Devil's Gate

by David Roberts

  One reason President Richards and the Martin Company leaders may have felt sanguine about the late start across the plains was that, by design, two fully equipped wagon trains took up the rear. The William B. Hodgetts Company, comprising 150 emigrants with about thirty-three wagons, set out from Florence on August 28. Three days later, it was followed by the much larger John A. Hunt Company, with three hundred individuals and some fifty-six wagons. Yet as it turned out, these two caravans straggled along, making no better progress than the women, children, and aged in the Martin Company, as they were beset with problems of their own. The Hodgetts and Hunt Companies played almost no part in mitigating the catastrophe that was soon to unfold.

  Having left Florence on August 16, a week before the Martin Company, Willie’s party, now reduced to 404 individuals with eighty-five handcarts, traveled at first in high spirits. Many years later, Mary Ann James, who was eleven at the time of the journey, recalled, “When we started out on the trail each morning there was always something new to see. Maby it was a bird running along the road which was chased but never did catch. The[re] were always flowers and pretty rocks to pick. This land was so different from the one in England that it kept us interested.”

  Even John Chislett, who would later apostatize, remembered the departure from Florence as a happy time: “Everything seemed to be propitious, and we moved gaily forward full of hope and faith. At our camp each evening could be heard songs of joy, merry peals of laughter, and bon mots on our condition and prospects. Brother Savage’s warning was forgotten in the mirthful ease of the hour.”

  The Saints invented many songs to chant as they trundled their rickety carts, the most popular of which became known simply as “The Hand-cart Song.” The verses were written by J. D. T. McAllister, who had been appointed commissary of the McArthur Company. The first stanza goes:

  Ye Saints that dwell on Europe’s shores,

  Prepare yourselves with many more

  To leave behind your native land

  For sure God’s Judgments are at hand.

  Prepare to cross the stormy main

  Before you do the valley gain

  And with the faithful make a start

  To cross the plains with your hand cart.

  The chorus to “The Handcart Song” became the most beloved and often recited of all the ditties along the trail—a kind of Mormon “Row, row, row your boat” (though not, apparently, a round):

  Some must push and some must pull

  As we go marching up the hill,

  As merrily on the way we go

  Until we reach the valley, oh.

  From the start, the Saints were also indefatigable composers of hymns. Along with “The Handcart Song,” the emigrants in the Willie and Martin Companies sang “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” which after its composition in 1846 had quickly become the most popular of all Mormon hymns (earning the sobriquet, “the Mormon ‘Marseillaise’”). It was composed along the trail in Iowa by William Clayton, the fanatically precise mileage-measurer on Brigham Young’s pioneer trek to Zion. In today’s hymnal it is given a metronome marking of 66 to 84 for a quarter note, which would make it a brisk marching tune. The epigraphic inscription urges the faithful to sing the hymn “With conviction.”

  The fourth and last stanza of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” gives an eerie insight into the fatalistically pious spirit that drove the whole Mormon emigration, and it has an especially grim resonance for the disaster that awaited the last two handcart companies in Wyoming:

  And should we die before our journey’s through,

  Happy day! All is well!

  We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;

  With the just we shall dwell!

  Cheerful and melodic those first days out of Florence may have been, but the toil was at once more severe than what the Saints had borne across Iowa. As John Chislett explained, “Our carts were more heavily laden, as our teams could not haul sufficient flour to last us to Utah; it was therefore decided to put one sack (ninety-eight pounds) on each cart in addition to the regular baggage. Some of the people grumbled at this, but the majority bore it without a murmur.”

  “Grumbling” and “murmuring” were of course significant Mormon sins, earning a leader’s tongue-lashing, such as the one Captain Willie delivered on September 7, as he announced that he “would like to see all the grumblers, pilferers, liars and so forth if any were still so in their hearts immediately stand by themselves aside from the rest so that the Brethren might better know them.”

  During those first weeks, as the company followed the north bank of the Platte River across Nebraska Territory, there were the usual mishaps. The official journal records that on August 22, with the company only seventy-five miles out of Florence, “Sister Sophia Geary had her left foot run over by Bro. Wilford’s waggon. She was administered to in the evening by Bros. Siler, Cantwell and Geary, Capt. Siler officiating. He sealed the blessing of health and strength upon her and promised that inasmuch as she would exercise faith she should walk tomorrow.” Sure enough, the next day, “Sis. Geary walked a considerable distance pursuant to Bro. Siler’s promise.”

  Retrospective accounts of the journey are full of similar exempla of faith triumphing over adversity. Seventeen-year-old Joseph Wall nearly drowned crossing one of the tributaries of the Platte. He became too ill to walk, and the company leaders urged leaving him behind for the Martin Company to pick up. But Joseph’s sixteen-year-old sister, Emily, could not stand to be parted from her brother, so for several days, she and another girl carried Joseph along on their handcart.

  The onerous sand hills of Nebraska gave the company some of its sternest challenges. The official journal tersely notes that on August 25, “Had to double teams up a steep sandhill between 2 bluffs.” Normally a team of six oxen was yoked to each of the seven wagons; if the journal is accurate, doubling a team would mean that a full dozen oxen were required to haul each wagon up the dune.

  Levi Savage’s journal routinely recorded the arduous labor of traversing the sand hills: “After noon we commenced to ascend the Bluffs. The ascent was Sand; it caused very hard puling.” On the following day, “Both people and teams are much fatigued by the hea[v]y Sandy roads.” And the day after, “Just before the camp got under way, a colde, and Strong wind arose from the N.W. This togeather with the hea[v]y Sand, made our progress very Slow, and exstreanly laborious. Several were obliged to leave their carts and they with the infirm, could Scarcely Get into camp.”

  Adding to the misery was the wretched condition of the handcarts. John Chislett would later eloquently analyze their failings:

  The axles and boxes being of wood, and being ground out by the dust that found its way there in spite of our efforts to keep it out, together with the extra weight put on the carts, had the effect of breaking the axles at the shoulder. All kinds of expedients were resorted to as remedies for the growing evil, but with variable success. Some wrapped their axles with leather obtained from bootlegs; others with tin, obtained by sacrificing tin-plates, kettles, or buckets from their mess outfit. Besides these inconveniences, there was felt a great lack of a proper lubricator…. The poor folks had to use their bacon (already totally insufficient for their wants) to grease their axles, and some even used their soap, of which they had very little, to make their carts trundle somewhat easier.

  Despite all their hardships, by September 3, the Willie Company had reached central Nebraska. By their own reckoning, they had covered 265 miles from Florence in eighteen days, averaging a creditable fifteen miles a day.

  Then an unmitigated disaster struck. The company had reached buffalo country. Many years later, Emma James, seventeen years old during the emigration, would recall the sight of a mass of bison in full stampede:

  One evening as we prepared to stop for the night a large herd of buffalo came thundering toward us. It sounded like thunder at first then the big black animals came straight for our carts. We were so scared that we were rooted to the ground. One of
the captains seeing what was going on, ran for the carts which were still coming in, jerked out some of the carts to make a path for the steady stream of animals and let them go through. They went passed us like a train roaring along. I’m sure that but for the quick thinking of these men that many of us would have been trampled to death. The animals acted as if they were craz[y] the way they ran. We hoped that we wouldnt meet such a large herd soon again.

  In the morning, the emigrants discovered that thirty of their forty-some cattle had disappeared—most of them the vital oxen that were used to pull the supply wagons. Captain Willie called a halt. For three days, the best scouts in the party searched far and wide for the missing livestock, without discovering a single “milch” cow. The storm had washed away the tracks of the straying beasts—if the ground trampled by hundreds of buffalo hooves had not in fact obliterated them.

  Chislett describes the woeful solution the company was forced to resort to:

  We had only about enough oxen left to put one yoke to each wagon; but, as they were each loaded with about three thousand pounds of flour, the teams could not of course move them. We then yoked up our beef cattle, milch cows, and, in fact, everything that could bear a yoke—even two-year-old heifers. The stock was wild and could pull but little, and we were unable, with all our stock, to move our loads. As a last resort we again loaded a sack of flour on each cart.

  On September 7, a Sunday, Captain Willie and his second-in-command, Millen Atwood, called the whole company together for a meeting intended to boost its sagging morale. In typical fashion for this iron-willed taskmaster, Willie castigated the throng even as he exhorted the men, women, and children to superhuman efforts. He insisted on “the absolute necessity for doing away with the spirit of grumbling, strife, pilfering and disregard of counsel which was now on the increase in the Camp and substituting in its place the spirit of contentment, peace, union and strict obedience.” Determined to keep up a rate of ten to fifteen miles a day, Willie “said he would not enter into full particulars of the plan of operations which he contemplated further than by saying that if the Brethren or Sisters drawing handcarts should be required by their Captain to draw 4 or 5 hundred of flour they must do it cheerfully.” It is a tribute to the sheer pluck and fortitude of the Saints that during the next four days, they did indeed average just under ten miles a day.

  By September 12, the Willie Company had reached the North Bluff Fork of the Platte, 320 miles west of Florence. That evening they were surprised by the sudden appearance of Franklin Richards’s team of elite returning missionaries. Besides the president of the British Mission, their number included William Kimball, who in Florence had jauntily promised the company that he would “stuff into his mouth all the snow they would ever get to see on their journey to the valleys”; Joseph Young, Brigham’s oldest son; George Grant, who would later play the leading role in a desperate rescue mission; and several other dignitaries. With their light wagons and sturdy mules and horses, Richards’s team had left Florence on September 4, almost three weeks after the Willie Company, but, averaging a remarkable forty miles a day, had caught up to the handcart train in western Nebraska.

  According to the official journal, Richards and his colleagues “were loudly greeted by the hearty hurrahs of the Saints whom they met after supper.” Willie called a meeting so that Richards could deliver a stirring pep talk.

  Prest. Richards then addressed the Saints expressing his satisfaction at their having journeyed thus far & more especially with handcarts…. God being their helper and that if a Red Sea whould interpose they should by their union of heart & hand walk through it like Israel of old dryshod. On the same conditions he promised that though they might have some trials to endure as a proof to God and their Brethren that they had the true “grit” still the Lamanites heat nor cold nor any other thing should have power to seriously harm any in the Camp but that we should arrive in the Valleys of the Mountains with strong and healthy bodies and that this should be the case with the aged the sick and the inform [infirm].

  Richards repeated the by now widely accepted assertion that the hand-cart plan was of divine origin. He “said although it was a scheme at which many had already scoffed and which they were yet deriding it was nevertheless the Lord’s plan, a plan which would first puzzle and astonish the nations and then strike terror into their hearts.”

  Richards was not content, however, simply to praise and encourage the Willie Company. The next morning, with the wagons hitched to their makeshift teams, the handcarts loaded, and the company ready to move out, Richards and Willie called another meeting. The purpose was to give Levi Savage a thorough dressing-down in front of his fellow Saints. Savage recorded this public humiliation in a defensive journal entry, under the surface of which he seethes with outrage:

  I supposesd [the meeting] was for prayers. After Singing and prayers Brother Richards commenced to Speak. And I Soon perceived that the meeting was called in consequence of the wrong impression made by my expressing myself So freely at Florance, concerning our crossing the plains so late in the Season. The impression left, was, that I condemned the hand cart Skeem, which is aradiculy [ridiculously] wrong. I neaver conveyed Such an ideah, nor felt to do so, but quite to the conturary. I am infavor of it.

  The tirade continued, with Willie taking up the cudgel: “Brother Richards reprimanded me Sharply. Bro Willey Said that the Spirit that I had manifested from Iowa City. This is something unknown to me and Something he nevour before expressed I had always the best of feelings toward him, and Supposed he had toward me until now.”

  Before riding onward in advance of the handcart company, Richards promised the Saints that they would be resupplied “with provisions, bedding, etc.” at Fort Laramie, about two hundred miles farther west. And also before departing, the missionaries enacted a tableau of such arrogance that John Chislett would remember it bitterly for the rest of his life:

  These brethren told Captain Willie they wanted some fresh meat, and he had our fattest calf killed for them. I am ashamed for humanity’s sake to say they took it. While we, four hundred in number, travelling so slowly and so far from home, with our mixed company of men, women, children, aged, sick, and infirm people, had no provisions to spare, had not enough for ourselves, in fact, these “elders in Israel,” these “servants of God,” took from us what we ourselves so greatly needed and went on in style with their splendid outfit, after preaching to us faith, patience, prayerfulness, and obedience to the priesthood.

  AFTER VOTING ALMOST unanimously to push on from Florence, the Martin Company had set out on August 25. The tribulations and minor triumphs of this sprawling caravan of Saints closely mirrored those of the Willie party a week ahead of them, though the Martin Company suffered no mass stampede of cattle. Like the Willie emigrants, the Martin pioneers had to add a ninety-eight-pound sack of flour to each handcart after Florence. The team’s progress was even slower than that of the Willie Company, thanks to the large numbers of elderly, infirm, and ill in their ranks.

  Patience Loader, her family, and her brother-in-law, John Jaques, were members of the Martin Company. Their ordeal, culminating in the death of Patience’s beloved father, was but one of countless personal dramas unfolding among the 575 Saints in the last handcart company of the year, as the weary pioneers trudged across the plains.

  James Bleak (pronounced “Blake”) was a twenty-six-year-old Englishman who had risen from impoverished orphanhood to become a branch president in the London LDS church. In 1856, he originally planned to come to Zion with his wife and four children, who ranged from infancy to six years old, by conventional wagon team. He was wealthy enough to afford such means of transport. But the zeal of President Richards and other high officials, urging men such as Bleak voluntarily to forgo wagon teams and travel by handcart, pricked the man’s conscience. The money he saved was donated to allow much poorer Saints to gather to Zion with their own handcarts.

  On the trail, Bleak kept a journal that was as laconic a
s it was dutifully regular. Sometimes he noted nothing more than the day’s mileage, and those entries serve as a memorandum of the Martin Company’s fitful progress. From September 4 through 8, for instance, the daily toll was fifteen, six, eight, sixteen, and eighteen miles. The six-mile day was shortened “in consequence of a violent thunderstorm.”

  On the last of those five days, September 8, Bleak recorded, “No watering place on the road. Considerable murmuring in Camp.” The very next day: “At the meeting this morning President Martin and Elder Tyler gave the murmurers a good chastising.”

  Bleak was as stoic about his own suffering as he was about the party’s discontent:

  Sunday [September] 14th We travelled 13 miles. While I was on Guard last night I was attacked with Bloody Flux. Have been very ill all day.

  Monday 15th We travelled 22 miles. I began to draw the Hand-cart this morning but was obliged to leave it. Br Francis Webster very Kindly persuaded me to get on his handcart and drew me 17 miles….

  Tuesday 16th We travelled 9 miles. I through the blessing of God was able to draw the Handcart to day, but am still very ill. The brethren were out Buffalo hunting to day but returned unsuccessful.

  Wednesday 17th We travelled 15 miles. I feel better to day.

  Like James Bleak, thirty-seven-year-old Elizabeth Sermon initially planned to gather to Zion by wagon. She was so determined that she overcame the objections of her fifty-four-year-old husband, who would have preferred to stay in their home just outside London. The couple, and four of their five children, ended up in the Martin Company.