A Table in the Wilderness
A
Timeline of the Miraculous Latter-day Saint Migration West
Shortly
after the evacuation of Nauvoo, in a pioneer camp on the west of the
Mississippi River, a destitute Mormon mother, Sarah Leavitt, was
confronted by an antagonistic government officer.
"Why,
madam," he said,
"I
see nothing before you but
inevitable destruction in going off into the wilderness among savages, far from
civilization, with nothing
but what you can carry in your wagon…I see nothing before you but starvation.”
Quoting
Psalm 78:19, Sarah told him, “The Lord [will] spread a table for us in the wilderness…”
The
officer was right: there was no chance of success.
And yet the Mormons triumphed.
Here is the
timeline of their story.
A statue honoring Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt is located in Santa Clara, Utah
On the base of her statue, excerpts of her testimony are inscribed.
--1841--
The first American overland
pioneers
leave
Missouri
for the Oregon territory. They follow
existing
trails to Fort Hall in Eastern
Idaho,
abandon
their
wagons when the trail ends
but
safely reach
Oregon.
--1842--
Congress sends Army Captain
John C. Fremont on a series of exploratory expeditions to the western
territories. Copies of his maps are given to Mormon Church leaders by an
Illinois senator.
--1843--
Large numbers of American pioneers
are migrating
westward to California and Oregon
on the Oregon Trail.
--June 27, 1844--
Joseph Smith is murdered at Carthage Jail.
Persecutions increase for the
Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo.
--October 1845--
The Quincy Convention calls for all Mormons to leave Nauvoo by May of 1846.
A few days later, the Carthage Convention calls for their forced removal by
militia, should they fail to meet the deadline.
12,000 saints in Nauvoo and another 2,000-3,000 in the surrounding states will soon be homeless.
--October 11, 1845--
President Brigham Young calls team captains for the move west and
Nauvoo saints begin gathering supplies and making wagons. Saints in other areas
are called to gather with them and go west. The plan is that they will all go together in one gigantic 2,500-wagon train in an organized fashion.
--January 1846--
John Brown is sent
from Nauvoo to collect the families he baptized
on his mission three years earlier in Monroe County, Mississippi to join the
expedition west. The congregation of saints there includes whites and blacks. Most of the black saints are slaves.
(I'm sorry I put the blue star on Boston instead of New York--
by I'm not sorry enough to fix it!)
Meanwhile, a community of converts
on the east coast,
too poor to make the overland trek, pools its money to charter the Ship
Brooklyn. They will take a dangerous voyage around Cape Horn to the west coast,
stopping off in Chile and Hawaii on the way. From there, they will travel to
meet the saints at their final destination. Sam Brannan is called to lead the
group.
--February 4, 1846--
Because
of violence and threats, the first saints leave Nauvoo. The organized plan is abandoned, and there are eventually three exoduses over the following 9 months or so.
--also February
4, 1846--
The very same day, the Ship
Brooklyn
leaves New
York City with
238 saints
living between-decks in 2,500 feet of space. The lower hold is full of cows,
pigs, chickens, sawmills, a gristmill, seeds, tools, a printing press and
everything they need to set up a civilization from scratch.
--The Nauvoo Covenant--
Time
has not been adequate to prepare wagons and supplies for all the saints in
Nauvoo. Many do not have the means, having been unable to sell their homes at
fair prices. A covenant is made that those who leave first will stop at a safe
spot along the trail and send wagons and teamsters back and forth for all those
who wish to come.
By
spring, there are over 10,000 saints scattered across Iowa, obtaining jobs to
earn money along the way. The Nauvoo Brass Band plays concerts for pay as they
travel. Pioneers build temporary settlements with crops planted for those who
follow.
Pres. Young calls Jesse Little to go to Washington, D.C. to petition
the government for a contract to build roads and forts on their way west in
order to finance the trek.
--Early Spring 1846--
The Ship Brooklyn has blown nearly to Africa before finding trade winds to blow her back to the Cape. She's made it safely around Cape Horn, chipping ice ahead of her in the water, and she's survived the
oppressive heat of the tropical doldrums. Now a huge storm blows her away from Chile, where
the passengers had planned to resupply. So instead, the captain steers them to the
Juan Fernandez Islands.
There they are able to obtain fresh water, fish,
fruit, potatoes and firewood at a cost hundreds of dollars less than Chilean
prices. It is another
“table in the wilderness.”
--April 8,
1846--
The first group
of Mississippi
saints leaves to join the Nauvoo saints and travel to the west. There are 43 in
the company.
--May 1, 1846--
The Nauvoo Temple is finally dedicated, although temple work had ceased in
February. Over the winter, 6,000 saints had received their endowments in the completed
portions of the Nauvoo Temple. The temple is immediately put up for sale, but no
reasonable offer is made. They ask $200,000 and years later finally receive $5,000.
Even while in this distress, a few men are called on missions to Europe
straight from the refugee camps.
--May
13, 1846--
The
U.S. declares war on Mexico
--May
21, 1846--
Jesse Little
arrives in Washington, realizes the government’s focus is now the war, and petitions U.S. President James Polk to
contract a battalion of Mormon men to fight in the war. It is a very bold move, considering the government had just forced the Mormons to surrender all their weapons the year before because of the conflict in Missouri. Polk is highly dubious,
but amazingly, Little convinces him and wins the contract.
The formation of the Mormon Battalion puts
Brigham Young and the Mormons on the same team as the U.S. government at
last, and
ends the very real threat
of
governmental interference on the trek west.
--May 26,
1846--
John Brown and the Mississippi saints arrive in Independence,
Missouri, the jumping-off point for all travel to the west, hear wild stories about Mormons killing people in the west, and
assume that Brigham Young has gone on ahead of them. They decide to head west
to catch up, rather than go north to Nauvoo.
--June 20, 1846--
The Ship Brooklyn
stops
in Hawaii
to deliver a load of cargo.
12 people have died on the voyage. The U.S. Navy is stationed at Pearl Harbor,
preparing for war with Mexico.
--June 29, 1846--
The Nauvoo refugees
arrive
at the Missouri
River.
U.S. Army Captain
James
Allen meets
them & musters
540 men for the Mormon Battalion.
Pres. Young
delays
the journey
west
for a year to allow time for the Battalion to earn money. He establishes
Winter Quarters in Nebraska.
--July 10,
1846--
Meanwhile, the Mississippi wagon train has hurried all the way to Laramie,
Wyoming before a passing traveler (it's a busy road these days) tells them that no Mormons are ahead of them
on the trail. At the invitation of a trapper, they leave the trail
to
wait out the winter at Pueblo, Colorado
with the group of trappers and their Spanish and Indian wives.
--July 21,
1846--
The Mormon Battalion
leaves Winter Quarters, the only
religiously-based military unit in the history of the United States.
Brigham Young promises them that none will die in battle.
They head south to be outfitted at Fort Leavenworth.
(There's an itty-bitty green line down from Winter Quarters.)
--July 31, 1846--
After a 24,000-mile voyage, the Ship Brooklyn saints arrive at
present-day San Francisco, then just a small town, and find out that an
American warship had sailed into the harbor just 3 weeks earlier, and planted a
flag. They are
back in the United States!
One passenger later writes, “Of all the memories of my life, not one is so bitter as that dreary
six months’ voyage, in an emigrant ship, round the Horn.”
San Francisco immediately becomes an overwhelmingly Mormon community. They start farming while they await instruction from Brigham Young.
--August 7,
1846--
The Mississippi saints arrive at Pueblo with plenty of summer left to build homes and a log church, earning food by working for the trappers.
John Brown
returns east
to meet with Pres. Young and then bring more saints from Mississippi.
--August 1846--
The Mormon Battalion
leaves Fort Leavenworth,
marching southwest to fight Mexico. They are given a clothing allowance of $42
each ($21,000 total), which they immediately turn over to the Church, opting to
wear their old clothes. Through their term of service, they earn $50,000, an
enormous sum of money, which finances the pioneer emigration west.
--September 13, 1846--
The Battle of Nauvoo
Less than 1,000 of the most destitute Mormons remain in Nauvoo, including Hyrum
Smith’s widow, Mary Fielding Smith, with her children, as well as Truman O. Angell, the future architect of the Salt Lake, St. George and Logan Temples. These stragglers are
attacked by anti-Mormons, and forced to sign the surrender of the city three
days later, whereupon they are
driven out at gunpoint.
--September 14, 1846--
At Winter Quarters, an 11-man rescue party leaves to bring the last saints out
of Nauvoo, knowing nothing about the attack.
--September 25, 1846--
Reports of the
Battle of Nauvoo reach Winter Quarters, and another rescue party is sent with
20 wagons.
--October 6, 1846
The rescue party arrives at the "poor camps" outside Nauvoo to find the situation much more desperate than they are prepared to meet. The rescue captain, Orville Allen, sends some of his men into the surrounding area to purchase more supplies. Meanwhile the people are starving.
--October 9, 1846--
Thousands of exhausted quail suddenly fly into the refugee
camp, flopping onto the ground all around the wagons and tents, and even onto the
arms and the heads of the pioneers. Even the sick can easily pick up a
bird with no resistance at all. The suffering saints eat well that day at a “table in the wilderness.” The quail stop coming at 3:00 p.m. The men arrive back with the supplies and the rescue team heads back with the first group at 4:30.
--October 1846--
The Mormon Battalion arrives at Santa Fe. Many members have fallen ill
along the way. The sick Battalion members are sent to Pueblo, Colorado.
--October 1846--
John
Brown
arrives
back at
Winter Quarters.
Pres. Young requests that he enlist several strong Mississippi men to join his
advance team and wait to emigrate the rest of the Mississippi saints the next
year.
The
sick Battalion members arrive at Pueblo to find the Mississippi saints waiting there--surprise! To add to the reunion, the leader of the sick contingent is James Brown, another missionary who served in Monroe, Mississippi.
--October 24, 1846--
Sam Brannan publishes
an
early edition
of The California Star newspaper, printed on the Mormon press.
--January 9, 1847
The first subscriptions are delivered by hand, or hawked on street corners in
San Francisco, and are
sent east and to Great Britain on ships.
--January 1847--
John Brown
arrives back in Mississippi. He selects four
white men with four black slaves for the journey. Two of the slaves die before
reaching Winter Quarters. The other two are brothers, Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay, who are owned by different masters.
--January 22,
1847--
The Mormon Battalion arrives at San Diego,
having walked 2,000 miles, the longest military march in history. It has been an almost unimaginably difficult journey. The war is
over, so they are assigned to garrison duty and civic improvement.
20 men have died on the journey due to sickness or injury, and all the
men are nearly starved to death, but they have seen no armed conflict.
--April 5, 1847--
The advance pioneer
party leaves Winter Quarters, led by Pres. Young. There are 148 in the party,
including the four men from Mississippi and an additional black Mormon slave from
the south already there (a friend of the other two) named Green Flake. Green remains faithful all his life, and later works as a servant in the home of Brigham Young.
--May 1847--
Seventeen
saints from the group waiting at Pueblo watch two weeks for Brigham Young’s
arrival on the trail at Fort Laramie.
--June 3, 1847--
Pres. Young’s
advance team arrives at Fort Laramie. Those waiting from Pueblo join the group, and one of
the apostles in the team, Amasa Lyman, goes to Pueblo to bring the rest to the Great Basin.
--June 30, 1847--
Sam Brannan, having made his way back from California, reports to Pres. Young
at his camp along the trail.
--July 16,
1847--
The Mormon Battalion is mustered out of service at Los
Angeles and
the men begin to make their way north.
Some
head straight to the Salt Lake Valley to get on the trail back to Winter Quarters to get family.
Others go north to San Francisco to join with the Brooklyn saints in the biggest Mormon community in the west, and earn money
to take back to Salt Lake.
--July 22, 1847--
Happily surprised to find the cut-off from the Oregon Trail down to the Great Basin
has already been blazed (by the Donner party, who were following bad advice about it being a great shortcut to California), the first advance party (including the three black slaves) arrives
in Salt Lake Valley far ahead of schedule and immediately plants crops.
Two days later, on what is now celebrated as Pioneer Day in Utah, Pres.
Young’s party arrives in Salt Lake Valley. Sam Brannan teaches the
Saints to make adobe bricks for houses, a skill he learned in California.
--September 8-11, 1847--
About 100 Battalion
members find work building a saw mill for John Sutter on the American River
near San Francisco.
--Autumn 1847--
The first Battalion members arrive
in the Salt
Lake Valley
from
Los Angeles. They are able to teach the saints invaluable skills for desert farming and irrigation which they learned from the Pueblo Indians and the Mexicans as they toiled through the southwest.
--January 24, 1848--
Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill. The location of the biggest find is dubbed “Mormon Island” because of the Mormons who worked there. Word travels quickly by mouth and ship first to Oregon, Hawaii and Latin
America.
--March 15, 1848--
The Californian
newspaper publishes the first article proclaiming the discovery of gold.
--June 10, 1848--
Sam Brannan's California Star publishes the cautiously optimistic opinion that there is room for another 50,000 prospectors without ruining the area. This news is dispatched back east by Mormon Battalion express riders. Four days later, they suspend publication so that the staff can rush to the gold fields themselves. Eventually tens of thousands around the world rush to California
to get rich.
--Summer 1848--
Many more Mormon families emigrate. To avoid harassment from anti-Mormon
pioneers, they travel on the north of the Platte River, rather than on the
Oregon Trail to the south. This separation contributes to a better survival rate
for the Mormons, thanks to the organization and cleanliness of their camps, and
the avoidance of cholera contamination left behind
by Oregon Trail travelers.
--Summer 1848--
Insects, frost and drought destroy much of the crop in the Great Basin. The
saints nearly starve through the winter. In the midst of this crisis,
Heber C. Kimball, a counselor
in the First Presidency, prophesies that “States’ goods would be sold in the streets of Salt Lake City cheaper than in New
York, and that the people would be abundantly supplied with food and clothing.”
--1849--
The tools of the settlers in Salt Lake City are wearing out with no chance of replacement. The
California Gold
Rush
brings many fortune-seekers out west. Merchants race from the east to make a
profit off the prospectors; hearing that merchant ships have beat them to San Francisco, some overlanders change their minds, head down to Salt Lake City, and sell
their wares at extremely low prices in order to lighten their loads and rush
ahead to prospect for themselves. The prices are lower than in New York City
by half. The presence of the prospectors also greatly inflates the prices the Mormon retailers and tradesmen can charge. In addition, prospectors drop tools and supplies all along the trail near Utah in order to lighten their loads and speed their journey, knowing they can buy more in California. Mormon men go along the trail and pick up amazing amounts of tools, wagons, stoves, even food like beans and bacon. It’s another “table in the wilderness.”
--May 25, 1849--
Apostle Amasa
Lyman arrives in San Francisco and encourages the Brooklyn saints to come to
the Salt Lake Valley. Increasing lawlessness in California provides additional
incentive. Besides gold-prospecting, Mormons have made money from the
prospectors themselves. Alondus Buckland sells his Buckland House hotel, situated on a corner lot in
downtown San Francisco, for an estimated $10,000, donating some to the Church
and using some to emigrate his extended family and the rest of his hometown
back east.
--July 14, 1849--
The wagon company, later known as “The Gold Train,” leaves for Utah, heavily
loaded with gold. It is a dangerous journey, as the company dodges would-be
thieves on the busy road.
About
1/3 of the Brooklyn saints eventually leave California to resettle in Utah.
--September 28, 1849--
“The Gold Train” arrives in Salt Lake City, and nearly $15,000 is deposited in
the Church’s bank account. With this money, Pres. Young establishes the Perpetual
Emigration Fund
which funds the emigration of an additional 100,000 saints over the following
years, mostly from Europe.
-----
60,000-70,000 Mormon pioneers eventually emigrate over land
until 1869
when the transcontinental railroad is completed.
Most of them are converts from the European Mission.
The death
rate among the Mormon pioneers is unknown, but is estimated at less than 10%
(including the Martin/Willie handcart disaster, and the deaths at Winter
Quarters). This is about 5% lower than other pioneers, despite the fact that
Mormon wagon trains consisted of many more inexperienced travelers;
old,
disabled or ill people; and families with young children.
Sarah Leavitt was right.
The Lord did prepare a table in the wilderness.
Bibliography
•Stewart
R. Wyatt, Sacrament meeting
talk,
Boise, Idaho, 22 July 2012
•Sarah
Sturtevant Leavitt, personal history
•Clair
L. Wyatt, The True Story of Nancy Laura Aldrich: Ship Brooklyn Pioneer, 2000
•Richard
E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848, Deseret
Book
•Margaret
Blair Young and Darius Aidan Gray, One More River to Cross, Deseret
Book
•Leonard
J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, Deseret
Book
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