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<\/a>24 July, for people who reside in Utah and for many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> worldwide, is \u201cPioneer Day.\u201d \u00a0It commemorates the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Latter-day Saint pioneers \u2014 the advance or vanguard party \u2014 into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake on 24 July 1847 after the forced expulsion of their people from Nauvoo, Illinois,<\/sup> and other (mostly adjacent) locations in the eastern United States and the roughly 70,000 other pioneers who followed them before the completion of the transcontinental railroad. \u00a0There will be parades, rodeos, fireworks (and resultant wildfires), barbecues, and other festivities in celebration of the holiday. \u00a0In Utah, many municipal and county offices, many businesses, and all state-run government offices<\/sup> will close for the day.<\/p>\n Amidst all of the busyness and activity, and particularly, perhaps, on the Sundays before and\/or after Pioneer Day, there are also sometimes occasional moments for reflection. \u00a0(I\u2019m deeply grateful, too, to the person who had the brilliant idea of reenacting \u201chandcart treks,\u201d which are now so familiar among our youth. \u00a0See, for example, \u201cChurch Historian Inspires Youth on Trek Across the Wyoming Mormon Trail:\u00a0Elder Kyle S. McKay and his wife, Jennifer, join about 150 youth on a pioneer trek experience\u201d<\/a>). With that in mind, I would like to offer a few hasty thoughts here:<\/p>\n First of all, not every Nauvoo Latter-day Saint came west. \u00a0(Some obvious examples of those who remained behind are Emma Smith, Joseph\u2019s widow, and her children; the widowed Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph and Hyrum\u2019s mother; and William Smith, the brother of the Prophet and the Patriarch.) \u00a0Many of those who remained in the Midwest and East presumably drifted away from the Restoration. \u00a0Others joined offshoots of the mainstream Church (e.g., the so-called \u201cStrangite\u201d) group or, eventually, coalesced to become, first, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and then, much more recently, the Community of Christ. \u00a0Over the past several decades, the latter has been moving (from my perspective) in the direction of a rather liberal or progressive Protestantism, which has generated still further schisms.<\/p>\n The Latter-day Saint pioneers weren\u2019t \u201crugged individualists,\u201d traveling alone and in isolation, let alone anti-social outcasts on the margins. \u00a0They set out with a plan, organized into companies.<\/a>\u00a0 They took the time to acquire or construct the wagons and the other equipment that they would need, and to think carefully through the supplies that would be required. \u00a0They traveled in society, as a community. \u00a0On more than few occasions, they paused or left somebody behind to prepare the way, to build facilities, and to plant crops for those who would follow them. \u00a0They kept careful records, not merely to satisfy later historical curiosity but to benefit any of their fellow Saints who hoped to travel the same path thereafter. \u00a0And when they finally arrived at their Great Basin goal, they were often sent out once again as organized communities to found cities and towns, not just to establish scattered homesteads.<\/p>\n From a Wikipedia entry:<\/p>\n The roadometer\u00a0was a 19th-century device like an odometer for measuring mileage, mounted on a wagon wheel. One such device was invented in 1847 by William Clayton, Orson Pratt, and Appleton Harmon, pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n Brass odometers were used by many pioneers making the westward trek in the 1840s. However, the design of Clayton, Pratt, and Harmon\u2019s odometer was new. \u00a0In 1847, William Clayton accompanied the first expedition to the Utah Territory as a writer and record-keeper. He initially counted revolutions of a wagon wheel to calculate the distance they had travelled. He tired of counting wheel revolutions and wanted a device that could measure the distance a wagon travelled. Clayton asked Orson Pratt if it would be possible to make such a device, and Pratt created the design. Harmon carved the gears out of wood and may have further refined the design. They started using the roadometer around May 12. Three hundred and sixty revolutions of the wagon wheel equaled one mile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Latter-day Saint pioneers forged their own path, in many places following their own separate trail. \u00a0Partly, of course, this was because their end-goal was different than that of the California Forty-Niners, who sought gold, or that of the folks on the Oregon trail, who sought land. \u00a0But it was also because, in some areas (e.g., in choosing the northern side of the Platte River rather than the southern side), they wished to avoid too much contact (and potential conflict) with non-Latter-day Saint wagon trains that were also moving westward.<\/p>\n Those who went West did so under the leadership of living apostles and prophets. \u00a0I see this not just as historically important for us today but as metaphorically so, just as their westward exodus can serve as a symbol of our own earthly pilgrimage through life. \u00a0(We still sing \u201cCome, Come Ye Saints\u201d today not merely as a historical tribute but as if its lyrics have meaning for our modern journeys, both individual and collective. \u00a0See this remarkable YouTube video, which moves me to tears every time I watch it.<\/a> \u00a0And others can so use it, as well. \u00a0See, for example, \u201cWhy a Black baptist church adopted \u2018Come, Come Ye Saints\u2019: \u2018It\u2019s one of our staples\u2019:\u00a0The Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, \u2018a walking history book,\u2019 requested the Latter-day Saint pioneer anthem for his pastor emeritus designation service.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n We too are led by prophets and apostles. \u00a0And if we stay with the group, not wandering off into strange paths where hostile enemies may lurk and dangerous animals may prowl, our odds of making it to \u201cthe place which God prepared\u201d will be much enhanced. \u00a0However, alas, some will not reach our destination. \u00a0The path is difficult, over plains and mountains and through great heat and bitter cold, and we sustain casualties along the way. \u00a0Sometimes, the pain of such losses is almost too much to bear<\/a>.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t all work along the way. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t always, or even often, grim. \u00a0There was music and courtship. \u00a0There were dances. \u00a0But they did make a serious effort, as much as ordinary mortals under great stress can make, to live the commandments. \u00a0They tried, for example, to keep the Sabbath Day holy.<\/p>\n Outwardly, they didn\u2019t look all that terribly different from other people who were migrating to the West, but they were the \u201cwandering camp of Israel,\u201d led in an \u201cexodus\u201d by an \u201cAmerican Moses\u201d and animated by a different spirit than many of the land-hungry farmers and gold-seekers whom they would meet on the trail.<\/p>\n Theirs is a legacy well worth considering and pondering, and not merely for those who are their literal biological descendants. \u00a0I\u2019m firmly convinced that it was the trek westward and the experience of settling the Great Basin West that formed the Latter-day Saints into something like an ethnic group (resembling the Jews in a certain way) rather than merely another religious denomination (like the Methodists and the Presbyterians).<\/p>\n The epic story of the early Restoration, the westward migration, and our history of colonizing the West give a unique texture to \u201cMormonism\u201d and to each family with that heritage, whether genetic or by adoption. \u00a0We have a history \u2014 a historical \u201cmyth,\u201d if you will (by which I don\u2019t mean a \u201cfalsehood\u201d but rather an archetypal narrative) \u2014 that is exceptional in both its nature and its content. \u00a0Decades ago, while browsing through the then-new Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups<\/em> (or whatever it was called) in a library in Cairo, I was surprised and quickly delighted to see that Latter-day Saints were listed as an \u201cethnic group,\u201d which I thought very perceptive. \u00a0Years later, Joel Kotkin took the same insight in a portion of his fascinating book Tribes<\/em> and developed it in an interesting direction.<\/p>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/a>