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"We Have Been in the Valley to Set the Big Wheel to Work"
The cause of Zion is brightening, and the mobbing and driving of the Saints will all lend to hasten their final gathering together.
Our removes thus far have tended to the diminution of our substance, and also that of many others of the brethren, but we believe the Lord will still open the way again, soon as it shall be his will for us to go, which we anticipate shall be in a short time.1
As watchful eyes of relief parties dispatched from the Salt Lake Valley eagerly awaited the first canyon sighting of the jostling wagons of the approaching Emigration Camp, a thousand miles to the east, 10,000 anxious Latter-day Saints worried and waited. Their summer had been long and hot, and their rich farmland had brought them an abundant harvest of grain and vegetables that, unlike the year before, assured them of all the provisions they would need for the coming winter. The Lord had been good to them, they were quick to say. But they wondered what news lay just beyond their western horizons.
It was an excited but exhausted Phineas Young, with three companions, who arrived back in Winter Quarters first, the evening of 2 October. But he was not so tired that he could not preach to an overflow outdoor crowd the following day. After sharing the news of the discovery of the Salt Lake Valley, he called for relief missions to help the struggling oxen team party and, further back, the company of the Twelve somewhere out along the Platte.2
The Twelve, meanwhile, after quitting John Taylor's wagon lines on the high Sweetwater, made the return journey in relatively good time-67 days total from the valley-without serious incident, although they were very fatigued and perilously low on provisions. Due to some misunderstanding, the returning ox and hunting parties that had been instructed to wait for them at Grand Island had gone ahead. What transpired next was little less than a prairie rescue. Some 90 miles out of Winter Quarters on 18 October, Hosea Stout and several others met up with them "with the determination to find out what was become of us." The result was, in Brigham's words, "they gladdened our hearts and caused our souls to rejoice even as much as though sixteen Heavenly messengers had come down to congratulate us in our return from the arduous enterprise and to comfort us in the hour of fatigue."3
Two weeks later, Bishop Newel K. Whitney, Alpheus Cutler, and a dozen others awaited them at the Liberty Pole at the Elkhorn "with abundance of provisions." "Brother Brigham looked very thin," reported one observer, "and others from their exposure and hardships felt fatigued."4
The next day, 31 October, the Mormon leader made his final speech of the campaign short and precise:
Brethren I will just say to the Pioneers I want you to receive my thanks for your kind service and willingness to obey orders. I am satisfied with you as you have [labored] with me and the Twelve. The boys have done first rate. We've accomplished more than we expected. Out of 143 men, all are well. Not a man died. . . . The blessings of the Lord have been with us.5