Devil's Gate

by David Roberts

  Willie and Elder found the signboard and veered up Willow Creek to Grant’s camp. The meeting was joyous. “When they saw us,” wrote Elder, “they raised a shout and ran out to meet us…. They could scarcely give us time to tell our story, they were so anxious to hear all about us.” Church historian Andrew Olsen takes the measure of Cluff’s vital act:

  His sign was the means of salvation not only for James Willie and Joseph Elder but perhaps also for the Willie company. Had James Willie and Joseph Elder bypassed the camp, the rescuers might have stayed there another two or three days while awaiting better weather…. [T]he Willie company would have been three or four days without a particle of food.

  Meanwhile, back at the sixth crossing camp, the Willie Saints sank into despair, for they, too, had anticipated an early connection with the rescue team that the four scouts had told them was not far to the west. John Chislett, who had been put in charge of the company’s virtually empty commissary, later conjured up the woeful scene:

  The scanty allowance of hard bread and poor beef…was mostly consumed the first day by the hungry, ravenous, famished souls….

  During that time I visited the sick, the widows whose husbands died in serving them, and the aged who could not help themselves, to know for myself where to dispense the few articles that had been placed in my charge for distribution. Such craving hunger I never saw before, and may God in his mercy spare me the sight again.

  As I was seen giving these things to the most needy, crowds of famished men and women surrounded me and begged for bread! Men whom I had known all the way from Liverpool, who had been true as steel in every stage of our journey, who in their homes in England and Scotland had never known want; men who by honest labour had sustained themselves and their families, and saved enough to cross the Atlantic and traverse the United States, whose hearts were cast in too great a mould to descend to a mean act or brook dishonour; such men as these came to me and begged bread. I felt humbled to the dust for my race and nation.

  Chislett records the momentous return of Willie and Elder with Grant’s rescue train:

  On the evening of the third day after Captain Willie’s departure, just as the sun was sinking beautifully behind the distant hills, on an eminence immediately west of our camp several covered wagons, each drawn by four horses, were seen coming towards us. The news ran through the camp like wildfire, and all who were able to leave their beds turned out en masse to see them…. Shouts of joy rent the air; strong men wept till tears ran freely down their furrowed and sun-burnt cheeks, and little children partook of the joy which some of them hardly understood, and fairly danced around with gladness.

  The myth that has come down to present-day Mormons who are aware only of the general outlines of the handcart story is that the rescuers saved the Willie party. Even historians succumb to this simplifying temptation, as, for instance, do LeRoy and Ann Hafen in Handcarts to Zion, titling a section of the relevant chapter “Willie’s Company Carried to Safety.”

  To be sure, the rescuers made a monumental difference. Without their help, it is possible that nearly all the members of the Willie Company might have died. Yet the inescapably tragic fact is that for many, the rescue came too late. More Saints in both the Willie and Martin Companies died after the rescuers reached them than during all the previous weeks of their trek from Iowa City to western Wyoming.

  Daniel Jones, the former mountain man in the rescue party, recognized this fact the moment he rode into the Willie Company camp at the sixth crossing:

  On arriving we found them in a condition that would stir the feelings of the hardest heart. They were in a poor place, the storm having caught them where fuel was scarce. They were out of provisions and really freezing and starving to death. The morning after our arrival nine were buried in one grave. We did all we could to relieve them. The boys struck out on horseback and dragged up a lot of wood; provisions were distributed and all went to work to cheer the sufferers. Soon there was an improvement in camp, but many poor, faithful people had gone too far—had passed beyond the power to recruit. Our help came too late for some and many died after our arrival.

  Only now did Grant’s rescue team learn that the Martin Company—larger in numbers than the Willie party, and no doubt in an even more desperate situation—lagged far behind the emigrants whom the team had found so wretchedly camped at the sixth crossing. Captain Willie could tell Grant nothing about the whereabouts or condition of the Martin Company, for Willie and Martin Saints had last overlapped during a single week in July, in Iowa City. All that Willie could say was that Martin’s party must be straggling along somewhere to the east of the sixth crossing. And somewhere out there to the east must be the Hunt and Hodgetts wagon teams, as well. (In fact, at the moment, stranded in snow under Red Buttes, the Martin Saints were camped almost exactly a hundred miles to the east.)

  Grant now performed a kind of triage: he left six wagons for the Willie Company, whom he put under the charge of William Kimball, to try to rally the ill and exhausted and carry them forward to Zion. With the bulk of his team, he forged on eastward along the trail to look for the Martin Company. Grant knew that in his wake, other teams out of Salt Lake must be coming, potential reinforcements to help pull the Willie Company to its ultimate destination.

  Kimball, of course, was the official who had bragged in Florence about eating all the snow that should fall on the handcarters’ path between there and Utah. He was despised by some within the Willie Company. In John Ahmanson’s private memoir, not published in English until 1984, he sardonically referred to Kimball as “the snow prophet.”

  The first few days of that forced march under Kimball’s leadership would prove to be the Willie Company’s calvary. In his journal, Levi Savage glumly recorded,

  We traviled about 10 miles and camped at the foot of what is called the Rocky Ridge. I had charge of the teams; because of their reduced Strength, and heavy loads,—a large number of Sick, and Children were in the Wagons—I did not arive in camp until late at night. The wind blew bleek and colde, and fire wood very scarse. The Saints were obliged to Spread their light beding on the Snow, and in this colde State, endeavored to obtain a litle rest. Sister Philpot died about 10 oclock P.M. leaving two Fatherless girls, also Several others died during the night.

  If the haul to the base of Rocky Ridge was bad enough, the ascent of that naked series of swales on October 23 would try the party to its very limits. Savage, again, in his longest journal entry in more than a month:

  This was a Severe day. The wind blew awful hard, and colde. The ascent was some five miles long, and Some places, Steep and covered with deep Snow. We became we[a]ry, Set down to rest, and Some become chilled, and commenced to frieze, Brothers Atwood; Woodard; and myself; remained with the teams, they being porfer loaded down with the Sick, and children. So thickly Stoed, I was fearful, some would Smuther. About 10 or 11 oclock in the night, we came to a creek that, we did not like to attempt to cross without help, the [creek] being ful of ice and freezing colde. Leaving Bros Atwood; and Wooderd with the teams, I started to the camp for help; I met Bro Willey coming to look for us, he turned for the camp as he could do no good a loan. I passed Several on the road, and arived in camp after about four miles travel. I arived in Camp; but few tents were pitched, and men, women, and Children Sit shivering with colde around their Small fires. Some time alapsed when two teams Started to bring up the rear; Just before daylight they returned, bringing all with them, Some badly frozen; Some dying, and Some dead. It was certainly heartrending to hear Children crying for mothers, and mothers, crying for Childrin. By the time I got them, as Comfortably Situated as circumstances could admit. (which was not very comfortable) day was dawning. I had not Shut my eyes for sleep, nor lain down. I was nearly exhosted with fatigue, and want of rest.

  Two days later, Savage would find himself too worn out to continue keeping the diary he had written faithfully since the start of the trek. Its last entry, dated October 25 but written after the journe
y, sums up the final two weeks of the ordeal in the pithy formula, “Nothing of much note transpired excepte the people ded daily.”

  Other Saints vividly remembered Rocky Ridge for the rest of their lives. Michael Jensen, only eleven at the time, later recalled,

  My father was very weak from lack of food and so the men in charge of the wagons fastened our handcart to one of the wagons and told father to hang onto the wagon. He was walking between our handcart and the wagon when he slipped and fell, and before anyone could reach him, the handcart had passed over him as he lay on the ground. They picked him up and put him into the wagon and we went on until dark and then camped for the night. Sometime during that night my father died and next morning they buried him beside the road.

  As usual, John Chislett had the most comprehensive view of that terrible traverse:

  The day we crossed Rocky Ridge it was snowing a little—the wind hard from the north-west—and blowing so keenly that it almost pierced us through. We had to wrap ourselves closely in blankets, quilts, or whatever else we could get, to keep from freezing…. The ascent of the ridge commenced soon after leaving camp, and I had not gone far up it before I overtook a cart that the folks could not pull through the snow, here about knee-deep. I helped them along, and we soon overtook another. By all hands getting to one cart we could travel, so we moved one of the carts a few rods, and then went back and brought up the other.

  Through a superhuman effort, Chislett rallied perhaps a dozen Saints who would have otherwise given up and died, helping pull their carts and even supporting them bodily until they reached the summit. From there, he remembered, the carts “trotted on gaily down hill.” Chislett’s entourage caught up with the ox-drawn wagons, “all so laden with the sick and helpless that they moved very slowly.”

  On the far side of Rocky Ridge, however, the emigrants ran into a stream that was newly frozen over. The oxen could not be forced across it: “No amount of shouting and whipping could induce them to stir an inch.” By now, despite Kimball and Willie’s leadership, the company was stretched out across miles of terrain, and it was growing dark. Trying to rally the stragglers, Chislett finally went ahead to locate the camp. He reached it only at 11:00 P.M., where he roused other strong-bodied Saints to go back and gather up the weakest pioneers. “It was 5 A.M.,” remembered Chislett, “before the last team reached camp.”

  Trail historians argue to this day about the location of this camp. Most place it on Rock Creek, but others believe the company reached Willow Creek, a little more than two miles farther west, and reoccupied the site where Grant’s party had stalled on October 19. In any event, whatever its true location, that camp would witness the single most devastating episode in the Willie Company’s long ordeal.

  William Woodward, in the official journal entry for October 24, summed up the toll that crossing Rocky Ridge had taken in his usual laconic register-book fashion:

  It was concluded to stay in camp today & bury the dead as there were 13 persons to inter. William James, from Pershore, Worcestershire, England, aged 46 died; Elizabeth Bailey, from Leigh, Worcestrshire, England, aged 52 died; James Kirkwood from Glasgow, Scotland, aged 11 died Samuel Gadd, from Orwell, Cambridgeshire, England, aged 10 died; Lars Wendin, from Copenhagen, Denmark, aged 60 died; Anne Olsen, from Seeland, Denmark, aged 46 died; Ella Nilson, from Jutland, Denmark, aged 22 years, died; Jens Nilson, from Lolland, Denmark, aged 6 years died; Bodil Mortinsen from Lolland, Denmark, aged 9 years, died; Nils Anderson from Seeland, Denmark, aged 41 years died; Ole Madsen from Seeland, Denmark, aged 41 years died; Many of the Saints have their feet & hands frozen from the severity of the weather.

  Chislett described the mass grave and the ceremony of interment:

  We had a large square hole dug in which we buried these thirteen people, three or four abreast and three deep. When they did not fit in, we put one or two crosswise at the head or feet of the others. We covered them with willows and then with earth. When we buried these thirteen people some of their relatives refused to attend the services. They manifested an utter indifference about it.

  Only seven years old at the time, Mary Hurren remembered being hoisted to the shoulder of one of the men to observe the burial. Nineteen-year-old Robert Reeder explained the purpose of that deed: “My brother-in-law James Hurren held out his [seven]-year old girl Mary to see her playmate lying among the dead. They were laid in the clothes they wore, in a circle with feet to the center and heads out. We covered them with willows and then earth and slid rocks down the hill to keep the wolves from disturbing them.” Reeder further remembered, “Two of the men who helped dig the grave died and were buried in another near by.”

  In addition to the fifteen dead, according to eleven-year-old Mettie Mortensen, “A big strong looking Sweedish woman who was in our tent, lost her mind.” Yet Mettie’s most indelible memory of that grim day was a testament to her insatiable hunger: “The thing I regret most in all that terrible time was, taking a piece of bread from a dead womans pocket. She was a woman I had walked with day after day and I knew she had this bread she had not eaten.”

  Despite the intercession of Grant’s rescue team, with its bounteous supply of provisions, and despite the arrival on October 24 of a second rescue team—six wagons under the command of Reddick Allred—on Rock (or Willow) Creek, fifteen men, women, and children died in a single night and day. It is a powerful testimony to how memory reshapes events that several of the Willie Saints later wrote about the crossing of Rocky Ridge and the mass interment in camp the next day as if both had happened before the arrival of Grant’s rescue team. Whatever aid and sustenance Kimball, Allred, and the other men with the rescue wagons were able to render, it was not enough to save those fifteen.

  And according to Chislett, the burial failed to serve its lasting purpose. “I learned afterwards,” he later wrote, “from men who passed that way the next summer, that the wolves had exhumed the bodies, and their bones were scattered thickly around the vicinity.”

  On October 25, the company started in motion once again. For the first time in weeks, the Saints now received a ration of a full pound of flour per adult. Yet from that date on, according to Chislett, “two or three died every day.” Woodward’s official journal records the seesaw swing of health and illness through the following week. On the 25th he recorded the deaths of four more men, ranging in age from twenty-two to sixty-five. Three days later, he wrote, “Weather fine. Saints improving in health.” But two days after that, “Many persons were sick & it was late before they were in camp.” On November 2, he observed that the captain himself had become crippled: “Bro. Willie’s feet were in such a bad condition from frost that he was unable to walk to the Camp; a wagon was sent for him.”

  On top of all their other miseries, the Willie Company Saints had become infested with lice: “We were dirty & Lousy,” Woodward remembered fifty-one years later, though he never mentioned the fact in the official journal. “Body lice by the hundreds were on our people.”

  During these days of dogged progress, despite the aid of increasing numbers of wagons sent out from Salt Lake, most of the Saints still pushed and pulled their handcarts. There were small moments of kindness and cruelty, the one sometimes masquerading as the other. Years later, the eleven-year-old Danish boy, Michael Jensen, would remember that after his father had died,

  Mother sat on a large kettle turned upside down weeping bitterly, I and [nine-year-old brother] Anthony stood beside her not knowing what to do. One of the men who was helping to manage the company came along just then and he had a walking stick in his hand. He struck Mother across the back with his stick and said in a sharp voice, “Get up and go on, you cannot sit here crying. We have to go at once or we will all die.” Oh, how I wished I were a man so I could fight for my mother! I never forgave this man…. Now in my late years as I look back, I see things more clearly and I see that sternness was our only salvation and the only thing we could stand as it roused us from our misery and had the leaders allowe
d us to grieve we could not have endured the hardships left to us when we had to go on alone.

  Also years later, Agnes Caldwell, nine at the time, recounted the parable of her salvation:

  When the wagons started out, a number of us children decided to see how long we could keep up with the wagons, in hopes of being asked to ride. At least that is what my great hope was. One by one they all fell out, until I was the last one remaining, so determined was I that I should get a ride. After what seemed the longest run I ever made before or since, the driver, who was [William] Kimball, called to me, “Say, sissy, would you like a ride?” I answered in my very best manner, “Yes sir.” At this he reached over, taking my hand, clucking to his horses to make me run, with legs that seemed to me could run no farther. On we went, to what to me seemed miles. What went through my head at that time was that he was the meanest man that ever lived or that I had ever heard of, and other things that would not be a credit nor would it look well coming from one so young. Just at what seemed the breaking point, he stopped. Taking a blanket, he wrapped me up and lay me in the bottom of the wagon, warm and comfortable. Here I had time to change my mind, as I surely did, knowing full well by doing this he saved me from freezing when taken into the wagon.

  During these onerous days, John Ahmanson, the Danish sub-captain who would later apostatize, came to hate the handcarts, which he later referred to as “two-wheeled man-tormentors” and “two-wheeled infernal machines invented by Brigham Young.” He also remembered the cold treatment of a fellow countryman meted out by, of all people, Levi Savage: