Continuing the series begun in February, here:

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Trek 2016
Ensign and Emigration Stakes, Salt Lake City, Utah

May

“And this shall be our covenant—that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord.”
—Doctrine and Covenants 136:4

MEN AND WOMEN ON THE TRAIL

Working on the Trail

Men and women – and that included boys and girls who were old enough to take some of the responsibility – generally had different work assignments as they crossed the Plains.

Leadership

First of all, men served as leaders of every pioneer company, from the president of the entire company with his two counselors – just like a bishopric or a stake presidency – down through the captains of hundreds and fifties and tens. In the first few years of the pioneer experience, the company presidents were sometimes apostles or other Church leaders. Later, when most such leaders were in Utah, a missionary coming back to Utah from a mission in the East or in Europe, or someone else who had already crossed the Plains a few times, would often be appointed as company presidents.

The company leaders were responsible for decisions that affected the whole company: Getting the company started on the trail every day, deciding when to “noon” to give the cattle a chance to rest and eat, deciding when to camp for the night. They called the company together for meetings and prayers, and they were responsible for seeing that the rules were kept.

Captains of hundreds and fifties and tens made a lot of the practical decisions every day: What order the wagons traveled in, so that nobody was stuck at the end of the dusty train day after day; who would be on guard duty that night; and what to do about that one man who kept on breaking the rules or who refused to do his share of the work. When pioneer companies included converts from Europe who spoke Danish or German or some other language, the captains of tens translated for them so that everybody understood what was expected.

Daily Duties

Pioneer men had a long work day: Once the company started moving in the morning, men pulled handcarts, or kept the cattle pulling wagons. Most men walked all day: There were very few horses to ride, they needed to walk beside the cattle to encourage them and to keep them in line, and the poor animals already had so much work to do that men didn’t want to add their weight to what the oxen pulled.

Many pioneer men carried their guns as they walked, hoping to do a little hunting on the road. But the pioneers soon developed strict rules for when and where guns could be used, because there were many shooting accidents in the early days on the trail.

Night Guard

Once the pioneers were in camp for the night, most of the men could finally rest and relax – unless, that is, it was their turn to stand guard duty. In that case, they would lose half a night’s sleep, and still have to work all day the next day. Guards were posted mostly to protect the cattle and to prevent stampedes. Guards also watched for possible trouble from others on the trail, or from Indians, but there were few such problems. Many of the pioneers remembered waking at night to hear a guard call the hour – “Eleven o’clock and all is well” – as the call passed from one guard to another all around the camp.

If night guard duty was hard, men’s lives were even harder if there was a stampede. Then almost every man in camp, whether he was on guard or not, had to run immediately to try to stop the cattle, or to round them up after they got away. Chasing down runaway cattle sometimes took hours, even days, slowing the company on the trail. Chasing runaway cattle exhausted the men who had to hike for many miles searching for their animals.

Women’s Work

Women’s work on the trail was very much the same work that women would have been doing at home: Taking care of small children, cooking meals, washing dishes and clothes, nursing sick and injured pioneers.

There was a major difference, though: Women had to do all the usual things, but without the usual conveniences. They had very few cooking utensils to prepare meals, and a very limited number of food items to cook, yet they had to satisfy big appetites of family members who worked hard all day. Instead of caring for small children in a house or yard, they had to keep track of children climbing in and out of moving wagons, playing dangerously near the feet of enormous oxen, and getting lost and left behind if a woman took her eyes off her children for even a minute. There was no wood pile outside the back door; women had to scour the prairies for wood or other fuel sources to heat their washing water or bake their biscuits.

Women very often had cooking and mending to do for more than their own families. A lot of pioneer companies included men without their families, teamsters who were driving wagons filled with freight to Utah, or who had driven wagons from Utah to the eastern frontier to pick up emigrants and bring them west. In exchange for the help given by such teamsters, and sometimes in exchange for money or goods, women took care of their cooking and washing needs.

Cooking

Women who did the cooking on the trail devised routines and shortcuts to help them prepare better food in less time as they gained experience. As quickly as they could upon making camp in the afternoon, they got their beans and meat into pots so that dinner could cook while the women washed clothes, bathed children if water were near, and tended to other camp chores. Just before going to bed, they would mix a batch of bread to rise overnight. In the morning, along with breakfast, women prepared foods that could be served without fire while the company rested at noon. Women milked cows in the evening, let the milk stand so that the cream would rise overnight, and put cream in jars that were jostled and shaken as the wagons traveled during the day, turning the cream into butter for the evening meal.

Sometimes, too, women did some of the same work as men: They pulled handcarts and drove wagons. They were spared guard duty – but when cattle stampeded, older girls and young women did sometimes help round up the runaway cattle.

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So men and women on the trail had different responsibilities, but families worked together as teams to do what needed to be done. And in the case of teamsters helping women with their wagons, and women helping teamsters with their meals, men and women filled in the gaps and made sure that everyone had what they needed.

The Mormon Battalion

When the Mormons knew they would have to leave Nauvoo, Brigham Young sent agents to Washington, D.C., looking for ways to help the Mormons find the money to emigrate. Those agents asked the American government to hire Mormon men – maybe the Mormons could help the government build forts in the West, they said, and the money would help buy wagons and cattle and supplies to move the Mormons west.

The government didn’t want to hire fort builders – but they had another suggestion. In 1846, the United States went to war with Mexico and needed soldiers. If the Mormon men would be soldiers in that war, then their wages could be used to bring their families to the West. The Mormon soldiers would also be paid an allowance for uniforms and other supplies, and some of that money could also be used by the Pioneers.

In July 1846, U.S. Army Captain James Allen met Brigham Young and the main Mormon camp at Council Bluffs, in Iowa. Some of the Mormons didn’t trust him – they thought he came to cause trouble for them. But Brigham Young accepted the proposal and asked for 500 Mormon men to enlist in the Army, and form the Mormon Battalion. The Army gave Brigham Young the privilege of appointing captains for the companies within the Battalion; he chose good men who would be almost like bishops over the companies.

A few dozen women, with about 50 children, decided to follow their husbands in the Battalion and work as laundresses – these women and children walked most of the way across the continent, just as the men did. There was at least one more child with the Battalion than the adults planned on: As Philander Colton marched off with the Battalion, his 9-year-old son Charles sneaked out of the Pioneer camp and followed at a distance. That night, when the Battalion made camp, Charles walked into the camp and found his father. The soldiers decided to let Charles stay with his father, running errands and doing odd jobs as an officer’s aide.

Azariah Smith was one of the youngest Battalion members, barely 18 when he started the march. Very few men kept diaries during the march, and Azariah was one of them. He wrote about all the new things he saw – “I saw a rattlesnake, which is the first one I have saw on the road” – and about being homesick.

Henry Sanderson was another teenage member of the Battalion. He was only 17 – not old enough to join the Battalion legally – but he was as tall as a man, so nobody questioned him too closely. He successfully enlisted.

The Mormon Battalion marched from Council Bluffs to Fort Leavenworth (Kansas), then all the way to Santa Fe (New Mexico). It was a long, hard march – one of the longest infantry marches in history. They suffered from heat, and didn’t have enough food or good water. They built roads by clearing rocks and sometimes cutting openings through narrow passes so that wagons could travel the entire way – the first wagon road across the continent.

Some of the men became sick on the journey across the continent, and the long march exhausted some of the women and children. As the Battalion went through Colorado, the sick soldiers and most of the women children were discharged from the Battalion and sent to the U.S. fort at Pueblo, where they spent the winter. Those Pioneers left Pueblo the next spring and walked on to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving there just five days after Brigham Young reached Salt Lake.

The men of the Battalion never did have to fight any battles … against other soldiers, that is. They did have one battle with wild bulls, though, when wild bulls stampeded through the encampment. Fifteen bulls were killed by gunfire; two of the Army mules were gored by bulls, and three men were wounded.

The Battalion marched on, all the way to San Diego, California. Although they didn’t have to fight the Mexican Army, their presence in California helped the U.S. Army secure the territory and keep the peace there. After they were discharged from the Army, the men of the Battalion found work in California so they could earn the money and supplies they would need to reach Salt Lake, or even to go all the way back to Winter Quarters to find their families and bring them West. Some of those discharged Battalion members were working at Sutter’s Mill in northern California when gold was discovered there, starting the great California Gold Rush.

From beginning of their march when they gave their enlistment pay to Brigham Young, to the end of their travels when they gave the gold they found in the streams of California, the men of the Mormon Battalion helped to support the entire Church in its movement West.

Women on Their Own

Sometimes women and children had no male family members to help them get West. Abigail Abbott was one of those women. Her husband left Nauvoo in February 1846 with a wagon full of goods, promising to return for Abigail and the children as soon as he had made arrangements for them in Iowa. But the next time Abigail heard from him, she learned that he had enlisted in the Mormon Battalion. Abigail would have to get herself and her children West, without his help.

Abigail and a widowed friend managed to get one wagon for their two families. The two women and all the older children walked across Iowa, leaving space in the wagon for the youngest children. Besides walking all day, Abigail took her turn guarding the camp at night.

“Our diet was sometimes corn or buckwheat bread, and a few beans made into soup with pepper and salt for seasoning. Through the winter, had a few pounds of wild pork, bought a few pounds of butter, and bought a few pumpkins and made a little pumpkin butter.”

Abigail spent the first winter in Iowa, raising a crop of 22 bushels of buckwheat, spinning wool, and teaching school. Then the family moved on to Winter Quarters, where Abigail spent a year teaching school, nursing the sick, and gleaning turnip fields.

Abigail son-in-law, but not her husband, returned to Winter Quarters after the Mormon Battalion’s march was over, and helped Abigail outfit her family for the Pioneer trail in 1849.

Abigail didn’t complain about having to do what a man would ordinarily do, even when she wrote to tell Brigham Young what she had done. She just did what a woman had to do, for her family.

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The Case of the Forgetful Groom

Thomas Bullock was the camp clerk of Brigham Young’s 1847 pioneer company and he kept the official record of the pioneer journey.

On June 25, 1847, the pioneers were high in the mountains. Even that late in the year, it was so cold that water and milk froze in the buckets.

Thomas must have been thinking about his wife, Henrietta, who was back in Winter Quarters with their three small children (just before Thomas left with the pioneers, their fourth child, a 2-year-old boy, had died). Thomas wrote in his journal that “Brother Wordsworth brought me a ball of Snow which I ate; quite a treat for the Anniversary of my Wedding day.”

The only problem is, Thomas’s and Henrietta’s anniversary was not on June 25 … it was on June 28. Thomas forgot his own anniversary!

The Case of the
(Almost) Kidnapped Bride

Susan Ellen Johnson was 14 when she crossed the Plains in 1850. She wrote about her adventure with a young Native American who visited their camp frequently.

One evening the 20-year-old Cheyenne announced that he wanted Susan for his bride, “and would pay a good price for her.” A man who was traveling with the company – a soldier who had deserted from the army at Fort Kearney, thought he would play a joke and said, “All right! You may have her for five horses, five buffalo robes, and some dried meat, and two antelope skins.” The young man agreed, saying he would come the next day with the pay.

Everybody made a joke of it, and congratulated Susan on her upcoming wedding. She didn’t think it was funny – she was annoyed.

Annoyance turned to fear the next day, though, when the Indian returned with the horses and other things. The Mormons told him that it was a joke, that they didn’t sell brides to anybody, even to other Mormons. Besides, the man who had made the joke was not related to Susan and had no right to make any arrangements for her. The young man was furious, and swore he would get even. The Mormons kept extra guards on duty from then on, for fear that the company might be attacked, or that their animals might be driven away.

A few nights later, the company was camped on the bank of the Platte River, which was covered with a dense growth of willows. At sunset a storm struck, with sheets of rain, and thunder and lightning. The wind blew wagon covers off, and blew down tents, and the rain drenched bedding. As Susan’s tent was starting to blow over, went outside to hold the tent pole in place while other members of the family drove the tent pegs deeper into the ground.

While she was holding up the tent pole “with all my strength,” Susan “felt herself lifted upon a horse by unseen hands, and someone sprang upon the horse behind her. At this instant a blinding flash of lightning revealed the young Cheyenne.” Susan screamed and struggled to get off the horse. Nearby men rushed to help her, and the Indian rode off on his horse, leaving Susan on the ground.

It was the last time Susan saw her admirer.

Margaret Gay Judd

Margaret was 17 when she crossed the plains in 1849. Her memories of life as a Pioneer are full of romantic episodes.

“The night before we left, my true lover, Henry Ridgley, came to bid me farewell. We each vowed eternal constancy, for four years at least. At the end of that time he would be of age, and then he would come to claim me for his own, even if I was at the end of the earth.

“Well, he did come to see me, but it was forty years instead of four years. He had a wife and three children. I had a husband and was the other of thirteen children. How we did talk of the long ago and laugh at each other’s inconstancy!”

On the Fourth of July, Margaret and her younger sister Phebe went to wash their clothes in privacy. “We selected a place, quite secluded, close to the creek where we could have plenty of water. Well, we were making suds when a dapper young gentleman from New York discovered us and brought a large piece of delicious fruit cake, which was made to celebrate the Fourth on the plains – it was a rather embarrassing position to accept this compliment in the midst of soiled linen and soap suds. However, I accepted the cake with great patriotism, and from that time he often called at our wagon, that is, our wagon yard. So when any of the young folks called, I was as much at home sitting on an ox yoke as if I were sitting in an easy chair in a parlor. such is life on the plain.”

Margaret’s brother Riley drove an ox team for a widow and her little girl. “He said that the girl would ask more questions in a day than ten men could answer in a week.” The questions got so tiresome that Riley decided to play a joke on the little girl when they came in sight of Chimney Rock, the very tall stone “smokestack” visible for days on the flat prairie. “He told her in a most confidential way that as soon as we got to it, he was going to push it down. It had stood there long enough anyway. As soon as he got his hands on it, over it would go.

She begged and implored him to let it stand. She threatened to tell ‘Brother Brigham’ when we got to the Valley. He kept her anxiety at fever het for two days until we were within about a half mile of it. He then gave in to her pleadings and said he would let it stand. She was so delighted that she gave him an extra good dinner and supper that day.”

Come, Girls, Come

This old folk song was originally sung by non-Mormons to make the Mormons angry, just like British soldiers at the time of the American Revolution taunted the Americans by singing “Yankee Doodle.” Rather than getting angry, though, the Americans adopted “Yankee Doodle” as their own song – and the Mormons adopted this one in the same way. Laugh at yourself, and it takes the sting out of other people’s laughter.

Come, girls, come, and listen to my noise:
Don’t you marry the Mormon boys!
If you do, your fortune it will be
Johnny cake and babies is all you’ll see.

Buy a little house and put it on a hill,
Make you work against your will.
Buy a little cow and milk it in a gourd,
Put it in the corner and cover it with a board.

Some singers add verses that may or may not be as old as the first two. The folksinger recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PVYgtFZAdBg adds this verse:

When they come a-preaching, let me tell you what they wear:
An old leather coat all thready and bare,
An old straw hat more brim than crown,
A pair of dirty socks that they’ve worn the winter ’round.