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Wagons West

From the Elkhorn to Ash Hollow

The great cause of Zion, taken en masse, swallows up all minor or personal considerations, and wife and children and relatives appear lost, as it were, and we are obliged to forsake them all to build up the Kingdom of God and bring about a reign of peace upon the earth.1

The Latter-day Saint errand into the wilderness hardly began on a positive note. Pent-up excitement was soon tempered by such harsh realities as bitterly cold nights, windswept prairies, stubborn animals, stolen horses, careless accidents, quicksands, and sandbars. Each of these tribulations were amply documented by a score of diarists, whose surviving writings frame a memorable portrait of a faith in exile.

British-born William Clayton (who the year before in Iowa had composed the hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints," which had gained instant popularity) found the early going a painful experience, literally from head to foot. A last-minute recruit, Clayton started out suffering from a throbbing toothache. "Tonight I went to bed about 7:30 o'clock suffering severely with pain in my head and face," he recorded on 18 April. Two days later he asked Luke S. Johnson, medical doctor and would-be dentist, "to draw my tooth. He willingly agreed," noted the sufferer,

and getting his instruments, I sat down in a chair, he lanced the gum, then took his nippers and jerked it out. The whole operation Wagons crossing the Platte did not take more than one minute. He only got half the original tooth, the balance being left in the jaw. After this my head and face pained me much more than before. I ate but little supper and then lay down, but could not sleep for pain till near morning.2

Several days and sleepless nights passed before the best scribe in camp fully recovered.

But toothaches were not his only problem. After three days of walking an average of 12 to 15 miles per day alongside his wagon, Clayton admitted that his "feet were so sore and blistered he could not walk for some time."3

The weather at that early season in the Elkhorn Valley alternated between winter and summer, with winds that almost blew loaded wagons onto their sides. "In the night there was a very strong wind, accompanied with frost," complained 30-year-old Thomas Bullock, official camp historian. "When I arose [I] found the ice one ice one inch thick in the water buckets, the guard complained much of the severity of the weather, and the brethren generally wrapt themselves in their buffalo skins and blankets."4

At other times, afternoon temperatures rose as high as 80 degrees, a fluctuation that spawned the sudden storms so well known in those parts. "About 2 thunder was heard," Bullock remarked a few days later, "which was soon followed by lightning and rain, and continued to descend very prettily until about 4 o'clock, when a strong East wind arose and assisted to blow us forward on our journey."5 A careful look at "Professor" Orson Pratt's daily recordings of temperature and barometric readings, as well as a careful review of the diaries, indicate that the weather remained unseasonably cold all the way to Fort Laramie.6