Devil's Gate

by David Roberts

  John Bond, the twelve-year-old in the Hodgetts wagon company, conjured up decades later the “untold hardships, broken hearts and so many deaths of loved ones” he witnessed along the trail. “Whatever was on the agents minds”? he wondered out loud, before inveighing, “The men in high standing with high priesthood power are yet to meet the innocent ones before the bar of God to answer to Him for the atrocities of inhuman advice.”

  And John Chislett mused upon the tragedy for a decade and a half, before writing in the early 1870s, “Whether Brigham was influenced in his desire to get the poor of Europe more rapidly to Utah by his sympathy with their condition, by his well-known love of power, his glory in numbers, or his love of wealth, which an increased amount of subservient labour would enable him to acquire, is best known to himself. But the sad results of his Hand-Cart scheme will call for a day of reckoning in the future which he cannot evade.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For a non-Mormon, the intricacies of LDS doctrine and history present a labyrinthine challenge. As I began to conduct research for this book, I felt seriously lost on more than one occasion. I would have remained lost had I not hired the services of Ardis Parshall, a Mormon historian, newspaper columnist, and freelance researcher. Parshall’s command of the documents in the LDS Archives in Salt Lake City, as well as of published sources, proved to be utterly masterful (an inside joke has it that Ardis knows the Archives better than the official church archivists).

  Besides being delightful to work with—a woman with a keen sense of humor and a powerful intelligence—Parshall impressed me as by far the most talented researcher I have ever collaborated with on any book or magazine article. As a devout Mormon, Ardis realized early on that my conclusions about the handcart tragedy, nineteenth-century Mormon history, and Brigham Young himself would be seriously at odds with hers. Yet she never hesitated in supplying me documents that I thought I needed, even when they cast a less than flattering light on LDS leaders or events. Far and away my greatest debt in writing Devil’s Gate is thus to her, and I admire her integrity in persevering in her invaluable labors even after she recognized that she disagreed with my narrative argument.

  In the middle of my research, as I visited Boulder, Colorado, my brother Alan, a genealogy buff, caught sight of the unusual name Woodmansee in my notes, and recognized it from our own family tree. With much help from Ardis Parshall, Alan figured out that Emily Hill Woodmansee, a survivor in the Willie Company and later author of the poem “Hunger and Cold” (quoted in Chapter Nine), was my second cousin five times removed. For me, this discovery furnished a fugitive but beguiling personal link to the story.

  I had anticipated a diffident or even suspicious reception when I started work in the LDS Archives in 2005. To my great surprise, the archivists, librarians, and historians in the Church History Library could not have been more welcoming and helpful. In 1964, Wallace Stegner had complained that the LDS library and archives were “open to scholars only reluctantly and with limitations.” Nothing could be further from the truth today. To my mind, the Archives now set a shining example of disinterested service to writers and researchers who will inevitably quarrel with and criticize “orthodox” Mormon history.

  Within the Church History Library, especially helpful to me were Bill Slaughter, Mel Bashore, and Andrew D. Olsen, who regularly dropped whatever they were doing to help me solve a knotty dilemma or fill in a gap in my understanding. I also benefited from consultation with Chad Orton, Michael Landon, and Richard Turley.

  A number of dissident or skeptical Mormon historians helped me fix my bearings on the complicated handcart saga. By far the most helpful was the brilliant iconoclast Will Bagley, whose Blood of the Prophets is the definitive work on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. David Bigler likewise came to my aid, both over the telephone and through the pages of his scrupulously researched and very readable books. Gary Bergera shared his thoughtful conclusions with me over lunch in Salt Lake City. Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Terry Del Bene took time out to give me some valuable lessons on overland travel on the Mormon Trail. Steve Lundgren, general manager of the Downtown Marriott hotel in Salt Lake City, went out of his way to correct the erroneous information that had been laminated into the caption on a replica of a famous handcart sculpture that rests in the hotel lobby. And independent historian Lyndia Carter, who knows more about the handcart expeditions than anyone else alive, spent half a day bringing me up to speed on all kinds of arcana, even though she is in the process of writing her own pair of books about the handcart story.

  In Riverton, Wyoming, I was also surprised and grateful to be granted meetings with Scott Lorimer, Kim McKinnon, and Lloyd Larsen, even though I’m sure they knew I was bound to be skeptical of the Second Rescue mission they had launched and carried out. Those stake leaders also gave me free run of their own archives, through which I was guided by the savvy Gary Anderson.

  Every elder or sister whom I met at the Mormon Handcart Visitors’ Center near Alcova, Wyoming, was unfailingly kind and helpful. And I was pleased to be invited briefly into the fold of the West Valley, Utah, stake as they carried out their own pilgrimage in honor of their ancestors at the Visitors’ Center and Martin’s Cove. Likewise, I received nothing but assistance from the staffers at Fort Bridger and Fort Laramie.

  Research carried out in other libraries supplemented my core work in the LDS Archives. I am particularly grateful to Janet Seegmiller of the Special Collections department of Southern Utah University in Cedar City. I wish also to thank the staffs of Special Collections at Brigham Young University, the Missouri Historical Society, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Houghton, Widener, and Tozzer Libraries at Harvard.

  Long before I started writing, I talked through some of my theses with several close friends, who reacted candidly. These sounding boards included Greg Child, Vaughn Hadenfeldt, Jon Krakauer, and my wife, Sharon Roberts. Jon’s superb Under the Banner of Heaven did not serve as the immediate impetus for Devil’s Gate, but his hard-earned expertise in matters Mormon helped set me back on my own path time and again.

  As usual, my agent, Stuart Krichevsky, put in long hours helping me craft a proposal and was a constant source of good advice when it came to the writing itself. In many details, I was admirably aided by Stuart’s longtime colleague, Shana Cohen, and by his assistant, Kathryne Wick.

  At Simon & Schuster, Gypsy da Silva and Fred Chase performed the kinds of careful reading and querying I have almost taken for granted. And Johanna Li was, as ever, on top of every stray detail.

  This is my tenth book for my Simon & Schuster editor, Bob Bender, in what for me has been an ideal relationship spreading across fifteen years. I’m sure Bob is sick of hearing it by now, but I cannot resist the temptation once more to salute the best damned editor I know of, and the best I ever hope to have.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: PATIENCE

  Up to that point, for Patience Loader: Archer, Recollections, 62–63, 209.

  Florence, a fledgling community: Berrett et al., Sacred Places: Iowa and Nebraska, 216-18.

  Averaging ten miles a day: http://wwwzds.org/churchhistory.

  Yet even as the emigrants: Archer, 62, 165.

  Patience, her father, her mother: http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  what historians LeRoy and Ann Hafen call: Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts, 11.

  A few ox-drawn wagons: http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  The handcart “experiment”: Millennial Star, December 22, 1855.

  By 1856, Young’s virtually autonomous empire: Hirshson, Lion of the Lord, 116–20.

  “those twin relics of barbarism”: Nevins, Frémont, 433–34.

  Not only to strengthen: Millennial Star, December 22, 1855.

  The handcart of 1856: Rogerson, “Martin’s Handcart Company, 1856,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 4, 1914; Olsen, Price We Paid, 25–26; Elder Hadley, Mormon Handcart Visitors’ Center, Wyoming.

  From Iowa City to Florence: Archer, 62�
��63, 165–66.

  August 1: About 9 aclock: Joseph Beecroft, http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  Unlike Beecroft, Patience Loader: Archer, 14–15.

  Thus, describing James Loader’s collapse: Ibid., 63.

  On the thousand miles: Berrett et al., Sacred Places: Iowa and Nebraska, 283–87; Berrett and Anderson, Sacred Places: Wyoming and Utah, 16–23, 157–75.

  In that last week of August: Archer, 62–63.

  In 1846, Brigham Young’s vanguard party: Slaughter and Landon, Trail of Hope, passim.

  In her memoir, Patience bitterly rues: Archer, 56–57.

  Born in 1827: Ibid., 21, 165.

  By the time she wrote: Ibid., 11–14.

  Thus the gardener’s cottage: Ibid., 22–23, 25–27.

  No photograph of Patience: Ibid., 100.

  The Loaders were staunch Anglicans: Ibid., 21–22, 31, 34.

  One day in 1851: Ibid., 35.

  Accepting what she could not change: Ibid., 39–41.

  Yet something “took”: Ibid., 42.

  At some point, a new housekeeper: Ibid., 44–45.

  Patience was even castigated: Ibid., 45.

  Patience promptly found another job: Ibid., 45–46.

  Within a year after founding his church: Brodie, No Man Knows, 111, 120–21.

  By 1855, Zion had been relocated: Hirshson, Lion, 102–3.

  As early as 1848: Millennial Star, March 15, 1848.

  And in September 1855: Ibid., September 22, 1855.

  By December 9, 1855: Archer, 49.

  There must have been some confusion: Ibid.

  A semiofficial report: The Mormon, March 1, 1856.

  In her memoir, Patience left an account: Archer, 50–54.

  In her memoir, Patience recalls that President John Taylor: Ibid., 55–56.

  The grand scheme had been announced: Millennial Star, December 22, 1855.

  It had likewise been published in The Mormon: The Mormon, December 1, 1855.

  There is no getting around the family’s shock: Archer, 56–57.

  Not only did John Jaques answer it: Millennial Star, June 14, 1856.

  The impact on James Loader: Archer, 57.

  The Loaders left New York: Ibid., 58–60.

  Thirty-three years old that July: http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  The Loaders arrived in Iowa City: Archer, 58–61.

  Thirty-seven years old, born in Lancashire: http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  Decades later, Patience would look back: Archer, 62–63.

  In a reminiscence published: Jaques, “Some Reminiscences,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, December 1, 1878.

  John Jaques also kept a diary: Jaques, [Diary and Reminiscences], http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  As Wallace Stegner writes in his pithy history: Stegner, Gathering, 221.

  Built in 1846 as Winter Quarters: Berrett et al., 208–16.

  On August 25, the company started off: Archer, 62–68.

  Before they could catch up with the company: Ibid., 66–67.

  (In his 1878 reminiscence): Jaques, “Some Reminiscences,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, December 8, 1878.

  James Loader’s strength held up: Archer, 68–71.

  John Jaques’s otherwise mundane diary: Jaques, [Diary and Reminiscences], http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  The 1878 reminiscence amplifies: Jaques, “Some Reminiscences,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, December 8, 1878.

  The fort, established in 1848: Berrett et al., 283–86.

  Wrote Jesse Haven: Haven, Journals, http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  And Samuel Openshaw recorded: Openshaw diary, ibid.

  It was now that James Loader began to fail: Archer, 70–73.

  John Jaques tersely recorded the gravesite: Jaques, [Diary and Reminiscences], http://www.lds.org/churchhistory.

  After that, for the Loaders: Archer, 73, 215n.

  The team’s few oxen were forced to swim: Ibid., 73–74.

  CHAPTER 2: FINDING ZION

  What is today by far: Riess and Bigelow, Mormonism, 10.

  In his 1930 essay: DeVoto, “The Centennial of Mormonism,” 2.

  Indeed, during the 1860s: E.g., T. B. H. Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, 668; Beadle, Life in Utah, 524–26; New York Times, August 30, 1877.

  Driven by poverty and illness: Brodie, 7–10.

  Born on June 1, 1801: Hirshson, Lion, 5–6.

  During the first decades: Werner, Brigham Young, 56.

  The region centering on Palmyra: Brodie, 14.

  The Mormons would do better: Werner, 20.

  She sees her subject: Brodie, 16.

  “He was known among the young men”: Daniel Hendrix, St. Louis Globe Democrat, February 2, 1897, quoted in Linn, Story, 13.

  Among them is an affidavit: Brodie, 16, 18. Italics in original.

  Smith himself, in a church publication: Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate, November 6, 1840, quoted in ibid., 17.

  In any event, while still a teenager: Brodie, 16, 18.

  He was big, powerful: Ibid., 32.

  In the best-known portrait: By Adrian Lamb, National Portrait Gallery.

  At the age of nineteen: Brodie, 29–32.

  At some point, while still a teenager: Ibid., 20–21, 30–31.

  In 1820, a latent religious instinct: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 1, 5–7. Italics in original.

  The second vision: Ibid., vol. 1, 11–12.

  The very next day: Ibid., vol. 1, 14–16; Brodie, 39–40.

  The hill, named Cumorah: Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven, 63–64.

  The golden plates were densely inscribed: Brodie, 42–43, 50.

  “seemed to be pliable”: Saints Herald, October 1, 1879, quoted in ibid., 43.

  Eventually Smith collaborated: Brodie, 53, 60–62, 80, 87.

  To Bernard DeVoto: DeVoto, “Centennial,” 5.

  “Perhaps in the beginning”: Brodie, 41.

  “It was like taking”: Shirley E. Stephenson interview, November 30, 1975, quoted in Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie, 58.

  In 1946, the year after: Bringhurst, “Fawn Brodie and Her Quest,” 79.

  It is impossible to determine: Werner, 31.

  “intellectually the most eminent”: Sterling McMurrin, in B. H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, xviii.

  “the greatest Mormon thinker”: Rea, Devil’s Gate, 226.

  The terms upon which the debates: B. H. Roberts, Studies, 3–4.

  Then, late in his own life: Ibid., xvi–xviii, 94–115.

  There is a school of Mormon thought: Ardis Parshall, personal communication, February 18, 2007.

  Mark Twain famously called: Twain, Roughing It, 110–11.

  One of the antagonists: B. H. Roberts, Studies, 7.

  From almost the time: E.g., Brodie, 46–47, 444–52.

  Neither plagiarism claim: B. H. Roberts, Studies, 321–44.

  Quite aside from allegations: E.g., Hyde, Mormonism, 100.

  In the face of such early criticism: Brodie, 77–80.

  One of his first and most important converts: Pratt, quoted in ibid., 103.

  One of the first to fall: Hirshson, 7.

  Young, however, was no instant convert: Werner, 10–12.

  By his own admission: Hirshson, 6.

  Some skeptical visitors: E.g., Hyde, 155–56.

  “He loses his temper”: Young, Wife No. 19, 520.

  On April 15, 1832: Werner, 13.

  “He was happy to see us”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 1, 295–97.

  “It consisted of a babble”: Werner, 14.

  The duty of every Saint: Doctrine and Covenants, 29: 7–8; 28: 9; 47: 67, 71.

  According to the Book of Mormon: Book of Mormon, 43–46, 250–61; Riess and Bigelow, 157–61.

  The new faith got off: Brodie, 87, 94–97.

  To persuade the recalcitrant: Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 111.

  Kirtland lasted as the Mormon stronghold: Brodie
, 102, 111–13.

  They stripped him: Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, 3–4, paraphrased in ibid., 119.

  For one thing, the Mormon colony: Stegner, viii–ix.

  As early as 1831: Brodie, 108.

  One of them delivered: Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 533–34.

  Frictions with neighbors: Stegner, vii–viii.

  Arriving there two years later: Ibid., 19.

  Even as the Kirtland colony: Ibid., ix.

  In January, Smith abandoned: Ibid.

  There is good evidence: Brodie, 184.

  “Inasmuch as this Church”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 2, 247.

  “a remarkable series of evasions”: Brodie, 321.

  Brodie offers a list: Ibid., 335–36.

  The man, of course: Ibid., 339–41.

  As late as the early 1850s: Fanny Stenhouse, “Tell It All,” 103–4.

  Brodie imagines “a man”: Brodie, 186.

  “Whenever I see a pretty woman”: Werner, 130.

  “Within the state raged”: Hirshson, 30.

  By 1838 the numbers: Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 15; Brodie, 209.

  One of Smith’s closest associates: Brodie, 213–14.

  Both Smith and Young would aver: Ibid., 215–16.

  In 1859, the famous journalist: Hirshson, 252.

  Greeley pressed the Prophet: New York Tribune, August 20, 1859.

  Leonard J. Arrington, whose Brigham Young: Arrington, Brigham Young, 250.

  One of the most notorious: Beadle, ed., Brigham’s Destroying Angel.

  “to go out on a scout”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 3, 180–81.

  In the middle of 1838: Werner, 101–2.

  John D. Lee, who was Brigham Young’s stepson: Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 58–60; Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, August 6, 1838.

  The conflict culminated: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 3, 182–86; Brodie, 237.

  What followed remains uncertain: Brodie, 239–40; Lee, 82.

  With his five hostages: Werner, 103.

  The upshot was that Smith: Brodie, 242–55.

  Without hesitation, he chose: Ibid., 256.

  Within months, however, malaria: Ibid., 256–57.