How Did They Travel?--Had They Vehicles?--Children of Israel used
Covered Wagons--Did Lehi and Company use Camels?--Experience of
Battalion in California--Custom in Abyssinia--Laman and Companions
Never Forget Habits Acquired in the Desert--Transmitted Them to
Posterity in Their New Home--Nephi Cherished True Knowledge of
Civilization--Contrast Between the Two Brothers--Each Left his Impress
upon his Nation.
There is nothing said in the record which has come to us respecting
the method of traveling adopted by Lehi and his company in the
wilderness--whether they had beasts of burden or conveyances of any
kind, or not. That they did not go afoot and carry upon their own
backs that which they had with them, is so plain, we think, that no
one who reflects upon the subject will entertain such an idea. In the
first place we learn that Lehi took no gold, silver, or other
valuables with him when he left Jerusalem, but he did take provisions
and tents. When his sons returned to Jerusalem to obtain the plates
they took with them their tents. In that climate a tent at least was
necessary for a covering. They certainly had some means of carrying
these provisions and tents. While they were in the valley of Lemuel
they gathered together seeds of grain and fruit of every kind. When
they left there they took these with them, and they carried them with
them during all their wanderings; they also took with them "all the
remainder of our [their] provisions which the Lord had given unto"
them, and their tents. Besides these, they took "whatsoever things we
[they] should carry into the wilderness." These would comprise their
clothing, their weapons of the chase, and other necessary articles. We
think it is safe also to suppose that, while they killed game by the
way as they traveled, they also accumulated a stock for future use
when they stopped, as they often did, to rest and to hunt. We scarcely
think they used vehicles for the purpose of transporting all these
articles. The character of the country would be unsuitable for their
use; though their forefathers, when they traveled in the wilderness
between the Red Sea and Canaan had wagons with them and they used oxen
to draw them.
We think that the popular impression is that the children of Israel
upon their journey to the promised land of Canaan knew nothing about
wagons and had no use for them. But the fact is, they traveled in
heavy marching order. They had their wives, children, effects, and
indeed all their worldly possessions with them. Upon one occasion the
princes of Israel, each a representative of one of the tribes, brought
an offering of six covered wagons and twelve oxen and gave them to
Moses. That is they each gave an ox and half a wagon. These were given
to the Levites for their use (_ Numbers vii., 2-9_). In the country
which Lehi and his company were traveling it was then the fashion, as
it has been through all the intervening centuries and still is, to use
animals for carrying burdens. The camel, "the ship of the desert," as
he has been aptly called, has proved of inestimable value for this
purpose to the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula. Horses and asses
attain their greatest excellence in that land; they are, however, more
employed for riding than for loads. But the camel would be of as great
use to Lehi and his fellow-travelers as it was and is to the Arabs. He
and his sons must have known of its value and its adaptability for the
purposes they needed. We think it very likely, therefore, that they
used camels to carry their baggage, and probably their wives and
children and themselves. Travelers inform us that in pasture land
Arabia is singularly fortunate, and that the very desert supplies
through the greater part of its extent sufficient browse for camels.
Our views upon this point are sustained, we think, by the experience
of the Latter-day Saints in the mountains. When they left Winter
Quarters, their experience in traveling was confined to the methods to
which they had been accustomed; but when those who had been in the
Battalion and discharged in California came to Salt Lake Valley, they
brought with them their baggage and provisions packed on horses and
mules--a method of traveling well suited to the country over which
they journeyed, and which they, with ready facility, had adopted from
the people of the land, the Californians. This style of traveling has
ever since been common in our land. Its adoption by the members of the
Battalion was, under the circumstances, a most sensible thing; and had
the same men been placed in Arabia, and had seen or known anything
about the camel and his wonderful fitness for all the purposes of
traveling in that land, they would have used it with the same
readiness as they did the pack animals of California.
Referring again to the journey of the children of Israel in the
wilderness, the difficulty of providing water for their numerous
cattle has proved a great stumbling-block to many people, especially
to those inclined to doubt the truth of the sacred record. A
suggestion has been made upon this point (Palmer's Desert of the
Exodus, p. 272) that reduces this stumbling-block considerably.
Instead of cattle being an encumbrance to the movements of the host,
they could have been used as beasts of burden. In addition to the camp
furniture, each could carry its own supply of water, sufficient for
several days, in water-skins slung at its sides, precisely as Sir
Samuel Baker, an English traveler, found them doing at the present day
in Abyssinia. Those who have traveled on our own deserts know how
common an occurrence it has been to carry water, not in water-skins,
but in kegs slung upon the sides of pack animals. Though cattle could
have been used in this manner by Lehi and party, the country through
which they traveled was not so favorable for pasturage for them. But
the camel was at home there. He could live upon scanty herbage; he
could travel for days without water. From his hair they could make
tents and clothing, and in every respect he was a better animal for
their use than the ox.
In the matter of clothing, they doubtless learned to be very simple.
The climate was one which required but little. Travelers describe the
dress of the wandering Arabs of the present day as consisting, on the
part of the men, of a long cotton shirt, open at the breast, and often
girt with a leathern girdle. A cloak of hair is sometimes thrown over
the shoulders. A handkerchief, folded but once, covers the head, round
which it is kept in its place by a piece of twine or twisted hairband.
To this costume a pair of open sandals is added. Among the Bedouins of
the south a light wrapper takes the place of the handkerchief on the
head, and a loin-cloth that of the shirt. The attire of the women is
hardly more complicated. It is worthy of remark in this connection
that the wicked portion of Lehi's descendants never forgot or threw
off the habits of life which they had adopted in the wilderness. When
they reached the promised land, the continent of South America, if
they pursued agriculture at all it was only for a short time. At
Lehi's death, if not before, they resumed their old nomadic habits.
They had been a wandering tribe of people for eight years in the
Arabian peninsula, hunting for game and living upon the spoils of the
chase, removed from all the arts of civilization, and it would seem
they had become attached to that kind of life. The diet, too, appears
to have suited them; for Enos, one of Lehi's grandsons, describes them
as early as his day, as a wild, ferocious, blood-thirsty people; full
of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey, and many of
them _living upon raw meat_. They lived in tents and wandered about in
the wilderness. Their dress consisted of a short skin girdle about
their loins, and they shaved their heads. They had become an idle,
subtle and mischievous people immediately after landing in the
promised land. From being an enlightened, cultivated people, familiar
with the arts of life and the knowledge of their race--and the Jewish
people of that day still occupied in many respects the foremost rank
among the nations--through rejecting the commandments of the Lord,
closing their hearts against the Holy Spirit, and indulging in a
spirit of murderous hatred against their father and brother, because
they chose to serve the Lord, they sank into barbarism, lower even
than the Bedouins of the desert in which they had wandered.
Nephi and those who sought for the Spirit of the Lord did not forget,
in the midst of the hard life and privations of the wilderness, their
former good habits, or throw aside their knowledge of civilization.
Their wandering life did not degrade them. Though they had to hunt for
the game necessary to sustain them, and, by direction of the Lord, eat
its flesh without cooking it, and live in tents, they looked upon that
mode of life, not as one that they must follow for ever after, but as
necessary only in the providence of the Lord for the time being.
Therefore, when they reached the promised land, they became an
agricultural and pastoral people of settled habits, living no longer
in tents and wandering to and fro, but building houses, establishing
cities and turning their attention to mechanism and manufactures and
the cultivation of all the arts of true civilization. Of course two
branches of a family adopting such dissimilar habits and modes of life
would inevitably separate. They would have nothing in common except
their origin, and the influence of that would not long remain. The
future lives and histories of these two peoples furnish us the most
wonderful illustration of the effects of individual example and
teachings that we know anything about. Nephi on the one hand and Laman
on the other, for good or evil, was each the head and representative
man of his family and people. They both had passed through the same
outward circumstances. For a wise purpose the Lord had caused them to
follow a wandering, and it may be said a wild desert life of eight
years. The one had emerged from it stronger, purer, more elevated in
thought and action, more attached to those pursuits which make men and
nations enlightened, noble and powerful, and more determined when the
proper time came to follow them. The other emerged from it a savage in
thought, sentiment and practice. He had stifled those human and loving
feelings which always exist in the bosoms of men and women who cherish
the Spirit of the Lord, and a ferocious, murderous disposition had
taken their place. The wild, barbarous life of the desert, with its
animal pleasures and excitements of hunting and roving from place to
place, with its idleness and filthiness, he became satisfied with, and
he never forsook it. He and those who joined him would not have sunk
as low as they did had they not been favored, as they had been, in
their birth, their surroundings and their opportunities. There was no
blessing, favor or power which was possible for man to obtain from the
Lord that was not within the reach of Laman, if he had chosen to seek
for it. Instead of this, he deliberately, despite every warning, even
the words and presence of an angel and the voice of the Lord Himself,
rejected everything of the kind and opened his heart to the spirit of
hatred and murder. That he did not kill his father and brother was not
because of any compunction or lack of effort upon his part. More open
and flagrant rebellion against the Lord and everything proceeding from
Him, history does not furnish us. Hence his deep fall and the curse
which came upon his race. His people and descendants were like him.
His wife, children, and all who came within the range of his influence
and example, and whom he could persuade, he dragged down with himself.
When he died, he bequeathed to his posterity a legacy of
unextinguishable hate against everything elevated, noble and good. He
chose to be a savage himself, he made his wife and people and
descendants savages also. This was Laman, and this the effect of his
life, as we glean it from the record embodied in the Book of Mormon.
How great a contrast between his life and that of Nephi! One can
scarcely conceive how it would be possible for two men of one family,
of the same parentage and brought up under the same circumstances to
be more dissimilar. Nephi's constant effort was to lift his people up
and to have them exert every power to attain the highest standard of
excellence. His example, teachings and labors left an impression upon
his people for good, the effect of which was felt for centuries. Still
further it can be said with the greatest propriety, that by the
revelation of his record, and its translation by the Prophet Joseph,
the influence of his teachings and life still operates, and in the
years to come will yet exert a mighty power upon the mixed descendants
of himself and brothers.
The influence of Laman's life was as potent for evil as Nephi's was
for good. We can trace its effects through the ages, widening and
deepening as generations came and passed away, casting its baleful
shadow upon all who came within its range. No mortal pen can describe
the bloodshed, and carnage, and misery which have been the results of
his teachings. He imbibed the spirit of falsehood in the outset. He
never appears to have done justice to the views and aims of his father
and brother. He tortured their teachings and acts, designed for the
benefit and happiness of himself and all the company, into causes
sufficiently atrocious to justify him in taking their lives. This
conception of their characters and motives--and especially so with
respect to Nephi--he gave to all who accompanied him. It was indelibly
fastened upon the mind of their descendants; and false and cruel as it
was, it became the fixed and permanent tradition of their entire race.
Though these traditions died out with the disappearance of the
Nephites as an organized nationality, there being no longer any reason
for keeping them alive, yet we have but to look at the Indians which
we see around us, to behold the dreadful consequences of Laman's
example, false traditions and life. The wild Indian, as we see him in
our day, exactly personifies the life which Laman upwards of
twenty-four centuries ago, chose for himself and descendants.