Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  “I have,” he sighed. “It’s just that . . .” He shook his head. “You know I don’t want to leave you, Becca. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” She took his hand. “And we don’t want to have you leave us, either.”

  “I know. I just worry so about you.”

  “If we were staying in our home in Nauvoo while you go, it would be a different matter, Derek. But we’re not. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. We don’t have homes or enough food. We won’t have until we reach the Rocky Mountains. So if we have to go anyway, I would rather it was with you.”

  He nodded somberly, but said nothing. For several minutes they sat together quietly, lost in their own thoughts. Finally he looked up. “They say President Young and the others are supposed to be back here tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “What if we asked him what he thinks?”

  She felt her heart leap. “I think that is a good idea, Derek.”

  “If he says no, will you accept that?”

  “Of course.” She held her breath for a moment. “And if he says yes, will you accept that?”

  There was no hesitation. “Yes, I will.”

  She threw her arms around him. “Thank you, Derek. That’s all I ask. We’ll let President Young decide.”

  Mary Ann Steed was cutting potatoes into thin slices and dropping them into the gurgling stew pot that hung over the fire. Lydia was dicing carrots by her side. Joshua and Nathan had managed to acquire some fresh vegetables at the trading post downriver, and tonight they were going to have a treat. Both stopped what they were doing to watch as Derek and Rebecca appeared from some trees and walked toward them.

  “Well?” Lydia asked her mother-in-law, who was now more a mother to her almost than her own mother had been. “Did she convince him?”

  Mary Ann nodded slowly and sadly. “Yes.”

  Lydia peered more closely to see what Mary Ann was seeing. “How can you tell?”

  “Because it’s right. The moment she first brought up the idea, I felt it was right.” She sighed. “That doesn’t make it any less frightening, and that’s what Derek is struggling with. But it’s right. Don’t you feel it?”

  Lydia started a little, then went back to work. “I suppose.”

  Mary Ann gave her a sharp look, but said nothing, and she too resumed her cutting. She knew that at that moment Lydia was not thinking of Derek and Rebecca at all. She was thinking of young Josh. His desire to volunteer for the Mormon Battalion would not be squelched, and it had become a source of major contention between mother and son—the first real problem that Lydia had ever had with him. So what if he was not yet sixteen? he countered every time she and Nathan fell back on that, their strongest argument. He had heard that they were taking a few men who were not eighteen yet for orderlies or to help care for the stock.

  Derek let go of Rebecca’s hand and went to get something from one of the wagons. Rebecca came straight to her mother and sister-in-law. She had kept her face without much expression until Derek turned away. Now it broke out in a huge smile.

  “It worked,” Mary Ann laughed.

  “Yes!” She pulled the paper from her pocket and waved it triumphantly at them. “It was just what he needed. He’s agreed that if Brother Brigham gives us his blessing, I can go.”

  “That’s wonderful, Rebecca,” Lydia said slowly. Her words and her expression were in direct contradiction to each other.

  Rebecca slowly put the paper away and came to stand between them. “I know,” she said softly. “Now the reality of leaving sets in.” Her voice caught for a moment. “I can’t bear to think about that.”

  “But you’ll be with Derek,” Mary Ann responded. “That will make it easier.”

  “Oh, yes.” She looked sideways at Lydia. “If it were Nathan, wouldn’t you do it?”

  Lydia did not hesitate. “Of course. I would rather face whatever that march will mean with him than to be without him.”

  “That’s what I told Derek. It’s not that I want some great adventure. I just want our family to be together.”

  Mary Ann dropped the last of the potatoes in the pot and wiped her hands on her apron. She turned and gave Rebecca a quick hug, watching Lydia as she did so. “There are many roads to Zion,” she said. “And for some reason, the Lord seems to think our family should take more than one.” She stepped back and forced a smile. “But let’s not forget that they all lead to the same place. That’s all that matters. Someday, we’ll all be together again.”

  Chapter Notes

  The story of the group that came to be known as the “Mississippi Saints” is a little-known part of the great westward migrations of the Mormons. As Brigham Young’s plans for going west had to be adjusted, what seemed to be a setback for the Mississippi Saints, who were out ahead of Brigham’s group hoping to meet them on the trail, would prove to be one more evidence of the Lord’s over-watching eye. (See “Pioneer Journeys,” pp. 802–10; “Mississippi Saints Headed West in 1846,” Church News,13 July 1996, p. 4; Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia,4 vols. [1901–36; reprint, Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1971], 1:511–12.)

  Usually, little is said about the women who accompanied the Mormon Battalion. As part of the recruitment of the Mormons, the U.S. Army granted permission for each of the five companies to have four women designated as “laundresses.” (In reality they also became cooks and seamstresses.) Only eighteen of the possible twenty such women have been identified, but it is known that thirty-one wives of battalion members and three additional women started the journey. Forty-four children also joined them. (See MB,pp. 28–33, which includes a roster of names.) All of the names used here by Rebecca are the names of actual people who accompanied the battalion.

  Chapter 12

  Melissa was deep in thought, trying to calculate how long it would be before she could realistically expect Carl’s return from St. Louis. He had left on the fifth of July. Today was the eleventh. If it took four days for the raft of lumber to make it downriver—she decided to make it five to be sure—that meant that he and Jean Claude had arrived in St. Louis yesterday. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to find a buyer, perhaps a day or two, and then two more days to return to Nauvoo, assuming they could get immediate passage on a steamboat bound upriver. Today was Saturday. So they could possibly be here by Tuesday, but almost certainly by Thursday or Friday, unless something had gone wrong. That would be the time—

  “Mama. Look!” Sarah tugged at her mother’s sleeve.

  Melissa stopped, raising her head. Sarah, nearly eight now, had taken over pushing Mary Melissa in her pram, leaving Melissa free to let her thoughts roam. Now Sarah pointed up the street in the direction they were walking. There was a crowd collected there outside the post office, and even as she looked, Melissa saw other people hurrying to join it.

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah. We shall go and see.”

  She stepped forward and took the baby carriage from her daughter. “Hold on, Mary Melissa. We’re going to go faster now. Sarah, stay close by me, now.” She strode out briskly, her curiosity piqued. With less than a thousand people left in Nauvoo, it was unusual to see large crowds of any kind anymore, especially in the afternoon when most of the men were still out in the fields working.

  Before she reached the assembled crowd, Melissa sensed that something was seriously wrong. The faces of those she could see were showing dismay, and there was much talking and pointing. As she reached the edge of the crowd, she spoke to the nearest woman. “What is the matter?”

  “I think someone has been hurt.”

  “Beaten, you mean,” a man beside her said, his face grim.

  “Beaten?” Melissa echoed.

  But the man had pushed into the crowd so as to see better and didn’t answer. She turned and looked around quickly. There was a large, open field across the street from the small store that served as pos
t office and unofficial city hall now that the city was nearly abandoned. There were several children playing there together in the long grass. “Sarah, take Mary Melissa over there. You may get her out of the pram, but watch her closely.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Melissa didn’t wait to see that she did as she was told. Sarah was quite responsible, and Melissa often left the baby in her care. Melissa circled around the back of the crowd to the far side, where there weren’t quite so many people, then pushed her way in. She stopped as she neared the front of the crowd. Going up on tiptoe to see over the heads, she caught a glimpse of a strange thing. A man was leaning against the building, feet spread wide apart and hands propped up high on the wall so as to leave his body at an angle. She heard a cry of pain and saw his fingers dig into the wood. Surprised, she pushed in closer until she was near the front. Then she gasped. The man was stripped to the waist, and his back was a bloody mass of welts, cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Another man stood beside him with a cloth and a bucket of water. He dipped the cloth in the bucket and held it over the man’s back, then gently squeezed it onto the wounds. She saw his body stiffen, heard him grunt, and saw the fingers clawing at the wall again. The water streamed down his back, turning bright red as it ran onto his trousers.

  Melissa looked away, feeling her stomach lurch. Then she saw a second man. He was lying on a bench farther down the narrow porch of the store. A woman stood beside him, rubbing what looked like soft lard across a second lacerated back. He winced and shuddered each time her fingers moved across the battered flesh.

  One hand came to Melissa’s mouth. “What happened?” she exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

  A man she didn’t know turned to look at her. “They were caught by a mob. There are more inside.”

  Her legs went weak, and for a moment she had to close her eyes and shut out the sight. “Who?” she managed to ask.

  Another man in front of them turned. “That’s more the outrage. They’re not Mormons. They’re new citizens.”

  Her first informant gave the other a sharp look. “When a man is whipped, it is an outrage whether he is a Mormon or not a Mormon.”

  “But,” a third man joined in now, “it’s the Mormons these so-called ‘regulators’ are after. But this time they didn’t care who it was, they just—”

  Just then someone came out of the store. It was James Wilson, one of the leaders of the new citizens committee. Melissa didn’t know him well, but he had been to their house on a few occasions to meet with Carl, who was also an active member of the committee. They had finally stopped holding meetings there because of Melissa’s feelings. She had little tolerance for these people who swept in behind the Mormon tragedy to buy up property for pennies on the dollar. Now they were finding, to their great dismay, that the anti-Mormons didn’t much care which residents were Mormons and which were not; they wanted everybody out of Nauvoo.

  Wilson raised his hands, and the crowd instantly quieted. He looked at the two battered men, then lifted his head. “Fellow citizens of Nauvoo. We have had a tragedy in our midst. You see the results of that tragedy in front of you. There are three more men inside who are just as badly wounded.”

  The crowd was shocked.

  “From what we have learned, this is what happened. Five of our number—none of which were Latter-day Saints, by the way—hired out to help harvest wheat on the Davis farm up near Pontoosuc, which is about twelve miles north of here on the river. They worked all day yesterday without incident. But this morning, about nine o’clock, several bands of armed men suddenly appeared from different directions. In a moment they were surrounded. This was a group of the antis who have been stirring up trouble of late. One they call Old Whimp. Another was Frank Lofton.”

  The man who had been leaning against the wall straightened and turned slowly. “John McAuley from Pontoosuc was their leader,” he said, grimacing even as he spoke.

  Wilson motioned to someone at the front of the crowd, and Melissa saw a man writing the names down. Then Wilson straightened and went on. “Our men waved a white handkerchief as a sign of peace, but they came in and demanded these men’s weapons.”

  Now the victim picked up the story. “Once they had our weapons they marched us to the nearest house, which belonged to a man named Rice. Here they held a quick council, then sent eight or ten men off to the woods.” Now his voice became more strained, and it was clear that he was reliving it in his mind. “After a few minutes they all came back with hickory gads.”

  Melissa shuddered. Hickory was the wood of choice for making ox goads—or gads, as they were often called—because hickory was more like iron than wood. Usually a gad was three-quarters of an inch to an inch in diameter and four or five feet long. Again her stomach twisted as she sensed what was coming.

  Now the man on the bench got to his feet and joined Wilson and the other man. He spoke, his voice low and filled with pain. “They called us out two by two. Me and John Richards were first. They marched us down to a ditch and made us kneel down in it, with our chests pushed up against the one bank. Then they each took turns.” His eyes closed and he lowered his head. “The sentence was twenty lashes each.”

  “The man who whipped me,” the first man broke back in, “had chosen the largest hickory gad of the bunch. He held it with both hands and swung it with all the force he could muster. He gave me my twenty lashes, then hit me once more for good measure.” He hesitated, his eyes haunted and wide. “I think there’s some damage. I can’t move my shoulders without it hurting something awful.”

  The silence was total for several moments. Then James Wilson raised his head to look at the crowd. “This comes as no surprise. These so-called men, who are courageous only in bands of fifty or more, think this is the way to frighten us away. They want us to leave, particularly the Mormons. But I say that we are not going to leave. I say we get a warrant for the arrest of these men—McAuley, Old Whimp, Lofton, and whoever else was responsible—and bring them in for justice.”

  There was an instant and angry response from the crowd. Several men shouted out their support. “Go home,” Wilson shouted. “Get your guns and horses, then report back here as soon as you can. The new citizens committee will deputize every man who is willing to let these bullies know that we will not stand for such lawlessness. We will not allow this . . .”

  Melissa turned away, not wanting to hear any more, sickened by the sight of the bloodied men, unable to stand and listen to the call for escalation. As she walked quickly toward the field and her two girls, for the first time since Carl had left her to go to Wisconsin, Melissa was grateful that he was not there with her, for she knew that if he were here, he would be among the first to volunteer for the posse.

  Most of Sunday morning was quiet. Melissa kept the children in the house. They read from the Book of Mormon, and then they acted out some of their favorite Bible stories. After lunch Melissa could not bear it any longer and sent young Carl to see what he could learn. He was back in less than half an hour. When she heard him come in the back door, she folded her sewing and put it in her lap. Carl came into the room. He looked a little flushed, and she supposed that he had run part of the way. “What did you learn, son?” she asked even as he entered.

  “The posse rode out to Pontoosuc last night and arrested Mr. McAuley and another man and brought them back to the city.”

  “Did they meet resistance?”

  He shook his head. She leaned back, letting some of the stiffness go out of her body. This was good. The mob had struck, but now they knew that the citizens of Nauvoo were prepared to defend themselves. It was the best way to prevent further depredations. Then she saw his face. “What, Carl?”

  “They’ve got the two men in jail, Mama, and there weren’t any problems with that—not last night, anyway.”

  She felt her heart constrict. “But?”

  “There was a note delivered this afternoon to the committee.”

  “What kind of a note?”

 
“The mob in Pontoosuc have kidnaped five Mormons and are holding them hostage until the two leaders are returned to them.”

  She gave a low cry of dismay. “No!”

  “Yes, Mama. Brother Phineas Young and his son. Brother Richard Ballantyne and two others that I do not know. The note was signed by the victims and addressed to the new citizens. It begged them to release the leaders in exchange for their freedom. Otherwise, their captors are promising to execute them.”

  For several moments Melissa sat motionless, chills shooting through every part of her body. Then she nodded slowly. “Carl, don’t say anything to the other children, but I want you to go to the barn and get the two steamer trunks up in the loft.”

  “All right, Mama. What for?”

  “We are going to start packing some things. When your father returns home, we’re leaving Nauvoo.”

  For several seconds he stared at her, his eyes not comprehending, and then he nodded very slowly. “Yes, Mama,” he said quietly. “I’ll go at once.”

  When Captain Allen and his officers arrived at Mount Pisgah in late June with the news that they were there to recruit five hundred Mormon men into the army, they received a polite but cool reception. Such was not the case with Brigham Young. He immediately saw the broad advantages that would accompany the Saints’ acceptance. Knowing that his people had good cause to distrust the federal government and that it would take some persuasion from the highest councils to change the people’s minds, he left immediately for Mount Pisgah to help recruit for the army. He was successful. Once Brigham made it clear that he was in support of it, over sixty men volunteered and started west for Council Bluffs. Satisfied, Brigham turned west again too. The ranks of the battalion were starting to fill, but there was still much to do.

  Brigham Young arrived back at the Missouri River late in the afternoon of Sunday, July twelfth. During his nine days’ absence the ferry ran day and night, and there was now a sizeable encampment on the western side of the Missouri River. For miles up and down the eastern bluffs, however, the numbers had not diminished but were actually greater than when he had left. With the coming of summer and the drying of the roads across Iowa, massive numbers of people were on the move. Just between Mount Pisgah and Council Bluffs alone, a distance of about 120 miles, the eastbound party led by Brigham had counted 1,805 wagons—an average of one wagon about every hundred yards! There was hardly a time on the trail now that one could look in either direction and not see at least one wagon.