The men roared at that, but it was bittersweet laughter. More than one had left material possessions behind in the myriad mud holes that had marked their march west from Sugar Creek.
There was a long pause, then the President concluded. “That is the proposal, brethren. It has come only after careful council together. All of you who feel to support your leaders in this proposal, would you raise your right hand to the square.”
Nathan gave Joshua a strange look as the older brother’s hand came up automatically along with everyone else’s. Joshua saw the look and was puzzled. “What?” he mouthed.
Nathan shook his head. Common consent was a pivotal principle in the Church. It pleased him that Joshua accepted it without even thinking.
“Thank you, brethren,” Brigham said. “We’ll formally dismiss now, and then you can ask your questions. We’ll ask Brother Willard Richards to close our meeting and invoke the Lord’s blessing on what we have just determined to do.”
Chapter Notes
If one counts back to the first day wagons began leaving Nauvoo, 4 February, by 7 April 1846 the Saints had been on the road for sixty-three days of travel but had come only 118 miles. That meant they were averaging less than two miles per day. As in other chapters, the author has tried to accurately represent the details of the weather, the campsites, and what was happening day by day along the trail as recorded in the various journals (see CN, 6 April 1996, p. 10; also Iowa Trail, pp. xviii–xx).
Zina Huntington Jacobs, who became the third general president of the Relief Society in 1887, gave birth to a son on 22 March 1846. The birth took place in a wagon while she and her husband were waiting to ford the Chariton River. They named the boy Henry Chariton Jacobs. (See Iowa Trail, p. xviii.) Chariton Jacobs remained faithful throughout his life and eventually was made a patriarch in the Church (see LDSBE 3:421–23).
Maria Judd Stewart, wife of Rufus Putnam Stewart, also gave birth to a son under the circumstances described here. No name is given for the son in the account. (See MHBY, pp. 126–27; Iowa Trail, p. xx.)
By the middle of April it was becoming painfully clear to Brigham Young that their original plans for a quick dash to the Rocky Mountains were not realistic. It is a witness to his great vision and leadership abilities how quickly he accepted that reality and adapted to meet the needs of his people in the wilderness. (See William Clayton’s Journal [Salt Lake City: Clayton Family Association, 1921], pp. 17–18; and CN, 20 April 1996, p. 7.)
Concerning the Saints’ stay in the Locust Creek area and their proximity to Missouri at this point during the trek west, William G. Hartley has written, “On 6–15 April the companies camped by Locust Creek, three miles above the Missouri border.” However, he goes on to explain, “several diary entries support the possibility that their Locust Creek encampments were a few miles farther south, in Missouri, below the disputed boundary line between Iowa Territory and Missouri.” (“The Pioneer Trek: Nauvoo to Winter Quarters,” Ensign 27 [June 1997]: 35, 43 n. 13.)
Chapter 12
The scene was one of total pandemonium, but if one looked more closely, it was pandemonium that was controlled and channeled and organized. Nine wagons, lined up in three rows of three each, filled the hilltop on the west side of Springfield on Wednesday, April fifteenth, 1846. Men were shouting to each other as they yoked up the oxen or saddled horses. Dogs raced in and out, barking and yelping, sensing the excitement of their masters. Young boys were in the nearby meadow, barking and yelping almost as incessantly as the dogs as they tried to keep the milk cows and the beef cattle in some semblance of order. Women and girls shuttled back and forth between the wagons, making sure everything was secure or that the baskets of food were near at hand. The Reeds’ twelve-year-old daughter, Virginia, was already mounted on her pony, which was prancing around the assembly. Virginia looked as though everything that was happening was under her direct supervision.
Kathryn McIntire Ingalls sat on a stool in the back of the first of the three Reed wagons, the wagon that everyone was coming to call the “pioneer palace car.” The cover of the oversized wagon was pulled halfway back, so it was open to the warm spring sunshine and to a view of all that was happening around them. Beside Kathryn, half reclining on a feather mattress, was Mrs. Keyes, mother of Margret Reed and grandmother to the Reed children. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she exclaimed, almost clapping her hands together. “This is so exciting.”
“Yes!” Kathryn agreed with warm enthusiasm. She felt it too. The long-awaited day had finally come. She and Peter had been packed for three days now. It was almost nine o’clock. The Donners, who lived a short distance out of town, had come in the previous night. The Reeds had joined them first thing this morning. The morning was nearly half done already. On with it! Kathryn thought. No more delay. Tell the boys to move the stock up. Get the teamsters up here “a-geeing” and “a-hawing” to their oxen. Let the wagons roll!
But of course it wasn’t up to her to give that command, and so she sat, trying to contain her impatience. Margret Reed, Kathryn’s employer, was still over with Tamsen Donner, helping her sort the last of her things. Kathryn turned. Peter was there in her view, checking the yoke on the last pair of oxen on the last wagon. Mr. Reed was cinching the girth on the saddle of his prized gray racing horse.
At another sound, Kathryn turned back. Margret Reed was approaching the wagon. “We’re done, Mother. I think we’re ready.”
“Well, we certainly are, aren’t we, Kathryn?” Mrs. Keyes said.
“I’ve been ready for a month now,” Kathryn groaned.
Mrs. Reed laughed. “Good. I’ll tell Eliza to round up the children.”
As Mrs. Reed moved off, Kathryn turned to survey the nine wagons that would constitute their train for now. She shook her head, knowing what was in them. That still amazed Kathryn. When she thought of her own family and friends, the Saints in Nauvoo scraping together everything they had to get enough to get them across the river, what she saw here was astounding. This wagon train would be one of the most amply equipped to ever leave the state, she decided. She and Peter would be traveling in the lap of luxury while her family fought for survival. The only comfort came in knowing that going this way left two less people for their family to have to worry about.
The difference was money, pure and simple. There was no other explanation. George Donner was a very well-to-do man. Twice widowed, “Uncle George,” as everyone called him, was sixty-two years old. He had spent a lifetime being a very successful farmer. He and his first wife had raised a family who were all grown and married now. According to Mr. Reed, Uncle George had left each of those children from the first marriage with prosperous farms of their own. That said all that needed to be said, didn’t it? Some years before, he had married for the third time. Tamsen Donner was a mere whiffet of a woman—she was barely five feet tall and weighed no more than a hundred pounds—and was nearly twenty years Donner’s junior. But in that tiny frame was a lot of spunk. Born in Massachusetts, she had come west to be a schoolteacher and gotten married. Her first husband had also died, and after a time she married George Donner. He was still raising two daughters from his second marriage, and he and Tamsen had begotten three more daughters of their own. All five girls would be going west with their parents.
In addition to one whole wagon filled with food, the Donners were taking a load of what Peter called “geegaws”—beads, knives, and other trinkets to be given as presents to the Indians and laces and silks to be traded with the Mexicans in California. Tamsen was also taking along a supply of schoolbooks, paper, brushes, watercolors, oils, and other supplies needed for the girls’ seminary she planned to establish once they reached Upper California. Mr. Reed had also let it be known that Uncle George was carrying plenty of gold so they could purchase whatever land he wanted once they got there. And Mrs. Reed had whispered to her mother and Kathryn just last night the rumor that Mrs. Donner had sewn ten thousand dollars cash into one of the quilts. Ten thousand dollars! Kathryn could barely comprehend such a sum.
For that matter, what must the Reeds have spent to get ready? she wondered. They were traveling first-class as well. Take this wagon, for example. James Reed had paid a man to specially build it for him. Larger than a normal wagon by maybe a third again, it had an entrance on the side with steps that folded up or extended down, a second level on each end to provide sleeping quarters, and a small iron stove for cooking and for when the nights turned cold. And that was only this wagon. Reed also had two other wagons filled with food, tools, and personal effects. Kathryn had helped pack the dresses for Virginia and Patty. Peter had helped get the boys’ clothing ready. When they compared notes later, they guessed that in just clothing alone, what the Reeds were taking would have come close to outfitting a full wagon back in Nauvoo.
And the food! They had almost sixteen hundred pounds of flour, boxes of smoked sausage, barrels of salted cod, tubs of lard, three or four cans with a hundred pounds of sugar in each, bags of rice, cans of coffee and tea, raisins, salt, spices, dried fruit, potatoes and carrots packed in boxes of sawdust. Then there was all the paraphernalia that it took to maintain life on the trail—pots, kettles, dishes, butter churns, cheese presses, eating utensils. There were the tool kits, the spare parts, the tar buckets and water barrels. They had two extra wagon tongues and four extra axles, all slung beneath the wagon boxes of their three wagons. Buckets and boxes and pens of chickens were tied to the sides to the point that each wagon looked like the carriage of some traveling huckster.
Jacob Donner, head of the third family, was no less well-off, though Kathryn did not know his family as well. “Uncle Jake,” like his brother, was a kindly and industrious man, but seemed far less robust and healthy. When Kathryn learned that he was only two or three years older than George, it shocked her, for it seemed more like ten or twelve years’ difference. But his outfit was as well stocked as—
Kathryn turned as she heard children’s voices approaching the front of the wagon. Eliza Williams was herding the three younger Reed children toward them, speaking softly to them to keep them moving. She looked up and saw Kathryn. “Mrs. Reed said they’re nearly ready to go. She wants the children in the wagon.”
“All right, children,” Kathryn said, pulling herself to her feet by holding on to the side of the wagon. “Come up now. I have your places all ready.”
First Eliza handed up the youngest, Thomas Keyes, who was three. He was Kathryn’s personal favorite. Thoughtful but unfailingly cheerful, he was bright and very observant. He had won her heart one day shortly after the Reeds had hired them. After watching her get up on her crutches, he came to her and whispered in her ear, “If you need something, Miss Kathryn, let me know and I’ll get it for you.” And thus far he had been true to his word. She pointed to his place near the front wagon seat, directly behind where his father would sit, then whacked him gently on the rump as he scooted past her.
Next came Martha, whom they all called Patty, though Kathryn had not yet discerned why. At eight, she was already every bit the lady, just as her mother was. Her clothes were purchased from Springfield’s best shops, and she wore them with just the right touch of primness and modesty. She knelt down beside her grandmother. “Oh, Granny,” she cried, “it’s time!”
“Yes, Patty,” Mrs. Keyes said, taking her hand. “Isn’t it exciting?”
Last up was James Frazier Reed, Jr. This one was all boy. Though only five, he was forever out with the men, checking the harnessing, eyeing the stock, or kicking at the wagon spokes to make sure they were dished correctly. His parents always called him James, but Kathryn had taken to calling him Jamie, which in her Irish line was a more favored nickname than either Jim or Jimmy. Having been born in the north of Ireland himself, Mr. Reed did not seem to mind, and though he never used the name himself, he never corrected Kathryn when she did. To no one’s surprise, Jamie crawled past his brother and onto the wagon seat to await his father’s signal to move.
Kathryn laughed. “Going to drive us all the way to California, Jamie?”
“Aye,” he shot back with a grin.
“And he’ll probably beat the rest of us by a month,” Eliza said.
Kathryn chuckled. That was very likely. She looked at Eliza. “Are you all set?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m in the next wagon. Baylis will be leading that one mostly.”
Kathryn nodded. Baylis Williams was Eliza’s half brother. Both single—Eliza was thirty-one and Baylis was about twenty-five—they were going as part of the Reeds’ staff, just as Kathryn and Peter were. Eliza, who for years had been a domestic for the Reeds, would be the cook for the family and help Kathryn with the children—tending them, not tutoring them, for Kathryn suspected that Eliza, who was very hard of hearing, did not know how to read. Baylis was an all-around utility and fix-it man, and would help with the driving and herding of stock. Like the Ingallses, the Williamses would receive their board and a journey across the plains with no investment required of them other than their labor. Baylis spoke proudly of finding land of his own once they reached California, and in this he was encouraged by Mr. Reed.
There was a sound behind her and the wagon rocked a little. Margret Reed had returned and was climbing up. Peter was right behind her. He folded the steps, which fit ingeniously in beneath the wagon box, and shut the small door.
Kathryn beamed. Peter wore a wide-brimmed hat and carried the long ox whip over his shoulder. One did not “drive” oxen in the way that one drove a team of horses. There were no reins and harnessing in the usual sense. Oxen were “yoked” to the wagon through a series of hitch ropes or chains which led from the great yokes that sat on the animals’ shoulders to the wagon tongue. No one sat in the wagon seat to drive them. Instead, the ox driver, usually called a “bullwhacker,” would walk alongside the animals, directing them with soft commands—“gee” to turn them right, “haw” to turn them left—or the crack of the whip above their heads. Peter would be leading the four yoke that pulled the big wagon. And with his hat and boots and whip he looked like the real thing. Knowing of his preference for books and printing type and writing poetry, it amused her greatly to see him in this role. It also made her very proud. He had spent a lot of time on his own learning how to handle oxen.