Devil's Gate

by David Roberts

  On August 25, the company started off—dangerously late in the season, as more than one emigrant suspected. Within only three days, the Loader family found itself in dire straits. By now, Zilpah was about to give birth, and Tamar was incapacitated with “mountain fever.” On the morning of August 27, Captain Martin came to the Loaders’ tent to tell them to get ready to move on as soon as possible. But, in Patience’s recollection, “There lay my Sister Zilpha on the ground just gave birth to achild she was liing on some Quilts in one corner of the tent and My sister Tamar liing on quilts in the other corner of the tent neither of the poor things able to moove.”

  Martin assigned the two invalids and the newborn baby boy to one of the team’s eight wagons, but when Patience pleaded for a healthy sister to be allowed to ride with them to take care of Zilpah and Tamar, the captain brusquely refused. Stubbornly, Patience then declined the offer of wagon transport for her ailing sisters.

  I said thay will not go we will stay here for a day or two and take care of our two sick Sisters so we was left there all alone as the company started about seven oclock that morning we was there all day alone with our sick and when night came My poor father and brotherinlaw John Jaques had to be up all night to make big fires to keep the wolves away from us I never heard such terrable hawling of wolfs in my life as we experenced that loansome night.

  Only three days out of Florence, the Loaders had been left behind by the Martin Company. The next day, a rider on horseback—Joseph A. Young, one of Brigham’s own sons—came galloping into the Loader camp. The main body of the party had seen the huge bonfire a few miles behind them and had worried that some accident had befallen the family.

  When he came into the tent and saw My sister with her new born babe liing on the ground on some quilts he was overcome with seympathy the tears ran down his cheeks then he bless my sister and tried to comfort and cheer her by saying well Sister Jaques I supose you will name Your boy handcart having begn born under such circumstances No she said I will want a prettyer name than that for him.

  The boy, named Alpha Loader Jaques, would live to the ripe old age of eighty-nine. Before he died in December 1945, he had become the last surviving member of the Martin Company.

  The handcart party, 575 strong, could not grind to a halt to wait for a single family to catch up. Accepting the inevitable, on August 28 the Loaders pushed on. On one handcart, along with the heavy tent, Tamar rode; on the other, Zilpah and her two children. The rest of the family pushed and pulled. In an incredible feat of perseverance and stamina, they traveled twenty-two miles that day, rejoining the main party only at 2:00 A.M., having navigated by moonlight. Patience saw the hand of God in the effort of August 28: “My poor father seemed better that day than he had been for aweek past surely God gave him new strength.”

  Before they could catch up with the company, however, the Loaders had their first Indian scare. As Patience tells it,

  Five great Indians came out of acave in the Mountains got on there horses and came to Meet us thay was all painted bare naked except there brich cloth had there tomahawks and hatchet bows an arrows thay stopt us in the road talked but we could not understand them when they saw our Sick and My sister with her New born babe thay mooved out of the road and motioned for us to go on I think this was as near to beign killed by Indians as I wished to be.

  Those natives, probably Omaha Indians, seem to have been more perplexed by the sight of the struggling family than bent on bloodshed. Adds Patience,

  Thay was quite impodent in there Maners to us and Made fun of us pulling the handcart we was some what afraid of them and I daresay thay could see we was afraid of them…. I know it was nothing but the power of God that saved us from those Indians.

  Eventually, both Zilpah and Tamar recovered sufficiently so that they could walk alongside the handcarts. (In his 1878 reminiscence, John Jaques insists that each sister was carried 150 miles, but this may be a retrospective exaggeration.) James Loader’s strength held up for another two weeks or so. Patience remembered the agony of those days trudging across the plains and sand hills of Nebraska, and the faith that saw her through it: “Sometimes in the Morning I would feel so tiard and feel that I could not pull the cart the day through. then the still small voice would wisper in my ear as thy day thy strength shall be. this would give me new strength and energy.”

  Already the party’s daily rations were proving inadequate. John Jaques’s otherwise mundane diary records a consequence of the emigrants’ ceaseless hunger that Patience’s memoir omits. On September 22: “Cold, wet, rainy morning. Someone stole a cow’s foot from my cart, also treacle, spice, meat, etc. from Brother John Oldham’s cart and a meat dumpling from another brother’s cart.”

  The 1878 reminiscence amplifies: “In some of the pinching times there would be a little petty pilfering going on in camp occasionally. The pilferings were usually of bread.”

  On the trail west, the Martin Company followed the Platte River along its northern bank. By mid-September, they had traveled some 275 miles from Florence, and were camped in what is now south-central Nebraska. On the 12th or 13th, they had passed Fort Kearny—a landmark that, curiously, neither Jaques’s diary nor Patience’s memoir mentions. The fort, established in 1848 to protect emigrants on the Oregon Trail, was one of only three places west of Florence where the Martin Company might have hoped to purchase supplies and food.

  A pair of other diary-keepers in the party give clues to that omission. Wrote Jesse Haven, “Sept 12th…remained in Camp to-day did not travel. opposite to Fort Kerney I went over to the Fort and traded som Indians doing some depredations in this vicinity.” And Samuel Openshaw recorded,

  Sept. 13—Started about half past 8 o’clock this morning, traveled until one o’clock when we stopped for dinner nearly opposite Fort Kearney where the soldiers are stationed, started again and traveled until five o’clock when we camped at the Platte River. A man fell down dead. The Indians are very hostile about here. They have attacted some of the immigrants who have passed through this season and rumor says that some have been murdered, but they have kept out of our way.

  The chief reason that the Martin Company did not tarry at Kearny was not fear of Indians but the fact that the fort lay on the south—the wrong—side of the river. Crossings of waterways as broad and deep as the Platte were major undertakings. The detour to Kearny, even with its potential for trade, must have loomed as an unnecessary hiatus for the Saints as they hurried into autumn.

  It was now that James Loader began to fail. A long, poignant passage in Patience’s memoir chronicles his collapse:

  Some days he was not able to pull the cart but had to walk one evening when we goto camp he had walked seventeen miles with Mother helping him he sais My dear girls I was not able to get any wood to Make you afire and he fealt so bad about it I said never Mind father we have got some wood on the cart and we will soon have afire and make you a little warm grewel.

  The Loaders and John Jaques got their tent pitched and carried James into it, swaddled in quilts.

  The next Morning I got very early to make afire and make him alittle more flour grewel that was all we had to give him but before I could get it ready for him My Sister Zilpha called to Saying patience come quick our father is dieing and when I got into the tent my poor Mother and all our family four Sisters My youngst brother Robert ten years old and my brother in law John Jaques was all kneeling on the ground around him poor dear father realizing he had to leave us he was to weak to talk to us he looked on us all with tears in his eyes then he said to Mother with great diffulcuty he said you know I love My children then he closed his eyes thees was the last words he ever said.

  One of the subcaptains of the company, taking pity on the nearly comatose old man, offered to put him in a wagon as the party moved onward, but when Patience was rebuffed once more in her plea for one of the Loader sisters to ride with him, she again declined the offer. Instead, all day on September 23, the family pushed their two handcarts, a
top one of which lay James Loader. “He did not seem to suffer pain he never opened his eyes,” recalled Patience. “Many times dureing the day I spoke to him quite loud and ask him if he knew me or could he hear me but he never noticed me.” The day’s journey was a particularly arduous one, as the emigrants climbed and crested sand hills into which the handcart wheels sank as they gouged deep ruts.

  That evening several Saints came to the Loader tent to give a last blessing to James. They moistened his mouth with anointing oil. To the family’s amazement, James licked the oil from his parched lips. One of the watchers said, “We the servants of God seal him up unto God our Father,” to which “my dear father amen said so plain that we could understand him and there lay with such asweet smile on his face that was the last word he said Amen to the blessing.” He died at 11:00 P.M.

  Another sub-captain, Daniel Tyler, who had also been made bishop of the Martin Company, tried to console the Loaders, calling James “afaithfull true servant of God” who “had laid down his life for the gosple sake he had died amarter to the truth,” promising the family that “we will Meet our dear father again and be reunited with him to dwell in unity and love allthrough eternity…. Of course this was all very comforting to us but it did not bring our dear father back.”

  The burial, carried out at six the next morning, was agonizing for the family. “Two kind brothers” dug a grave deep enough so that the wolves would not dig up the corpse. Coffinless, wrapped in a quilt, James Loader was lowered into the hole “and the earth thown in upon his poor body oh that sounded so hard I will never forget the sound of that dirt beign shoveld anto my poor fathers boday it seemed to me that it would break every bone in his body.”

  John Jaques tersely recorded the gravesite as “west side of sandhill, 13 miles east of Ash Hollow.” Jaques assigned “diarrhoea” as the cause of death.

  After that, for the Loaders, there was nothing to do but to push on along the Platte with the rest of the company. During the first weeks of October, the days grew shorter and colder. James Loader was far from the only victim of this procession into an early winter. One day an emigrant named Jonathan Stone, about fifty-three years old, lay down beside the trail and fell asleep. It was some time before he was missed. According to Patience, “Some of the breathren had to go back in seach of him and when thay found him he was dead and nearly all eaten by the wolves.”

  The first snow fell on October 19. The timing was disastrous, for on that day the Martin Company had reached the point, not far from today’s Casper, Wyoming, where the Mormon Trail left the Platte to follow the Sweetwater River toward South Pass and the Continental Divide. To pursue that route, all of the Martin Company had to ford the Platte, snowstorm be damned.

  The team’s few oxen were forced to swim, as the wagons were floated across, but the handcarts had to be pushed through the current by the terrified pilgrims. The mass ford quickly grew chaotic. Amy Loader was able to ride on the back of a mule making the crossing, but from the far bank she watched her children wading almost up to their necks. As Patience remembered,

  The water was deep and very cold and we was drifted out of the regular crossing and we came near to beign drounded the water came up to our arm pits poor Mother was standing on the bank screaming as we got near the bank I heard Mother say for Gods Sake some of you men help My poor girls.

  One vignette glimpsed by Patience that day would haunt her for decades:

  When we was in the middle of the river I saw a poor brother carreying his child on his back he fell down in the water I never Knew if he was drowned or not I fealt sorrey that we could not help him but we had all we could do to save ourselves from drownding.

  Once on the far bank, with all their clothing soaked, the snow falling, and a bitter wind raking the plain, the emigrants were at immediate risk of fatal hypothermia. The company moved on for several miles before finding a campsite. The Loader children’s clothing froze stiff. “Mother took of one of her under skirts and put on one of us and her apron for another,” Patience later wrote. In camp that afternoon,

  It was to late to go for wood and water the wood was to far away. that night the ground was frozen to hard we was unable to drive any tent pins in as the tent was wett when we took it down in the morning it was somewhat frozen So we stretched it open the best we could and got in under it untill morning.

  For the Loaders, and for the hundreds of other members of the Martin Company stranded in the middle of this increasingly desperate journey, the worst was yet to come.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FINDING ZION

  The handcart trail to Zion was paved with two and a half decades of messianic visions on the part of Mormon leaders and relentless persecution at the hands of the church’s enemies. What is today by far the most successful homegrown American religion, with nearly six million adherents in the United States and twelve million worldwide, might well have fizzled out early on, like such contemporary American faiths as the Millerites, the Campbellites, or the celibate Jemimaites. In his 1930 essay “The Centennial of Mormonism,” Bernard DeVoto—born in Ogden, Utah, to a mother who had been raised in the LDS church—alluded sardonically to an “anonymous Frenchman” who had “remarked that America, which could contrive only one soup, had invented a hundred religions.” (One wonders what soup the Frenchman had in mind.)

  The very survival of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, not to mention its burgeoning appeal at the beginning of the twenty-first, owes everything to the extraordinary characters of its first two Prophets, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. (For its December 2006 issue, The Atlantic Monthly polled ten “prominent historians” to rank the one hundred most influential Americans in history. The list, headed by Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson, included Joseph Smith [at number 52] and Brigham Young [at 74]. Only two other religious leaders made the list—Martin Luther King Jr. [8] and Mary Baker Eddy [86].) Indeed, during the 1860s and 1870s, many sagacious observers of the Mormon colony in Utah were quite certain that the religion would collapse shortly after the death of Brigham Young.

  It is something of a coincidence—but something not—that while Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were both born in Vermont (in Sharon, in the eastern Green Mountains, and Whitingham, just north of the Massachusetts border, respectively), both moved while still in childhood to western New York state. Driven by poverty and illness, Smith’s farming family resettled in 1816 in Palmyra, a town of about four thousand situated some twenty-five miles southeast of Rochester. Smith was ten years old at the time.

  Born on June 1, 1801, Young was actually four and a half years older than the Prophet who would lead him into the church he would found in 1830. Like Smith’s, Young’s father was a down-on-his-luck farmer, a man who supplemented his earnings as a part-time carpenter. By 1804 the Youngs had moved to Sherburne, in central New York state; eight years later, when Young was eleven, they fetched up in the rural burg that is known today as Tyrone—fifty miles due south of the Palmyra to which the Smiths would emigrate in 1816, during the famous “year without a summer.”

  There was no more propitious time or place in American history for the concoction of new religions. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Americans were hungry for millennial proofs that God was among us, watchful, punitive of sinners, but promising abundant and imminent rewards to the righteous. The whole country was lurching in violent counterreaction against the irreligion and moral looseness of Tom Paine’s Age of Reason—itself a violent reaction against the Puritan thunderings of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather a generation before.

  Nowhere was that zeal for new faith more rabid than on the semi-frontier of western New York state. The region centering on Palmyra acquired among circuit-riders a sobriquet as “the burnt-over district.” In biographer Fawn Brodie’s gloss: “One revival after another was sweeping through the area, leaving behind a people scattered and peeled, for religious enthusiasm was literally being burnt out of them.” />
  Latter-day Mormon hagiographers have tended to portray the young Joseph Smith as an upstanding teenage citizen of Palmyra with an insatiable curiosity about the metaphysical, but there is plenty of evidence that he had much of the scamp and scallywag about him, and even a bit of the con man. Brigham Young’s iconoclastic 1925 biographer, Morris Werner, finds the flawed image of Smith more appealing than the gilded icon:

  The Mormons would do better to accept this picture of him, which wins our sympathy by virtue of his roguery. However, it outrages the moral sensibilities of stern religious enthusiasts to admit that Huckleberry Finn could have grown up into a Prophet of God.

  Fawn Brodie, whose 1945 biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History (revised in 1970), remains the definitive life, concurs. She sees her subject in adolescence as “a likeable ne’er-do-well who was notorious for tall tales and necromantic arts.” Later, after Smith became famous, a number of his erstwhile Palmyra neighbors published unflattering vignettes of the rogue who had grown up in their midst. One former friend wrote, “He was known among the young men I associated with as a romancer of the first water. I never knew so ignorant a man as Joe was to have such a fertile imagination.”

  Some of these retrospective slurs were solicited by anti-Mormon polemicists, and are thus perhaps no more to be credited than the hagiographers’ rosy portraits. Among them is an affidavit signed by fifty-one Palmyrans asserting that Smith was “destitute of moral character and addicted to vicious habits.” It is a matter of record that at age twenty-one he was arrested for being “a disorderly person and an impostor.” But the affidavit seems too harsh. Smith himself, in a church publication, admitted at the age of twenty-eight that in his teenage years “I fell into many vices and follies,” but he insisted that “I have not…been guilty of wronging or injuring any man or society of men.”