George A. Smith

“ The Latter-day Saints have built commodious school-houses in every ward of the various cities and through all the settlements of the Territory. They have done all they could to promote education, but they have received no assistance from any source on earth. Almost every newly settled country has received certain donations in land and money to aid them in support of their schools, but in this Territory we have never received a cent. The money that has been expended for the furtherance of education in this Territory has been by the voluntary will of the parents. ”

“ The result was that about fifteen thousand persons were expelled from Missouri and their property, to most of which they still hold the titles; and when the day arrives that the Constitution of the United States becomes absolutely the supreme law of the land, so that all men can be protected in their civil and religious rights, they and their children will go back and enjoy their cherished homes in the State of Missouri. ”

“ The city of Nauvoo and vicinity had probably about 20,000 inhabitants. They were remarkable for their industry, and the city was conspicuous for peace, quietness and good order, and for the rapid manner in which improvements had been made. They continued to build up the city though they were constantly harassed by mob violence, and warned from time to time that they should be driven away. ”

“ From this county the Saints were driven to Clay county, and most of them remained there about three years, during which time they performed a great amount of labor for the people of Clay county, for the inhabitants were mostly new settlers who possessed nothing seemingly in the way of property save Indian corn, hogs and cattle. They hired the Saints to labor, who made brick, built fine houses, and enlarged their farms, erected mills, and, in fact, acquired considerable property by industry in laboring for the people in Clay county. ”

“ But it is my opinion to-day that had Congress been as liberal with us as with Oregon, and had given 640 or 320 acres of land to each, it might have hindered our progress under the circumstances. Most of our farmers cultivate from five to thirty acres of land, very few of them cultivating forty; and it requires tolerably good Saints not to quarrel about the water while irrigating in a dry time even on small tracts of land close together ”

“ We have struggled with all our power and might to maintain that morality and uprightness which pertain to the kingdom of God, and to place all men and all women in that high position which God designs them to occupy, and to prevent them being led astray by the immoral tendencies which are abroad in the world ”

“ Previous to the death of Joseph Smith, he had selected twenty-five men—most of whom now reside here—to explore the Rocky Mountains, with the view of finding a place where they could make a location that would be out of the range and beyond the influence of mobs, where they could enjoy the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution of our common country. ”

“ The mob of Jackson county endeavored to stir up the people of Clay against the Saints, which culminated in a request on the part of the people of Clay that the Latter-day Saints would leave. They accordingly hunted out a new county without inhabitants and almost without timber, called Caldwell county, and moved into it, purchasing land and occupying it, of which they were the sole inhabitants. ”

“ They encamped at Winter Quarters, the place now called Florence, in the Omaha country, where they built 700 log cabins and 150 caves or dug-outs, in which a great number of the people resided through the winter. Some two thousand wagons were scattered about in the Pottawattamie country, on the east side of the Missouri—a country then uninhabited except by Indians—which, by a treaty of purchase, came into the possession of the United States the ensuing spring. ”

“ We have done all in our power to hurry it on. Many looked on it at the time, and since, as if it were work for a hundred years; but the work is completed, and men can come from the States in a few hours. When I came here with my family, in 1849, I was one hundred and five days driving oxen from the Missouri river across the Plains to this place. Now a man can come with his family in a few days. ”

“ The Saints also commenced the culture of fruit, and although they came there with little means, the heads of families were generally able to buy from forty acres to a section of land, and in a few months, by their untiring industry, they began to prosper and flourish in a manner almost astonishing. ”

“ The result was we were troubled with expensive Indian wars, caused by the acts, not of our own people, but of those over whom we had no control, and in some instances through the acts of men who would rather entail trouble upon us than not. ”

“ At first they purchased, in the East, cattle and wagons necessary to bring the emigrants here; but in a few years they raised cattle here, and sent their teams to the Missouri river year after year, sometimes two hundred and sometimes three hundred, and they have sent as many as five hundred teams, for several successive seasons—a team being four yoke of oxen (or their equivalent in horses and mules) , a wagon, a teamster, also the necessary officers and night guard for each company of fifty wagons. ”

“ This location is so high in the mountains, the latitude about 41° and the altitude so great that nearly every one thought it was impossible to raise fruit, but some continued to plant. In the second year of their arrival here their settlement was increased by nearly a thousand wagons from the East and a few from the West. The third year the immigration continued. In 1849 a handsome sum of money was contributed as a foundation for the Perpetual Emigration Fund, and Bishop Edward Hunter went East to aid those to emigrate who could not do so by their own means. ”