Chapter 5
Glorious Brotherhood! Permit us the honor of saluting you. Your like may never march abreast again in any campaign! Living, you were conquerors; dying, you are heroes.
Of these above named Messrs. Hooper, Anderson, Steelman, and McNiece have entered the "snow-white tents" of the other shore.
SOME MORMON BELIEFS
His studie was but litel on the Bible.--_Chaucer_.
Imaginations fearfully absurd, Hobgoblin rites, and moon-struck reveries, Distracted creeds, and visionary dreams, More bodiless and hideously misshapen Than ever fancy, at the noon of night, Playing at will, framed in the madman's brain. --_Pollok, in Course of Time_.
The abode of the dead, where they remained in full consciousness of their condition for indefinable periods, or even for eternity, has been the theme of many a writer both before and after the advent of the Saviour of men. Annihilation is repugnant to the common intelligence. Homer sends Ulysses, Dantelike, to the realms of the dead, where he converses with them he had known in life. The Stygian River, the dumb servitor, Charon, the coin-paid fare, are all well known in the classics of the ancients.
In some later religio-philosophic studies the names are different; some have tartarus, some purgatory, some paradise. The last is the name adopted by the Mormons.
The heroes of Homer seemed never to hope for a release from the bonds of Hades. Voluptuous Circe, the Odysseyan swine-maker, told the hero of those tales he was a daring one:
"... who, yet alive, have gone Down to the abode of Pluto; twice to die Is yours, while others die but once."
Many well meaning minds have tried to discover in the Bible, or otherwise reasonably invent a second probation for the unrepentant as an addendum to the final resurrection of the just. Not a little has been made of the term "spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3. 19, 20), and of "baptism for the dead" (1 Cor. 15. 29). In the intensity of zeal, or as a proselyting advertisement, the Latter-Day Saints proclaim the possibility of all the inhabitants of the grave (paradise) being saved in heaven. To this end, early in the history of the organization, there was implanted the doctrine of preaching to the departed and that of proxy ministrations.
From their Articles of Faith I take these two:
3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Now, since without immersion there is no remission of sins, and since they who are in prison (paradise) are eligible to salvation, therefore some one must be baptized for them and have all the other rites of the plan likewise administered in their name. That "all things may be done decently and in order," there was received a "revelation" to the end that temples must be built, recorders and other officials appointed, and all the paraphernalia necessary for the work prepared. When these rites are consummated some elder of the church who dies goes to the spiritual prison house and tells the people therein confined that these most meritorious works have been done for them on earth; in fact, this is the chief reason for their going thither. They who will believe this story and repent of their sins are then and there entitled to "a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."
Not only are the people redeemed from all their sins by the pious ministrations of the many temple-workers, who, like Samuel, continually serve and minister therein, but as marriage relations are to continue throughout the endless ages of eternity, and children are to be born forever and ever, these dead have the hymeneal ceremony performed "for eternity"; this act is known as the "sealing" process. Men are here married--by proxy--to others than the actual living wife, sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really and truly believe this to be the only road to eternal life and exaltation.
Added to this is the doctrine of the deification of men. All the true and faithful Mormons are to become gods by and by, and create and populate new worlds; hence the value of polygamy; in fact, this world is but one of the samples of this truth. Adam is the owner and ruler of earth, and to him we pray. He is our God. As such he is only one in an endless procession of such beings.
"There has been and there now exists an endless procession of the Gods, stretching back into the eternities, that had no beginning and will have no end. Their existence runs parallel with endless duration, and their dominions are limitless as boundless space."[3]
Possibly the most popular hymn among these people is the following, written by one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Eliza R. Snow. It is in their collection and now in use:
HYMN TO FATHER AND MOTHER
O my Father, thou that dwellest In the high and glorious place! When shall I regain thy presence, And again behold thy face? In thy holy habitation, Did my spirit once reside? In my first primeval childhood, Was I nurtured by thy side?
For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth, And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth; Yet ofttimes a secret something Whispered, "You're a stranger here"; And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere.
I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high; But, until the Key of Knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heavens are parents single? No; the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me, I've a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, mother, may I meet you In your royal court on high? Then, at length, when I've completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.
[3] New Witness for God, B. H. Roberts, 1895.
WEBER TOM, UTE POLYGAMIST
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way. --_Pope_.
When Mormonism was no longer compelled to maintain the defensive it quickly assumed the offensive. This was apparently deemed necessary for the existence of the system. Two kinds of preaching were indulged in by the elders on their missions, home and foreign. At home they declared the beauty of the Smithian gospel, including the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were trying by every means, Machiavellian or otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians were called by the Mormons, at least to an extent which would allow them to remain undisturbed throughout the territory of Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were immersed for the remission of their sins, but they were permitted to multiply unto themselves as many squaws as they cared for. It would take water stronger than the common alkaline pools contained to reach the morals of a heathen Ute.
Very many of the Indians thus were made Mormons and white men were appointed as their bishops. Brigham Young used to make visits to them to try to instruct them in various things. For a considerable period he was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. He was such official at the time of the lamentable Mountain Meadow Massacre, in 1857, and for which crime Bishop John D. Lee suffered death.
Possibly it was the influence of Mr. Young that kept the most of the red men from the warpath and thus saved the scattered settlers in the earlier days when there were so few to guard the isolated homes in the far-away nooks and cañons of the mountains.
The other sort of preaching in which the elders indulged was that of an absolute and unqualified denial of polygamy in Utah. Such was the plan of the elders who went to Europe. The public denial of John Taylor, later president of the church, is abundant evidence. When they deny polygamy now they have the consistency of definition to back them; to their manner of explaining, polygamy is the act of taking new wives; to the non-Mormon, polygamy is the possessing of more than one wife. For this reason we are very bold in saying that polygamy is publicly practiced in Utah--witness Joseph F. Smith as chief example.
Although we may read of it, none can comprehend just what it means to a girl-wife, two thousand miles away from her parents, to be treated as an alien, in a land under the flag of the free. This was the case in the strictly Mormon settlements in Utah thirty years ago. Reason only kept the Giant Despair from the threshold of the mind. The bravery of these women can be compared only to the English women of the Sepoy Rebellion days of 1857 in India, or to those of our American sisters who accompanied their valorous husbands to their isolated posts on the Indian frontiers, resolved to share equally in the dangers, and to die lingeringly and cruelly if necessary. Retreat and surrender never grew in the hearts of such women. It was so in the times that were called the "dark days" in Utah--the time when the government applied its functions to the stamping out of polygamous practices, 1883 to 1893--ten terrible years for the Mormon as well as the non-Mormon.
Add to this the fact that, unannounced, a brawny, stalwart Indian might walk in at the door. More than once has it so occurred in our home. One day the door was suddenly opened and in walked a grinning brave, armed with a long knife, and followed by his squaw; extending his empty hand toward the far-from-home girl-wife, alone in the house, he said, "How-do!" In telling us of it, she said: "I was scared to death, I thought, but I would have shaken hands with him if I had died in the attempt. I would not let him know I feared him." But this was not Weber Tom.
It was in those fearsome days when the leading men of Utah--farmers, bankers, stockmen, church dignitaries, all sorts and conditions of the Latter-Day Saints--were being arrested and haled to the courts almost daily, that one morning there rode up to our door the battle-scarred old warrior, Weber Tom, chief of the Skull Valley Utes, or Goshutes.
If perfection is beauty, this Indian was most beautiful, for he was the ugliest creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and saying, "Too short, too short."
This giant chief dismounted, and, seeing my wife standing near, reached the reins of the bridle to her and said, "Here, squaw, hol' my hoss."
She said, quietly, "Hold your own horse if you want him held."
Having had to accommodate himself to the rudeness of a civilized woman, he made other provision for his cayuse and then asked her, "Wheh yo'man?"
She told him I was down in the field, and he then proceeded to find me. He was in the depths of trouble. He had several squaw-wives and feared he was to be arrested for it.
Now he approached me. It was dramatic; it was high-class pantomime. It is too bad the kinetoscope, cinematograph, or some other moving-picture machine had not been invented. He seemed awed by a presence, yet so emboldened by the needs of his case that he walked stoically to his quest.
Squaring his Atlaslike shoulders, he began: "You heap big chief. You talky this way" (at the same time extending one finger straight from his lips). "Mormon he talky this way" (now extending two fingers, to show he understood them to talk with double tongue). "Mormon telly me sojer men ketchy me, put me in jug [jail]; me havy two, tree, four squaw. You heap big chief. You telly me this way" (one finger). Continuing, he said: "Me havy two, tree, four squaw. Mormon he telly me, me go jug; one my squaw he know dat, he heap cry, _heap_ cry, HEAP cry, by um by die!"
This was accompanied by gestures, throwing his body backward in imitation of the dying woman whom fear had killed, according to his dramatic story.
I told him something like this: "No, heap big lie. You go back Skull Valley, you stay home, no sojer ketchy you, you be heap good Injun!" Upon this he grunted deeply, shook hands cordially, went back to his many-wived tents over across the creek, and soon we saw them filing off through the sagebrush toward their Skull Valley home, many miles over the Onaqui range.
POLYGAMY OF TO-DAY
The man that lays his hand upon a woman, Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch Whom 't were gross flattery to name a coward. --_John Tobin_.
A baby was sleeping, Its mother was weeping. --_Samuel Lover_.
Polygamy _may_ die in Mormondom, but has never yet done so. Cases are often reported, and from the manner of their finding it is a certainty that new alliances are being formed continually between married men and unmarried women.
Not long ago a very bright conversion was made in one of the missions of an evangelical denomination. The convert was a young woman of more than average intelligence. Some of her relatives had been polygamists, but she repudiated the whole cult and creed. For a while this decision made it necessary for her to find other residence than her rightful home.
Some time after she permitted herself to be persuaded that a young man of her acquaintance loved her more than he did the polygamous tenet of his church--he was a Mormon--and that he never would attempt to woo and win another woman while she remained his wife. She consented, and was happy in her home life. Not for a moment did she suspect him of double-dealing. Her honest heart was above entertaining such suspicion had it entered. Serenely she saw her children growing to useful womanhood. Not a cloud of anxiety appeared on the calm sea of life; all was fine sailing. One day she was making some repairs in one of her husband's garments when a letter fell from a pocket. It bore the postmark of a city where they both had relatives, and it was quite natural that she should look into its contents.
What despair and agony seized her when she read therein the statement from the "other woman" telling her "fond" husband of the birth of the child!
The poor, heart-stricken, and hitherto trusting wife immediately rose to the dignity of outraged womanhood and insulted wifehood and compelled the polygamist to choose at once between her and the concubine. He did so, choosing the younger woman and leaving her who had trusted him too fondly.
This is not a tale of the ancients in Utah, but a living, festering story of the vivid present.
One way of avoiding prosecution by the law is the surreptitious, clandestine rearing of children, whose mothers lose no prestige in the community; for it is well understood "among the neighbors and friends." "Public polygamy has been suspended," but the requirement of the doctrine remains unchanged.
GREAT SALT LAKE
So lonely 'twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. --_Coleridge_.
This is truth the poet sings That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. --_Tennyson_.
GREAT SALT LAKE
Many stories, weird and lurid, true and untrue, have been told of this body of saline water lying imposed on the breast of the beautiful and scenic State of Utah. Although one of the transcontinental highways of ocean-to-ocean travel has extended its bands of steel directly across its wide bosom for many miles, it is still a spot where mystery lingers.
Private as well as public legends are handed down from lip to ear rather than from page to eye. For that reason there are tales of this wonderful salt sea to be learned only by residing in the vicinity. Its natural moods are unlike the ocean, and its individual characteristics would make a book.
The briny pond is but a wee thing as compared with its gigantic dimensions in the days when its waters were sweet and had an outlet to the north. Then its arms spread far south into Arizona, over into Nevada and into Idaho. It was 350 miles from the northern end to the southern, and 145 miles across from east to west. The area was 20,000 square miles. This greater lake stood 1,000 feet higher than does the present one, although this one is 4,280 feet above the level of the sea. Geologists have named the earlier one Bonneville, in honor of the intrepid soldier-explorer whom Washington Irving has so well fixed in American literature.
By some as yet unknown cataclysm a great break was made at the north end of this inland ocean and its pent volume was poured into the cañon of the Port Neuf toward the ravenous Snake. This reduced the level four hundred feet, but the old beach line may still be easily noted. Gradually this diminished body became smaller and smaller until it reached the present stage of desiccation.
So impure is this heavy liquid that after evaporation there is a residuum of twenty-eight pounds of solid matter in every hundred. This is composed of salt, magnesium, and other elements carrying three dollars of gold to the ton; the gold is not made a matter of trade or of industry because facilities are lacking for its handling. Very little animal life is found in this brine, and none of vegetable; in fact, at every point where the water touches the shore vegetation vanishes utterly. The animal life is that of a very small gnat which, mosquito-like, lays its eggs on the surface of the water. The larvæ, when driven shoreward, collect in such quantities as to cause a strong, unpleasant odor observable for miles to the leeward. Myriads of seagulls here find a dainty feast.
Salt Lake affords the finest and really the only beach-bathing resort in the whole interocean country. The bathing is attended with little, if any, danger. In thirty years only two persons have been lost. These strangled before assistance reached them. One body was found after four years, lying in the salty sand at the south end of the lake, whither the high winds from the north had drifted it. All the parts protected by the sand were perfectly preserved and as beautiful as if carved from Parian marble.
The tops of a number of sunken mountains still protrude above the surface and form islands: such are Fremont, Church, Stanbury, Carrington, and others. Some of these are habitable, possessing fine springs and irrigable land. Very few people live on these islands, but some brave spirits dare to face the semiprivations of such isolation and stay there with their herds.
Doubtless, many tales of heroism and devotion could be told of those who have lived on these islands. One of the best known is that of Mrs. Wenner, who, a few years after her marriage, went with her husband and little children to live on Fremont Island. Her husband's health failing, the oversight of the herds fell largely upon her, but she cheerily took up the burden, the while she trained her little ones, and was ever a true companion to him whom she daily saw slipping away.
The end came on a dread and fearsome day, while the faithful man who worked for them was detained on the mainland by a raging storm. The children and an incompetent woman could give her little assistance or consolation. There on the lonely, storm-lashed island, with faint-whispered words of love, the dear one closed his eyes forever. Tenderly she cared for his body, and sadly she kept her vigil, replenishing through the long night the two watchfires intended as a signal to those on the mainland. On the night of the second day, the man made his dangerous way back to the island--and with his help she laid the loved husband in his island grave, with no service but the tears and prayers of those who mourned.
This is but one story of desolation and sorrow--but the deep, briny waters and the barren, forbidding shores hold in their keeping many suggestions of mystery and of tears.
ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. --_Shakespeare_.
ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE
"I panned him out over and over ag'in, But found nary sign of color," Said Argonaut Sam one evening, when, As sitting atop of a box, to some men He was spinning a yarn of the gold-trail.
And then, With arms set akimbo, he straightened his back And said: "'Twuz one night in the fifties I know; Ther' kem up the trail frum the gulch jist below A youngish-like feller; but steppin' so slow I heartily pitied him even before I saw his pale brow and heerd the sharp hack Of his troublesome cough, and plain enough lack Of more'n enough power to bring to my door That tremblin' young body.
"He hed a small pack-- A blanket an' buckskin--but that wa'nt no lack In them days when notions an' fashions wuz slack; When all a man needed, besides pick an' pan, Wuz a wallet o' leather to tie up his dust--'R a place to git grub-staked (that means to git trust Till he found a good prospeck); an' then he'd put in His very best licks; fur in them days 'twuz sin Fer a man strong o' body, o' wind an' o' limb T' hang erround loafin' all day, 'twuz too thin.
"Well, this puny feller hed grin'-stunlike grit, But wuz clean tuckered out when my cabin he hit; 'N fell down a-faintin' jist inside my door-- His eyes set 'n' glassy--he seemed done fer, shore. So I straightened him out, couldn't do nothin' more
Than to put back his hair an' t' dampen his brow, An' to feel fer his pulse--joy! I found it--slow An' flickery though, stoppin' and startin', an' now Gone ag'in; then it revived, but so faint, don't you know, That minute by minute I couldn't hev said Whether the feller wuz livin' or dead.
"All night I watched by him; an' 'long a-to'rds light I seed that a change hed come: so, honor bright! I made up my mind that I'd save that young life If it took me all summer. I'd fight With grim death to a finish fer him.
"An' so I begun. I quit workin' my claim Where I'd git on an average ('pon my good name) An ounce or more daily of number one gold. An' in them days we thought nothin', you see, Of layin' by stuff fer a rainy day; we Hed plenty; the diggins wuz rich, an' wuz thick Scattered over the kentry. Most every crick Hed plenty o' gold in nuggets or dust-- An' the man who wuz stingy hed ort to be cussed. So I shouldered my task.