Trail Tales Part 7

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 circ.u.mstances.

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 a.n.a.logy 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 ma.s.ses. The blinded people groped for light in the pitchlike blackness of the new superst.i.tion.

"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. Mork, 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 surpa.s.ses 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 canons 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 sh.o.r.e.

SOME MORMON BELIEFS

His studie was but litel on the Bible.--_Chaucer_.

Imaginations fearfully absurd, Hobgoblin rites, and moon-struck reveries, Distracted creeds, and visionary dreams, More bodiless and hideously misshapen Than ever fancy, at the noon of night, Playing at will, framed in the madman's brain.

--_Pollok, in Course of Time_.

The abode of the dead, where they remained in full consciousness of their condition for indefinable periods, or even for eternity, has been the theme of many a writer both before and after the advent of the Saviour of men. Annihilation is repugnant to the common intelligence. Homer sends Ulysses, Dantelike, to the realms of the dead, where he converses with them he had known in life. The Stygian River, the dumb servitor, Charon, the coin-paid fare, are all well known in the cla.s.sics of the ancients.

In some later religio-philosophic studies the names are different; some have tartarus, some purgatory, some paradise. The last is the name adopted by the Mormons.

The heroes of Homer seemed never to hope for a release from the bonds of Hades. Voluptuous Circe, the Odysseyan swine-maker, told the hero of those tales he was a daring one:

"... who, yet alive, have gone Down to the abode of Pluto; twice to die Is yours, while others die but once."

Many well meaning minds have tried to discover in the Bible, or otherwise reasonably invent a second probation for the unrepentant as an addendum to the final resurrection of the just. Not a little has been made of the term "spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3. 19, 20), and of "baptism for the dead" (1 Cor. 15. 29). In the intensity of zeal, or as a proselyting advertis.e.m.e.nt, the Latter-Day Saints proclaim the possibility of all the inhabitants of the grave (paradise) being saved in heaven. To this end, early in the history of the organization, there was implanted the doctrine of preaching to the departed and that of proxy ministrations.

From their Articles of Faith I take these two:

3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Now, since without immersion there is no remission of sins, and since they who are in prison (paradise) are eligible to salvation, therefore some one must be baptized for them and have all the other rites of the plan likewise administered in their name. That "all things may be done decently and in order," there was received a "revelation" to the end that temples must be built, recorders and other officials appointed, and all the paraphernalia necessary for the work prepared. When these rites are consummated some elder of the church who dies goes to the spiritual prison house and tells the people therein confined that these most meritorious works have been done for them on earth; in fact, this is the chief reason for their going thither. They who will believe this story and repent of their sins are then and there ent.i.tled to "a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."

Not only are the people redeemed from all their sins by the pious ministrations of the many temple-workers, who, like Samuel, continually serve and minister therein, but as marriage relations are to continue throughout the endless ages of eternity, and children are to be born forever and ever, these dead have the hymeneal ceremony performed "for eternity"; this act is known as the "sealing" process.

Men are here married--by proxy--to others than the actual living wife, sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really and truly believe this to be the only road to eternal life and exaltation.

Added to this is the doctrine of the deification of men. All the true and faithful Mormons are to become G.o.ds by and by, and create and populate new worlds; hence the value of polygamy; in fact, this world is but one of the samples of this truth. Adam is the owner and ruler of earth, and to him we pray. He is our G.o.d. As such he is only one in an endless procession of such beings.

"There has been and there now exists an endless procession of the G.o.ds, stretching back into the eternities, that had no beginning and will have no end. Their existence runs parallel with endless duration, and their dominions are limitless as boundless s.p.a.ce."[3]

Possibly the most popular hymn among these people is the following, written by one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Eliza R. Snow. It is in their collection and now in use:

HYMN TO FATHER AND MOTHER

O my Father, thou that dwellest In the high and glorious place!

When shall I regain thy presence, And again behold thy face?

In thy holy habitation, Did my spirit once reside?

In my first primeval childhood, Was I nurtured by thy side?

For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth, And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth; Yet ofttimes a secret something Whispered, "You're a stranger here"; And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere.

I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high; But, until the Key of Knowledge Was restored, I knew not why.

In the heavens are parents single?

No; the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me, I've a mother there.

When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, mother, may I meet you In your royal court on high?

Then, at length, when I've completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.

[3] New Witness for G.o.d, B. H. Roberts, 1895.

WEBER TOM, UTE POLYGAMIST

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees G.o.d in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way.

--_Pope_.

When Mormonism was no longer compelled to maintain the defensive it quickly a.s.sumed the offensive. This was apparently deemed necessary for the existence of the system. Two kinds of preaching were indulged in by the elders on their missions, home and foreign. At home they declared the beauty of the Smithian gospel, including the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were trying by every means, Machiavellian or otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians were called by the Mormons, at least to an extent which would allow them to remain undisturbed throughout the territory of Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were immersed for the remission of their sins, but they were permitted to multiply unto themselves as many squaws as they cared for. It would take water stronger than the common alkaline pools contained to reach the morals of a heathen Ute.

Very many of the Indians thus were made Mormons and white men were appointed as their bishops. Brigham Young used to make visits to them to try to instruct them in various things. For a considerable period he was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. He was such official at the time of the lamentable Mountain Meadow Ma.s.sacre, in 1857, and for which crime Bishop John D. Lee suffered death.

Possibly it was the influence of Mr. Young that kept the most of the red men from the warpath and thus saved the scattered settlers in the earlier days when there were so few to guard the isolated homes in the far-away nooks and canons of the mountains.

The other sort of preaching in which the elders indulged was that of an absolute and unqualified denial of polygamy in Utah. Such was the plan of the elders who went to Europe. The public denial of John Taylor, later president of the church, is abundant evidence. When they deny polygamy now they have the consistency of definition to back them; to their manner of explaining, polygamy is the act of taking new wives; to the non-Mormon, polygamy is the possessing of more than one wife. For this reason we are very bold in saying that polygamy is publicly practiced in Utah--witness Joseph F. Smith as chief example.