--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Russell, I. K. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 30 number: 5 published: 1927-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Russell, I. K., “Joseph Smith and the Great West,” *Improvement Era* 30, no. 5 (March 1927): 419–426." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3005unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3005unse start_page: 419 end_page: 426 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1927-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3005unse publication_year: 1927 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1927, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Joseph Smith and the Great West JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST How the British Invaded the Utah Country and Set About to Conquer and Hold It By I. K. Russell, Author of "Hidden Heroes of the Rockies" XIV When I was written to in Nauvoo by the President of the United States, through another person, inquiring, 'Where are you going, Mr. Young?" I replied that I did not know where we should land. We had men in England trying to negotiate for Vancouver's Island and we sent a ship load of Saints around Cape .Horn for California. Men in authority asked, "Where are you going to?" "We may go to California or to Vancouver's Island." Brigham Young in a sermon, quoted by Dr. John A. Widtsoe in his Discourses of Brigham Young. The quotation at the head of this article clears a gentle bit of mystery that has refused, until I found it, to admit of being fitted anywhere into the patch work of the Conquest of the Great West. Twenty years ago, when I first began work at solving the problem of what really had- gone on in the Far West before the era of Settle- ment, I happened upon a British story of the Columbia river country. It told an apparently "weird" story of some "Mormons" throw- ing the Parliament of England into a panic by proposing to buy a spot on which to settle on Vancouver's Island. It told how Parliament had been the scene of excited speeches to the effect that British policy in that quarter was all wrong, that British land laws, as liberal as the American, should be passed 'at orice, as emergency measures, and that British settlers must be rushed forward by way of the Saskatchewan river at once. The Yankees must not gain Vancouver's Island, and until their own settlement plans were made, Brigham Young and his "Mormons" must be driven off by naval and military force if necessary. What then read like a weird yarn now turns out to be true, foi Brigham Young had put the crowbar under British affairs which re- sulted in a ten-year campaign by the (great Gladstone to make the British portion of the Far West as attractive to settlers as was the American portion. It was a campaign which resulted in Gladstone's final great orations against the Hudson's Bay Co. He succeeded in having the company hurled out of power over the Far West and the government of Canada extended westward to the Pacific. It also resulted in the suppressing of several books, as the Hudson's Bay Company officials found they told much that the company did not wish known about the Far West. They were by company officials. Gladstone read one of these books, page by page, to its author, Sir George Simpson, as he drew contrasts be- tween its beautiful pictures of the Far West and the desolate pictures drawn by him verbally in trying to paint the Far West as not suited 420 IMPROVEMENT ERA to settlement. This book was a two-volume work, entitled A Journey Round the World, by Sir George Simpson. We shall have much to do with this work later in this series, for there Sir George "spills the beans," even to the extent of the manner in which he made every effort to get Great Britain into war with America over the Oregon country, just as the "Mormon Battalion" was starting its long march west, where, in the event of such a war, it would have been in ready striking distance of the British frontier on the Columbia. It is hard for people of the present generation to realize that Utah was once British-ruled, and British-held for two yhole decades, while Americans were thwarted at the passes of the Rocky Mountains and told they must remain on their eastward slopes. We now turn to the telling of the story of that British in- vasion. It is a rosy chapter of Utah affairs, for it alone gives us the picture of our wild Indians before they had heard the crack of the white man's rifle or had tasted the white man's whiskey or tobacco. It gives us the picture of our wild life before it had been hunted out of its natural haunts. Utah, then, was invaded first of all by would-be possessors of the land, coming with intent to stay and Igain riches, in a regular military processional. These invaders built a fort as a base of operations. They sent out cavalry from their fort, and maintained a courier system between the fort and distant bases in the Utah wilderness. The first invading party discovered our Bear Lake land |named it. Their first Utah winter was spent there, and strung along the Green River branches. What kind of men they were can be guessed by the fact that their Scotch leader led his horse brigade into the Utah mountains and then decided, in the dead of winter to go back to the company's base. Taking six men with only a blanket each, he struck out over the frozen isnow. (His route was from some point near Bear Lake or up on the Green River, northward across Idaho to the Grand Forks of the Columbia, near the present town of Walla Walla. It was a route so forbidding in mid-winter that few, if any, Americans would want to tackk it now. Yet with a blanket on his back this leader of the British invasion into Utah made the journey, a matter of 600 miles, and did not have a jword of complaint or a word about cold, weariness, or hunger, when he arrived. With hardly any rest after transacting the business which brought him in, he turned around and struck out over the snow, back to the rendezvous of his people in the Bear Lake or Green River country. His trip northward was on snowshoes. His return was by boat up the Snake for he was out to make the first white man's survey of its navigation pos- sibilities. To understand this British invasion we must come to know in- timately three Scotchmen engaged in field work and two who were behind them in authority and power. And we must understand JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 421 the democratic system under which Americans moved — and the feudalistic system under which these Scotchmen moved. For the two systems differed radically. And thereby hung the tale of the final victory for America. The three men we must most intimately take into the picture are Alexander Ross, as fearless a Scot as ever wielded a sword in a Scottish clan; Donald McKenzie, discoverer of Bear Lake and a man who hated writing so that we have no narrative of his great Utah adventures; and our own Peter Skene Ogden, after whose brothers Ogdensburg, New York, is named, while Ogden, Utah, is named after Peter himself; and Washington's famous headquarters at Mor- ristown, N. J., is his father's original family home. That Peter Skene Ogden should turn up at Ogden's Hole, Utah, as carrier of the British flag into the Far West is one of those sad items of the Revolutionary War. Not all Americans joined Washington. Judge Isaac Ogden, Peter's father, did not, and so his home was confiscated while he fled to Canada as a loyalist. There his son took service with Canadian fur hunters — and so lived to be for a decade a British leader in the Utah country. At this time we can only carry the British group through its regular work of laying siege to the Utah citadels of wealth in the form of furs. Donald McKenzie was the beginner of it all. He had gone through the Idaho country with westward-bound Astorians in 1811, and so did not fear the Snake River desert as most of the "Nor' -westers" did. When we last considered the Fur Hunters of the Columbia we left Alexander Ross there with others, trying to fell forest trees to build an American fort. Canadian traders brought news of the war of 1812 to it, bought it out, the British flag was run up, and America made a treaty for "joint occupation of the Oregon country," pending some later settlement of boundary. But Americans withdrew, leaving the British in actual possession. That being nine-tenths of the law, they held onto the country — right up to the day Brigham Young started his movement towards it, and it was only by the 'slenderest of margins that he did not have to fight the British to gain a foothold in Utah as he would have had to fight them to gain a foothold on Vancouver's Island as he had partly planned to do. The first argument of the British was that the treaty for joint occupation applied only to Oregon. There lay the Utah country, then called Eastern California. They could occupy that. It was not mentioned in the treaty. And possessing it, they Would" possess the American road to Oregon. There was western California, too, — they could go there. And so two grand plans of campaign were mapped out as early as 1816. One called for a movement on Utah, with Green River Valley as its objective, and the other called for an invasion of California with San Francisco bay as its objective. Utah then included everything north of New Mexico to the Oregon line. Both expeditions were started off in grand form, — Donald 422 IMPROVEMENT ERA McKenzie being commander of the Utah expedition from Fort George, as Astoria had been rechristened, on the Columbia. McKenzie came to his task fuming and fussing. He had re- treated out of that country with the Astorians in 1813 and then had "sold" the nabobs of the North-west Company the idea of exploring the "Snake Country." He had converted the company chiefs at their Grand Headquarters, Fort William, on Georgian Bay, Lake Ontario, from which point northern Utah was ruled for five years just as it was later ruled from a Hudson's Bay Company fort on the west shore of Hudson's Bay for twenty-four years from 1821 to 1845. McKenzie arrived at the mouth of the Columbia to present requisitions on men who were his superiors in caste and seignorial standing. They loathed him, and hated him and wished him all the ill luck they could imagine. He was the "bounder" of their group. For- by 1816 ease had come to the Columbia, with dance halls where Scottish reels enlivened Christmas carousals, and the fairest of the fair Indian daughters came to dance with trappers. ALEXANDER ROSS' STORY- In fact the town of Winnipeg. as we now know it was formed by these trappers, in their later years, when they wanted an asylum for their Indian wives and children. Alexander Ross, encumbered just so with an Indian family became an official of Winnipeg and in the leisure of his final years wrote us all that here follows in this narrative. He wrote two volumes on his hunting experiences, called Fur Hunters of the Far West. And in these he makes it known that he conspired with his friend McKenzie to get the Utah country opened. He passed the word on to Fort William, on the Great Lakes, that the western nabobs of the company had built a second great fort with dance hall, race track, and great dining hall at Spokane, — and there took too much ease. He wanted a new fort, where there would be no ease, for his invasion of the Utah country. In June, .1818, the final preparations were made and the order issued on authority of Fort William itself that McKenzie should have 100 men for a "Snake Country" expedition and should build a fort as a base at Walla Walla. We are now at the genesis of the first attempted Utah occupation by white men for revenue-producing purposes. "To these resolutions," records Ross, "were appended sharp reproof for the delays during the two preceding years." The hundred men got off at once in a gay canoe brigade up the Columbia to the Grand Forks. "On July 11, 1818," Ross records, "McKenzie and myself, and ninety-five effective men, encamped on the site pitched upon for the new establishment of Fort Nez Perces, about half a mile from the mouth of the little river Walla Walla." There were five tribes of Indians there of whom we can recog- JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 423 nize the Shoshones, the Nez Perces, the Flatheads and the Cayuses. All were bred to war and considered peace squaw-like. They were accustomed to horse-stealing raids all the way down into the Santa Fe country, over the same trails the "Mormon" pioneers used in making Santa Fe connections. Of horses they had enormous abun- dance. Wild horses, in droves1 of 200 or more each, coursed up and down the plain. There was no timber of which to build a fort so men were sent far up the Columbia to cut trees and set them afloat in the river. Fort Nez Perces arose from logs caught as they floated past its site from logging camps 100 miles above it. Perhaps among those Shoshone chieftains Washakie sported about as a young warrior, gaining white man's experience which made him later so great a friend to Brigham Young and the "Mormon" people. The chief of the Shoshones just then was Tum-a-ta-um, an Indian giant of unlimited lust for war. He was out on the war-path when the fort was built. "What, make peace and be like squaws?" he cried when Ross explained to him at last the ways of trade and the need of traders for safe trails and secure camp grounds. Tum-a-ta-um came roaring into camp "with mangled prisoners, bloody scalps, hideous yells and barbarous gestures." His answer to the white man's first peace proposal was, "And then shall I throw away these trophies (pointing to his scalps and arms) and forget the glory of my forefathers and become a woman?" -He little guessed he had prophesied the fate that Brigham Young would force upon his tribesmen, in another quarter-century. "They must either be civilized," Ross confided to his diary, "or extirpated; then there may be peac£, but not till then." He, no more than the Indian chieftain, knew he was predicting a task for Utah's first American governor, and builder of workable Indian policies. ! From their half-wild horses the Indians traded with Ross and McKenzie until the whites had 280 horses. Some were hunters, some pack horses, some good travelers. Indians trained their horses for specific uses, just as did our cowboys and pioneers. At the end of September Ross bade his field commander farewell, and thus McKenzie struck out on his well organized invasion of Utah. He took, Ross records, fifty-five men, 195 horses, 300 beaver traps, and "considerable merchandise." But not a pound of food. They were to subsist off the country. Wild cheers from the thousands of assembled Indians and all those within Fort Nez Perces arose as the cavalcade passed out of sight — to the southward, where lay the Tetons, Bear Lake and the Uintahs. Anxious days lay ahead for Ross, now in charge at the fort. He was a white man alone at Walla Walla, as McKenzie was on the trail to the Bear River valley. Ross hunted for game, conversed with 424 IMPROVEMENT ERA many tribesmen of many tribes — and scanned the southern horizon steadily. At last a faltering Indian, looking more like an animated skeleton than a human being, came into the fort. He wasi an Iroquois Indian from Montreal, for the North-west Company imported Christianized Indians as trained trappers, and used them persistently in the west. This Iroquois told, perhaps, the story that gave the name of Pierre's Hole to the present Teton Basin. For Pierre was another of these Iroquois Indians, and he came to his death six or seven years later in a massacre of Americans he had joined, probably at Provo, Utah. Ross records it as being at "the American camp south of Great Salt Lake," and there, at Provo, we know the largest of all massacres of trappers in the Utah country occurred, at just the time old Pierre fell. "My companions," the Iroquois said, "fell in with a band of Shoshones and began to exchange horses, guns, and traps with these people for wives. They joined the Shoshone camp and are doing nothing to gain beaver. They were a detachment McKenzie left from the main party. I became disgusted with my companions and set out to join McKenzie. I lost my way, and was set upon by a war party. I threw away my pack, killed my horse, and hid in a stream. After dark I got out of the water and for seven days traveled without food till I arrived here." That portended badly for the Utah expedition. The poor Iroquois, Oskononton, was like many another seeker of the trail to Utah, destined for brief days only in his quest. A few weeks later he was killed and scalped by hostiles, while on his way down the Columbia to Fort George with messages. Ross sat and worried while winter snows set in. What of McKenzie? Was everything as bad as Indian rumors set forth? If so, all was lost. Suddenly his mood changed. "At this period of our anxiety and declining hopes who should appear, to remove suspicion and give us new vigor to our proceedings but Mc- Kenzie himself. He and six men reached Fort Nez Perces on snow shoes, with their blankets on their backs in good health and spirits, after a tedious journey of six months." McKenzie told Ross this story, and we repeat it as the conqueror's own story of the way Utah first gave of her wealth to white men: "After leaving this place we directed our course across the Blue Moun- tains. We had not proceeded far into the country of the Shoshones when the Iroquois began their old trade of plotting mischief. ,1 left them to work beaver in the rich little river Skam-naugh. From that place we advanced for twenty-five days, and then found ourselves in a rich field of beaver between the great South branch (the Snake river) and the Spanish waters (upper reaches of -Green river, called by the trappers the Spanish river, since the Indians told them it ran into Spanish territory.) "After disposing of my people to the best advantage, trading with the natives, and securing the different chiefs to our interest, I left my people at the end of four months. Then taking a circuitous route along the foot JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 425 of the Rocky Mountains, a country extremely dreary during a winter voyage, I reached the headquarters of the Great South branch, regretting every step I made that we had been so long deprived of the riches of such a country. Thence steered my course to the river Skam-naugh. * * * We found but little snow in crossing the Blue Mountains and finished up here a journey of 600 miles in two months on snow shoes." McKenzie gave a description of wild life in the Snake River approach to Utah that even the earliest pioneer settler never saw, so vigorously did the trappers and hunters work to exterminate game during the next two decades. Said McKenzie: "Wherever there was a little plain, the red deer were seen grazing in herds; where there was a sapling the ingenious and industrious beaver was at work. Otters sported in the eddies; the wolf and the fox were seen sauntering in quest of prey; now and then a few cypresses or stunted pines were met with on the rocky parts, and in their spreading tops the racoon sat secure. In the woods, the martens and black fox were numerous; the badger sat quietly looking from his mound ; and the numberless ravines, among bushes laden with fruits, the black, the brown, and the grizzly bear were seen. Mountain sheep and goats, white as snow, browsed on the rocks and ridges; and the big horn species ran among the lofty cliffs. When we approached most of the animals stood motionless. The report of a gun did not alarm them. They would give a frisk at each shot, and stand again." Thus ran the first "Industrial Survey" of the Utah country's resources, made for men who saw wealth only in furs. No wonder they went wild to possess it. In seven days McKenzie was on his way back again to his hunters — first of the "mountaineers." But this time he was testing the navigation of the Snake and found he could carry a boat to the "head of the narrows." He ordered supplies up from his base, in a letter sent back with the boat from the head of navigation. He would be along the next June with his mountaineers at the river Skam-naugh, the river just north of the Boise, flowing from the eastward into the Snake. And here Ross dispatched supplies to him, only to have the horses carrying them fall into the hands of Shoshone thieves. McKenzie, approaching the rendezvous with his gay band of richly laden Utah trappers, saw horses he knew belonged to the whites, and gave chase to their herders. He killed one, captured one, wounded the third, and rounded up the drove of horses. Driving them before him he met his relief expedition encamped in the plain and forted up, without transport. Despair there turned to rejoicing. "The Snake expedition," records Ross significantly, "turned out well; it made up for all deficiencies elsewhere and gave a hand* some surplus besides." You see here was the first wealth from the Great West in fortune-building proportions. "It turned out well." The wealth from our Uintah mountains went by way of the Columbia and the Saskatchewan, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, to England where it dressed the fine ladies of the British court, made noted politicians rich, and gave color and 426 IMPROVEMENT ERA wealth to aristocratic life among the British nabobs of the Fur Trade. It did more than that. It started rumors afloat in New York and in St. Louis, — rumors of wealth in the secret passes of the Uintahs. Should Americans leave this wealth to England? New Yorkers answered, "No," and St. Louis merchants answered, "No." The hour of real conflict between English hunters and American hunters for the Far West was now at hand. How American enter- prize based itself on the "Mormon" settlement at Independence and from that outfitting point sought a foothold in the Far West will be told as the next phase of our story. Chicago, III. Ploughed Under I saw a field of rich, green clover grown, Its blossoms honey-laden for the bee, And, turning to the owner who stood by, I asked him when the harvest time would be. '"Twill not be gathered in." "How then?" I cried. "Have yoji no recompense for all your toil?" ( The farmer smiled; he was more wise than I, "I plough it under to enrich the soil." And all at once I seemed to sec more clear Some things that I had tried to comprehend: Has not the heart, like that broad field, its growths That never seem to reach their destined end? Its early dreams that perish unfulfilled? Its youthful hopes that perish ere their prime? Its fond affection and its tender love Borne down to earth before their blossom time? I mused on these, and as I turned my feet Back to the city and its swift turmoil, I smiled and said, in tranquil, sweet content, "God ploughs them under to enrich the soil." Aetna, Alberta, Canada. MCfcRONI ALLEN. Who Knows the Law? As well might the layman say to the professor of Chemistry that certain procedure is non-essential to produce a certain result, when that procedure had been followed, and like results produced until the process has become an established law, as for man to say to God, who has firmly established his laws on the results which they bring through obedience to them, that in some minor parts they are non-essential. Who knows the law? Who has followed the entire process through, and found the result? God only. — J. T. Barrett, Murray, Utah. R. 4.