by Adell Harvey
“Then you’ll let me stay here?”
He fingered his beard. “Don’t know as how that’d work out. Ain’t nobody here but me, Ol’ Louie Vasquez, and them bunch of Injuns out there. Ain’t rightly no place for a woman.” He fingered his bowie knife, an angry scowl crossing his face.
“’Sides, the fort ain’t mine no more. Durned old prophet decided he didn’t want no infidel crowdin’ his territory, so’s he stole it from me year or two ago. Me and Ol’ Louie has been scoutin’ for the Army, but they ain’t got nothin’ for us to do in the winter, so’s we jest kinda holed up here, figuring no Mormonites would be coming through ‘til spring anyhow.”
Disheartened, Ingrid tried to persuade him. “I just need food for the baby and a warm place to stay. I’d be happy to help clean and cook and wash clothes.”
Bridger let out another bellow of laughter. “Wash clothes? Clean? Them things are for back in Saint Louie. Out here, we don’t need sech stuff. But I reckon we can look after you and the girl for the winter and ketch you a ride on a stage coach come spring.”
A far-away look gleamed in his eyes as he reached down to chuckle Ammie under the chin. “Kinda reminds me of my own little ‘un.”
Ingrid raised her head, moved by the emotion in his voice. “You have a daughter?”
“Not any more. My Mary Ann went with them missionaries, the Whitmans, and was taken hostage when the Cayuse killed them. She died awhile later.” He blinked back a tear, and Ingrid found herself drawn to this tough, but tender, man of the mountains. She and Ammie would be perfectly safe here.
“We’ll git ya a wet nurse from one of the Injun squaws,” he promised. “Looks like she could use a bit more feedin’.”
When the wagons rolled toward Salt Lake the next morning, Ingrid was not among the passengers. It had been much easier than she expected. Bridger simply told Captain Martin she was going to stay at the fort so the baby “could be fed proper.”
The Mormons apparently took it for granted she would be coming to Salt Lake in the spring when Andy and the other men came through from Devil’s Gate. “In a pig’s eye, I will,” she whispered to Ammie. “Those Mormons will never see either one of us again!”
True to his word, Bridger introduced Ingrid to Hanabi, a Shoshone girl who had a baby boy about the same age as Ammie. “She’s got plenty of milk for the both of ‘em, I reckon,” he said.
The days flew by swiftly and happily. Hanabi taught Ingrid much about caring for an infant. The two young women became fast friends, comparing the antics of the babies, and Ingrid spent much of her time in the tepees with the Shoshones, learning their language and customs.
The Indian women were busy from dawn until dusk, cooking, cleaning game, tanning hides, weaving canoes from bulrushes. “Tell me, don’t the men do anything but sit around and smoke?” Ingrid grumbled to Hanabi one particularly busy afternoon.
Hanabi grinned. “’Tis the way with the men,” she replied. “They do the fishing, hunting, and fighting, and we do the rest.”
“Seems a bit unfair to me,” Ingrid voiced almost absentmindedly. She motioned her head in the direction of a very old, wrinkle-faced woman who always sat silently in the door of her tepee, a look of utter despair on her face. “The old one – she never speaks and seems to never move. Who is she?”
Hanabi looked up from the skin she was tanning. “That’s Morogonai, the sad one. She’s Chief Washakie’s mother. Her husband was shot in the knee with a poisoned flint arrow while fighting with the Crow. He lived twelve moons after the battle but suffered greatly before he died.”
“How sad,” Ingrid murmured. “No wonder she seems so lonely.”
“Her life has been one of tragedy,” Hanabi continued. “Soon after her husband died, two of her sons were killed in a snow slide while they were hunting mountain sheep. It swept them into a deep gorge, where they lay under many feet of snow until the following spring. We took long sticks and pushed them down into the snow but could not find their bodies.”
Hanabi paused and glanced towards the old woman. “She isn’t well yet from her ordeal. For many days she refused to leave the canyon. She stayed there and dug in the snow hoping to find her boys. Finally, she was very near to death from sorrow and exposure, and Washakie brought her back here. She recovered from the sickness but not from the sadness.”
Ingrid felt a kindred spirit with old Morogonai, another who had suffered much. Maybe she could befriend the old woman and help relieve her awful sadness. Turning to Hanabi, she suggested, “Maybe our papooses could help cheer her up.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think anything can take away the sorrow from her eyes.” Hanabi studied Ingrid’s threadbare dress and coat, the clothing the Mormon relief party had given her. It hung from her body in ragged tatters and did little to protect her from the winter cold. In an abrupt change of subject, Hanabi jumped to her feet and said, “We’ve got to do something about your clothes before we worry about anything else.”
Ingrid looked down at her ragged garments. “I know they’re rather shabby, but the fort doesn’t carry any cloth, so I can’t make new ones.”
“We’ll take care of that,” Hanabi promised. The next afternoon, Ingrid’s friend handed her a package, smiling shyly. “Here’s your new clothes.”
Hanabi and some of her friends had made her buckskin leggings, a pair of new moccasins that came up to her knees, and what resembled a mother hubbard. The sleeves came just below her elbows and had a long fringe on the outside from the shoulder down and all around the neck. The skirt hung to her knees, and it, too, had fringe around the bottom. Beads in arrow and diamond shapes adorned the breast.
Ingrid drew in her breath. “These are the loveliest clothes I’ve ever had!” she exclaimed, feeling the soft, smoked buckskin with her hands and cheek. Impulsively, she hugged Hanabi. “Thank you so much!”
“Old Gabe,” as she had come to call Jim Bridger, took one look at her and bellowed one of his hearty laughs. “Durned if ya ain’t the whitest Injun I ever saw!”
Taking a closer look at his ward, he turned serious. “One of them thar braves may take a likin’ to ya and want ya for a wife. We’d best take care of that right now.”
He walked out to the Indian enclave and returned a few minutes later with Chief Washakie in tow. “The chief here needs somebody to look after his ma – she ain’t been well for quite a spell. She’ll be yer ma, you’ll be her daughter, and Ammie can be her grand-baby. That makes the chief yer brother, and nobody won’t bother the chief’s sister.” Old Gabe smiled hugely. “Welp! That takes care of everything, I reckon.”
Ingrid followed Chief Washakie into the wickiup where Morogonai lived. Today, she sat on a bed of buffalo robes. “Your new daughter,” he told her.
With great effort, the woman rose from the bed and approached Ingrid. She put her hand on the girl’s head and began saying something very pitiful. Ingrid couldn’t follow her rapid words but knew by the expression in the old woman’s eyes that she was accepting her.
The old grandmother motioned that she wanted to hold Ammie. Ingrid held the baby out to her. With a sob, the woman cried, “Ke kudjawaia! ke kudjawaia!” (My girl, my girl!)
Ingrid’s heart went out to the dear old woman. “You’ll be my Ma,” she said. “May I call you Ma?”
The woman broke into a beatific smile. Pointing to herself, she said, “Ma. Your Ma.”
While old Morogonai cuddled the young Ammie, Ingrid helped Washakie’s wife prepare the evening meal. Fried sage-chicken, dried meat, and fresh service berries seemed like a feast to the girl who had so recently been at the point of total starvation. How good it tasted, and how good it was to be among friends!
Morogonai began to talk, telling about her life, speaking slowly so Ingrid could understand. She said her father was a Shoshone and her mother a Bannock. She was now sixty-two summers old and had four children, three boys and a girl. The girl was killed by a grizzly bear; her two youngest boys were killed in a snow slide.
All she had left was Washakie, who at 27 summers was very young to be a chief. And now, she also had Ingrid and Ammie. How very happy she was to be given a new daughter!
Washakie’s wife, Yaiabi, laughed while she stirred the soup. “The old one, her tongue is loosened. You will be good for her.”
Washakie, looking up from his meal, agreed. “Ibi tsi djant. ” (Very good)
Ingrid smiled. Life was beginning to look brighter for all of them.
The days fell into a routine, with Ingrid spending more and more time in Morogonai’s wickiup. She grew to love the old woman, who continued to teach her the Shoshone language. She marveled at Morogonai’s wisdom in dealing with Ammie; she always knew exactly how to quiet the baby and how to heal her minor sniffles and tummy aches. When Ammie grew fussy and feverish, Morogonai felt knowingly in her mouth. “Teeth,” she proclaimed and gave the baby an onion bulb to chew.
The hunters found what seemed to be an endless supply of fresh meat and fish, a fact that helped Ingrid’s thin body begin to fill out to its former sturdy proportions. “If I get any fatter, you’ll have to let out the seams in my buckskins,” she jokingly told Hanabi.
“Lean times will come again,” Hanabi declared, almost prophetically. “There are always the lean times.”
Chapter 12
AS WINTER began to depart, the Shoshones busied themselves preparing to move to their spring hunting grounds. Ingrid worked along with them, always spending as much time with Morogonai as possible.
Over these months, the old woman had become like a real mother to her, or perhaps a grandmother, filling a void Ingrid had felt but not acknowledged, even to herself.
“Your white mother, what was she like?” Morogonai often asked, seeming to delight in Ingrid’s tales of far-off Denmark. “Do you miss her very much?”
“Yes, I think of her often,” Ingrid admitted. Hugging the old woman, she assured her, “But you’re my Ma now.”
A broad smile played across Morogonai’s features, lighting her eyes with happiness. “Then you will stay with me?” she asked. “You do not want to return to your people?”
Startled, Ingrid paused. She hadn’t considered living forever with the Indians. In her mind, they had simply been a safe haven until she could determine where she and Ammie would settle. On the other hand, life in the Shoshone village outside the fort had been pleasant, and baby Ammie was growing into a healthy, happy little girl.
She was spared from making a decision by a shout from Old Gabe, “Hide yerself, thar’s Mormonites acomin’!”
A cold chill raced down her spine and a look of utter terror crossed her face. “Quick!” Morogonai ordered. “In here.” She led Ingrid into Chief Washakie’s tepee and dropped the flap. “They won’t come into the Chief’s tepee” she whispered, gently stroking Ingrid’s back in an effort to calm her nerves.
After what seemed an eternity of endless waiting in the darkened tepee, Ingrid heard footsteps approaching and cowered in fear. “Please, God, don’t let them take me,” she begged softly.
The flap flung open, and Old Gabe appeared in the opening. “It’s okay. You can come out now. They’s a bunch of apostates on the run from Salt Lake themselves, Danes like yerself. After a while, I figgered we could trust ‘em, and so I told ‘em about you. They’ve even offered to take you back east with them. You’re gonna be okay!”
A crazy mixture of hope and fear surged through Ingrid. “Are you sure it’s not a trap? They’re not after me?”
Old Gabe chuckled. “Would I tell ya an untrue, gal? They’s got about eighteen wagons, each drawn by eight oxen. Don’t reckon they’d send a contingent like that to capture one little gal and a baby, now would they?”
Ingrid still wasn’t completely convinced, but Old Gabe’s next words sent her bounding from the tepee. “One of them sez he knows you from back in Denmark and wants to take ya back there. Sez his name is John Ahmanson.”
“Brother Ahmanson!” Ingrid ran toward the approaching Dane, her arms outstretched in welcome. “Oh, I’m that glad to see you!”
The older man held her at arm’s length away from him, appraising her as if to check the state of her health. “Thank the Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “When you didn’t come into Salt Lake with the rest of the Martin party, we thought you were one of the many who had died at Devil’s Gate.”
The mere mention of Devil’s Gate stirred memories deep within her, memories she had deliberately buried all winter. “The others,” she asked tentatively. “Did they make it safely?”
Brother Ahmanson looked down at the ground, but not before Ingrid caught the fleeting sadness in his eyes. “About half of our original party made it into the valley on December 9th, much the worse for our ordeals. Martin’s Handcart Company arrived in Salt Lake on the seventeenth of December in a condition even worse than our own, if that’s possible.”
His voice took on a harshness that was inconsistent with the loving teacher Ingrid had known previously. “We came to a halt just in front of the palace of Brigham Young, but the prophet did not honor us with a personal visit; he was ashamed to look upon our miserable and wretched condition, the result of his own shortsighted and ill-conceived plan.”
Ingrid was baffled by this apparent change in her friend and former mentor. What had happened to his devout faith, his absolute unswerving loyalty to the prophet and the Saints?
Ahmanson continued to talk of the horrors of the “Promised Land” as he led her to the wagon he and his wife shared. “Please join us for our noon meal,” Sister Ahmanson invited. “We have so many things to tell you.”
“I feel in a large part responsible for your joining the Saints,” Brother Ahmanson began, “and therefore, I must warn you of what lies ahead if you go to Salt Lake.”
Ingrid gave him a startled look. “But I have no plans to go to Salt Lake. Didn’t Mr. Bridger explain to you that I’ve been hiding here at the fort, waiting a chance to escape?”
Both Ahmansons sighed audibly, sighs of great relief. “He mentioned you were here, but I don’t think he fully trusted us enough to tell us everything. A wise decision, no doubt, to have caution in times such as these.”
Ingrid briefly shared her own spiritual turbulence that had helped formulate her decision not to become a Mormon. In a hushed voice, she asked, “Is it really as bad in Deseret as they tell me?”
“I don’t know what all you’ve heard, but it’s worse than anything I could have imagined.” Brother Ahmanson bowed his head, almost in shame. “And to think of all the unsuspecting souls I lured into coming here!”
“We were billeted in the third district in the city, the so-called Danish District. Pottemager Jensen, from Horsholm in Denmark, was first adviser to the bishop, an honest man and highly regarded by all of us. Despite harsh intolerance, our district abounded with Danish heartiness and hospitality, mostly due to Pottemager’s influence.”
Ingrid listened intently, her heart yearning for some of that “Danish heartiness and hospitality.” The homesickness she had buried deep inside was rushing to the surface in the presence of her fellow Danes.
“Not all the leaders looked down on us,” Sister Ahmanson interjected. “Remember that sermon Apostle Lorenzo Snow preached in the Tabernacle?”
Brother Ahmanson nodded. “He counseled the Saints not to ‘turn their backs and look the other way’ when they met one of the new arrivals and now helpless emigrants from Europe. He reminded them that the missionaries in their own time had received hospitality abroad from these poor people, and so now it was befitting for them to show a more active sympathy toward us.”
He paused, remembering. “For us, Apostle Snow’s speech was a little ray of light in the dark Mormon sky, but it was soon extinguished like a falling star. Another apostle stepped forward and explained in a very commanding tone that there was not to be found anything such as sympathy in Mormonism! There was only ‘duty and obedience!’”
The Ahmansons continued to share their horror stories with Ingrid,
stories of murders, thievery, and the outlandish excesses of Brigham Young. “Worst, however,” Brother Ahmanson continued, “was the utter disregard for the Bible. From a spiritual standpoint, Salt Lake is an empty desert in which the spirit and teachings of Christ have no dwelling place. Many of the folk there consider Brigham Young as God!” He shook his head, almost as if he found it difficult to believe his own words.
“There are thousands of our compatriots living in Utah who because of the language factor alone are not only ignorant about Mormonism and its history in general, but also about the unnatural and criminal obligations that they have entered into in the ‘Endowment House.’” His voice took on a tone of terrible sadness and regret, near trembling as he spoke. “And I’m partly responsible for them being in that awful place!”
His wife placed her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Turning to Ingrid, she explained, “That’s why we had to escape. John plans to go back to the Faedrelandet (fatherland) and write a book exposing the naked and unreserved truth about Mormonism.”
John nodded. “It’s the only way I know to make amends for my folly. Even though the truth may be bitter and disappointing for many, it is the only sure means of leading these misguided, but honest and upright people out of the shameful slavery of the Saints and back to the kind and humanitarian teachings of Christ.”
“We originally determined to leave Utah in company with several compatriots and go to California,” Sister Ahmanson said. “But because of the fearsome threats that were constantly uttered in the Tabernacle and the meetinghouses, our decision was altered, and we decided to travel back to the eastern States in company with the larger groups that were gathered in Salt Lake City and organized for mutual security.”
Brother Ahmanson gave Ingrid an imploring look. “Please return to the States with us. We secured passage on this merchant train with Mr. Fernandes from Weston, Missouri, so I can assure you of safety.”
Ingrid’s heart leaped with hope. But still there was the matter of income. “I have no funds, nothing left to sell to secure return passage to Denmark.”