Chapter Three
“The Blessings of God on Our Labors We’ll Seek”
Oh! little we knew of our troubles in store,
Of the wilderness vast, that we had to pass o’er.
And sometimes I think the provisions most wise
That troubles ahead are oft hid from our eyes
Unless our foreknowledge the evil could cure
’Tis best not to know all we have to endure.
—Emily Hill Woodmansee
By September, the company had reached the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. As they gazed up at the massive purple heights above them, Emily and Julia shivered with dread at what was going to be required. It was fall; the leaves were changing, and the nights were cold. John Chislett, who was a subcaptain over one hundred in the company and who had previously traveled in the Rockies, said: “The mountains [were] before us, [and] as we approached nearer to them, [they] revealed themselves to view mantled nearly to their base in snow, and tokens of a coming storm were discernible in the clouds which each day seemed to lower around us.”1
The sisters were now pulling their cart up the foothills through soft, sandy footing. The wheels would drag through the loose soil, and it became more and more a necessity to push the handcart than to pull. In addition, apprehension about possible Indian attacks had spread throughout the group. On August 29, they came upon a camp of friendly Omaha Indians who sold buffalo meat to the company. “These Indians informed us of a murder, which had been committed on the 25th [of August] by the Cheyennes, on two of Col. Babbitt’s men and a Mrs. Wilson and her child. We subsequently passed by the scene of the murder and covered up the graves.”2
This experience was unnerving to the entire company, but especially to those women who were the sole protectors for their families. The attack occurred just nine days after they had camped with Colonel Babbitt, a member of the Nauvoo Legion, at Little Pappea. Colonel Babbitt survived the ambush by the Cheyenne, but he himself was killed by them three weeks later at Fort Laramie.3
Captain Willie expressed additional concern in his journal, noting: “On the morning of Thursday, 4th Sept. (being 265 miles west of Florence) we found that 30 of our oxen were missing. We stayed to search for them till the 6 and during our stay Col. Babbitt came up and reported that the Cheyennes had attacked a small Californian train and killed a woman.”4 In retaliation, the U.S. marshalls killed thirteen Cheyenne and confiscated their horses. This put the fourth handcart company right in the middle of the trouble. Emily, Julia, and Martha were constantly concerned and ever alert. The season was advancing, the weather was getting colder, thirty oxen and cattle were gone—possibly from a stampede—and the Cheyenne were unpredictable. A terrible storm at this time had washed away any hoofprints the thirty cattle had made, so the men were unable to follow their tracks and never located any of the missing animals, adding another element of difficulty to their journey.
On Sunday, September 7, Captain Willie spoke to the concerned company and said, “The whole strength of the camp, that of men, women, children, and beasts, must be applied under the direction of the officers of the camp for the one object in view, the early resumption and speedy & final completion of the journey.”5
As the cold nights and the gravity of these trials settled upon the Saints, the little band of sisters intensified their resolve to get to the Valley. Their prayers and petitions to God became more fervent and specific as they contemplated the storms and mountains that lay between them and the Zion they sought. Awed by the immensity and ruggedness of the Rocky Mountains, with each step increasing in height and ominous danger and each mountain a foreshadow of the granite monster behind it, this was a time that their testimonies were tempered in the fire of adversity. The sisters were sustained in response to their powerful pleadings to see the city of Saints with their mortal eyes.6
The burning desire of Emily, Julia, and Martha to get to the Valley kept them moving through the storms and trials. They had learned they needed each other. Alone they might have failed, but together they hoped they could succeed and live. But there was still much to be endured.
Because of extremely unfortunate miscommunication in instructions to the supply wagons sent out from Salt Lake City to help the handcart companies, no supply wagons had yet gone far enough to reach the Willie company. When relief wagons were sent from Salt Lake City in response to President Brigham Young’s plea on October 4 to bring these Saints in from the plains, those rescuers actually met supply wagons returning to the Valley, still full of flour and other life-sustaining goods.
By October 19, the Saints in the fourth handcart company had exhausted all their resources; that day the last ration of flour was issued. Their strength was depleted, and many saw death on the plains as an absolute certainty. Julia, who had struggled throughout the journey, was in true peril.
In the early afternoon a fierce wind began and the first winter snow began to fall. It was at that moment that an advance party from the relief wagons from Salt Lake City arrived. Stephen Taylor, Joseph A. Young, Cyrus Wheelock, and Abel Garr had been sent ahead of the relief wagons to find the handcart companies still on the plains and let them know more help was on the way. Many in the handcart company had already died of exposure and exhaustion, and the pitiful survivors of the Willie company were camped next to the frozen Sweetwater River, surrounded by a sea of swirling snow, and fainting because of hunger and fatigue. The pioneers had given all they could give when shouts rang out in the evening, “The rescuers have come!”
But the end was not yet in sight. In order to travel so quickly, this small group of rescuers in a light wagon did not have an abundance of provisions with them. They brought with them a little flour, some onions, and hope. Then they were on their way, as they had been charged, to find the Martin handcart company.
Joseph A. Young, one of the rescuers, had served a mission to England and recognized Emily. Appalled at her condition, he gave her a small onion. Emily did not eat it immediately but carried it away. Later that night she came upon a seriously ill man lying close to a fire. Emily gave him the onion, and he later said that this act of kindness saved his life.7
Joy flooded the souls of the handcart company in the realization that God had not forgotten them. Relief had been sent to succor and comfort those who would have otherwise surely perished on the desolate, snow-covered, high plains of Wyoming.
Reflecting on their suffering during this part of their journey to Zion, Emily wrote a poem about her experience. A portion of it follows:
Hunger and Cold
A reminiscence of life on the plains with a Handcart Company
Oh! little we knew of our troubles in store,
Of the wilderness vast, that we had to pass o’er.
And sometimes I think the provisions most wise
That troubles ahead are oft hid from our eyes
Unless our foreknowledge the evil could cure
’Tis best not to know all we have to endure.
Each day (save the Sabbath) we journeyed with care
Looking out for the redmen who lurked in their lair.
Folks not of our party, who with us had been
The Indians had murdered, their graves we had seen. . . .
At length came the climax—how well I remember
That cold, dismal night in the month of November. Faint and fasting, we camped by a hard frozen stream
Here nothing we had, but of plenty could dream.
Our rations eked out with discretion and care,
Had utterly vanished, “the cupboard was bare.”
Not a morsel to eat could we anywhere see,
Cold, weary and hungry and helpless were we.
Our woes were pathetic and everywhere round
Every inch of the prairie was snow covered ground,
Shut off from the world as in ocean’s mid waves,
The desolate plains offer nothing but graves.
Death seemed but a question of limited time,
Yet the faith of these faint ones was truly sublime!
On the brink of the tomb few succumbed to despair,
Our trust was in God, and our strength was in prayer.
Oh, whence came those shouts in the still, starry night,
That thrilled us and filled us with hope and delight?
The cheers of new comers, a jubilant sound
Of triumph and joy over precious ones found.
Life, Life was the treasure held out to our view,
By the “Boys from the Valley,” so brave and so true,
The “Boys from the Valley,” sent out by their chief,
Brought clothing and food and abundant relief.
O’er mountainous steeps, over drearisome plains
They sought us, and found us, thank God for their pains!
Hurrah! and hurrah! from the feeble and strong.
Hurrah! and hurrah! loud the echoes prolong.
They were saviors, these men whom we hardly had seen,
Yet it seemed that for ages, acquainted we’d been.
When Fate introduces Compassion to Need,
Friendships quickly are founded and ripen with speed.
Weatherworn were our friends, but like kings in disguise
Their souls’ native grandeur shone out of their eyes.
Oh, soft were their hearts who with courage like steel,
Left their homes in the Valley our sorrow to heal. . . .
For helpful and kind, as a woman or Saint,
These men cheered the feeble, the frozen and faint.
God bless them for heroes, the tender and bold,
Who rescued our remnant from hunger and cold. . . .
Ups and downs are our fate; for the best ’tis I ween,
Some woes we forget as though ne’er they had been,
But while memory her hold of my being retains
I’ll remember the lesson I learned on the plains.
If fortune withholds what I deem would be good,
I try to be thankful for shelter and food.
If disposed e’er to murmur, the wish is controlled,
When I think of that season of hunger and cold.8
Notes Chapter Three: “The Blessings of God on Our Labors We’ll Seek”
Epigraph: Woodmansee, “Hunger and Cold,” in Abegg, Poetry of Emily Woodmansee, 168.
^3. “Latest News from the Plains.”
^5. William Woodward in Smith, “Faithful Stewards.”
^6. Woodmansee in Crocheron, Representative Women of Deseret, 86.
^7. Olsen, Price We Paid, 132–33.
^8. Woodmansee, “Hunger and Cold,” in Abegg, Poetry of Emily Woodmansee, 168–70.