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Epilogue
The American Prophet, Joseph Smith, was dead, but the Kingdom of God did not die with him, for the Head of the Church is Jesus Christ, and He lives!
Persecutions increased in Nauvoo, and soon Brigham Young and the rest of the leaders of the Church knew that they must do as Joseph had prophesied: flee to the Rocky Mountains. Information had been gathered about land in Texas, Oregon (which comprised the whole of the Northwest), and Upper California, a Mexican province of which the Utah territory was a part. This latter option, the eastern part of the Great Basin, seemed the best choice because of its isolation and its size. Joseph had said that the Saints should "hunt out a good location, where we can remove to . . . and where we can build a city . . . and have a government of our own, get up into the mountains, where the devil cannot dig us out."
With mobs rising up and threatening from every side, the Saints hastily prepared to move west. The first wagons left in February 1846, crossing the frozen Mississippi, with thousands upon thousands of Saints following after. The move was called by many the greatest migration of a people in modern times. In the minds of the faithful likely rang words similar to those of Eliza R. Snow at Adam-ondi-Ahman, "It'll take more than this to cure me of my faith."
On a final rise of a hill in Iowa, where the City of Joseph, Nauvoo, could last be seen, the wagons would roll to a stop and the Saints would get out for one last gaze upon their city fair, sorrowing at the loss. Then they would move on-on to a place in the West, they knew not where.
George Whitaker, one of the pioneers, commented about the Saints' trek westward: "It seemed as though there was something more than human nature which caused them to feel so joyful and happy to leave their comfortable homes and to go out in the dead of winter with so many young children, to face the cold and the storms, and not even knowing where they were going. It seemed to me that we must be in possession of some power besides the power of man."
As many as eighty thousand Saints made the journey across the plains from 1846 to 1869, leaving six thousand graves, mostly unmarked, along the lonesome trail. Here was a people who would sing with all their hearts: "Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?/'Tis not so; all is right./Why should we think to earn a great reward/If we now shun the fight?/Gird up your loins; fresh courage take./Our God will never us forsake;/And soon we'll have this tale to tell-/All is well! All is well!"
Arriving in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, a land inhabited only by a few Indians, Brigham Young, in prophetic vision, looked upon the vast desert and said, "It is enough. This is the right place." As he began to lay out the city of Salt Lake, he thrust his cane into the ground and said, "Here we will build the temple of our God."