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Building a City
Mormon Battalion members who had left their wives and children on the east banks of the Missouri had every reason to believe that they would remain there, in Iowa, near the present site of Council Bluffs. While the battalion was still preparing for its long March, on July 21, 1846, Brigham Young issued a proclamation:
We would instruct the High Council attend as speedily as convenient to locating and advising all those Saints who will tarry here, as well as others who may arrive this season and locate them here for the winter, or at either of the farms back as circumstances and your best judgment may dictate. . . .
It will not be wisdom for any families to cross the river this season, unless they will have sufficient time to go to Grand Island and cut plenty of hay to winter their cattle and keep them from starving. . . .
It will be wisdom and necessary to establish schools for the education of children during the coming winter in this region, and we wish you to see that this is done.
Done in Council, at Council Bluffs, this 21st day of July, 1846.
WILLARD RICHARDS, Clerk BRIGHAM YOUNG, President.
A few days later, President Young inserted letters in his journal that were from Lt. Colonel James Allen, the officer who had carried the message requesting the Mormons, and from R. B. Mitchell, an Indian agent, and a letter to the President of the United States from Colonel Thomas L. Kane.
James Allen's letter gives permission for the Mormons to reside for a time on the Pottawatomie lands. Indian agent R. B. Mitchell certified that such action was for the apparent good of both parties. The Pottawatomie Indians were all located east of the Missouri, and their lands would soon become a part of the new state of Iowa. Colonel Kane, whose residence among the Mormons seems to have increased his admiration for them, wrote a forceful letter to the President, approving the actions of both James Allen and R. B. Mitchell. He nevertheless felt the necessity of warning the Saints to proceed no farther westward.
How then do we account for the fact that, within a week, President Young and most of his Quorum of the Twelve had already crossed the Missouri, with the apparent purpose of making the move permanent? On July 30, Willard Richards, Clerk of the Council, crossed to the east bank "to make out the Nauvoo mail and to close out the unfinished business of the council."
Thus, nine days after the order that it would not be wisdom for any families to cross the river in 1846, Brigham Young and his Council had moved the headquarters of the Church across the Missouri. Perhaps it can best be explained by the westering spirit that pervaded America in that landmark year. Bernard DeVoto appraised in poetic rhapsody the force that was sweeping the nation, including the Latter-day Saints, when he wrote:
When the body dies, the Book of the Dead relates, the soul is borne along the pathway of the setting sun. Toward that western horizon all heroes of all peoples known to history have always traveled. Beyond it have lain all the Fortunate Isles that literature knows, beyond the Gates of Hercules, beyond the peaks where the sun sinks, the Lapps and the Irish and the Winnebago and all others have known that they would find their happy Hyperboreans-the open country, freedom, the unknown. Westward lies the goal of effort. . . . These people, waiting for spring to come, are enclosed by our myth.