affect their freebooting relations generally, they all obey the great
war chief of the tribe called the Utahs, in the heart of whose proper
territory the Mormon settlements are comprehended.
If accounts are true, the Utahs are brave fellows. They differ
obviously from the deceased nations, to whose estates we have taken it
upon ourselves to administer. They ride strong, well-limbed Spanish
horses, not ponies; bear well cut rifles, not shot-guns, across their
saddle-bows, and are not without some idea of military discipline. They
carry their forays far into the Mexican States, laying the inhabitants
under contribution, and taking captive persons of condition, whom they
hold to ransom. They are, as yet at least, little given to drink; some
of them manifest considerable desire to acquire useful knowledge; and
they are attached to their own infidel notions of religion, making
long journeys to the ancient cities of the Colorado, to worship among
the ruined temples there. The Soldan of these red Paynims, too, their
great war chief, is not without his knightly graces. According to some
of the Mormons, he is the paragon of Indians. His name, translated to
diminish its excellence as an exercise in Prosody, is Walker. He is a
fine figure of a man, in the prime of life. He excels in various manly
exercises, is a crack shot, a rough rider, and a great judge of horse
flesh.
He is besides very clever, in our sense of the word. He is a peculiarly
eloquent master of the graceful alphabet of pantomime, which stranger
tribes employ to communicate with one another. He has picked up some
English, and is familiar with Spanish and several Indian tongues. He
rather affects the fine gentleman. When it is his pleasure to extend
his riding excursions into Mexico, to inflict or threaten outrage,
or to receive the instalments of his black mail salary, he will take
offence if the poor people there fail to kill their fattest beeves,
and adopt other measures to show him obsequious and distinguished
attention. He has more than one black-eyed mistress there, according
to his own account, to whom he makes love in her own language. His
dress is a full suit of the richest broadcloth, generally brown, cut in
European fashion, with a shining beaver hat, and fine cambric shirt.
To these, he adds his own gaudy Indian trimmings, and in this way
contrives, they say, to look superbly, when he rides at the head of his
troop, whose richly caparisoned horses, with their embroidered saddles
and harness, shine and tinkle as they prance under their weight of gay
metal ornaments.
With all his wild cat fierceness, Walker is perfectly velvet-pawed
to the Mormons. There is a queer story about his being influenced in
their favor, by a dream. It is the fact, that from the first, he has
received the Mormon exiles into his kingdom, with a generosity, that in
its limited sphere, transcends that of the Grand Monarch to the English
Jacobites. He rejoices to give them the information they want about the
character of the country under his rule, advises with them as to the
advantages of particular localities, and wherever they choose to make
their settlements, guarantees them personal safety and immunity from
depredation.
From the first, therefore, the Mormons have had little or nothing to do
in Deseret, but attend to their mechanical and strictly agricultural
pursuits. They have made several successful settlements; the farthest
North, at what they term Brownsville, is about forty miles, and the
farthest South, in a valley called the Sanpeech, 200 miles, from that
first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias, or Genesareth, empties
its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine river, to
which the Mormons have given the name--it was impossible to give it any
other--of the Western Jordan.
It was on the right bank of this stream, at a choice spot upon a rich
table land traversed by a great company of exhaustless streams falling
from the highlands, that the Pioneer band of Mormons, coming out of the
mountains in the night, pitched their first camp in the Valley, and
consecrated the ground. Curiously enough, this very spot proved the
most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring
the whole country, they have founded on it their city of the New
Hierusalem. Its houses are spread to command as much as possible the
farms, which are laid out in Wards or Cantons, with a common fence to
each Ward. The farms in wheat already cover a space, greater than the
District of Columbia, over all of which they have completed the canals,
and other arrangements for bountiful irrigation, after the manner of
the cultivators of the East. The houses are distributed over an area
nearly as great as the City of New York.
They have little thought as yet of luxury in their public buildings.
But they will soon have nearly completed a large common public
store-house and granary, and a great sized public bath-house. One of
the many wonderful thermal springs of the valley, a white sulphur water
of the temperature of 102 Fahrenheit, with a head "the thickness of a
man's body," they have already brought into the town for this purpose;
and all have learned the habit of indulging in it. They have besides
a yellow brick meeting-house, 100 feet by 60, in which they gather on
Sundays and in the week-day evenings. But this is only a temporary
structure. They have reserved a summit level in the heart of the city,
for the site of a Temple far superior to that of Nauvoo, which, in the
days of their future wealth and power, is to be the landmark of the
Basin and goal of future pilgrims.
They mean to seek no other resting-place. After pitching camps enough
to exhaust many times over the chapter of names in 33d Numbers, they
have at last come to their Promised Land, and, "behold, it is a good
land and large, and flowing with milk and honey:" and here again for
them, as at Nauvoo, the forge smokes and the anvil rings, and whirring
wheels go round; again has returned the merry sport of childhood, and
the evening quiet of old age, and again dear house-pet flowers bloom in
garden plots round happy homes.
It is to these homes, in the heart of our American Alps, like the holy
people of the Grand Saint Bernard, they hold out their welcome to the
passing traveller. Some of you have probably seen in the St. Louis
papers, the repeated votes of thanks to them of companies of emigrants
to California. These are often reduced to great straights after passing
Fort Laramie, and turn aside to seek the Salt Lake Colony in pitiable
plights of fatigue and destitution. The road, after leaving the Oregon
trace, is one of increasing difficulty, and when the last mountain has
been crossed, passes along the bottom of a deep Canyon, whose scenery
is of an almost terrific gloom. It is a defile that I trust no Mormon
Martin Hofer of this Western Tyrol will be called to consecrate to
liberty with blood. At every turn the overhanging cliffs threaten to
break down upon the little torrent river that has worn its way at their
base. Indeed, the narrow ravine is so serrated by this stream, that
the road crosses it from one side to the other, something like forty
times in the last five miles. At the end of the ravine, the emigrant
comes abruptly out of the dark pass into the lighted valley on an even
bench or terrace of its upper table land. No wonder if he loses his
self-control here. A ravishing panoramic landscape opens out below
him, blue, and green, and gold, and pearl; a great sea with hilly
islands, rivers, a lake, and broad sheets of grassy plain, all set, as
in a silver chased cup, within mountains whose peaks of perpetual snow
are burnished by a dazzling sun. It is less these, however, than the
foreground of old-country farms, with their stacks and thatchings and
stock, and the central city, smoking from its chimneys and swarming
with working inhabitants, that tries the men of fatigue broken nerves.
The 'Californeys' scream, they sing, they give three cheers, and do not
count them, a few have prayed; more swear, some fall on their faces and
cry outright. News arrived a few days since from a poor townsman of
ours, a journeyman saddler, that used to work up Market street beyond
Broad, by name Gillian, who sought the valley, his cattle given out,
and himself broken down and half heart-broken:--The recluse Mormons
fed and housed him and his party, and he made his way through to the
gold diggings with restored health and strength. To Gillian's credit
for manhood, should perhaps be cited his own allegation, that he first
whistled through his fingers various popular nocturnal, street, circus,
and theatre calls; but it is certain that, when my tidings speak of
him, which was when he was afterwards hospitably entreated by a Mormon,
whom he knew ten years ago as one of our Chester County farmers, he was
completely dissolved into something not far from the hysterics, and
wept on till the tears ran down his dusty beard.
Several hundred emigrants, in more or less distress, received
gratuitous assistance last year from the Mormons.
Their community must go on thriving. They are to be the chief workers
and contractors upon "Whitney's Railroad," or whatever scheme is to
unite the Atlantic and Pacific by way of the South Pass; and their
valley must be its central station. They have already raised a
"Perpetual Fund" for "the final fulfilment of the covenant made by the
Saints in the Temple at Nauvoo," which "is not to cease till all the
poor are brought to the valley." All the poor still lingering behind,
will be brought there: so at an early period will the fifty thousand
communicants, the Church already numbers in Great Britain, with all
the other "increase among the Gentiles." Their place of rendezvous
will be upon what were formerly the Pottawatamie lands. The interests
of this Stake have been admirably cared for. It now comprises the
thriving counties of "Fremont" and "Pottawatamie," in which the
Mormons still number a majority of the inhabitants. Their chief town
is growing rapidly, already boasting over three thousand inhabitants,
with nineteen large merchants' stores, the mail lines and five regular
steam packets running to it, and other western evidences of prosperity;
besides a fine Music Hall and public buildings, and the printing
establishment of a very ably edited newspaper, "The Frontier Guardian."
It is probably the best station on the Missouri for commencing
the overland journey to Oregon and California; as travellers can
follow directly from it the Mormon road, which, in addition to other
advantages, proves to be more salubrious than those to the south of
it. Large numbers are expected to arrive at this point from England
during the present spring, on their way to the Salt Lake. They will
repay their welcome; for every working person gained to the hive of
their "Honey State" counts as added wealth. So far, the Mormons write
in congratulation, that they have not among them "a single loafer rich
or poor, idle gentleman or lazy vagabond." They are no Communists; but
their experience has taught them the gain of joint stock to capital,
and combination to labor,--perhaps something more, for I remark they
have recently made arrangements to "classify their mechanics," which
is probably a step in the right direction. They will be successful
manufacturers, for their vigorous land-locked industry cannot be
tampered with by protection. They have no gold--they have not hunted
for it; but they have found wealth of other valuable minerals; rock
salt enough to do the curing of the world,--"We'll salt the Union for
you," they write, "if you can't preserve it in any other way,"--perhaps
coal, excellent ores of iron everywhere. They are near enough, however,
to the Californian Sierra, to be the chief quartermasters of its
miners; and they will dig their own gold in their unlimited fields
of admirably fertile land. I should only invite your incredulity,
and the disgust of the Horticultural Society, by giving you certain
measurements of mammoth beets, turnips, pumpkins, and garden
vegetables, in my possession. In that country where stock thrives care
free, where a poor man's 32 potatoes saved can return him 18 bushels,
and 2 1/2 bushels of wheat sown yield 350 bushels in a season; or where
an average crop of wheat on irrigated lands is 50 bushels to the acre;
the farmer's part is hardly to be despised. Certainly it will not be
under a continuance of the present prices current of the region,--wheat
at $4 the bushel, and flour $12 the hundred, with a ready market.
The recent letters from Deseret interest me in one thing more. They are
eloquent in describing the anniversary of the Pioneers' arrival in the
Valley. It was the 24th of July, and they have ordained that that day
shall be commemorated in future, like our 21st of December, as their
Forefather's Day. The noble Walker attended as an invited guest, with
two hundred of his best dressed mounted cavaliers, who stacked their
guns and took up their places at the ceremonies and banquet, with the
quiet precision of soldiers marched to mass. The Great Band was there
too, that had helped their humble hymns through all the wanderings of
the Wilderness. Through the many trying marches of 1846, through the
fierce winter ordeal that followed, and the long journey after over
plain and mountain, it had gone unbroken, without the loss of any of
its members. As they set out from England, and as they set out from
Illinois, so they all came into the valley together, and together
sounded the first glad notes of triumph when the Salt Lake City was
founded. It was their right to lead the psalm of praise. Anthem, song
and dance, all the innocent and thankful frolic of the day owed them
its chief zest. "They never were in finer key." The people felt their
sorrows ended. FAR WEST, their old settlement in Missouri, and NAUVOO;
with their wealth and ease, like "Pithom and Ramses, treasure cities
built for Pharaoh," went awhile forgotten. Less than four years had
restored them every comfort that they needed. Their entertainment,
the contribution of all, I have no doubt was really sumptuous. It was
spread on broad buffet tables about 1400 feet in length, at which they
took their seats by turns, while they kept them heaped with ornamented
delicacies. "Butter of kine, and milk, with fat of lambs, with the
fat of kidneys of wheat;" "and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the
leeks, and the onions, and the garlic, and the remembered fish which
we did eat in Egypt freely"--they seem unable to dilate with too much
pride upon the show it made.
"To behold the tables," says one, that I quote from literally:
"To behold them filling the Bowery and all adjoining grounds, loaded
with all luxuries of the fields and gardens and nearly all the
varieties that any vegetable market in the world could produce, and
to see the seats around those tables filled and refilled by a people
who had been deprived of those luxuries for years by the cruel hand of
oppression, and freely offering seats to every stranger within their
borders; and this, too, in the Valley of the Mountains, over a thousand
miles from civilization, where, two years before, naught was to be
found save the wild root of the prairie and the mountain cricket; was
a theme of unbounded thanksgiving and praise to the Giver of all Good,
as the dawning of a day when the Children of the Kingdom can sit under
their own vines and fig-trees, and inhabit their own houses, having
none to make them afraid. May the time be hastened when the scattered
Israel may partake of such like banquets from the gardens of Joseph!"
[G]
I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted your
Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without trespassing too
largely upon your courteous patience. But I should do wrong to conclude
my lecture without declaring in succinct and definite terms, the
opinions I have formed and entertain of the Mormon people. The libels,
of which they have been made the subject, make this a simple act of
justice. Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you
do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I have
given.
I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made them
rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not a few of
the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless force into the
Wilderness; seeking an untried home far away from the scenes which
their previous life had endeared to them; moving onward, destitute,
hunger-sickened, and sinking with disease; bearing along with them
their wives and children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepit;
renewing daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of
family and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and braving
dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and trial, and
persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or tried to tell you, of
men, who when menaced by famine, and in the midst of pestilence, with
every energy taxed by the urgency of the hour, were building roads and
bridges, laying out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger
who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common humanity,
and peradventure a common suffering,--of men, who have renewed their
prosperity in the homes they have founded in the desert,--and who,
in their new built city, walled round by mountains like a fortress,
are extending pious hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our
frontier lines,--of men who, far removed from the restraints of law,
obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their religion,
something not inconsistent with human laws, but far more controlling;
and who are now soliciting from the government of the United States,
not indemnity,--for the appeal would be hopeless, and they know it--not
protection, for they now have no need of it,--but that identity of
political institutions and that community of laws with the rest of us,
which was confessedly their birthright when they were driven beyond our
borders.
I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may
deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have
not yet heard the single charge against them as a Community, against
their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their
toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the
laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which
we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of
others, know to be unfounded.
THE END.
POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.
I have been annoyed by comments this hastily written discourse has
elicited. Well meaning friends have even invited me to tone down its
remarks in favor of the Mormons, for the purpose of securing them a
readier acceptance.--I can only make them more express. The Truth must
take care of itself. I not only meant to deny that the Mormons in any
wise fall below our own standard of morals, but I would be distinctly
understood to ascribe to those of their number with whom I associated
in the West, a general correctness of deportment, and purity of
character above the average of ordinary communities.
The furthest I can go toward qualifying my testimony, will be to name
the causes, to which, as a believer in Nature's compensations, I have
myself credited this undue morality.
It was partly attributable perhaps to their forced abstemiousness;
the diet of the most fortunate Mormons having been for long continued
periods very spare, and composed almost wholly of vegetable food, with
few condiments, and no intoxicating liquors. Some influence should
be referred also to their custom of early and equal marriages, these
not being regulated by the prudential considerations which embarrass
opulent communities; something more to the supervision which was
incidental to their nomadic life, and the habits it encouraged of
disciplined, but grateful industry.
The chief cause, however, was probably found in this fact. The Mormons
as I saw them, though a majority, were but a portion of the Church
as it flourished in Illinois. When the persecution triumphed there,
and no alternative remained for the steadfast in the faith but the
flight out of Egypt into the Wilderness, as it was termed, all their
fair weather friends forsook them. Priests and elders, scribes and
preachers deserted by whole councils at a time; each talented knave,
of whose craft they had been victims, finding his own pretext for
abandoning them, without surrendering the money-bag of which he was
the holder. One of these, for instance, bore with him so considerable
a congregation that he was able to found quite a thriving community
in Northern Wisconsin, which I believe he afterwards transplanted
entire to an island in one of the Lakes. Other speculator-heresiarchs
folded for themselves credulous sheep all through the Western Country.
One Rigdon not long since had a Cure of them in our own State. Quite
recently, an abandoned clergyman, who shortly before the Exod was
excommunicated for his improper conduct, has presented a memorial to
Congress, in which he charges the Mormons with very much more than he
himself appears to have been guilty of. This abusive person, a former
intimate of the Major General James Arlington Bennet, lately on trial
at New York, in company with a One Eyed Mr. Thompson of that city, is
also the only surviving brother of the Prophet Smith, founder of the
Sect, and as such, still claims to be its sole true President, and
genuine Arch High Priest.
So the Mormons have been, as it were, broken and screened by calamity.
Their designing leaders have left them to seek fairer fortunes
elsewhere. Those that remain of the old rock are the masses, always
honest in the main and sincere even in delusion; and their guides
are a few tried and trusty men, little initiated in the plotting
of synagogues, and more noted for services rendered than bounties
received. They are the men whom I saw on the prairie trail, sharing
sorrow with the sorrowful, and poverty with the poor;--the chief of
them all, a man of rare natural endowment, to whose masterly guidance
they are mainly indebted for their present prosperity, driving his own
ox-team and carrying his sick child in his arms. [H] The fact explains
itself, that those only were willing to undertake their fearful
pilgrimage of penance, whom a sense of conscientious duty made willing
to give up the world for their religion. The Mormons I knew, were all,
as far as I could judge, partakers of the sacraments, persons of prayer
and faith; and their contentment, their temperance, their heroism,
their strivings after the golden age of Christian brotherhood, were
but the manifestations of their ever present and engrossing devotional
feeling.
I am asked to explain or justify the Mormon Creed:--I will have nothing
to do with it. It is enough for me to say, that it does not manifest
itself externally by the Pythian ravings or Eleusinian hocus pocus
of new religions, nor the pageantry or mumming of those sometime
established; that its communicants cultivate no mysteries or double
faiths; and that I certainly think they are to be believed in their own
exposition of it. They have two books, that are for sale in the shops,
called The Book of Mormon and The Book of Doctrine and Covenants,
which profess to contain the entire body of their faith. The latter
harmless work has its special chapters on Marriage, and on the Right of
Property, Religious Toleration, and the Union of Church and State. [I]
I am not called upon to investigate this subject, so long as any person
of a jealous orthodoxy can constitute himself as good an inquisitor, by
investing somewhere about one dollar and fifty cents.