Chapter IX.
At The Missouri.
1846-1847.

Native Racks of the Missouri — the Pottawattamies and the Omahas — the Mormons Welcomed As Brethren — War With Mexico — Californila Territory — Mexican Boundaries — Application to the United States Government for Aid — An Offer to Serve As Soldiers Accepted — Organization of the Mormon Battalion — Departure of the Battalion — Bounty Money — March Across the Continent — the Battalion in California — Matters on the Missouri.

    Among the savages on either side of the Missouri, the Pottawattamies on the east side and the Omahas on the west side, the outcasts from Nauvoo were warmly welcomed. "My Mormon brethren," said the chief Pied Riche,¹ "the Pottawattamie came sad and tired into this unhealthy Missouri bottom, not many years back, when he was taken from his beautiful country beyond the Mississippi, which had abundant game and timber and clear water everywhere. Now you are driven away in the same manner from your lodges and lands there, and the graves of your people. So we have both suffered. We must help one another, and the great spirit will help us both."

    Extreme care was taken not to infringe in any way upon the rights of the Indians or the government. Brigham counselled the brethren to regard as sacred the burial customs of the natives; frequently their dead were deposited in the branches of trees, wrapped in buffalo robes and blankets, with pipes and trinkets

    As the United States pretended to hold the title to the land, it was thought that the Pottawattamies had no right to convey their timber to others; so Brigham enjoined that there should be no waste of timber within these limits, but that as much as was necessary might be used. A permit for passing through their territory, and for remaining while necessary, was obtained from Colonel Allen, who was acting for the United States.³

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    Although it was late in the season when the first bands of emigrants crossed the Missouri, some of them still moved westward as far as the Pawnee villages on Grand Island, intending to select a new home before winter. But the evil tidings from Nauvoo, and the destitute condition in which other parties of the

³Hist. B. Young, MS., 1846, 98-9. Maj. Harvey brought the Mormons at Winter Quarters letters from Washington, expecting them to leave the Pottawattamie lands in the spring. See cor., Hist. B. Young, MS., 441-52.

    While the saints were undergoing their infelicities at Nauvoo, war had broken out between the United States and Mexico. At that time New Mexico and California were a part of Mexico, and Utah and Nevada were a part of California.⁵ Journeying west from Nauvoo, California or Oregon would be reached. The latter territory was already secured to the United States; people were there from the United States, composing religious sects and political parties as jealous of their holdings as any in Missouri or Illinois. Vancouver Island⁶ was practically unoccupied, but the Hudson's Bay Company would scarcely regard with favor its occupation by a large body of American citizens whose government was at that moment crowding them out of the Oregon territory and across the Columbia River.

    But had the Mormons known their destination, had they known what point among the mountains or

⁵I frequently find California and Utah confounded by writers of this early period. The limits of California on the east were not then defined, and it was not uncommon, nor indeed incorrect, to apply that term to territory east of the sierra. I find this written in Snow's Voice of the Prophet, 15: 'The pioneers discovered a beautiful valley beyond the pass of the great Rocky Mts, being a portion of the great basin of Upper California.' As we shall see later, the Mormons knew even less about Utah than they did about California.

⁶Brigham Young at first suggested Vancouver Island. 'There are said to be many good locations for settlements on the Pacific, especially at Vancouver Island.' Circular to the brethren, in Times and Seasons, vi. 1019. In 1845 the report was current that the Mormons of Illinois had chosen V. I. as their future home, the metropolis to be situated at Nootka. Niles' Register, lxix. 134. The Quincy Whig thinks the Mormons intend to settle at Nootka Sound. Polynesian, ii. 1846.

    The national title to what is now the Pacific United States being at this time thus unsettled, and the Mormons having been driven from what was then

⁸In his address to the saints in Great Britain, dated Liverpool, 1849, Elder John Taylor says: 'When we arrive in California, according to the provisions of the Mexican government, each family will be entitled to a large tract of land, amounting to several hundred acres; but as the Mexican and American nations are now at war, should Cal. fall into the hands of the American nation, there has been a bill before congress in relation to Or., which will undoubtedly pass, appropriating 640 acres of land to every male settler.' Millennial Star, viii. 115.

    They now applied to the government at Washington for work, offering to open roads, transport military stores, or perform any other service which the government might require in this farthest west, even to assist in fighting its battles. Such occupation would be of the greatest advantage to them in this new country, where land was fertile and plenty and free, and possessing as they did large herds of cattle and horses and sheep, with no market and but little money. And on the other hand, being on the ground, accustomed to work, and having every facility at hand without long and expensive transportation, they could give more and better work for the pay than the government could obtain by any other means.

    They even asked for aid direct about the time the exodus began, being represented at Washington by Elder Jesse C. Little,⁹ who, aided by Colonel Kane, Amos Kendall, and others, brought the matter before President Polk. While negotiations were yet in progress, news arrived that General Taylor had already won two victories over the Mexicans; whereupon the elder addressed a petition to the president, stating that from twelve to fifteen thousand Mormons had set forth from Nauvoo for California, while some had departed by sea, and in Great Britain alone were forty thousand converts, all resolved to join the saints in their promised land. Many of them were without means; they were compelled to go; they wanted assistance

    Elder Little was taken at his word. At a cabinet meeting, held a day or two after his petition was presented, the president advised that the elder be sent at once to the Mormon camps, and there raise a thousand men to take possession of California in the name of the United States, while a thousand more be sent by way of Cape Horn for the same purpose, on board a United States transport. It was finally arranged that the elder, in company with Kane, should proceed westward, the latter bearing despatches to Kearny, then at Fort Leavenworth, with a view to raising a corps of about five hundred men.

    On the 19th of June, Kearny issued an order to Captain James Allen of the 1st dragoons to proceed to the Mormon camp, and there raise four or five companies of volunteers, to be mustered into the service of the United States and receive the pay and rations of other infantry volunteers. They were then to be marched to Fort Leavenworth, where they would be armed; after which they would proceed to California by way of Santa Fé. They were to enlist for twelve months, after which time they were to be discharged, retaining as their own property the arms furnished them.

    In pursuance of his orders, Captain Allen proceeded to Mount Pisgah, where on the 26th he made known his mission. After a conference with the church council at that point, Allen went to Council Bluffs, where on the 1st of July it was determined by President Young that the battalion should be raised. In two weeks the corps was enrolled, and mustered in on the 16th of July, the president of the church

    Though in reality a great benefit to the brethren, there were some hardships connected with the measure.¹⁰ As Brigham and others were on their way from Council Bluffs to Pisgah to aid in obtaining these recruits, they passed 800 west-bound wagons. At their encampments on each side the river there was much serious illness, and as many of the teamsters had been withdrawn for this campaign, much heavy work fell upon the women and children, and the aged and infirm.¹¹

    After a ball on the afternoon of the 19th, the volunteers next day bade farewell to their families and friends, and accompanied by eighty women and children,¹² set forth on their march,¹³ on the 1st of August arriving at Fort Leavenworth. Here the men received

¹¹'Most of our people were sick; in fact, the call for 500 able-bodied men from Council Bluffs for Mexico, by the government, deprived us of about all our strength.' Richards' Rem., MS., 25.

¹²Compare official report in U. S. House Ex. Doc., no. 24, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., and Tyler's Hist. Mormon Battalion, and note discrepancies in regard to numbers enlisted and discharged. The names of those who reached California will be found in my pioneer register, Hist. Cal., this series.

¹³'The members started upon their pilgrimage cheerfully,' says Woodruff, 'understanding that they occupied the place of a ram caught in a thicket, and were making a sacrifice for the salvation of Israel.' Utah Pioneers, 20.

    About the middle of August the corps resumed its march toward Santa Fé, a distance of seven hundred miles, arriving at that place in two parties on the 9th and 12th of October. There eighty-eight men were invalided and sent back to Pueblo for the winter, and later a second detachment of fifty-five, being found unfit for service, was also ordered to Pueblo.¹⁵ Many of them found their way during the following year to the valley of Great Salt Lake.

    From Santa Fé the remainder of the troops set forth for San Diego, a journey of more than eleven hundred miles, the entire distance between that, town and the Mormon camps on the Missouri exceeding two thousand miles. Much of the route lay through a pathless desert; at few points could food be obtained in sufficient quantity for man or beast, and sometimes even water failed. Wells were sunk in the wilderness; but on one occasion, at least, the men travelled for a hundred miles without water.¹⁶ Before leaving Santa

¹⁵Families accompanying the battalion were ordered to Pueblo for winter quarters. Hist. B. Young, MS., 1S46, 260. A detachment was sent to Pueblo consisting of 89 men and 18 laundresses. Later in this vol., I refer to affairs at Pueblo as furnished me in a very valuable manuscript by Judge Stone of Colorado.

¹⁶In a general order issued at San Diego on Jan. 30, 1847, by command of Lieut-col St George Cooke, then in charge of the battalion, vice Col Allen, deceased, the men are thus complimented on their safe arrival at the shores of the Pacific: 'History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry; nine tenths of it through a wilderness, where nothing but savages and (cont.)

    Passing through a New Mexican pueblo on the 24th of October, some of the men were almost as naked as on the day of their birth, except for a breech-clout, or as their colonel termed it, a 'centre-clothing,' tied around the loins. In this plight, near the middle of December, the battalion reached the San Pedro River, some three hundred and forty strong, and here occurred the only battle which the saints militant fought during their campaign—an encounter with a

¹⁷'Until further orders, three fourths pound of flour, also three fourths rations sugar and coffee will be issued. Beef, one and a half pounds will be issued for a day's ration.' Order No. 11, Headquarters Mormon Battalion, Santa Fé. A copy of it will be found in Tyler's Hist. Mor. Battalion, 175-6.

¹⁸During the march from Santa Fé to San Diego a song was composed by Levi W. Hancock, a musician belonging to company E. It was entitled the 'Desert Route,' and commences:

While here beneath a sultry sky,
Our famished mules and cattle die;
Scarce aught but skin and bones remain;
To feed poor soldiers on the plain.

Chorus: How hard to starve and wear us out
Upon this sandy desert route.

We sometimes now for lack of bread,
Are less than quarter rations fed,
And soon expect, for all of meat,
Naught else than broke-down mules to eat.

Now half-starved oxen, over-drilled,
Too weak to draw, for beef are killed;
And gnawing hunger prompting men,
To eat small entrails and the skin.

Id., 181-2.

    A more detailed account of the career of the Mormon battalion will be found in my History of California. It remains only to add here that about one hundred of the men reached Salt Lake City in the winter of 1847, while some remained on the Pacific coast.²⁰

    The alacrity displayed by the Mormon president in raising this battalion has been ascribed to various causes; to the fear of further persecution should the levy be refused, and to a desire of showing that, notwithstanding their maltreatment, the saints were still

²⁰In the Frontier Guardian, March 7, 1849, is a notice copied from the St Joseph Gazette, stating that the members of the battalion can at once receive their extra pay at Fort Leavenworth. The notice is signed by Paymaster Thos S. Bryant.

    At the close of 1846, about twelve thousand souls had assembled in the Mormon camps, a portion of them being yet stationed as far eastward as Garden Grove. Of the rest a few had made their way to some Atlantic port and taken ship for California; many had dispersed throughout the country, some of whom were now gathering at the rendezvous. Though the first bands that crossed the Mississippi encountered no very severe hardships, as I have said, the sufferings of those who set forth later have few parallels, even among the pioneers, who, a year or two afterward, followed their track westward in search of gold.²¹

    Mount Pisgah, the next encampment west of Garden Grove, was on the middle fork of Grand River. Through this winter of 1846-7, which was one of severest struggle, there was great lack of food and clothing. They could not go on because they had no teams, most of them being employed in bringing forward the emigration from the Mississippi. Many

    On each side of the hills where now stands Council Bluffs could be seen the white canvas tents of a Mormon encampment, from which arose at sunrise the smoke of hundreds of fires. After the morning meal, the men employed themselves in tending herds, in planting grain and vegetables, or in building houses for winter. Many of them were excellent craftsmen, and could fell a tree, and split its trunk into boards, scantling, rails, posts, or whatever were needed, as

²³'Parties were sent to the gentile settlements to look for work, food, and clothing, and elders Dana and Campbell collected about $600 from the rich gentiles in Ohio and elsewhere.' Snow's Biography, 91.

    During the summer and autumn months of 1846, the Papillon camp, near the Little Butterfly River, in common with the others, was stricken with fever, and with a scorbutic disease which the Mormons termed the black canker. In the autumn drought, the streams that discharge into the Missouri at this point are often little better than open sewers, pestilential as open cesspools, and the river, having lost more than half its volume, flows sluggishly through its channel of slime and sedge. Of the baked mud on either bank is formed the rich soil on which lay the encampments, the site being called, in their own phrase, Misery Bottom. In the year previous the Indians in this neighborhood had lost one ninth of their number; and now that the earth was for the first time upturned by the plough, the exhalations from this rank and steaming soil were redolent of disease and death.

    In the camp nearest to Papillon more than one third of the company lay sick at the beginning of August; elsewhere matters were even worse; and as the season advanced there were in some of the encampments not one who escaped the fever, the few who were able to stagger from tent to tent carrying food and water to their comrades. For several weeks it was impossible to dig graves quickly enough for the burial of the dead,²⁵ and one might see in the open tents the wasted forms of women brushing away the flies from the putrefying corpses of their children.

    Through all these months building was continually going on at Winter Quarters.²⁶ The axe and saw were

²⁵At the camp situated on the site of the town of Florence, there were over 600 burials. Kane's The Mormons, 51.

²⁶'Here we suffered terribly from scurvy, for want of vegetables. I was a victim, and even my little children as young as three years of age. The (cont.)

    There was a camp at Cutler Park which was moved to Winter Quarters. Great difficulty was experienced in getting flour and meal; a little grain was ground at the government mill, and the rest was obtained in Missouri, a hundred and fifty miles distant.²⁸ Brigham kept everybody busy, and everything was well organized and systematically executed.²⁹ Schools were soon established, officers of the church appointed, and men sent on missions. The whole machinery was apparently in as active operation as it had been at Nauvoo. The gathering continued through the summer,

²⁷'The buildings were generally of logs from 12 to 18 feet long, a few were split, and made from lynn and cotton-wood timber; many roofs were made by splitting oak timber into boards, called shakes, about 3 ft long and 6 in. wide, and kept in place by weights and poles; others were made of willows, straw, and earth, about a foot thick; some of puncheon. Many cabins had no floors; there were a few dugouts on the sidehills—the fireplace was cut out at the upper end. The ridge-pole roof was supported by two uprights in the centre and roofed with straw and earth, with chimneys of prairie sod. The doors were made of shakes, with wooden hinges and string latch; the inside of the log houses was daubed with clay; a few had stoves.' Hist. B. Young, MS., 1846, 534. 'The roofs were made of logs laid across with flags spread over them, and earth spread over these. This was partial protection from the rain, but when once it was soaked through in a heavy storm, we were at the mercy of the rain.' Richards' Rem., MS., 27. In Dec. 1846, at Winter Quarters there were '538 log houses and 83 sod houses, inhabited by 3,483 souls, of whom 334 were sick.' Church Chronology, 65.

²⁸'$8,000 was sent by Whitney to St Louis to purchase stones and machinery for flouring mills; and through A. H. Perkins a carding machine was ordered from Savannah.' Hist. B. Young, MS., Aug. 30, 1846. 'Sugar and coffee were 16 2/3 cts per lb.; domestics and calicoes from 18 to 25 cts; $3 a cwt. for flour,' etc.; all of which could be purchased in St Louis for a third of these rates. These prices seemed exorbitant to the Mormons, though in reality they were not unreasonable. In transporting the goods from St Louis later, ferriage became so high and prices were so advanced that the brethren burst forth: 'Woe unto you, Missourians! but we are independent of them and can live without them, for we have thousands of cattle left.'

²⁹'At a meeting of the council July 14th, it was voted that colonies be established on the east side of the river to put in buckwheat, and winter; that a fort be built on Grand Island and a settlement made there; and that Bishop Miller and a company go over the mountains.' Hist. B. Young, MS., 1846, 50.

    The building of a water flouring mill was in process of construction, and Brigham superintended the work. As the camp journalist writes: "He sleeps with one eye open and one foot out of bed, and when anything is wanted he is on hand." The tithing collected was distributed among the destitute at Mount Pisgah. To the gentiles who visited their camps such hospitality was extended as their means permitted, which though often scant was never stinted.

    Within the camp the women attended not only to their ordinary household duties, but were busily occupied spinning, knitting, making leggings from deer and elk skins, and in weaving willow baskets for market.³⁰ With cheerfulness and courage they adapted themselves to their many vicissitudes, their faith in their religion never swerving, and supported by it to a patient endurance beyond human strength. Most of them had exchanged their household treasures and personal effects, even to their table and bed furniture, for stores of maize or flour, which with milk were their only articles of diet. As evening approached, the tinkling of cattle bells announced the return of the men, when the women went forth to meet them, and welcome them back to their log hut and frugal meal. Then a little later all sounds were hushed, save that on the still night arose the strains of the evening hymn and the murmur of the evening prayer, the day closing, as it had commenced, with a supplication for the blessing of the Almighty, and with heartfelt thanksgiving that he had been pleased to deliver his people from the hands of their persecutors.

    During the latter part of the winter and toward the early spring matters assumed a brighter look.

³²'I then knelt down and prayed to God in behalf of the meeting,…and dedicated the meeting and house to the Lord,…and led forth in the dance.' Hist. B. Young, MS., 1847, 27. In an address Brigham said: 'For some weeks past I could not wake up at any time of the night but I heard the axe at work,…and now my feelings are, dance all night if you desire to do so.' p. 48. 'The "Silver Greys" and spectacled dames,…some nearly a hundred years old, dancing like ancient Israel.' p. 49.

³³'There were 117 poor adults,…divided into three wards…Shortly after noon I met with 66 of my family, including my adopted children.' Id., p. 53.