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"A Great American Desert"

Here was an immense wilderness of arid plains, rugged mountains, and burning deserts, to be crossed before you reached Oregon or California.1

The well-traveled reader of the late 20th century may find it difficult to identify with the uncertainties, perils, and personal sacrifices characteristic of a mid-19th century march across the vast trans-Mississippi west, which Stephen H. Long termed the Great American Desert.2 Overland immigrants were risking their fortunes and their very lives on a journey to an unseen new somewhere. Some went on to fortune and a new life; others turned back or died in the attempt.

For Brigham Young and the Latter-day Saint pioneers, even more was at stake. The future of the Church was in danger if they were routed by Indians or by Missouri discontents, especially if the leadership were killed, or if they were unable to find a suitable place. This was not a group of individuals bent on fulfilling their personal needs and dreams as much as it was an organization making an expression of faith. The destiny of the Church would go in those wagons, in queen bee fashion, in search of a distant hive. Nothing was certain.

Also uncertain was what would happen to the hundreds of families planning to start their trip in May if the advance company were to fail in its objective: Salvation or starvation? Discovery or dissolution? For them all there were a thousand questions and very few answers. And the ante was up as never before.

The purpose of this chapter is to review briefly the changing dynamics of the American West on the eve of the Mormon departure, to evaluate the dangers and risks, and to try to recreate the tenor of the time.

The Ending of An Era

As the vanguard companies rolled west, they saw several wagons laden with fur belonging to Peter B. Sarpy, longtime trader of the American Fur Company, en route from the Pawnee hunting grounds to his post at Bellevue, near Council Bluffs.3 Though trade for deer, buffalo, raccoon, and other skins endured for a few more years, Sarpy's wagons symbolized the twilight of an era-a symbolic exit from a colorful stage, for years dominated by the Spanish, French and British fur companies, and mountain men.

By 1847 the great fur trade era in the western wilds of North America was in steep decline after a half century when furs had defined the history and economy of the American West. It had been the fur trader, as historian Ray Billington put it, who had

spied out the secrets of all the West, plotted the course of its rivers, discovered the passes through its mountains, and prepared the way for settlers by breaking down Indian self-sufficiency. No single group contributed more to the conquest of the trans-Mississippi region than those eager profit seekers.4

Though the Spanish had been trading with the Plains Indians since before 1700, the fur trade era in American history began in earnest the moment President Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. This compact with Napoleon, in one stroke of a pen, doubled the land mass of America by adding the area from the A New Map of Texas, Oregon and California (1846), by S. Augustus Mitchell Mississippi Valley to the Rocky Mountains. The subsequent expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805-1806 to the mouth of the Columbia River and back to St. Louis proved the existence of navigable waterways to the great Northwest and thus the viability of a profitable fur trade with Europe.