Candy Moulton, The Mormon Handcart Migration: “Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow.” University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. 272 p., hardback, ISBN 978086162614, $29.95 ($20.04 on Amazon)

There is no more iconic symbol of the Mormon overland trek than the handcart pioneers. Each year, Church youth groups reenact the trek by pulling replica handcarts over short distances for a few days in an effort to recreate the experience and build faith and empathy for the sacrifices of pioneers. Visitors to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints historic site at Martin’s Cove in Wyoming can also pull carts over prepared paths for a few minutes. Similarly, there is also no more cautionary tale than the tragic story of the Willie and Martin handcart companies of 1856, where two to three hundred individuals died of starvation and exposure. It would be hard to find a member of the Church who doesn’t know something about the handcart expeditions.

In the Mormon culture, we are susceptible to allowing our stories about history and faith to take on epic proportions. Ordinary events can become more heroic, coincidence takes on the patina of the miraculous, and faith-promoting rumors become accepted as fact. This seems particularly true in the case of the 1856 Willie and Martin handcart companies. BYU-I religion professor John Thomas shared his experience teaching the reality of some of the events surrounding the rescue of the 1856 handcart pioneers to skeptical students who pushed back when faced with historical truth. We confuse heritage, or what we wish had happened, with our actual history. ((John C. Thomas, “Sweetwater Revisited, Sour Notes, and the Ways of Learning,” Religious Educator 10, no. 2 (2009): 97–110. Also, “17 Miracles,” a film by T.C. Christensen, Excel Entertainment, 2011, as an example of hagiography writ large. Many of the “miracles” portrayed in this dramatic film have no foundation in historical context. While dramatic license in a fictionalized film allows for such things, many individuals that I have spoken with assume that all are based on actual events. ))

The first comprehensive treatment of the five year span of handcart migration, “Handcarts to Zion” by LeRoy and Ann Hafen, has for fifty years been the best reference of the handcart experience beyond just the 1856 disaster. More recent articles and books have focused on fixing the blame for the disastrous late season trek, more often than not pointing the finger at Brigham Young. ((Will Bagley, “One Long Funeral March,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 35 no. 1 (20090, pps 50-115; David Roberts, “Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy,” Simon and Schuster, New York, 2008. ))

A new book by Candy Moulton, The Mormon Handcart Migration: “Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow” attempts to update the story, interpreting the primary sources from the view of a partial outsider. While she is not a member of the Church, her husband and children are the descendants of handcart pioneers. She has also written and produced documentaries about the Western migration in general, and participated in the 1997 sesquicentennial recreation of the wagon and handcart trek of the Mormon pioneers.

Her approach is comprehensive, covering the entire span of the handcart period, drawing on the journals and recollections of the participants themselves. She has also drawn on other sources that give a wider context of the environment within which the handcart migration took place. Beyond just focusing on the recorded sermons and statements of Brigham Young, Moulton looks at the correspondence between the other major players in the leadership of emigration from Great Britain and other European countries.

There is no question that Young took a close, personal interest in the handcart experiment. President Young, concerned about the mounting debt generated by poor immigrants through the Perpetual Emigration Fund (almost $100,000 by 1856), wanted to reduce the costs to a more manageable level. Handcarts could be made for as little as $10 to $20, far less than the cost of a wagon and team of oxen. This put the cost of the westward migration at a level that could be shouldered by the majority of the poor immigrants.

Young also assumed that the handcart pioneers could travel two to three times faster than wagon trains, shortening the time required to reach the Salt Lake Valley, and reducing the required provisions. Young even specified the dimensions of the carts, with a width that matched the ruts and trail created by California, Oregon, and Utah bound wagons. Anticipating the difficulties of the varied terrain of sand, rocks, and prairies, Young suggested the width and construction of the wheel materials. Young’s critics are quick to point to his obsession over the details as micromanagement, concerns about costs as putting financial issues over the immigrant’s welfare, and overly optimistic views of the ease of handcart travel as naïve enthusiasm. ((Ibid.))

Moulton correctly, I believe, identifies the root causes of the handcart tragedies as failures of management at multiple levels. The individuals charged with implementing Young’s plans, John Taylor in New York, and Franklin D. Richards in Europe, were weeks if not months separated from the church President’s vision. Taylor focused on logistics of the overland trail, booked rail travel to Iowa, and purchased the first one hundred handcarts from an experienced wagon maker. Richards handled the sea leg of the trip from Europe, motivating and exhorting the faithful about to tackle the American wilderness of which they knew nothing. For the most part, they were spectacularly unprepared.

Moulton instead points out that much of Young’s enthusiasm for the handcarts as a mode of quick, cheap travel were not unreasonable. Most of the handcart pioneers from 1856 through 1860 would have been unable to cross the Atlantic and arrive in Utah in the same season without the availability of cheap transportation. As to the quickness of the crossing, Wallace Stegner wrote in a 1956 article for Collier’s Magazine that when the first two companies of handcarts arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley, they were not expected so soon. No other travelers had passed the handcart trains going west; they had letters written to send on ahead, but found no one to take them. They actually had come near to Young’s optimistic estimate of bettering the daily travel rate of the ox teams. (( Wallace Stegner, “Ordeal by Handcart,” Collier’s Magazine, July 6, 1956, 78-85. ))

But in the case of all ten handcart companies, logistics were a persistent problem. All ten companies had to cut rations at one or more points on their journeys. None of them could carry sufficient flour, bacon, and other food supplies in their small carts to last all the way to Utah. They were dependent either on accompanying wagons to carry supplies or the availability of resupply across Nebraska and Wyoming. Every one of the ten companies experienced serious hunger and physical exhaustion from the arduous pace. Levi Savage noted that the Willie company had to reduce rations to 10 ounces of flour in the 28 days that it took to pull their carts from Iowa City to Florence, Missouri on the first part of their journey, foreshadowing the starvation that contributed to the loss of life of so many in the Willie and Martin companies as they struggled through the snow in Wyoming.

Moulton also writes that John Taylor in New York was surprised at the large numbers of immigrants in 1856, far more than had been anticipated. The initial order for 100 carts had to be supplemented with additional carts from less experienced builders, and at half the price of the first order. Corners were cut and unseasoned wood used, leading to constant breakdowns. Travelers already worn down with the weeks long ocean crossing and a rushed train trip from the coast to the Missouri River were not in the prime of physical shape when they began their more than 1,000 mile journey to Utah. Setting up and breaking camp on a daily basis, standing guard at night, and constant repairs to the carts added to the physical toll. Men and women alike were in an almost constant state of exhaustion.

When combined, all these conditions created an environment ripe for problems. Moulton acknowledges Young’s concerns over a large steam engine coming overland by freight wagons in 1856 and other issues named by critics that show that the President’s focus was not initially on the handcart companies. But the evidence Moulton lays out does seem to target Franklin D. Richards in particular. On board the ship Horizon in late May, addressing some eight hundred impoverished immigrants including those who would eventually be part of the Martin and Willie companies, Richards was recorded making great promises in the journal of Joseph Beecroft: “If we would carry out our religion, there should not be a soul lost, nor anyone come to great harm … blessed from now to our journey’s end and that the angels should be with us to guard us …” [page 22]

As the Willie and Martin companies were recuperating and refitting at Winter Quarters Iowa City in July, several travelers who had made the crossing before related their concerns about weather and the condition of the pioneers. Levi Savage, who had made the crossing at least three times told “the old, weak, and sickly to stop until another spring.” George Cunningham recorded later, “The tears commenced to flow down his cheeks and he prophesied that if such undertook the journey at that late season of the year that their bones would strew the way.” [page 62]

Despite the warnings of Savage and others, the leaders prevailed upon the company to commence the final leg of the trek. Richards and other missionaries returning from the East, riding quickly in light wagons drawn by horses and mules, overtook the Willie company in Nebraska in mid-September. Richards rebuked Savage for “his lack of faith in God.” He again resorted to prophetic utterance, saying, “though it might storm on our right and on our left, the Lord would keep our way open before us and we should get to Zion in safety.” Pioneer John Chislett wrote later, “This assurance had a telling effect on the people – to them it was ‘the voice of God.’ They gave a loud and hearty ‘Amen,’ while tears of joy ran down their sunburnt cheeks.” Before leaving, Richards told Captain Willie that the missionaries were in need of fresh meat. Chislett watched as Captain Willie butchered an oxen calf for the Apostle and his companions, and wrote he “felt ashamed for humanity’s sake that they took it … we had no provisions to spare, not enough for ourselves.” [page 65] Finally, of the dozen or so missionaries traveling with Richards, all took part in the later efforts to rescue the Willie and Martin companies, except Richards, who remained in the Salt Lake Valley.

I approached this volume with the knowledge that my own ancestors, George Christopherson Folkman, his son Jens, and daughter-in-law Mathilde, traveled west with the Christensen company of 1857. I was aware that difficulties that forced a change in leadership of this group of mostly Danish converts. Unable to speak the Danish tongue, James Park had clashed with his charges, and was replaced in Florence by returning Danish missionary Christian Christensen, fluent in both Danish and English. What I had not previously known is that rations were reduced, and hunger became a constant presence for much of the crossing. Efforts had been made for resupply across Nebraska and Wyoming, though, and circumstances for all of the 1857 and later companies never reached the desperation levels of 1856.

Moulton ends with her own experience of traveling with the sesquicentennial reenactment of the 1847 pioneer journey, following as much as possible the original Mormon Trail. Never far from the benefits of civilization, this commemorative trek still dealt with broken wagons, complaints about leadership, and worry about the health of horses, mules, and even the reenactors themselves. To Moulton, this underscored how difficult the original crossings had been. But in this experience, she found much of the same courage and faith that propelled the original handcart companies to take such great risks to reach their Zion.

Moulton shows great respect and admiration for those early pioneers. This is an easily accessible book, unflinching in its telling of both triumph and tragedy along the trail, and adding more detail of this iconic episode in the Church’s western migration. The close examination of the realities of the handcart experiment does not detract from the heroism shown by so many under such difficult conditions. As Wallace Stegner wrote in 1956, “… perhaps their suffering seems less dramatic because the handcart pioneers bore it meekly, praising God, instead of fighting like animals and eating their dead … as the Fremont and Donner parties did … But if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this half-forgotten episode of the Mormon migration is one of the great tales of the West and America.” (( Ibid. ))