What Determined Brigham Young to Settle in Salt Lake Valley?

What Determined Brigham Young to Settle in Salt Lake Valley? In chapter LXIII of the History of the Mormcn Church in Americana, by B.-H. Roberts, assistant historian of the Church, under the title, "The Mormon Battalion," and in a very interesting note at the end of the chapter, the author answers this question in the manner following : Brigham Young and Father De Smet — Did the Description of Salt Lake Valley by the Catholic Missionary Determine Brigham Young to Settlement? The evidence presented in the foregoing pages of the regular text, [Chapter 63 of the History cf the Mormon Church] proving that the destination of the Latter-day Saints, even before leaving Nauvoo, was clearly understood bv

EDITOR'S TABLE 739 Brigham Young, at least as to the general region in which they would settle, disposes of a question recently raised in a book of some excellence under the title, The Catholic Church in Utah, published by "The Knights of Columbus" of that state.* The question referred to is, was it a certain conversation, or a series of conversations which Brigham Young had with a Catholic missionary at Winter Quarters that led him to fix upon Salt Lake valley as a place of settlement? The Catholic missionary in question was Father De Smet, who claims to have traversed much of the Salt Lake valley in his rambles among the Rocky Mountains in 1841. (Letter of De Smet to Precis Historiques Bruxelles, January 19, 1858). It is claimed also in "Father De Smet's Life and Travels Among the North American Indians," that "He became well acquainted with [Brigham] Young, and it is possible the information he gave him may have influenced that leader in choosing Salt Lake valley as the future home of his people." {Catholic Church in Utah, 271). Father De Smet himself puts forth the same suggestion, though modestly and with much charm of manner, in a letter to his nephew, written in March, 1851. He says: "In the fall of 1848, as I drew near to the frontiers of the state of Missouri, I found the advance guard of the 'Mormons,' numbering about 10,000, camped on the Territory of the Omaha, not far from the old Council Bluffs. They had just been driven out for the second time from a State of the Union (Illinois had received them after their war with the people of Missouri). They had resolved to winter on the threshold of the great desert, and then to move onward into it, to put distance between themselves and their persecutors, without even knowing at that time the end of their long wanderings, nor the place where they should once more erect for themselves permanent dwellings. They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored, and the valley which I have just described to you pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it. Was that zvhat determined them' I would not dare to assert it. They are there! In the last three years Utah has changed its aspect, and from a desert has become a flourishing territory which will soon become one of the states of the Union."! *The author is Very Reverend W. R. Harris, D. D., L. L. S. D., 1909 tWe may help out our Catholic friends by corroborating the fact of the meeting of Father DeSmet and Brigham Young. In the latter's Journal History, Ms., is the following entry: "Nov. 19, 1846: Mr. Smith, a Catholic priest and missionary to the Black Feet Indians,

740 IMPROVEMENT ERA Commenting upon this, the author of The Catholic Church tn Utah, says : "To the 'Mormons' living in temporary camp on the edge of the desert, unable, or at least unwilling to retrace the road leading back to the land of their persecutors, ignorant of the region which lay before them, De Smet's glowing description of the beautiful and fertile valley which lay beyond the mountains, brought the solution of their most perplexing problem, for it indicated a place wherein they could establish their homes and their religion, free from the troubles and persecutions which had so far beset them. His close acquaintance with Brigham Young, and his many conversations with him on the Rocky Mountain regions, and on Salt Lake Valley, probably determined the choice of the 'Mormon' prophet, and led to the decision which ultimately settled the Latter-day Saints in the fertile lands they now occupy in Utah." (The Catholic Church in Utah, pp. 270-1.) All this probability disappears, however, in the presence of the repeated assertions of Brigham Young and others that the destination of the people he was leading was the "Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains," or the "Bear River Valley," long before the arrival of Father DeSmet at the "Mormon" camps on the Missouri. "