes that would have to be built of materials at hand after they arrived. In addition, there were thousands of Mormons in the East and in Europe who wanted only an opportunity to join those already under Brigham Young. They did not care how far they had to travel or where they had to go in order to do so.

Brigham Young and the other apostles were trained and experienced in the ways of the frontier. They showed the more than two thousand families who were ready to move how to go about it.

Each family of five people was to have a strong wagon, six oxen to pull it, two cows, three sheep, one thousand pounds of flour, twenty pounds of sugar, a rifle with ammunition, a tent, seeds, farming and other tools, and the innumerable personal articles such as needles, clothing, and soap, which any family needs no matter where it is.

Brigham Young was also looking to the future. The Mormons were going to live in a wilderness, but it would be a wilderness only until they had time to tame and civilize it. The Mormon leaders knew perfectly well that, at first, the people would have to live roughly and would not have everything they needed. Nevertheless, the leaders had in mind something besides settlers' cabins. They determined from the first that the Mormons were going west not only to live, but to live well. They would build great and wonderful cities, and everything necessary they themselves must provide.

Therefore, the wagons also held flower seeds, slips from fruit and other trees, grape vines, seed potatoes, butter churns, saws, hammers and nails, window glass, stone-working tools, lace for curtains, and iron-working machinery.

Brigham Young further proved his intelligence and his great ability to look forward by asking every family that had a library to take at least one book which might later prove of worth to the entire community. A complete printing press, and everything necessary to operate it, must go along.

Brigham Young wanted much more. Sacred furnishings and the silver-toned bell from the temple, which even today may be seen in Salt Lake City, were to go with the Mormons. Two pianos and organs were in the wagons. Pitt's Brass Band and Duzett's band traveled with the emigrants. Brigham Young asked Mormons in England to send him surveyor's instruments and all the latest scientific instruments of the day in order that the Mormons might always be sure of their exact latitude and longitude.

Most Western travelers of the day—scouts, soldiers, trappers—would have laughed had they looked at the Mormon stores. But the usual Western travelers were not on the same mission as the Mormons. With few exceptions they went into the West to find profit for themselves; the Mormons were going to build homes.

There were many who thought, and doubtless hoped, that the Mormons would die on the trail. But Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, Parley Pratt, and other leading Mormons were determined to make the journey a success. There were two reasons why they were sure they would be successful.

First of all, they had complete faith in a God who would not desert them. Secondly, they had complete faith in themselves and their people. As little as possible was left to chance. They had the best wagons, the best gear, the best horses and oxen, the best maps, and the best plans that they could get. Probably, all things considered, they had the best people too. By far the greater number of the Mormons were not experienced frontiersmen, but they were intelligent and resourceful. They did not fear work, and hardship they could endure.

The first Mormons to leave Nauvoo, early in February, were taken across the Mississippi on barges and flatboats manned by the Nauvoo Police Force. The immense wagons were driven onto the barges and lashed down so they could not move. Livestock were tethered so there was no escape. Crates of poultry were tied to the rear of the wagons.

For the first ones who left, this beginning step in their long journey was, perhaps, as dangerous and as breath-taking as any that was to come later. The weather, while not cold enough to freeze the Mississippi, was cold enough to form some ice. In addition, ice cakes that had frozen farther north were hurtling down the flooded river.

Ice smashed against the boats and barges carrying the people of Nauvoo. Mothers gasped as they gathered young children about them, while fathers and older boys helped with the oars. Horses and oxen lunged at their tethers. Chickens set up a wild cackling. Ducks fluttered in their cages and the honking of alarmed geese added to the general disorder.

So skillful were the river men, and so well had they planned, that the first companies of Mormons were taken across the wild river with the loss of only one span of oxen. Breaking their tethers, the fear-crazed beasts plunged across a flatboat and jumped into the river. Both were drowned.

That night's camp was probably as dreary and desolate a one as human beings have ever erected. Reaching the Iowa shore, the teamsters drove their wagons nine miles to a wooded area along Sugar Creek. Had there been any faint-hearted among them, they would have turned back the next day.

The temperature hovered near zero. There was snow on the ground and a freezing sleet falling. Of course nothing was prepared for the travelers and there could be little thought of comfort. The people who first crossed the river had to use all the skill and resourcefulness at their command just to stay alive through that terrible night.

There on the banks of Sugar Creek, that first night out of Nauvoo, the Mormons proved their mettle.

Some of the men busied themselves shoveling snow so that, though the best shelter they had was either a wagon or a tent, they would not have to sleep in the snow. Other men cut down trees and built great log fires to ward off the bitter cold. In addition to these, there were cooking fires that had to be built. Women who had never before cooked over such a fire, now took pots and skillets out of their wagons and proceeded to get a hot meal for their families. Those who did not know how to do it were taught by those who did. Only the very sick, the very young, or the crippled could rest.

Brigham Young and other Mormon elders moved quietly through the camp. These high officials put their shoulders to the wheels of mired wagons, paying no attention whatever to the mud, ice, and snow that spattered their clothing. They showed a man who had made a poor camp how to make a better one. More than once that night they knelt beside a cooking fire, took a skillet or a pot from the hands of a woman who had never before tried to cook anywhere but in a fine home, and taught her the knack of camp cookery. They comforted children and, when the camp was finally partly settled, Brigham Young and the other apostles appointed themselves as guards. That was too responsible a duty to delegate to anyone else.

That night, in what at the best was a primitive camp, nine babies were born. One mother lay on a rude bed in a sort of tent made with canvas walls that were thatched with bark. Freezing sleet was falling into the tent but other women stood about with pots, skillets, pails, and caught the sleet as it fell so that it could not touch mother or child.

The next day the camp on Sugar Creek was organized. More and more families were coming in, and places must be made for them. What is more, they must be good places. The Mormons were going west, but they weren't going there in a slipshod, disorderly fashion.

Brigham Young was a sympathetic and understanding leader of his people, but he was no easy taskmaster. Strict sanitation and cleanliness must at all times be observed. The assembling Mormons were divided into companies, with leaders and sub-leaders for each, and every able-bodied person had appointed tasks which must be done.

By no means was it all work and no play. Brigham Young forbade drinking, gambling, and swearing. But in the evening, when the work of the day was finished, Pitt's Band could play for a camp dance. The camp had its quota of talented people—singers, jugglers, magicians—who helped entertain the rest. Books were so much in demand that often, passed from hand to hand, they were read by moonlight.

About the middle of February the Mississippi froze hard enough so that the ice would support a loaded wagon and the beasts that pulled it. The boats were no longer needed.

By the first of March, there was a whole city of tents on the banks of Sugar Creek.