“There they are!” It was Nathan. He slapped Derek on the back. “Look, there’s Joshua and Caroline.” He leaped up and down, waving both arms. “Joshua! Joshua!”
Caroline was on her feet, hanging on to Joshua’s shoulder, waving wildly and shouting back at them. Suddenly a figure jumped down from the wagon behind Joshua’s and darted forward. With the dust, Nathan couldn’t see for sure who it was. He saw it was a person in a dress and bonnet, but could see nothing more. Then he heard the shout. “Papa! Papa!”
“Emily?” It came out as a choked cry. Nathan took a step forward, his eyes burning with sudden tears. A great sob constricted his chest, making it in that instant difficult to breathe. “Emily!” He lunged forward, racing around a passing wagon. “Emily! Emily!”
She hurled herself through the air over the last few feet and flew into his arms. “Papa, it’s you!”
He buried his face in her hair and stood there, his whole body shaking as he held her tightly. Then, kissing her tear-stained cheeks, he moved her aside, and strode forward. Before the second wagon even stopped, he reached up for Lydia. With a cry of joy, she leaped from the wagon into his arms.
By now any order had completely disappeared. Some groups stood back, disappointed to learn that their families were not in this company. But everywhere else, wagons pulled out of line and people jumped down and into each other’s arms.
The Steeds formed one of the largest groups, with over thirty people trying to get to one another. Christopher and Benji and Leah were mobbed by their cousins. The women fell on each other’s necks and wept joyously, then cried out at the sight of Kathryn holding Nicole. In an instant she was surrounded. The men somberly shook hands and then embraced, too overcome to say anything of what they were feeling.
Finally, as things began to settle down, Nathan went over to stand beside his mother. She was standing back now. She had been given the first turn with Nicole. Now the others were cuddling her and cooing at her.
“This is the day, Mama! Reunion time.”
“Yes,” she whispered. There were two wet streaks in the dust on her cheeks.
“If only Papa were here,” he said softly. “That would make it complete.”
“He’s here, Nathan,” she said, smiling through the tears. “Do you really think he would miss a day like today?”
Nathan threw back his head and laughed aloud at the joy that that thought brought him. “No,” he answered. “Of course not.”
Chapter Notes
On July twenty-eighth, just four days after his arrival, Brigham Young selected the spot where the Salt Lake Temple now sits by marking a spot in the dirt with his cane. Before leaving again for the east, he also directed that the city be laid out perfectly square, with broad streets running north and south, east and west. (See Leonard J. Arrington,
Brigham Young: American Moses
[New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985], p. 146.) The site for the fort the pioneers built is now Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City and is found between Third and Fourth West Streets and Third and Fourth South Streets.
The Mormon Battalion stayed with the Saints from the
Brooklyn
at the colony of New Hope for a short time. They also met Thomas Rhoads and his family, who lived about twenty miles from New Hope. They then continued north to Sutter’s Fort, arriving on 26 August, the same day that Brigham Young left for Winter Quarters.
Once the battalion was discharged and split up into various groups to start back, it is hard to determine exact numbers of who went with each group. There were about two hundred who started over Donner Pass with Levi Hancock and who met Sam Brannan and James Brown near Truckee Lake. In the end, about half of them returned to California while the rest came on. (See Norma B. Ricketts, “The Forgotten Pioneers: Part Two,”
Crossroads
8 [Fall 1997]: 8, for a list of those who came on to the Valley with Hancock’s group in 1847.) Captain Brown went back to California with them to collect their back pay from the army and brought back almost five thousand dollars in gold in 1848. About fifty of those who returned to California were hired by John Sutter to build his sawmill on the American River. Thus they were there helping to dig the millrace for that mill when James Marshall, Sutter’s foreman, noticed the glint of shiny gold metal in the water. The California gold rush was on. (See
MB,
pp. 169–77.)
For some time the exact date of the discovery was not known, but it was the journal entry of Henry Bigler, a battalion member, that proved it happened on 24 January 1848 (see
MB,
pp. 197–98).
The California gold rush became a major influence in U.S. history, and those from the battalion who were in the area became part of that history. Ironically, John Sutter, who was situated as well as any man to capitalize on the gold rush, ended up being ruined by the discovery. Sutter said that the Mormons were the only ones who didn’t desert him. They stayed and finished the work they had contracted to do. Then he added: “Paid off all the Mormons which have been employed by me. . . . All of them made their pile and some of them became very rich and wealthy but all of them are bound to the Great Salt Lake and [will] spend their fortunes there to the glory and honor of the Lord.” (As cited in
MB,
p. 203.)
Sam Brannan went back to San Francisco, where he became prominent in northern California history. When the gold rush broke out, his mercantile business made him wealthy (some say he was California’s first millionaire). Some accused him of using tithing money which he had collected from the
Brooklyn
Saints for his own uses. Disillusioned with the Church for not sharing his vision of California, he drifted away from the faith and eventually was disfellowshipped. He became a heavy drinker. His fortunes changed, and he lost huge amounts of money in land development schemes, reaching a point where he even sold pencils on the streets of Nogales, Mexico. Eventually, however, he gave up drinking, repaid some of his debts, and lived out the rest of his life quietly. He died on 6 May 1889, almost forty-three years after the
Brooklyn
sailed through the Golden Gate and anchored near Yerba Buena. (See
CS,
pp. 219–24; Paul Bailey,
Sam Brannan and the California Mormons
[Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1943], pp. 129–35.)
Chapter 49
The roughly two hundred members of the Mormon Battalion who met Captain James Brown at Truckee Lake the first week of September divided themselves, half continuing eastward, half turning back with Captain Brown to spend another winter in California. For Peter, the return trip passed swiftly. This was the fourth time he had journeyed on the trail across the vast emptiness, but this time would be the last. He knew full well that Kathryn had resigned herself to the fact that he would not return until next summer. As he himself had. Now, not only was he returning, but he was bringing with him Josh, Alice and Will, and the baby no one else in the family had yet seen.
They made steady if not remarkable progress. At Sutter’s Fort, Will had purchased a wagon for Alice and Jared, who were the only woman and child in the company. The men also had a couple of wagons to carry their tents and supplies, but all except the wagon drivers walked. They left Truckee Lake on the eighth of September. After coming out of the Sierra, some of the men who felt like they weren’t moving fast enough asked their leaders for permission to go on ahead. If their families were not in the Valley, then they would still have time to press on to Winter Quarters to find them. The Indians who had caused so much grief for the Donner Party attempted to harass the group, now split into several smaller companies, but with the travelers’ manpower, the Indians posed no real threat other than the loss of animals.
As Peter and Sam Brannan had done earlier that year, they determined that they would not risk taking the Hastings Cutoff and the more direct route to the Salt Lake Valley. They turned north, rejoined the Oregon Trail at the Snake River, and continued east to Fort Hall, reaching there on October sixth, not quite a month after splitting up. They purchased a few supplies at Fort Hall and then, after resting for a short time, turned south, heading for the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.
Peter ran forward to where Josh Steed and William Hendricks were walking together near the front of the line of straggling men. He touched Josh on the shoulder. “Look. See that knobby hill up ahead?”
Josh slowed his step and looked up, staring dully ahead. Then he gave Peter an incredulous look. It was now more than thirty days since their group had split and this half had left Truckee Lake and started down the east slopes of the Sierra. Eleven days ago they had left Fort Hall and turned south toward the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. It was exactly fifteen months after their official mustering in and three months since their discharge. They had marched a total of almost three thousand miles. They were footsore, blistered, sunburned, and wind-chapped. They were mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. And he was supposed to get excited over the sight of some knobby hill?
Peter grabbed his arm and shook it. “Look, Josh. See there, where the mountains come down to meet the plain? Just to the left there’s a hill that looks like a monk’s bald head.”
Finally, Josh straightened and peered ahead more carefully. Others around him lifted their heads as well. Peter’s excitement was too much to ignore. Will and Alice were farther back in the company. Will gave Alice the reins, jumped down from the wagon, and hurried forward. A short distance ahead of where they were, Levi Hancock, the spiritual leader of the group, and Captain Jefferson Hunt, the senior officer of the battalion, both turned. “What is that again?” Hunt asked.
“That’s Ensign Peak.”
They just stared at him, as though he had spoken in a foreign tongue.
Realizing his mistake, Peter rushed on. “Ensign Peak is where Brigham Young raised the ensign to the world two days after we arrived in the Valley.” Peter looked around, bursting with energy now. “Don’t you understand? We’re there. Great Salt Lake City is just about a mile from that peak.”
Captain Hunt was nodding, his eyes bright now. He looked around. “Men, we have come a long way. We have endured much.” He let his eyes sweep across them with bitter irony. “And we look it.”
That brought a weary laugh from several.
“But we are about to march into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, where our people await us. Are we going to go in like a pack of mangy hounds, or are we going to march in like the soldiers we are?”
To Peter’s surprise, men began to straighten. They started to tug at their broad, white belts, about the only thing which remained of their original army “uniforms.” Hunt turned to Brother Hancock. “Levi, with your permission, I’d like to find a pole and break out the colors.”
Levi Hancock looked at his counterpart for a long moment. There had been many a disagreement between these two men over the months, but all of that was gone now. “I think that would be most appropriate, Captain.”
And then the captain had a second thought. He turned to Josh. “Private Steed?”
Josh came to full attention. “Yes, sir?”
“You think you could find us an empty bucket?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think that would make a fine drum with which to mark cadence.”
Forgetting that he was no longer a soldier, Josh snapped off a sharp salute. “
Yes, sir!
”
By mid-October, the Valley of the Great Salt Lake could no longer be said to be uninhabited except by the Ute Indians, or what many of the Oregon and California emigrants called the Utah Band. Nine full companies—more than five hundred wagons and almost fifteen hundred men, women, and children—had come in with the Big Company, the last arriving on October sixth. The population of the Salt Lake Valley was now at a whopping eighteen hundred Latter-day Saints.
By that time, the little colony had seen their first birth of a white female, their first birth of a white male, their first death (a boy had drowned in City Creek), a temple site selected, the regions round about explored, and the plan for a city—to be known as Great Salt Lake City—laid out, and surveys begun. Before departing for Winter Quarters, Brigham Young instructed the Saints to build a fort to the west of where they had plowed and planted. It was now completed, and extensions on both the north and south were under way to accommodate the larger numbers. The first settlement outside Great Salt Lake City—known as Sessions Settlement—was established about ten miles north of the city.
With the arrival of the Big Company, cutting and bringing timber from the nearby canyons commenced in earnest. Nearly four hundred cabins were completed or under construction. Sam Brannan had shown the Saints how to make adobe bricks like the ones they used in California, and numerous dwellings had been constructed using hardly any timber at all. But whether it was log cabins, adobe huts, willow lean-tos, tents, or wagons, there was no question but what the Valley of the Great Salt Lake now had permanent inhabitants.
Frost was occurring almost every night now, and a sense of urgency gripped the settlement as they raced to prepare for the first of the lasting snows. In addition to their meager harvest, the pioneers identified local roots and plants which could be eaten—sego lily bulbs and the roots of the thistle being the most popular. An infestation of field mice was dealt with by taking a wooden paddle with rounded handles and laying it across the top of a bucket filled with water. The paddle was smeared with grease. When the mice ventured onto the paddle to get the grease, it would flip and dump them into the water, where they drowned. Literally thousands of mice were killed in this manner. The one cat someone had brought across the plains became the pampered—and fat!—heroine of the settlement.
All of this was on Mary Ann Steed’s mind as she walked through the gate of the fort and saw the bustle that filled the large courtyard.
“Mother?”
She turned. Lydia, Emily, Jessica, and Rachel were coming toward her. They had been to the simple store that had been erected inside the fort to provide some means of commerce among the Saints.