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Show Page 16 Special Mormon Miracle Pageant Supplement Six hundred settlements The Settling Saints They entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake all alone, that summer of 1847. But by 1900, pioneering members of The Church Saints of Jesus Christ of Latter-da- y had founded more than 600 communities in a broad swath extending from Canada into Mexico. In the words of Pulitzer author and historian Wallace Prize-win-ni- Stegner, the Latter-da- y Saints "were one of the principal forces in the settlement of the West." RockyMountain Prophecies An 1840 letter first iterates Joseph Smith's vision that there existed "a place of safety preparing for the Saints away towards the Rocky Mountains." Joseph's view was colored in no small measure by a pronouncement of the ancient prophet Isaiah that "in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." (Isaiah 2:2) Throughout the Nauvoo period the Prophet collected information on that, and other, regions of the country', eventually going public with the news: "I prophesied that the Saints would con tinue to suffer much affliction . . . many would apostatize, others would be put to death by our persecutors or lose their lives in consequence of exposure or disease, and some of them would live to go and assist in making settlements and build cities and see the Saints become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains." When Brigham Young's wagon rolled out of Nauvoo on that bitter February morning of 1846, he knew exactly where his destination lay. Economy "The Lord has done his share of the work," said Brigham Young to the newly assembled Saints. "Me has surrounded us with the elements containing wheat, meat, flax, wool, silk, fruit and everything with which to build up, beautify and glorify the Zion of the last days. It is now our business to mold these elements to our wants and necessities, according to the knowledge we now have and the wisdom we can obtain from the heavens through our faithfulness." Thus, the Saints went to work. Within hours of their arrival in the valley, work committees had the most prevalent presence in a vast territory. Within ten years of Brigham Young's death in 1877, colonies ranged from Cardston, Alberta, Canada, to northern Chihuahua Mexico; from Laie, Hawaii and San Bernardino, California to southern Colorado. Today monuments to such settlement of them the first non-naticommunities in the state -- - dot the staked out and begun tilling a tract for growing produce; another was laying out the temple site; another was surveying for the broad uniform street and housing blocks which characterize central Salt Lake City, Utah today. Aqueducts and irrigation canals were being dug, homes built, kilns constructed, quarries opened. Inside of a decade, hundreds of families and individuals had been called on 35-ac- re ve western landscape throughout Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arimissions to develop some specific facet of territorial economy: an zona, Colorado, California, Moniron mission, a sugar mission, a tana, Idaho, Texas, Wyoming, and lead mission, a cotton mission, silk Canada and Mexico. missions, a flax mission and a State of Deseret When they entered the Salt wool mission. Lake Colonization Valley, as one historian "With no friends anywhere points out, Church leaders were upon the face of the earth, no credit "smarting under the sense of in. . . and hardly a dollar," wrote justice and wrong permitted if not inflicted under of Reed the Smoot, early Apostle Latter-da- y the United States." Yet they still Saints nevertheless occonsidered the United States Concupied, settled and sustained a vibrant new community in the heart stitution the finest document for of the wilderness. Yet within political rule ever written. And weeks of the arrival in the Salt within that same view, statehood was their best course toward poLake Valley, some were being dislitical autonomy. Thus they first patched to colonize the far reaches of that country, a move calculated petitioned for statehood in July of 849 and organized a provisional by Brigham Young to ensure self-ruand freedom from oppression legislature for the State of Deseret, taken from the Book of by establishing the first or at least a term quasi-sancti- 1 le was one of the few times in their short history an American political figure had endeared himself to Saints. The satisfied the Latter-da- y Saints granted him immortality by naming the territorial capital after Mormon and signifying industry. The proposed boundaries ranged from central Oregon to Mexico, and from San Diego to southern Colorado, including portions of nine states. President present-da- y Millard Fillmore went part way, granting the Saints territorial status (Utah) and their own choice of governor - Brigham Young. It him (Fillmore, now in Millard County). The heretofore "state" of Deseret was dissolved by the spring of 1851. -- Our valley has an inspiringlii&jqy, a" .bright mi future, .Tfr-JfSome of those WStfsHlil pecj'jg; rip;;the & members of the uuriiiy ( Rescue. You will se beasts nd jafte r the N .iki,- orsHiHeuntil Pageant directing j sahino eii'jj f on been his fetoed has way. lately every pereon r 5 noto.jcA , volunteer their SearchResctWmbergl t :.L t ij some time.from'jgthee dutiejSomd'nefarm.ers, 'Tv n are doctors, eomo-arrbusiness owners, put These , I , ,r ypn'e tiling fnXQmmon, their they all d e vet io ntgyrgvidina very valyafWSWd needed wheels characterizes Mormon trek to "better life to the west" A community on llie Saints, like hun- THEY DID DANCE!!! dreds of thousands of other Ameri"One of the father's cans and immigrants in the mid to Brigham Young most outstandlate 1800s, crossed the Great ing qualities as a leader was the American Plains and the Rocky manner in which he looked after Mountains in their quest for a bet- the temporal and social welfare of ter life to the west. But surely this his people along with guiding was the most unusual group to them in their spiritual needs. On make the journey: organized in the trek across the Latter-da- y companies, with captains, committees, and choirs, they sang, danced, and worshiped their way across half a continent, building bridges, planting crops, and erecting shelters in an orchestrated effort to ensure a better passage for those who would inevitably follow. ORGANIZATION In January of 847 Brigham Young announced that those crossing the plains were to be organized into companies of hundreds, fifties and tens, with their respective captains. Individuals without families (women without 1 husbands and children w ithout fathers) were adopted into a family for the journey. great plains when everyone but the most feeble walked the greater part of the way, the Saints would be gathered around the campfire for evening entertainment, if the weather was at all favorable. Then songs would be sung, music played by the fiddlers, and the men and women would forget the weariness of walking fifteen miles or so over a trackless desert while they joined in dancing the quadrille. It was his ON WHEELS Quite unlike the majority of people migrating west in the mid 1 800s -- - most of them men, seasoned in farming or in the trades -- The Latter-da- y Saints were a polyglot lot that mostly defied definition. Entire families, even extended families; single adults; orphaned (but d) way of keeping up 'morale' before such a word was ever coined." (Clarissa Young Spencer, "One Who Was Valiant" (Caldwell, warp and the woof of Brother Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1940), p. 162.) Brigham's great commonwealth . . . all gathered from the four corners of the earth ... all to the glory of God and the of his best-arm- ed group to go west up 'til then. Even so, being led by a determined man armed vv ith a dream probably made all the difference." (Arthur King Peters. Seven Trails lies I (New York, NY : Abbeville Press Publishers, 1996), p. 124). es COMMUNITIES up in Iowa territory to plant crops, harv est and prepare provisions for the coming migration. One entire village (Kanesville, now Council Bluffs, Iowa) was established with such "travelers aid" a primary concern. In contrast to most other pio ClNTHUO Sanpete County Search Sanpete County Seun h Wallace Stegner, "they proved extraordinarily adaptable. When driven out of Nauvoo, they converted their fixed property, insofar as they could, into the instruments of mobility . . . and became for the time herders and shepherds, & nnnn Tl Encyclopedia of 8. moved with a social cohesion unknown to others. "As communities on the march," wrote historian Rescue! & Rescue (photo courtesy Blake Edwards Photography) six-mon- th kingdom." On the Trail, they i tt k.J salute the 1!Ve teamsters and frontiersmen, instead of artisans and tow nsmen and farmers. When their villages on wheels reached the valley of their destination, the Saints were able to revert at once" to their former interests and occupations. For roughly 70,000 Latter-da-y Saint pioneers, it was not the context of common background that brought them together, but the vision of a common future. THE "DOWN AND BACK" WAGON TRALNS Perhaps no other effort better demonstrated trail efficiency and pioneer cooperation than the organization of the "down and back" wagon trains of 1861-6round-tri- p These trains in the Utah departed spring, trav"down" to the Missouri eling River, loaded with flour to be sold in the east. Reloading with newly arrived European converts, the trains brought them "back" to the Salt Lake Valley in the fall. Virtually every Utah settlement contributed to the cause with supplies (wagons, teams, food), or men (captains, teamsters, commissary chiefs, clerks and guards). Escaping arduous summer farm work for the adventure of living on the plains was hardly a sacrifice for the young men sent on the "down and back" trains. Neither was the good fortune of being among the first to meet new young single emigrant women. roads, built sturdy bridges, erected and built and manned river ferries at numerous points along the trail. way-hous- children; lawyers, doctors, piano builders, seamstresses, architects, masons mathematicians; rich and poor; American, Scandinavian, Welsh, British . . . "These tens of thousands," wrote J. Reuben Clark in 1947, "were the FOR THOSE WHO WOULD FOLLOW... "Taking everything into acWhile only 2000 people count, the Pioneer Company was crossed to the Salt Lake Valley probably the that first year of the migration, and most thousands remained on farms set best-supplie- d, neer groups crossing the plains, the Latter-da- y Saints cleared Cqu ntyr-- Lmj dtQnpet Mormonism Om II u (ii f j II uJO m i !1 fRi It til t IX ( ini ti i X) Intermountain Health Care Utahs Pioneer for Quality Health Care n j-T- for exj s xlC " 11 'ijl I i : 3' limited time you can receive Macmillans '!! : V1U cx I Now jk ail 3 Hi p' nt' lj n ) i; ru ,G3 a of CD-RO- Tht Encyclopedia of Alormonum, complete with the LDS Standard Worts, absolutely free. Deepen your understanding of gospel doctrine by IHC studying some of the greatest works ever written on the subject. Doctors, hospitals and health plans working together for you. At Intcrmountain Health Care, wc understand what matters most about your health care coverage: affordable, quality care and convenience. 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