Taken from: Life, letters, and travels of Father Pierre-Jean de Smet, S.J., 1801-1873; missionary labors and adventures among the wild tribes of the North American Indians.
Rapid settlement of the West — A forecast — Salt Lake Valley — What the Mormons have accomplished there — Proposed emigration to Sonora — Their rise, doctrine, and present status.
By Smet, Pierre-Jean de, 1801-1873; Chittenden, Hiram Martin, 1858-1917, ed; Richardson, Alfred Talbot, ed.
Extract from a letter to his nephew Charles, March, 1851 (in French).
Truly, the United States is a region where marvels of every sort fellow one another so swiftly that one can scarcely follow them or believe what he hears. Towns and villages appear as if by enchantment. In 1838, I traversed a desert of some hundred and fifty leagues in which there was neither a house nor a cabin to give shelter to the traveler; once in a great while I met an Indian out hunting. Will you believe it? today that desert contains upwards of fifty cities, towns and villages, and thousands of the finest farms that one could ask to see.
The first civilized man who set up his tent amongst the Indians on the spot where now stands St. Louis, has just recently died. He built the first house; he leaves a city which contains already 90,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, and which will have 200,000 before 1860. I have just been down and up the Mississippi and the Ohio for more than 400 leagues. I know plenty of people here who remember the time when the Indian was lord of those waters and the whites only navigated them in secret, or else in large numbers and well-armed; today, on those two rivers and their tributaries, over 700 steamboats, like floating palaces, sail majestically in all their splendor, employing 25,000 sailors and carrying 140,000 tons of every kind of produce and merchandise. These boats are valued at $12,000,000, and expend $10,000,000 annually, while the value of the merchandise that they transport in the course of a year from city to city and from one State to another, may be estimated roundly at $250,000,000. Of the lands watered by these great rivers, not one acre in ten is cultivated. What will it be like when the nine that remain are subjected to culture? Then 7,000 steamboats will be required to carry the products and the merchandise. The time is not far distant when on the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, from St. Louis and Cincinnati to New Orleans, there will be seen but a single unbroken village, surrounded with fair gardens and lovely fields. At another time I will speak to you in detail of the immense resources of this country, which could with ease employ and nourish all the inhabitants of the British Isles, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Spain.
But I forget myself; I started to tell you of a recent and genuinely American occurrence. It has to do with the new Territory of Utah. In 1841, I found myself involved with a single companion in some very difficult and dangerous mountain passes. The character of the region appeared to me at that time very singular; its situation is different from that of any other section of North America. The summits of these precipitous and rocky mountains are covered with perpetual snows; the valleys are very narrow, sterile, and arid; the earth and rocks are covered with bitter and saline incrustations; no other vegetation is to be seen than sagebrush of large growth, sufficient in that region for firewood for the lone traveler in those parts. As soon as one is through these passages, always arid in summer and choked with snow through five months of the year, he comes into a lovely and very extensive valley, which is the only habitable part; it is called to-day the Great American Basin, and it lies some 5,000 feet above sea-level. This basin is 560 miles in diameter; it has its own system of lakes and rivers, and has no apparent communication with the ocean. It is possible that gulfs may exist in the Great Salt Lake, through which its waters discharge themselves into the Pacific, or it may communicate with other lakes in the regions of Lower California. The Great Salt Lake, which is about 300 miles in circumference, lies in the northern part of the Great basin. It is rather shallow in the portions thus far explored; but is supposed to be very deep in the central parts. The water of the lake is more salty than sea-water. Three gallons of it yield a gallon of salt of the greatest purity, whiteness, and fineness. On the northeast of the lake is the termination of the valley of Bear River. This valley is thirty miles long by twenty-two wide, and communicates with another valley which is fifty miles by eight.”[i] It is in this first valley, enclosed by picturesque mountains, which has taken the name of the Valley of the Mormons, that their capital stands, called by some Great Salt Lake City, and by others Mormonville. These two valleys contain the principal body of emigrants belonging to this sect (a species of socialism and communism), more than 30,000 in number. They are capable of supporting in time a population of over 1,000,000.
In the fall of 1846, as I drew near to the frontiers of the State of Missouri, I found the advance guard of the Mormons, numbering about 10,000, camped in the territory of the Omahas, not far from the old Council Bluffs. They had just been driven out for the second time from a State of the Union (Illinois had received them after their war with the people of Missouri). They had resolved to winter on the threshold of the great desert, and then to move onward into it, to put distance between themselves and their persecutors, without even knowing at that time the goal of their long wanderings, nor the spot where they should once more build for themselves permanent dwellings. They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored and the spot which I have just described to you pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it. Was that what determined them? I would not dare to assert it. They are there. In the last three years Utah has changed its aspect, and from a desert has become a flourishing territory which will soon become one of the States of the Union. It is bounded by California, Oregon, New Mexico, and the region called of old the Great Western Territory.
In 1847, in the month of April, the first Mormon pioneers left the place of their winter quarters at Council Bluffs; on the 22nd of July of the same year, they entered this valley and halted at the place which forms today the center of the city. In the afternoon of the same day, they were at work with three plows and a harrow, and had begun the first ditch for the irrigation of the field. On the 24th, they planted five acres in potatoes. On the 28th they laid out the plan of the future city. It is divided into ten-acre blocks with eight lots to each block and a vast garden and yard to each lot. The streets are eight rods [132 ft.] in width and the sidewalks on each side twenty feet. There are to be shade-trees along the sidewalks. Each block is surrounded with a stream of limpid water, coming down in abundance from the mountains. Every house stands twenty feet from the street line, and no two houses are built opposite each other, so that a man in his own front door cannot look into that of his neighbor, but has a fine view of his garden. There are four great public places, which will be adorned with beautiful fountains and trees brought from the four quarters of the globe. The square of the temple will have a fine garden, already their missionaries have made arrangements in the Eastern States, in England, France, Italy, Denmark, Germany, and the islands of the sea, to make collections of the choicest seeds and fruits, or anything else that can serve for the embellishment of this garden. By the first plan the city contained 135 blocks; since then, there have been added 65 blocks on the east and 60 on the west of the city. The University place is a mile square.
It is barely three years since the first house was built in this city and today there are several thousand comfortable houses, built of sun-dried bricks, and they have an abundance of all the necessaries of life. In the vicinity of the city there are a great number of springs of all temperatures, mineral, sulphureous, and pure water. The fields have to be irrigated to render them productive. The city lies twenty-two miles southeast of the Great Salt Lake. Southward from it, at a distance of fifty miles, are Utah lake and valley, where the Mormons have built the city of Provo on the bank of a river which bears the same name. The water of this lake is pure; it is eight miles by four and abounds in fish. A hundred miles south of this valley a colony of some 200 families have settled in a place called San Pete, where ruins have been found covered with hieroglyphics, and a mountain, strange to say, of rock salt. While I was at St. Mary’s, among the Flatheads, in 1844-1845, I sent several times to this mountain for salt.
For five months of the year there is no communication with the north, east or west, by reason of the snow, which renders the passage of the mountains impracticable. The capital of the Mormons is in west of Greenwich.
Such is the change that has come over this desert in so short a time, and such the spot chosen by these new sectarians for a shelter against the tyranny and persecutions that other sectarians have brought upon them. In the midst of the desert, they have added a new star to the grand and beautiful American constellation. The Mormon sect has not been in existence thirty years. Already they have 200,000 converts or adepts, all of whom propose to go out and join their Utah brethren. The locality is well chosen, and will be able to render immense services as a place for rest, refreshment and provisioning for the army of emigrants who pass year after year on their way to settle in California or Oregon; and when the great railroad is built, which is to join the Atlantic to the Pacific, this territory will be of great assistance, and will serve as a great support, or station by the way.
University of St. Louis, December 12, 1857.
Very dear Francis:
Things are going on very easily in America. It will take a long time to restore confidence among the people. A whole new banking system is projected with assured guarantees. Hitherto these kinds of establishments have, for the most part, been nothing but regular traps, arrangements for smart scoundrels to get hold of the people’s money with impunity.
There is a good deal of talk just now about war with the Mormons. These polygamous fanatics have lately been committing infamous atrocities upon the poor peaceable emigrants. A war of extermination is being prepared for them. The Mormons could make it a long and hard one in their almost inaccessible mountains. I think that the Mormons will pass the winter in doing the Americans all the damage they can, and early in the spring take up their march and take possession of the province of Sonora in Mexico. They have a political system that is inadmissible in a republic, and a religious system still less admissible, which is the “abomination of abominations,” invented in the present century. The place where they live, the Great Salt Lake country, is most miserable. Wood, fresh water, and grass are scarce. The region would never allow a heavy settlement. The climate is not wholesome. Sonora offers all kinds of advantages, and the Mormons, after they have done all the harm they can, will take refuge there.
University of St. Louis, Jan. 19, 1858.[ii]
Reverend and Dear Father:[iii]
I propose to give you in this letter a short sketch of the fanatic sect of Mormons, against whom the Government of the United States has just sent troops, in order to subject them to the laws, or force them to leave the country. The facts which I will relate on the origin and history of this singular people are chiefly drawn from a recent work by John Hyde, who had been an elder or minister of the Mormon sect.
The founder of the Mormons was one Joseph Smith, born of an obscure family, December 23, 1805, at Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont. The whole life of this man, from youth up, was marked by fanaticism, fraud, and vice. More than fifty persons of good reputation and in every way worthy of respect, who knew him at Palmyra, New York, where he had settled with his family, have testified under oath that Joseph Smith was regarded as a man of no moral character and given to vicious habits. In 1820, Smith embraced Methodism. In April of that year, he pretended to have had a revelation from heaven, while praying in the woods. He said that God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son had appeared to him, and had declared to him that his sins were forgiven, that God had chosen him to restore his kingdom on earth and propagate anew the truth of the gospel which all Christendom had lost. In 1823, Smith, forgetting his revelations and his pretended divine mission, plunged as deep as ever in blasphemy, fraud, drunkenness, and other vices. Then, he said, an angel appeared to him and revealed the existence of a book written on gold plates and containing the history of the ancient inhabitants of America. This is the origin of the “Book of Mormon,” or Golden Bible, the Koran of these Mahometans. The next day Smith visited the spot designated by the angel as the spot where the book was. This was on the slope of a hill between Palmyra and Manchester. There he pretended to find in fact golden plates in a stone box; but this time his efforts to raise them were vain. There was, he says, a great contest between the devil and the angels as to it; but although the devil was beaten, the angel did not give the book to Smith, who received it only four years after, on the 22nd of September, 1827.
The Book of Mormon, like the Koran, is a tissue of contradictory plagiarisms and absurd inventions. The whole is interlarded with passages from the Bible. It has been proved that the portion given as historical is merely a plagiary of a romance of Solomon Spalding whose manuscript had been stolen by Smith. Spalding had written, under the title of The Discovered Manuscript, a romance on the-origin of the American Indians. He died before publishing it. After his death his widow removed to New York and Smith is known to have worked near her house. Sometime after the publication of the Book of Mormon she discovered the loss of her husband’s manuscript. Many of Spalding’s relatives and friends detected The Discovered Manuscript significantly altered, in Smith’s book. Spalding had been in the habit of reading long passages from his novel; the singularity of the facts, names, and style, which was biblical, had so struck them that they did not forget it. Now, the Book of Mormon had the same characteristics, the same strange names, the same incredible facts, the same style. John Spalding, the author’s brother, thus expresses himself on the point: “My brother’s book was entitled The Discovered Manuscript. It was an historical novel on the first inhabitants of America. Its object was to show that the American Indians were descended from the Jews, or the lost tribes. There was a detailed description of their voyage, by land and sea, from their departure from Jerusalem to their arrival in America, under the orders of Nephi and Lehi. I have recently read the Book of Mormon. To my great astonishment, I have found almost the same historical matters, the same names, etc., such as they were in my brother’s writings.” Many other persons, who knew Solomon Spalding well, and who for the most part knew nothing of Joseph Smith, gave similar testimony under oath.
The Book of Mormon probably derives its name from one of the chapters of this novel. A descendant of Lehi obtained the plates of gold, brass, etc., on which the prophets had engraved the history of the voyages and wars of their race, and this descendant was called Mormon. He abridged this history, and gave it to his son Moroni. The latter, having added a sketch of the history of Jared, enclosed all in a box, which he buried on a hill, A.D. 400. Smith, declaring himself chosen to give this wonderful book to the world, pretended to have received the gift of understanding and translating it. He did not write this translation himself, but dictated it. During the dictation he was concealed behind a curtain made of a bed-quilt, for the plates were so sacred that he did not even permit his secretary to gaze on them. To give a still higher idea of his golden bible, he explained the title after his own fashion. According to him, the word Mormon comes from the Egyptian mon, signifying good, and the English word worth, so that Mormon means Better I. Now, the bible, says Smith, in its widest signification, means good, since our Lord says in the gospel, “I am the good shepherd.” The ignorant and fanatical believe all those fables.
The Book of Mormon, although most known, is not the chief book of the sect. The Book of Teachings and Covenants, containing some of the revelations which Smith pretended to have received from heaven, is regarded by his disciples as a book of the law, which God has given this generation. Smith also published other revelations, which are contained in a little book called The Pearl of Great Price. Much of the doctrine of Smith is a mere repetition of the works of various Protestant sects. He has imitated Mohomet in his infamous immorality by permitting polygamy. To all this his successor has added abominable doctrines on the nature and attributes of God.
Smith organized his new religion in 1830. He could then number only six disciples. The next year, having obtained new adherents, he sent elders, two by two, to preach the new doctrine. When the number of his disciples had sufficiently increased, he founded a colony in Missouri, but their conduct induced the people of that State — first those around Independence, where the Mormons had first settled, and then those of Liberty — to expel them from the State. In 1834, the Mormon sect adopted the pompous title of “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” and thence the Mormons called themselves Latter-Day Saints, or simply Saints.
Smith and his adepts having acquired, in 1839, a large tract in Illinois, in a beautiful section on the banks of the Mississippi, built a flourishing city, which they called Nauvoo, erected a magnificent temple, now in ruins, and lived there till 1844, when they rendered themselves odious to the people of that State. They were attacked by an ungovernable mob, and the false prophet and his brother, Hyrum. were massacred in prison at Carthage.
In 1845, these persecutions continued and the Mormons, driven at last from Nauvoo, resolved in council to seek a solitary and permanent abode in some fertile valley at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They carried out this project in 1847, penetrated into the desert some 1,200 miles, and founded a new city on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, at the foot of a lofty chain of mountains forming a portion of the eastern limits of the Great basin. Brigham Young, Smith’s successor as prophet and chief, was their leader in this long and painful march.
The valley of the Great basin is about 500 miles long from north to south, and 350 from east to west. It is formed by the Sierra Madre bounding it on the east, and by the Goose creek and Humboldt Mountains on the west. Utah Territory, thus occupied by the Mormons, contains in all 187,923 square miles. (The lake, which is now only seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, probably filled, at a remote epoch, the whole valley. On all sides, on the slopes of the mountains, at a uniform height, are traces which water alone could have made.)
In 1841, I traversed much of this valley in my rambles in the Rocky Mountains. The country was then wooded and agreeable, watered by springs and streams, winding through the valley. Since the Mormon emigration the forests have disappeared on the slopes of the hills and mountains, and, as the snows are more exposed to the rays of the sun and melt quicker, the springs dry up, and the streams give scarcely water enough in the spring to irrigate the cultivated fields and supply the domestic animals.
Salt Lake City contains at present 15,000 inhabitants. They are mostly. English, Scotch, and Swedes. Hardly one-fourth of the Mormons are Americans by birth. They are scattered up and down in the villages and towns of all the plains and valleys of Utah, so called from an Indian tribe of that region. The Territory is bounded on the north by Oregon, on the west by California, on the east by the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and on the south by New Mexico. The total number of the inhabitants of the Territory is less than 50,000, although the Mormon leaders, for ends of their own, represent it as much higher. The number of Mormons in different countries is estimated at 300,000. They send their emissaries to all parts of the globe. These take good care not to present Mormonism in its true colors to those who are not as yet prepared to accept n such as It IS. Many of the Mormons at Salt Lake it is said adopted the new sect only in hopes of finding there an earthly paradise, with unlimited abundance for every want. Once m Utah, it is no easy matter to escape the snares and despotic power of the leader.
Brigham Young, president of the Mormon church and authority over his people. This man is, like Joseph Smith, a native of Vermont, born at Whittingham, June 1 1801. Having embraced Mormonism in 1832, he “soon became Smith s intimate friend. Since he became chief of the Mormons, he has displayed boundless ambition and talents far superior to Smith’s. He labors to establish Mormonism all over the American continent. As to the Territory which he governs he wishes to make it an independent State in the confederation. He has often declared that he will permit no one else to be governor of Utah. He defies the authority of the President and of all the Union. The judges and government for the civil administration of Utah have been expelled from the Territory, after seeing it useless to attempt to exercise their functions. Young has set up tribunals of his own and in the United States courts which he tolerated before his rebellion; the juries gave verdict according to his direction. The government at last resolved to resort even to force to make him respect its authority. Accordingly, last fall (1857), a detachment of 2,500 men was sent to the Territory to maintain the new governor and his suite.
On this, Young prepared to resist. The troops have already entered Utah, but the severity of the winter arrests them about 150 miles from the Mormon capital. The Mormons are not idle. They have surprised a train of seventy-six wagons, pillaged and burned them, carrying off all the animals, horses, mules, and oxen.[iv] This loss is estimated at a million dollars. The troops, ill-lodged and ill-fed, will suffer terribly if the winter is severe, as it is usually in the elevated parts which they occupy. As soon as the spring opens large reinforcements will be sent. There is a great diversity of opinion here on the matter. Many think that the war will be long and bloody, and that the Mormons will resist to the death. A great manifestation on the part of the Government will, doubtless, be necessary; and I think that as the new forces approach the rebel territory, the Mormons will retire after setting fire to their towns, and march to occupy some new district — Sonora, perhaps, or some other thinly-settled tract in the vast Mexican territory. This fanatical sect will find repose only outside of all other civil jurisdiction. It will master and subject all, unless it is mastered and expelled in season.
One more word on the Mormons and I have done. A new organization has been given to the Mormon troops. In 1840, Smith organized the Nauvoo Legion, and compelled all his disciples from the age of sixteen to fifty to enter it. This little troop has continually increased, and preserves its old name. No effort is spared to render the soldiers perfect in military discipline and exercises. They have at their head officers who served under General Scott in the Mexican war. Young’s whole army might, in case of necessity, be brought up to 8,000 men. This number would not be formidable, were they not all animated with a spirit of fanaticism which will make them fight, if it comes to that, with an obstinacy like that of the first Mahometans. Besides the community of religion and interest there exists among them another bond. A great number of them are bound to the president and Prophet Young by horrible oaths. There exists among this people a society called the Mormon Endowment, into which members are admitted amid ceremonies most capable of inspiring superstitious terror. The initiated take an oath of blind obedience, as understood by the secret societies of Europe. The penalty of death awaits him who violates his oath. If the Mormons wish war, as they so loudly proclaim, they will have a chance this year, but they cannot long resist the troops of the United States. I have the honor to be, etc.
Pierre-Jean de Smet (born January 30, 1801, Termonde [now in Belgium]—died May 23, 1873, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.) was a Belgian-born Jesuit missionary whose pioneering efforts to Christianize and pacify Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River made him their beloved “Black Robe” and cast him in the role of mediator in the U.S. government’s attempt to secure their lands for settlement by whites. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
[i] Cache Valley, one of the most beautiful of all the mountain valleys, and now occupied by a dense Mormon population with some thirteen flourishing villages which can all be seen at once from any vantage point in the surrounding hills.
[ii] To the editor of the Precis Historiques, Brussels.
[iii] The general outcry against the Mormons at this time had its influence upon Father De Smet, as is evidenced by his change of view in the six years between the dates of this and the preceding letter. Perhaps his ready acceptance of the report that the Mormons contemplated an exodus to Mexico was a case of ” the wish is father to the thought.” That would, indeed, have been an effective solution of the Mormon question in the United States.
[iv] The was the “Mormon Meadows Massacre.” 120 men, women, and children were slaughtered.