Remembering the Pioneers

One hundred and sixty-five years ago today, a man ~ ill with mountain fever ~ rose up on his arm from his sickbed in the back of a horse-drawn buggy and looked out over a vast desert valley.  He could see the large inland salty sea glittering in the distance.  It must have been a bleak and forbidding-looking spot, yet the man saw something more.  He saw a great city with a beautiful white temple in the midst.  He saw a place where his people could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences and not be molested.  He must have smiled at the vision, for he told his companions, "This is the right place.  Drive on." 

That man was the prophet, Brigham Young.  On July 24, 1847, he drove into the high desert valley of the Great Salt Lake.  Thus began the migration of thousands of people over the space of twenty years, across the American Great Plains along what became known as the Mormon Trail.  Brigham young has often been called "an American Moses," and with good reason.  The Latter-day Saint pioneers moved like the hosts of Israel.  They were the most highly organized and cohesive groups of all the pioneer groups of the 19th century.  Whereas other groups bound for Oregon or California lost all social cohesiveness, the LDS pioneers arrived at their destination as close-knit groups, bound by a common belief that they had been gathered out of the world to build a new Zion.

Volumes and libraries have been written about the Mormon Trail and the LDS pioneers and any attempt I might make to do a broad treatment of the subject, wouldn't be even the tiniest scratch.  What I would like to talk about are the things the early pioneers did for those who would follow.  Historians have said that no other westering groups performed the services for others as did the Mormon Pioneers.  I'd like to talk about just three of those services wrought by men and women who knew that they were literally blazing a trail that others would follow: marking trails, founding settlements and growing crops, and river ferry service.

The first wagon company left Winter Quarters in the spring of 1847.  William Clayton, who had been a clerk for martyred Church founder, Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr.,  accompanied the vanguard company.  Clayton kept a meticulous journal of the trek.  He posted mile markers along the way for those who would follow.  In order to have an accurate accounting, he measured the circumferance of the wagon's wheel and computed how many turns of the wheel would cover a mile.  He tied a rag to the wheel and walked along beside it, counting the number of revolutions.  This became tedious and, I suspect, hynotic after awhile, so he came up with an ingenious idea that he called a "roadometer."  The company's carpenter, A. M. Harmon, built the device.  A forerunner of today's odeometers, it kept an accurate count of the miles the company traveled.  Clayton later published a book called The Latter-day Saints' Emigrants' Guide. This became the premier guide to the American West and was used by Oregon and California pioneer groups as well as by other Latter-day Saints. 

At strategic points along the trail, the Mormon pioneers built semi-permanent settlements.  Members of the faith were left behind to plant crops and build cabins so as to provide respite and provisions for the groups who would follow.  In addition to Winter Quarters, in what is now the State of Nebraska, the Saints built such settlements at Garden Grove, Mt. Pisgah, and Kanesville in what is now the State of Iowa.

Crossing the Platte River was a huge challenge for the Saints.  At an especially problematic crossing site in what is now the State of Wyoming, men in the company built a simple flat boat to ferry the wagons, teams, and people across the Platte.  It made for such a smooth crossing that a team of men was left behind to set up camp and offer a ferry service for other groups of pioneers, LDS and non-LDS alike.  The fee charged for the crossing was small enough to be affordable and yet it provided funds to bring the often poverty-stricken European converts west to Zion.

These are just three of the services that Latter-day Saint pioneers provided for other groups that followed. They didn't need CTR rings or WWJD badges to help them choose the right and Christ-like thing to do.  They just did it.  But the most important service they gave were the examples they left for others who came later - even generations later.  As a descendent of these pioneers, they left me examples of faith, of determination, of courage, of love, of perseverance, of strength, of compassion, of testimony. 

When there are times in my life when the trail ahead is unclear or hard to face - and there have been many - I often think, in the midst of my trial, of my pioneer ancestors: of Rees Llewellyn, Welch-born, who came west with the Bunker Handcart Company just two weeks ahead of Willie and Martin; of George Peleg Rawlings who walked with a wagon train when he was six-years-old; of Edson Barney who marched with Zion's Camp; of Ann Skinner Rawlings who, as a mid-wife, delivered over 1,000 babies and never lost a one except her own; of Ann Llewellyn who walked hundreds of miles until she literally walked the shoes from her feet; of Hannah Butler Palfreyman who was disowned by her husband when she joined the Latter-day Saints and who stayed awake with her sick baby most of the ocean crossing to keep the ship's captain from throwing him overboard.  How can I give up when they didn't? 

In the words of Will Allen Dromgoole, in his poem "The Bridge Builder:

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

I remember and honor those pioneers today.  They were the trail blazers.  They were the bridge builders.  They marked the path and led the way. They endured to the end.  And they left me a gift I can never repay.  

Photo credits:

Mormon Pioneer Trail Marker from www.flickr.com  

Brigham Young from several sources

Trail Marker from www.emp.byui.edu

Wagon Company from www.mormonsoprano.com

Roadometer from www.thefurtrapper.com

Winter Quarters from www.old-picture.com 

Ferry Across the Platte from www.casperwy.gov

Handcart from www.flickr.com

Bridge from www.wallpaperland.net