By the Trail had gone Jason Lee, in 1834, to plant the sturdy oak of
Methodism in the Willamette Valley and the north Pacific Coast. His
task was nobly done; the developments of to-day attest the wisdom of
the church in sending him and his coequal coadjutors, Daniel Lee,
Cyrus Shepherd, and P. L. Edwards.
Over this same track went Marcus Whitman, in 1835, to found the
mission at Waiilatpu, near the present site of Walla Walla, and to
find there the early grave of honorable martyrdom at the hands of the
people he was attempting to save. The call to these two intrepid
equals, Lee and Whitman, came through the visit of the two young
Indian chiefs who, immediately after the expedition of Lewis and
Clark, had gone to Saint Louis to obtain a copy of the "white man's
Book of heaven." The names of these two, as previously stated, were
Hee-oh'ks-te-kin and H'co-a-h'co-a-cotes-min.
On the sixth day of April, 1830, in Kirkland, Ohio, Joseph Smith, Jr.,
had organized the body best known as the Mormon Church. Fourteen years
later he was mercilessly, and unjustly, mobbed at Nauvoo, Illinois,
and after three more years of drifting about from pillar to post, the
Latter-Day Saints prepared to emigrate to upper California under the
absolute domination and guidance of Brigham Young, who was often
styled the successor to the "Mohammed of the West," as Joseph Smith
was sometimes called. This cult had some queer traits. W. W. Phelps,
one of their more prominent members, thus characterized the leaders of
Mormondom: Brigham Young, the Lion of the Lord; P. P. Pratt, the
Archer of Paradise; O. Hyde, the Olive Branch of Israel; W. Richards,
the Keeper of the Rolls; J. Taylor, Champion of Right; W. Smith, the
Patriarchal Jacob's Staff; W. Woodruff, the Banner of the Gospel; G.
A. Smith, the Entablature of Truth; O. Pratt, the Gauge of Philosophy;
J. E. Page, the Sun Dial; L. Wright, Wild Mountain Ram.
Expelled from Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, the trembling Saints
sought less turbulent surroundings by immersing their all in the wild
conditions both of men and wilderness in the untamed lands of the
great West. They were not able to sustain the physical cost of the
trek of more than a thousand miles under the hardest of circumstances.
The Trail was the home of the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, the
Otoes, Omahas, Utes, and others, who knew neither law nor mercy. The
waters were often alkaline and deadly as Lethe. A thousand miles afoot
was the record some had to make. They appealed to the government, then
at war with Mexico, to permit a number of their men to enlist as
soldiers to be marched over the ancient Santa Fe Trail, and thus be
able to draw wages on the journey. This was granted. These recruits
had little, if anything, to do, but they are known in history as the
Mormon battalion. They went to California, 1847-49, and were present
when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill.
In 1847, July 24, Mormondom threw up its first trenches in the valley
of the Great Salt Lake, as that saline body was then known and
recorded. In this salubrious region was planted the analogy of the
harem of Mohammed, and the seraglio of Brigham became the center of
the sensual system of the Latter-Day Saints. So blatant was the
apostle Heber Kimball that he said he himself had enough wives to whip
the soldiers of the United States.
Evangelical Christianity waited almost twenty years before an attempt
was made to plant the high standards of Christendom in the Wahsatch
Mountains. In the sixties went the denominations in the order here
named: Congregational, Protestant Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal; in
1871 the Presbyterians went, and then the Baptists. It was dark.
Mighty night had beclouded the intellect and obscured the spiritual
senses; civilized sensuality swayed with unchecked hand the destinies
of the masses. The blinded people groped for light in the pitchlike
blackness of the new superstition.
"None but Americans on guard" in such a night! Hear the roll call.
None but tried and true Christian soldiers were mounted on those
ramparts: Erastus Smith, the heart-winner; Thomas Wentworth Lincoln,
the scholarly but quiet Grand Army man, who always kept his patriotic
fires banked; George Ellis Jayne, another veteran of the Civil War,
tireless evangelist who possibly saw more Mormons made Christian than
any other pastor of any church in Utah; George Marshall Jeffrey,
eternally at it; Joseph Wilks, methodic, patient, sunny; Martinus
Nelson, weeping over the straying of his Norwegians; Emil E. Mörk,
rugged and steadfast; Martin Anderson and Samuel Hooper, both of
whom died by the Trail, falling at the "post of honor." Last, but not
least of these to be named, stands the energetic and "Boanergetic"
Thomas Corwin Iliff, that Buckeye stentor and patriot, who with
heart-thrilling tones has raised millions of dollars in aiding and
in establishing hundreds and hundreds of churches in these United
States. For thirty years he commanded the Methodist as well as the
patriotic redoubts of Utah and bearded the "Lion of the Lord" in
his very den.
But there were never truer watchmen on the high-towered battlements
of the real Zion than the Protestant Episcopal Bishop, Daniel S.
Tuttle; the knightly Hawkes of the Congregationalists; the truly
apostolic Baptist, Steelman; the Presbyterian leaders--who surpasses
them? See the saintly Wishard, the polemic McNiece and McLain; the
scholarly and tireless Paden!
They were loyal to the core, commanding the Christian forces as they
deployed, enfiladed, charged, marched, and stormed the trenches of
religious libertinism in the fertile and paradisaical valleys and
roomy cañons of the Mormon state of Deseret. These never surrendered,
compromised, or retreated.
Glorious Brotherhood! Permit us the honor of saluting you. Your like
may never march abreast again in any campaign! Living, you were
conquerors; dying, you are heroes.
Of these above named Messrs. Hooper, Anderson, Steelman, and McNiece
have entered the "snow-white tents" of the other shore.