The Awakening Of The Desert Part 18

As the result of an alleged revelation he established Zion at Spring Prairie (now Voree) Wisconsin, where (so he often stated to his disciples) he discovered eighteen metallic plates containing valuable history. It appears that these were never submitted to the inspection of his people.

In 1847 with a few followers he established a new Zion on Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, to which point considerable additional Mormon immigration was attracted in 1849. It was his declared purpose to make this island the center of Mormon power. In 1850 the government of his colony was established on Mormon lines by the Union of the church and civil government, and on July 8th of the same year he was formally crowned King by George Adams, president of the twelve. I find this union of church and state to be authorized, and the argument therefor presented in _Times and Seasons_, 1844.

The a.s.sumption of civil authority by the Strangites resulted in much friction between the Mormons and their opponents, though not so serious as what arose from a similar cause in Illinois. The fact that the number of votes cast on Beaver Island was equal to its entire population seems to be conceded. It is, however, the inside life of that people that is of present interest.

Strang had one wife, named Mary, when his kingdom was established, but a revelation that he announced to his people decreed polygamy to be a divine inst.i.tution. He accordingly added four wives to his household, the last two, Phoebe and Delia Wright, who were cousins, being taken on the same day, as the sequel of a picnic held by the Saints on an island in Pine Lake, which in memory of the happy event was called Holy Island, by which name it is still known. Two daughters from his second and third marriages were named respectively Eveline and Evangeline in honor of whom two important towns.h.i.+ps in Michigan still bear the name given by Strang.

Strang was the father of twelve children, four of whom were born after his death and were the children of his last four wives. They all lived together in the one home. John R. Forster in his report, 1855, on his survey of Beaver Island, which appears in _Michigan Historical Society Reports_, Vol. IX, states that Strang had six wives. My informant, who was thoroughly familiar with the family and home says that this statement is incorrect, but that Strang had said in her hearing that he would be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow, and one mourner did sojourn for a time in his hospitable log cabin.

Each of Strang's twelve apostles also took more than one wife, two of the apostles having three wives each.

All weddings were private, none but officers who were to perform the ceremony being present. The temple in which all these religious functions were performed, and where services were held was built of pine logs, hewed square.

In accordance with early Mormon teachings the use of tea, coffee, tobacco, and spirituous liquors was interdicted. The payment of t.i.thes to the King, as well as the first fruits of field and flocks was required. One of the earliest edicts of the King prescribed the dress that must be worn by his people. The women were required to wear the style of costume which Miss Bloomer endeavored later to introduce. The men were commanded to wear an equally distinctive garb consisting in part of a short jacket, with no skirt or tail to the coat.

Mrs. Bedford states also that from infancy and during the first four years under Strang's dominion she religiously conformed to all the decrees of the church. One day, however, she was discovered in her home by the prophet when for a brief period she was wearing an ordinary dress. The Prophet King at once declared that the rule pertaining to dress must be enforced, or the people must walk over his dead body. The strong, independent spirit of the woman rose within her, and the beginning of the end had come. Bedford had previously been ordered to appropriate some fis.h.i.+ng nets, which were the property of others. A boat had been stolen, and Bedford, who was a st.u.r.dy Englishman, _would_ speak the truth, which reflected upon the integrity of certain of Strang's apostles, whereupon the King caused his officers to enforce upon Bedford a brutal punishment with whips. These were secured later and were sent to a museum in Detroit.

The rule of a tyrant is quite certain in time to be brought to an end by some lover of liberty and justice.

Night came down upon Bedford's home far back upon Beaver Island, and husband and wife conversed together concerning the wrongs and oppression of the King's despotic rule. Strang had preached that no bullet could enter his body.

"If you are going to shoot Strang go now and do it," said the indignant young wife, and Bedford went out into the darkness. It was long past the midnight hour of June 17th when the waiting wife heard a pounding at the barred door of their log cabin.

"Who is there?"

"Friends."

She stood with an axe in her hands prepared to defend herself, her children, and her home. Stating what defence she would make, if necessary, she told her visitors that she must know their names, before they would be admitted. On becoming a.s.sured that they were marines from the government steamer, Michigan, that her husband was aboard their s.h.i.+p, and that they had come to rescue her, she unbarred the door. A supper had been laid upon the table awaiting her husband's return, from which the sailors were glad to take refreshment.

Bundling her two little ones and a few light effects, they fled to the steamer before the King's officers reached the house.

Strang had been duly shot. In a few days a pa.s.sing steamer carried him to Racine, from which place he was conveyed to Voree, where on July 8th he died from the effects of his wound.

Bedford was taken to Mackinac and placed in an unlocked jail with a friendly guard, but boldly returned with his wife to Beaver Island.

There was no recognized leader. The spell was broken. The Saints scattered, some in one direction and some in another, as opportunity offered, by pa.s.sing vessels. Women wept as each party embarked. It was well known that at whatever port they might be landed their peculiar dress, which marked them as disciples of the despised and now fallen prophet, would invite the searching gaze and contemptuous jeers of rude and unsympathetic onlookers. Such was in fact their fate. Thus was closed the chapter of the Strangite defection.

An old pioneer has related to the writer the story of the gallows, which was erected on the Michigan beach by the Mormons and which he cut down.

Upon it was suspended the effigy of an obnoxious Gentile, which is preserved by its prototype to this day.

At the time of the dispersion of the Strangites Brigham Young had long since established himself as the hierarch of the Mormon Church, and to that master mind was delegated supreme authority in conducting a movement that has hardly a parallel in history.

The occasion for prompt, energetic, and sagacious leaders.h.i.+p arose when in the autumn of 1845 armed mobs of so-called Illinois citizens descended upon Mormon settlements in the vicinity of Nauvoo and burned stacks of grain, and other property, also a score of homes, driving men and helpless women and children of Mormon families from their own farms out into the darkness. These brutal demonstrations were repeated by the destruction of mills, factories, and business property in Nauvoo, accompanied by demands that the Mormons must leave the country within sixty days.

These facts are confirmed by Bancroft, who also quotes many other authorities in verification. Governor Ford's proclamation which followed the riots, embraced the statement that prior to the outbreaks Hanc.o.c.k County, then occupied in part by the Mormons, was as free from crime as any county in the state of Illinois.

The eviction of the Mormons from Illinois and other states, even though they were despised, would seem to have been as lawless and barbarous as has been the expulsion of Jews from Russia or Huguenots from France.

When thousands of Mormon women and children wept as they turned their backs in flight upon the beautiful temple just completed and which two years later was also burned by vandals, it was like the sigh of the Moor when from the distance he cast his last glance toward the glorious Alhambra and Granada from which his people had been driven.

The Mormons were now again in exile. And now came the chosen president and prophet of that church, the Moses who essayed to lead his homeless, impoverished followers to a promised land. The exodus of this people to an undetermined part of the far West unknown to them cannot fail to excite the admiration of their bitterest enemy because of the marked abilities and masterly generals.h.i.+p displayed by their leader. Nearly every obstacle that the mind can conceive seemed to confront them. Their homes were destroyed, or abandoned for slight compensation and beset by profane mobs that were often brutal, and doubtless inferior in moral qualities to the Mormons themselves, and certainly not fair representatives of the industrious citizens.h.i.+p of the state. The evicted Saints moved westward toward the Missouri River. We have read the pathetic story of their subsequent wanderings, and I, myself, have heard it from the quivering lips of men and women who were apparently honest and sincere. While suffering from hunger and disease, with inadequate means for aiding their afflicted helpmates and children, the objects of general derision and hatred, they turned their backs upon the homes which they had built and loved, and like a conquered tribe of Indians, (but less respected than vanquished savages,) they turned their weary steps toward the setting sun.

A great emergency often calls forth an able leader. With a base of operations in Eastern Nebraska, Brigham Young quickly laid plans looking to the removal of his people to Northern Mexico, which then embraced the present territory of Utah and had been brought to his notice by Fremont's explorations. He would there establish his new empire in that far-away wilderness, in a foreign country, and be at peace. In the spring of 1847, he personally led his first party of 132 Saints across the plains and over the mountains, and on July 21st, from the foot of Emigration Canyon they beheld for the first time the sparkling waters of Great Salt Lake, which in the following February, as the result of the war with Mexico, was ceded to the United States, with the territory south as far as the Rio Grande.

Less than two decades later our own little party also descended into that valley. The stirring events of their past history and experiences were then fresh and I may say burning in the memory of that generation of Saints. We were also more or less familiar with the history of the Mormons, as gathered from various authorities, and while inspired with admiration for the heroism of their pioneers, we doubtless shared in the prevailing prejudice against what was believed to be a misguided people.

The purpose of this brief review of events that led to the settlement of Utah, is to enable the reader to share our preconceived ideas, while we spent the remainder of the summer and autumn with the Saints. Our business, on the arrival of our big train, would bring us into relations with many men of affairs and with the heads of the church. These relations were doubtless more unrestrained and cordial than they would have been, if in return for their courtesy we had been expected to publish a literary broadside of caricature such as they had become familiar with. As a fact, a few journalists had reached the city and after two or three days spent in sight-seeing, some of those writers had seemed able to arrive at conclusions concerning men and affairs in Utah quite satisfactory to themselves and with abundant material for humor and ridicule. It has been my privilege to attend religious services in many temples in the Orient and elsewhere, where millions of presumably devout wors.h.i.+ppers bend the knee in submission to divine authority, and offer their prayers more fervently and humbly than I am wont to do, and strange as I may have thought it that the faith of those people was not the same as mine, I would not now discuss Mormonism as a religious belief because my judgment may be biased by the strong convictions inherited from my Puritan ancestry. Theologians trained in religious thought and utterance have already pa.s.sed judgment with the usual result.

As the one overshadowing fact in Constantinople is Mohammedanism and the Sultan, so in Salt Lake City it was Mormonism and Brigham Young. It was, therefore, not strange that on the day after our arrival, which was the Sabbath, our footsteps were directed toward the square, which was the center of the religious life of the Mormons, and in which was the bowery where their great services were held on Sabbath afternoons. The present temple and tabernacle had not then been built. We were a.s.signed to favorable seats near the platform. The bowery was a rude structure built on posts set into the ground and covered with bushes to shade the wors.h.i.+ppers from the sun. It was situated near the old tabernacle and was used during the summer months. We were informed that it afforded seating capacity for 8000 persons. Having come early to the services, we waited, and watched the arrival of the wors.h.i.+ppers until nearly all the seats appeared to be occupied, and we glanced with great interest over the vast a.s.semblage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIGHAM YOUNG]

I had been a regular attendant upon the morning services of our little Congregational Church in the East and had been inspired by the vast audiences convened and the eloquent sermons preached by Henry Ward Beecher in his great tabernacle in Brooklyn, and I knew something of church life and the means often adopted for bringing together audiences for religious wors.h.i.+p. What, therefore, I asked myself, was the power or influence that had attracted this vast gathering of thousands of wors.h.i.+ppers to a rude sanctuary in that far-away town in a mountain wilderness?

"Is this an ordinary Sabbath service?" I asked a man who occupied a seat near by.

"O yes, this is about an average attendance."

"It would seem to represent about half the entire population of the city. Are we not correct in that estimate?"

"Yes, but there are a few people here from outlying districts, who attend these services."

At about that moment a man arose from among the few who occupied the platform. He was above the average in height, with broad shoulders, a deep chest, and a strong, well-knit frame. His movements were indicative of great physical strength and vigor. He had cold, gray eyes, thin compressed lips, a firm mouth, and a broad, ma.s.sive forehead. He was dressed in plain business clothes, and his bearing indicated that he was master of the occasion. It was Brigham Young.

The thought at once comes into the mind that if the Mormon doctrines were true there stood before us a man in whom was combined all that there once was in Moses as a leader, and in Elijah as a prophet.

Suppliants kneel and kiss the ring of the Roman pontiff. The Mussulman trembles if he approaches the Sultan, yet neither of those ecclesiastic sovereigns arrogates to himself higher authority than was a.s.sumed by this president of the Mormon Church except that being within the limits of a modern republic the power of any church is in some degree restrained. Moreover, Brigham Young was not an aristocrat, and although his predecessor, Joseph, by virtue of his office as president of the church, was Mayor of Nauvoo, and Brigham as far as possible was also the political head of his people, yet he was not hedged about by courts, princes, or prelates, but mingled with the people and was drawing thousands to himself.

We are all in some degree hero wors.h.i.+ppers. As a youth I had gone far to listen to addresses made by some of our noted orators, chiefly because of the fame they had achieved. With equal pleasure I had heard the voices of Emerson, Whittier, Saxe, Bryant, and others who had become distinguished through their writings. Our great generals also had been objects of intense interest. On the other hand, we all remember our a.s.sociations with some men whose acquaintance had been formed before their achievements had made them objects of public notice, and we possibly remember that we then gave them but little consideration. The prophets were rejected, the apostles were persecuted, yet if one of them should now appear and be recognized he would be honored by the millions.

Before us in that Mormon tabernacle stood a strong man a.s.suming the highest authority that it is possible for man to claim. Thousands of people were flocking to his standard possibly in greater numbers than came at any time to the apostles of our Saviour.

After the first service that we attended in the bowery, we asked of each other the question, "What will be the verdict concerning Brigham Young in the ages to come?"

On each Sabbath when in the city I was present at the Mormon services.

President Young spoke on each occasion with but one exception, that being a Sabbath when he was absent on an important convocation in another town.

He taught that the Book of Mormon is a continuation of the history and revelations of the Bible. Jesus was recognized as having been one of the prophets, therefore the Mormons profess to be Christians. His sermons treated largely on practical affairs of his church and people, even to matters pertaining to dress. He urged habits of economy in household affairs. Now and then when addressing his great audiences, all of whom listened to his utterances with rapt attention, Brigham emphasized a point by bringing down his powerful fist heavily upon his desk and then pausing, as if to indicate that the fact presented was firmly nailed down. As an apostle of temperance in the use of intoxicants and narcotics he was uncompromising. Although many of his people had come from England, Wales, Scandinavia, and other European countries, we did not see an intoxicated person in Salt Lake City. One saloon only, so far as we could learn, existed in the year 1866, and that was said to be owned by one Charles Trowbridge, who consented to pay the required license of $500.00 per month, which it had been supposed would be prohibitory.

During our visit the relations between the Mormons and the government were not friendly. In one sermon, while dealing with that subject, Brigham said, "If we are ever obliged to leave this valley, we will leave it as desolate as we found it," to which the people replied, "Amen."

Heber C. Kimball, who was first councillor to President Young and Chief Justice of the State of Deseret, a man to whom was conceded a high character for sincerity and integrity, in one of his addresses in Brigham's presence, said that he and the president once traveled 500 miles, and all the money they had during the trip was $13.50, yet they paid out $16.00 for every 100 miles of travel. This he said was the Lord's work, for every time they wanted money they had only to put their hands into their pockets, and the required money was there. This statement was apparently offered for the purpose of inspiring faith in the hearts of their missionaries.

As is well known, nearly every Mormon was required to serve for a prescribed term in such mission work as was a.s.signed to him, and must go without purse or scrip. The effect of this system is that their church is represented economically and faithfully in nearly every part of the civilized world.

Their messengers go with the Bible and the Book of Mormon as their guide. We naturally gave to this last-named revelation a somewhat careful perusal and confess that we found nothing in it that in our judgment compared favorably with the First Chapter of _Genesis_ in dignity of style or clearness in expression, no words as a.s.suring to the believer or as poetic in style as those found in the 23d _Psalm_, nor any thoughts as exalted as are written in the 14th Chapter of _John_.

Its biblical style imparts to the book a semblance of antiquity. It is either a history of races concerning which there had been no known recent record until the alleged discovery of the golden plates, or it is a clever fabrication accepted by hundreds of thousands as the truth.

We returned from Sabbath to Sabbath to obtain all the light possible from the lips of the prophet concerning this mysterious revelation. Now and then one might observe some newly arrived doubter, just in from the mountains, who gave expressions of contempt on listening to the exposition of some chapter. We have also heard the t.i.ttering of light-hearted youths in the old Methodist prayer meetings in the States.

Brigham Young seldom indulged in flights of rhetoric, and his teachings were often given in the form of commands and not as advice. He frequently dealt rather at length on the social and domestic affairs of his people, urging industry, temperance, economy, and thrift, and advocated a simple, modest life similar to that which was required in his own family, where each wife attended to her own domestic affairs. In referring to his wives, which he did frequently, he used the term "my women." This expression fell very unpleasantly upon our ears unaccustomed to its use. We were informed that the terms "my man" and "my woman" have long been in use in other languages, even with the ancient Hebrews, but the phrase does not strike the right chord where woman occupies the position she does in America.