Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Not being able thus to watch his course, he lost his way, and had to regain it through a wretched tract of Low Meadow Prairie, where there were no trees to break the noon, nor water but what was ague-sweet or brackish. By the time he got back to the trail of the High Prairie, he was, in his own phrase, 'pretty far gone.' Yet he was resolute in his purpose as ever, and to a party he fell in with, avowed his intention to be cured at the camp, 'and no where else.' He even jested with them, comparing his jolting couch to a summer cot in a white washed cockloft. "But I'll make them take me down," he said, "and give me a dip in the river when I get there. All I care for is to see the brethren."

His determined bearing rallied the spirit of his travelling household, and they kept on their way till he was within a few hours journey of the camp. He entered on his last day's journey with the energy of increased hope.

I remember that day well. For in the evening I mounted a tired horse to go a short errand, and in mere pity had to turn back before I had walked him a couple of hundred yards. Nothing seemed to draw life from the languid air but the clouds of gnats and stinging midges; and long after sundown it was so hot that the sheep lay on their stomachs panting, and the cattle strove to lap wind like hard fagged hunting dogs. In camp, I had spent the day in watching the invalids and the rest hunting the shade under the wagon bodies, and veering about them, like the shadows round the sun-dial. I know I thought myself wretched enough, to be of their company.

Poor Merryman had all that heat to bear, with the mere pretence of an awning to screen out the sun from his close muslin cockloft.

He did not fail till somewhere hard upon noon. He then began to grow restless to know accurately the distance travelled. He made them give him water, too, much more frequently; and when they stopped for this purpose, asked a number of obscure questions. A little after this he discovered himself that a film had come over his eyes. He confessed that this was discouraging; but said with stubborn resignation, that if denied to see the brethren, he still should hear the sound of their voices.

After this, which was when he was hardly three miles from our camp, he lay very quiet, as if husbanding his strength; but when he had made, as is thought, a full mile further, being interrogated by the woman that was driving, whether she should stop, he answered her, as she avers, "No, no; go on!"

The anecdote ends badly. They brought him in dead, I think about five o'clock of the afternoon. He had on his clean clothes; as he had dressed himself in the morning, looking forward to his arrival.

Beside the common duty of guiding and assisting these unfortunates, the companies in the van united in providing the highway for the entire body of emigrants. The Mormons have laid out for themselves a road through the Indian Territory, over four hundred leagues in length, with substantial, well-built bridges, fit for the passage of heavy artillery, over all the streams, except a few great rivers where they have established permanent ferries. The nearest unfinished bridging to the Papillon Camp, was that of the Corne a Cerf, or Elkhorn, a tributary of the Platte, distant maybe a couple of hours' march. Here, in what seemed to be an incredibly short space of time, there rose the seven great piers and abutments of a bridge, such as might challenge honors for the entire public spirited population of lower Virginia. The party detailed to the task worked in the broiling sun, in water beyond depth, and up to their necks, as if engaged in the perpetration of some pointed and delightful practical joke. The chief sport lay in floating along with the logs, cut from the overhanging timber up the stream, guiding them till they reached their destination, and then plunging them under water in the precise spot where they were to be secured. This the laughing engineers would execute with the agility of happy diving ducks.

Our nearest ferry was that over the Missouri. Nearly opposite Pull Point, or Point aux Poules, a trading post of the American Fur Company, and village of the Pottawatamies, they had gained a favorable crossing by making a deep cut for the road through the steep right bank. And here, without intermission, their flat-bottomed scows plied, crowded with the wagons and cows and sheep and children and furniture of the emigrants, who, in waiting their turn, made the woods around smoke with their crowding camp fires. But no such good fortune as a gratuitous passage awaited the heavy cattle, of whom, with the others, no less than 30,000 were at this time on their way westward: these were made to earn it by swimming.

A heavy freshet had at this time swollen the river to a width, as I should judge, of something like a mile and a half, and dashed past its fierce current, rushing, gurgling, and eddying, as if thrown from a mill race, or scriptural fountain of the deep. Its aspect did not invite the oxen to their duty, and the labor was to force them to it. They were gathered in little troops upon the shore, and driven forward till they lost their footing. As they turned their heads to return, they encountered the combined opposition of a clamorous crowd of bystanders, vieing with each other in the pungent administration of inhospitable affront. Then rose their hubbub; their geeing and woing and hawing, their yelling and yelping and screaming, their hooting and hissing and pelting. The rearmost steers would hesitate to brave such a rebuff; halting, they would impede the return of the outermost; they all would waver; wavering for a moment, the current would sweep them together downward. At this juncture, a fearless youngster, climbing upon some brave bull in the front rank, would urge him boldly forth into the stream: the rest then surely followed; a few moments saw them struggling in mid current; a few more, and they were safely landed on the opposite shore. The driver's was the sought after post of honor here; and sometimes, when repeated failures have urged them to emulation, I have seen the youths, in stepping from back to back of the struggling monsters, or swimming in among their battling hoofs, display feats of address and hardihood, that would have made Franconi's or the Madrid bull-ring vibrate with bravos of applause. But in the hours after hours that I have watched this sport at the ferry side, I never heard an oath or the language of quarrel, or knew it provoke the least sign of ill feeling.

After the sorrowful word was given out to halt, and make preparations for winter, a chief labor became the making hay; and with every day dawn brigades of mowers would take up the march to their positions in chosen meadows--a prettier sight than a charge of cavalry--as they laid their swarths, whole companies of scythes abreast. Before this time the manliest, as well as most general daily labor, was the herding of the cattle; the only wealth of the Mormons, and more and more cherished by them, with the increasing pastoral character of their lives. A camp could not be pitched in any spot without soon exhausting the freshness of the pasture around it; and it became an ever recurring task to guide the cattle, in unbroken droves, to the nearest places where it was still fresh and fattening. Sometimes it was necessary to go farther, to distant ranges which were known as feeding grounds of the Buffalo. About these there were sure to prowl parties of thievish Indians; and each drove therefore had its escort of mounted men and boys, who learned self-reliance and heroism while on night guard alone, among the silent hills. But generally the cattle were driven from the camp at the dawn of morning, and brought back thousands together in the evening, to be picketed in the great corral or enclosure, where beeves, bulls, cows, and oxen, with the horses, mules, hogs, calves, sheep and human beings, could all look together upon the red watch fires, with the feeling of security, when aroused by the Indian stampede, or the howlings of the prairie wolves at moonrise.

When they set about building their winter houses, too, the Mormons went into quite considerable timbering operations, and performed desperate feats of carpentry. They did not come, ornamental gentlemen or raw apprentices, to extemporise new versions of Robinson Crusoe. It was a comfort to notice the readiness with which they turned their hands to wood craft; some of them, though I believe these had generally been bred carpenters, wheelwrights, or more particularly boat builders, quite outdoing the most notable voyageurs in the use of the axe. One of these would fell a tree, strip off its bark, cut and split up the trunk in piles of plank, scantling, or shingles; make posts, and pins, and pales--everything wanted almost, of the branches; and treat his toil from first to last with more sportive flourish than a school-boy whittling his shingle.

Inside the camp, the chief labors were assigned to the women. From the moment, when after the halt, the lines had been laid, the spring wells dug out, and the ovens and fire-places built, though the men still assumed to set the guards and enforce the regulations of Police, the Empire of the Tented Town was with the better sex. They were the chief comforters of the severest sufferers, the kind nurses who gave them in their sickness, those dear attentions, with which pauperism is hardly poor, and which the greatest wealth often fails to buy. And they were a nation of wonderful managers. They could hardly be called housewives in etymological strictness, but it was plain that they had once been such, and most distinguished ones. Their art availed them in their changed affairs. With almost their entire culinary material limited to the milk of their cows, some store of meal or flour, and a very few condiments, they brought their thousand and one receipts into play with a success that outdid for their families, the miracle of the Hebrew widow's cruise. They learned to make butter on a march, by the dashing of the wagon, and so nicely to calculate the working of barm in the jolting heats, that as soon after the halt as an oven could be dug in the hill side and heated, their well kneaded loaf was ready for baking, and produced good leavened bread for supper. I have no doubt the appetizing zest, their humble lore succeeded in imparting to diet which was both simple and meagre, availed materially for the health as well as the comfort of the people.

But the first duty of the Mormon women was, through all change of place and fortune, to keep alive the altar fire of home. Whatever their manifold labors for the day, it was their effort to complete them against the sacred hour of evening fall. For by that time all the out-workers, scouts, ferrymen or bridgemen, roadmakers, herdsmen or haymakers, had finished their tasks and come in to their rest. And before the last smoke of the supper fire curled up reddening in the glow of sunset, a hundred chimes of cattle bells announced their looked-for approach across the open hills, and the women went out to meet them at the camp gates, and with their children in their laps sat by them at the cherished Family meal, and talked over the events of the well-spent day.

But every day closed as every day began, with an invocation of the Divine favour; without which, indeed, no Mormon seemed to dare to lay him down to rest. With the first shining of the stars, laughter and loud talking hushed, the neighbor went his way, you heard the last hymn sung, and then the thousand-voiced murmur of prayer was heard like babbling water falling down the hills.

There was no austerity, however, about the religion of Mormonism. Their fasting and penance, it is no jest to say, was altogether involuntary. They made no merit of that. They kept the Sabbath with considerable strictness: they were too close copyists of the wanderers of Israel in other respects not to have learned, like them, the value of this most admirable of the Egypto-Mosaic institutions. But the rest of the week, their religion was independent of ritual observance. They had the sort of strong stomached faith that is still found embalmed in sheltered spots of Catholic Italy and Spain, with the spirit of the believing or Dark Ages. It was altogether too strongly felt, to be dependent on intellectual ingenuity or careful caution of the ridiculous. It mixed itself up fearlessly with the common transactions of their every-day life, and only to give them liveliness and color.

If any passages of life bear better than others a double interpretation, they are the adventures of travel, and of the field. What old persons call discomforts and discouraging mishaps, are the very elements to the young and sanguine, of what they are willing to term fun. The Mormons took the young and hopeful side. They could make sport and frolic of their trials, and often turn right sharp suffering into right round laughter against themselves. I certainly heard more jests and Joe Millers while in this Papillon Camp, than I am likely to hear in all the remainder of my days.

This, too, was at a time of serious affliction. Beside the ordinary suffering from insufficient food and shelter, distressing and mortal sickness, exacerbated, if not originated by these causes, was generally prevalent.

In the camp nearest us on the West, which was that of the bridging party near the Corne, the number of its inhabitants being small enough to invite computation, I found, as early as the 31st of July, that 37 per cent. of its inhabitants were down with the Fever and a sort of strange scorbutic disease, frequently fatal, which they named the Black Canker. The camps to the East of us, which were all on the eastern side of the Missouri, were yet worse fated.

The climate of the entire upper 'Misery Bottom,' as they term it, is, during a considerable part of Summer and Autumn singularly pestiferous. Its rich soil, which is to a depth far beyond the reach of the plough as fat as the earth of kitchen garden, or compost-heap, is annually the force-bed of a vegetation as rank as that of the Tropics. To render its fatal fertility the greater, it is everywhere freely watered by springs and creeks and larger streams, that flow into it from both sides. In the season of drought, when the Sun enters Virgo, these dry down till they run impure as open sewers, exposing to the day foul broad flats, mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles, unvaried, except by the limbs of half buried carrion tree trunks, or by occasional yellow pools of what the children call frog spawn; all together steaming up thick vapours redolent of the savour of death.

The same is the habit of the Great River. In the beginning of August, its shores hardly could contain the millions of forest logs, and tens of billions of gallons of turbid water, that came rushing down together from its mountain head-gates. But before the month was out, the freshet had all passed by; the river diminished one half, threaded feebly southward through the centre of the Valley, and the mud of its channel, baked and creased, made a wide tile pavement between the choking crowd of reeds and sedgy grasses and wet stalked weeds, and growths of marsh meadow flowers, the garden homes at this tainted season of venom-crazy snakes, and the fresher ooze by the water's edge, which stank in the sun like a naked muscle shoal.

Then the plague raged. I have no means of ascertaining the mortality of the Indians who inhabited the Bottom. In 1845, the year previous, which was not more unhealthy, they lost one-ninth of their number in about two months. The Mormons were scourged severely. The exceeding mortality among some of them, was no doubt in the main attributable to the low state to which their systems had been brought by long continued endurance of want and hardship. It is to be remembered also, that they were the first turners up of the prairie sod, and that this of itself made them liable to the sickness of new countries. It was where their agricultural operations had been most considerable, and in situations on the left bank of the river, where the prevalent south-west winds wafted to them the miasmata of its shores, that disease was most rife. [D]

In some of these, the fever prevailed to such an extent that hardly any escaped it. They let their cows go unmilked. They wanted for voices to raise the Psalm of Sundays. The few who were able to keep their feet, went about among the tents and wagons with food and water, like nurses through the wards of an Infirmary. Here at one time the digging got behind hand: burials were slow; and you might see women sit in the open tents keeping the flies off their dead children, sometime after decomposition had set in.

In our own camp for a part of August and September, things wore an unpleasant aspect enough. [E] Its situation was one much praised for its comparative salubrity; but perhaps on this account, the number of cases of Fever among us was increased by the hurrying arrival from other localities, of parties in whom the virus leaven of disease was fermented by forced travel.

But I am excused sufficiently the attempt to get up for your entertainment here any circumstantial picture of horrors, by the fact, that at the most interesting season, I was incapacitated for nice observation by an attack of Fever--mine was what they call the Congestive--that it required the utmost use of all my faculties to recover from. I still kept my tent in the camp line; but, for as much as a month, had very small notion of what went on among my neighbors. I recollect overhearing a lamentation over some dear baby, that its mother no doubt thought the destroying angel should have been specially instructed to spare. I wish too for my own sake, I could forget, how imperfectly one day I mourned the decease of a poor saint, who by clamor rendered his vicinity troublesome. He no doubt endured great pain; for he groaned shockingly till death came to his relief. He interfered with my own hard gained slumbers, and--I was glad when Death did relieve him.

Before my attack, I was fond of conversing with an amiable old man, I think English born, who having then recently buried his only daughter and grandson, used to be seen sitting out before his tent, resting his sorrowful forehead on his hands, joined over a smooth white oak staff. I missed him when I got about again; probably he had been my moaning neighbor.

So, too, having been much exercised in my dreams at this time, by the vision of dismal processions, such as might have been formed by the union in line of all the forlornest and ugliest of the struggling fugitives from Nauvoo, I happen to recall as I write, that I had some knowledge somewhere of one of our new comers, for whom the nightmare revived and repeated without intermission the torment of his trying journey. As he lay, feeding life with long drawn breaths, he muttered: "Where's next water? Team--give out! Hot, hot--God, it's hot: Stop the wagon--stop the wagon--stop, stop the wagon!" They woke him;--to his own content--but I believe returning sleep ever renewed his distressing visions, till the sounder slumber came on from which no earthly hand or voice could rouse him; into which I hope he did not carry them.

In a half dreamy way, I remember, or I think I remember, a crowd of phantoms like these. I recall but one fact, however, going far in proof of a considerable mortality. Earlier in the season, while going westward with the intention of passing the Rocky Mountains that summer, I had opened with the assistance of Mormon spades and shovels, a large mound on a commanding elevation, the tomb of a warrior of the ancient race; and continuing on my way, had left a deep trench excavated entirely through it. Returning fever-struck to the Papillon Camp, I found it planted close by this spot. It was just forming as I arrived; the first wagon, if I mistake not, having but a day or two before halted into place. My first airing upon my convalescence took me to the mound, which, probably to save digging, had been re-adapted to its original purpose. In this brief interval, they had filled the trench with bodies, and furrowed the ground with graves around it, like the ploughing of a field.

The lengthened sojourn of the Mormons in this insalubrious region was imposed upon them by circumstances which I must now advert to.

Though the season was late, when they first crossed the Missouri, some of them moved forward with great hopefulness, full of the notion of viewing and choosing their new homes that year. But the van had only reached Grand Island and the Pawnee villages, when they were overtaken by more ill news from Nauvoo. Before the summer closed, their enemies set upon the last remnant of those who were left behind in Illinois. They were a few lingerers, who could not be persuaded but there might yet be time for them to gather up their worldly goods before removing, some weakly mothers and their infants, a few delicate young girls, and many cripples and bereaved and sick people. These had remained under shelter, according to the Mormon statement at least, by virtue of an express covenant in their behalf. If there was such a covenant, it was broken. A vindictive war was waged upon them, from which the weakest fled in scattered parties, leaving the rest to make a reluctant and almost ludicrously unavailing defence, till the 17th day of September, when 1,625 troops entered Nauvoo, and drove all forth who had not retreated before that time.

Like the wounded birds of a flock fired into toward nightfall, they came straggling on with faltering steps, many of them without bag or baggage, beast or barrow, [F] all asking shelter or burial, and forcing a fresh repartition of the already divided rations of their friends. It was plain now, that every energy must be taxed to prevent the entire expedition from perishing. Further emigration for the time was out of the question, and the whole people prepared themselves for encountering another winter on the prairie.

Happily for the main body, they found themselves at this juncture among Indians, who were amicably disposed. The lands on both sides of the Missouri in particular, were owned by the Pottawatamies and Omahas, two tribes whom unjust treatment by our United States, had the effect of rendering most auspiciously hospitable to strangers whom they regarded as persecuted like themselves.

The Pottawatamies on the eastern side, are a nation from whom the United States bought some years ago a number of hundred thousand acres of the finest lands they have ever brought into market. Whatever the bargain was, the sellers were not content with it; the people saying, their leaders were cheated, made drunk, bribed, and all manner of naughty things besides. No doubt this was quite as much of a libel on the fair fame of this particular Indian treaty, as such stories generally are; for the land to which the tribe was removed in pursuance of it, was admirably adapted to enforce habits of civilized thrift. It was smooth prairie, wanting in timber, and of course in game; and the humane and philanthropic might rejoice therefore that necessity would soon indoctrinate its inhabitants into the practice of agriculture. An impracticable few, who may have thought these advantages more than compensated by the insalubrity of their allotted resting place, fled to the extreme wilds, where they could find deer and woods, and rocks and running water, and where I believe they are roaming to this day. The remainder, being what the political vocabulary designates on such occasions as Friendly Indians, were driven--marched is the word--galley slaves are marched thus to Barcelona and Toulon--marched from the Mississippi to the Missouri, and planted there. Discontented and unhappy, they had hardly begun to form an attachment for this new soil, when they were persuaded to exchange it for their present Fever Patch upon the Kaw or Kansas River. They were under this second sentence of transportation when the Mormons arrived among them.

They were pleased with the Mormons. They would have been pleased with any whites who would not cheat them, nor sell them whiskey, nor whip them for their poor gipsey habits, nor bear themselves indecently toward their women, many of whom among the Pottawatamies, especially those of nearly unmixed French descent, are singularly comely, and some of them educated. But all Indians have something like a sentiment of reverence for the insane, and admire those who sacrifice, without apparent motive, their worldly welfare to the triumph of an idea. They understand the meaning of what they call a great vow, and think it the duty of the right-minded to lighten the votary's penance under it. To this feeling they united the sympathy of fellow-sufferers for those who could talk to them of their own Illinois, and tell the story how from it they also had been ruthlessly expelled.

Their hospitality was sincere, almost delicate. Fanny Le Clerc, the spoiled child of the great brave, Pied Riche, interpreter of the Nation, would have the pale face Miss Devine learn duets with her to the guitar; and the daughter of substantial Joseph La Framboise, the interpreter of the United States,--she died of the fever that summer,--welcomed all the nicest young Mormon Kitties and Lizzies, and Jennies and Susans, to a coffee feast at her father's house, which was probably the best cabin in the river village. They made the Mormons at home, there and elsewhere. Upon all their lands they formally gave them leave to tarry just so long as should suit their own good pleasure.

The affair, of course, furnished material for a solemn council. Under the auspices of an officer of the United States, their chiefs were summoned, in the form befitting great occasions, to meet in the dirty yard of one Mr. P. A. Sarpy's log trading house, at their village. They came in grand toilet, moving in their fantastic attire with so much aplomb and genteel measure, that the stranger found it difficult not to believe them high born gentlemen, attending a costumed ball. Their aristocratically thin legs, of which they displayed fully the usual Indian proportion, aided this illusion. There is something too at all times very Mock-Indian in the theatrical French millinery tie of the Pottawatamie turban; while it is next to impossible for a sober white man, at first sight, to believe that the red, green, black, blue and yellow cosmetics, with which he sees such grave personages so variously dotted, diapered, cancelled and arabesqued, are worn by them in any mood but one of the deepest and most desperate quizzing. From the time of their first squat upon the ground, to the final breaking up of the council circle, they sustained their characters with equal self-possession and address.

I will not take it upon myself to describe their order of ceremonies; indeed, I ought not, since I have never been able to view the habits and customs of our aborigines in any other light than that of a reluctant and sorrowful subject of jest. Besides, in this instance, the displays of pow wow and eloquence were both probably moderated, by the conduct of the entire transaction on temperance principles. I therefore content myself with observing, generally, that the proceedings were such as every way became the grandeur of the parties interested, and the magnitude of the interests involved. When the Red Men had indulged to satiety in tobacco smoke from their peace pipes, and in what they love still better, their peculiar metaphoric rhodomontade, which, beginning with the celestial bodies, and coursing downwards over the grandest sublunary objects, always managed to alight at last on their Grand Father Polk, and the tenderness for him of his affectionate colored children; all the solemn funny fellows present who played the part of Chiefs, signed formal articles of convention with their unpronounceable names.

The renowned chief, Pied Riche--he was surnamed Le Clerc on account of his remarkable scholarship,--then rose, and said:

"My Mormon Brethren,

"The Pottawatamie 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, the same, 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. You are now free to cut and use all the wood you may wish. You can make all your improvements, and live on any part of our actual land not occupied by us. Because one suffers, and does not deserve it, is no reason he shall suffer always: I say. We may live to see all right yet. However, if we do not, our children will.--Bon Jour."

And thus ended the pageant. I give this speech as a morsel of real Indian. It was recited to me after the Treaty by the Pottawatamie orator in French, which language he spoke with elegance. Bon Jour is the French, Indian and English Hail and Farewell of the Pottawatamies.

The other entertainers of the Mormons at this time, the Omahas, or Mahaws, are one of the minor tribes of the Grand Prairie. Their Great Father, the United States, has found it inconvenient to protect so remote a dependency against the overpowering league of the Dahcotahs or Sioux, and has judged it dangerous at the same time to allow them to protect themselves by entering into a confederation with others. Under the pressure of this paternal embarrassment and restraint, it has therefore happened most naturally, that this tribe, once a powerful and valued ally of ours, has been reduced to a band of little more than a hundred families; and these, a few years more, will entirely extinguish. When I was among them, they were so ill-fed, that their protruding high cheek bones gave them the air of a tribe of consumptives. The buffalo had left them, and no good ranges lay within several hundred miles reach. Hardly any other game found cover on their land. What little there was, they were short of ammunition to kill. Their annuity from the United States was trifling. They made next to nothing at thieving. They had planted some corn in their awkward Indian fashion, but through fear of ambush dared not venture out to harvest it. A chief resource for them, the winter previous, had been the spoliation of their neighbors, the Prairie Field Mice.

These interesting little people, more industrious and thrifty than the Mahaws, garner up in the neat little cellars of their underground homes, the small seeds or beans of the wood pea vine, which are black and hard, but quite nutritious. Gathering them one by one, a single Mouse will thus collect as much as half a pint, which before the cold weather sets in, he piles away in a dry and frost proof excavation, cleverly thatched and covered in. The Omaha animal, who, like enough, may have idled during all the season the Mouse was amassing his toilsome treasure, finds this subterranean granary to give out a certain peculiar cavernous vibration when briskly tapped upon above the ground. He wanders about, therefore, striking with a wand in hopeful spots: and as soon as he hears the hollow sound he knows, unearths the little retired capitalist along with his winter's hope. Mouse wakes up from his nap to starve, and Mahaw swallows several relishing mouthfuls.

But the Mouse has his avenger in the powerful Sioux, who wages against his wretched red brother an almost bootless, but exterminating warfare. He robs him of his poor human peltry. One of my friends was offered for sale a Sioux scalp of Omaha, "with grey hair nearly as long as a white horse's tail."

The pauper Omahas were ready to solicit as a favor the residence of white protectors among them. The Mormons harvested and stored away for them their crops of maize; with all their own poverty, they spared them food enough besides, from time to time, to save them from absolutely starving; and their entrenched camp to the north of the Omaha villages, served as a sort of breakwater between them and the destroying rush of the Sioux.

This was the Head Quarters of the Mormon Camps of Israel. The miles of rich prairie enclosed and sowed with the grain they could contrive to spare, and the houses, stacks, and cattle shelters, had the seeming of an entire county, with its people and improvements transplanted there unbroken. On a pretty plateau overlooking the river, they built more than seven hundred houses in a single town, neatly laid out with highways and byways, and fortified with breast-work, stockade and block houses. It had too its place of worship, "Tabernacle of the Congregation," and various large workshops, and mills and factories provided with water power.

They had no camp or settlement of equal size in the Pottawatamie country. There was less to apprehend here from Indian invasion; and the people scattered themselves therefore along the rivers and streams, and in the timber groves, wherever they found inviting localities for farming operations. In this way many of them acquired what have since proved to be valuable pre-emption rights.

Upon the Pottawatamie lands, scattered through the border regions of Missouri and Iowa, in the Sauk and Fox country, a few among the Ioways, among the Poncahs in a great company upon the banks of the L'Eau qui Coule, or Running Water River, and at the Omaha winter quarters;--the Mormons sustained themselves through the heavy winter of 1846-1847. It was the severest of their trials. And if I aimed at rhetorical effect, I would be bound to offer you a minute narrative of its progress, as a sort of climax to my history. But I have, I think, given you enough of the Mormons' sorrows. We are all of us content to sympathise with a certain extent of suffering; but very few can bear the recurring yet scarcely varied narrative of another's distress without something of impatience. The world is full of griefs, and we cannot afford to expend too large a share of our charity, or even our commiseration in a single quarter.

This winter was the turning point of the Mormon fortunes. Those who lived through it were spared to witness the gradual return of better times. And they now liken it to the passing of a dreary night, since which they have watched the coming of a steadily brightening day.

Before the grass growth of 1847, a body of one hundred and forty-three picked men, with seventy wagons, drawn by their best horses, left the Omaha quarters, under the command of the members of the High Council who had wintered there. They carried with them little but seed and farming implements, their aim being to plant spring crops at their ultimate destination. They relied on their rifles to give them food, but rarely left their road in search of game. They made long daily marches, and moved with as much rapidity as possible.

Against the season when ordinary emigration passes the Missouri, they were already through the South Pass; and a couple of short day's travel beyond it, entered upon the more arduous portion of their journey. It lay in earnest through the Rocky Mountains. They turned Fremont's Peak, Long's Peak, the Twins, and other King summits, but had to force their way over other mountains of the rugged Utah Range, sometimes following the stony bed of torrents, the head waters of some of the mightiest rivers of our continent, and sometimes literally cutting their road through heavy and ragged timber. They arrived at the grand basin of the Great Salt Lake, much exhausted, but without losing a man, and in time to plant for a partial autumn harvest.

Another party started after these pioneers, from the Omaha winter quarters, in the summer. They had 566 wagons, and carried large quantities of grain, which they were able to put in the ground before it froze.

The same season also these were joined by a part of the Battalion and other members of the Church, who came eastward from California and the Sandwich Islands. Together, they fortified themselves strongly with sunbrick wall and blockhouses, and living safely through the winter, were able to tend crops that yielded ample provision for the ensuing year.

In 1848, nearly all the remaining members of the Church left the Missouri country in a succession of powerful bands, invigorated and enriched by their abundant harvests there; and that year saw fully established their Commonwealth of the New Covenant, the future State of DESERET.

I may not undertake to describe to you in a single lecture the Geography of Deseret, and its Great Basin. Were I to consider the face of the country, its military position, or its climate and its natural productions; each head, I am confident, would claim more time than you have now to spare me. For Deseret is emphatically a New Country; new in its own characteristic features, newer still in its bringing together within its limits the most inconsistent peculiarities of other countries. I cannot aptly compare it to any. Descend from the mountains, where you have the scenery and climate of Switzerland, to seek the sky of your choice among the many climates of Italy, and you may find, welling out of the same hills, the Freezing Springs of Mexico and the Hot Springs of Iceland, both together coursing their way to the Salt Sea of Palestine in the plain below. The pages of Malte Brun provide me with a less truthful parallel to it than those which describe the happy Valley of Rasselas or the Continent of Balnibarbi.

Let me then press on with my history, during the few minutes that remain for me.

Only two events have occurred to menace seriously the establishment at Deseret: the first threatened to destroy its crops, the other to break it up altogether.

The shores of the Salt Lake are infested by a sort of insect pest, which claims a vile resemblance to the locust of the Syrian Dead Sea. Wingless, dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock-spring, and with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in comparing him to a cross of the spider on the buffalo, the Deseret cricket comes down from the mountains at a certain season of the year, in voracious and desolating myriads. It was just at this season, that the first crops of the new settlers were in the full glory of their youthful green. The assailants could not be repulsed. The Mormons, after their fashion, prayed and fought, and fought and prayed, but to no purpose. The "Black Philistines" mowed their way even with the ground, leaving it as if touched with an acid or burnt by fire.

But an unlooked for ally came to the rescue. Vast armies of bright birds, before strangers to the valley, hastened across the lake from some unknown quarter, and gorged themselves upon the well fatted enemy. They were snow white, with little heads and clear dark eyes, and little feet, and long wings, that arched in flight "like an angel's." At first the Mormons thought they were new enemies to plague them; but when they found them hostile only to the locusts, they were careful not to molest them in their friendly office, and to this end declared a heavy fine against all who should kill or annoy them with firearms. The gulls soon grew to be tame as the poultry, and the delighted little children learned to call them their pigeons. They disappeared every evening beyond the lake; but, returning with sunrise, continued their welcome visitings till the crickets were all exterminated.

This curious incident recurred the following year, with this variation, that in 1849, the gulls came earlier and saved the wheat crops from all harm whatever.

A severer trial than the visit of the cricket-locusts threatened Deseret in the discovery of the gold of California. It was due to a party of the Mormon battalion recruited on the Missouri, who on their way home, found employment at New Helvetia. They were digging a mill race there, and threw up the gold dust with their shovels. You all know the crazy fever that broke out as soon as this was announced. It infected every one through California. Where the gold was discovered, at Sutter's and around, the standing grain was left uncut; whites, Indians, and mustees, all set them to gathering gold, every other labor forsaken, as if the first comers could rob the casket of all that it contained. The disbanded soldiers came to the valley; they showed their poor companions pieces of the yellow treasure they had gained; and the cry was raised: "To California--To the Gold of Ophir, our brethren have discovered! To California!"

Some of you have perhaps come across the half ironic instruction of the heads of the Church, to the faithful outside the Valley:

"THE TRUE USE OF GOLD is for paving streets, covering houses, and making culinary dishes; and, when the Saints shall have preached the Gospel, raised grain, and built up cities enough, the Lord will open up the way for a supply of gold to the perfect satisfaction of His People. Until then, let them not be over-anxious, for the treasures of the earth are in the Lord's storehouse, and he will open the doors thereof when and where he pleases."--II. Gen. Epistle, 14.

The enlightened virtue of their rulers saved the people and the fortunes of Deseret. A few only went away--and they were asked in kindness never to return. The rest remained to be healthy and happy, to "raise grain and build up cities."

The history of the Mormons has ever since been the unbroken record of the most wonderful prosperity. It has looked, as though the elements of fortune, obedient to a law of natural re-action, were struggling to compensate to them their undue share of suffering. They may be pardoned for deeming it miraculous. But, in truth, the economist accounts for it all, who explains to us the speedy recuperation of cities, laid in ruin by flood, fire and earthquake. During its years of trial, Mormon labor has subsisted on insufficient capital, and under many trials--but it has subsisted, and survives them now, as intelligent and powerful as ever it was at Nauvoo; with this difference, that it has in the meantime been educated to habits of unmatched thrift, energy and endurance, and has been transplanted to a situation where it is in every respect more productive. Moreover, during all the period of their journey, while some have gained by practice in handicraft, and the experience of repeated essays at their various halting-places, the minds of all have been busy framing designs and planning the improvements they have since found opportunity to execute.

The territory of the Mormons is unequalled as a stock-raising country. The finest pastures of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the Utah Lake and Jordan River. We find here that cereal anomaly, the Bunch grass. In May, when the other grasses push, this fine plant dries upon its stalk, and becomes a light yellow straw, full of flavor and nourishment. It continues thus, through what are the dry months of the climate, till January, and then starts with a vigorous growth, like that of our own winter wheat in April, which keeps on till the return of another May. Whether as straw or grass, the cattle fatten on it the year round. The numerous little dells and sheltered spots that are found in the mountains, are excellent sheep-walks; it is said that the wool which is grown upon them is of an unusually fine pile and soft texture. Hogs fatten on a succulent bulb or tuber, called the Seacoe, or Seegose Root, which I hope will soon be naturalized with us. It is highly esteemed as a table vegetable by Mormons and Indians, and I remark that they are cultivating it with interest at the French Garden of Plants. The emigrant poultry have taken the best of care of each other, only needing liberty to provide themselves with every other blessing.

The Mormons have also been singularly happy in their Indian relations. They have not made the common mistake of supposing savages insensible to courtesy of demeanor; but, being taught by their religion to regard them all as decayed brethren, have always treated the silly wicked souls with kind-hearted civility. Though their outlay for tobacco, wampum and vermillion has been of the very smallest, yet they have never failed to purchase what goodwill they have wanted.

Hence, it happens, that in their Land of Promise, they are on the best of terms with all the Canaanites and Hittites, and Hivites, and Amorites, and Girgashites, and Perizzites, and Jebusites, within its borders; while they "maintain their cherished relations of amity with the rest of mankind," who, in their case, include a sort of latest remnant of the primaeval primates, called the Root Diggers. The Diggers, who in stature, strength and general personal appearance, may be likened to a society of old negro women, are only to be dreaded for their exceeding ugliness. The tribes that rob and murder in war, and otherwise live more like white men, are however numerous all around them.

Fortunately, upon their marauding expeditions, and in matters that affect their freebooting relations generally, they all obey the great war chief of the tribe called the Utahs, in the heart of whose proper territory the Mormon settlements are comprehended.

If accounts are true, the Utahs are brave fellows. They differ obviously from the deceased nations, to whose estates we have taken it upon ourselves to administer. They ride strong, well-limbed Spanish horses, not ponies; bear well cut rifles, not shot-guns, across their saddle-bows, and are not without some idea of military discipline. They carry their forays far into the Mexican States, laying the inhabitants under contribution, and taking captive persons of condition, whom they hold to ransom. They are, as yet at least, little given to drink; some of them manifest considerable desire to acquire useful knowledge; and they are attached to their own infidel notions of religion, making long journeys to the ancient cities of the Colorado, to worship among the ruined temples there. The Soldan of these red Paynims, too, their great war chief, is not without his knightly graces. According to some of the Mormons, he is the paragon of Indians. His name, translated to diminish its excellence as an exercise in Prosody, is Walker. He is a fine figure of a man, in the prime of life. He excels in various manly exercises, is a crack shot, a rough rider, and a great judge of horse flesh.

He is besides very clever, in our sense of the word. He is a peculiarly eloquent master of the graceful alphabet of pantomime, which stranger tribes employ to communicate with one another. He has picked up some English, and is familiar with Spanish and several Indian tongues. He rather affects the fine gentleman. When it is his pleasure to extend his riding excursions into Mexico, to inflict or threaten outrage, or to receive the instalments of his black mail salary, he will take offence if the poor people there fail to kill their fattest beeves, and adopt other measures to show him obsequious and distinguished attention. He has more than one black-eyed mistress there, according to his own account, to whom he makes love in her own language. His dress is a full suit of the richest broadcloth, generally brown, cut in European fashion, with a shining beaver hat, and fine cambric shirt. To these, he adds his own gaudy Indian trimmings, and in this way contrives, they say, to look superbly, when he rides at the head of his troop, whose richly caparisoned horses, with their embroidered saddles and harness, shine and tinkle as they prance under their weight of gay metal ornaments.

With all his wild cat fierceness, Walker is perfectly velvet-pawed to the Mormons. There is a queer story about his being influenced in their favor, by a dream. It is the fact, that from the first, he has received the Mormon exiles into his kingdom, with a generosity, that in its limited sphere, transcends that of the Grand Monarch to the English Jacobites. He rejoices to give them the information they want about the character of the country under his rule, advises with them as to the advantages of particular localities, and wherever they choose to make their settlements, guarantees them personal safety and immunity from depredation.

From the first, therefore, the Mormons have had little or nothing to do in Deseret, but attend to their mechanical and strictly agricultural pursuits. They have made several successful settlements; the farthest North, at what they term Brownsville, is about forty miles, and the farthest South, in a valley called the Sanpeech, 200 miles, from that first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias, or Genesareth, empties its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine river, to which the Mormons have given the name--it was impossible to give it any other--of the Western Jordan.

It was on the right bank of this stream, at a choice spot upon a rich table land traversed by a great company of exhaustless streams falling from the highlands, that the Pioneer band of Mormons, coming out of the mountains in the night, pitched their first camp in the Valley, and consecrated the ground. Curiously enough, this very spot proved the most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring the whole country, they have founded on it their city of the New Hierusalem. Its houses are spread to command as much as possible the farms, which are laid out in Wards or Cantons, with a common fence to each Ward. The farms in wheat already cover a space, greater than the District of Columbia, over all of which they have completed the canals, and other arrangements for bountiful irrigation, after the manner of the cultivators of the East. The houses are distributed over an area nearly as great as the City of New York.

They have little thought as yet of luxury in their public buildings. But they will soon have nearly completed a large common public store-house and granary, and a great sized public bath-house. One of the many wonderful thermal springs of the valley, a white sulphur water of the temperature of 102 Fahrenheit, with a head "the thickness of a man's body," they have already brought into the town for this purpose; and all have learned the habit of indulging in it. They have besides a yellow brick meeting-house, 100 feet by 60, in which they gather on Sundays and in the week-day evenings. But this is only a temporary structure. They have reserved a summit level in the heart of the city, for the site of a Temple far superior to that of Nauvoo, which, in the days of their future wealth and power, is to be the landmark of the Basin and goal of future pilgrims.

They mean to seek no other resting-place. After pitching camps enough to exhaust many times over the chapter of names in 33d Numbers, they have at last come to their Promised Land, and, "behold, it is a good land and large, and flowing with milk and honey:" and here again for them, as at Nauvoo, the forge smokes and the anvil rings, and whirring wheels go round; again has returned the merry sport of childhood, and the evening quiet of old age, and again dear house-pet flowers bloom in garden plots round happy homes.