It is that time of year again when in Utah we have a state holiday and honor the "firsts" to the Salt Lake Valley. Every July 24th we "remember".
Here are the Utah Pioneer Lines of the Mark and Cyndy Weiss Family.
So have a great 24th of July-Pioneer Day Celebration. Indeed we stand on the shoulders of giants.
The
thousands of faithful, unsung Saints who endured the rigors of the
westward trek and colonization left us a spiritual heritage to treasure.
======
In
1947, the centennial of the arrival of Latter-day Saint pioneers in the
Salt Lake Valley, many tributes were paid to those who set their faces
toward Zion and wore out their lives in pursuit of that spiritual
homeland. One of the most poignant of those tributes was voiced by
President J. Reuben Clark Jr., First Counselor in the First Presidency,
in a general conference address Sunday, 5 October 1947. That address is
now reprinted in tribute to those early pioneer Saints as well as to the
millions of Saints today who trek across plains of personal trial and
deserts of worldly perils toward their spiritual homeland.
My
brethren and sisters, I should like in the beginning to add my
testimony to the many that we have heard during this conference—my
testimony that God lives; that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of the
World, the First Fruits of the Resurrection; that Joseph Smith was a
prophet; that through him the gospel was restored and likewise the
priesthood, the authority delegated to man on earth to represent Deity
here among us; and that the Prophet has been followed down to and
including our present president, George Albert Smith, by men who
possessed the keys of the last dispensation as conferred upon Joseph
Smith.
The
matter that I shall give you today is very dear to my soul. Since I
should like to say what I have to say in the best way I can say it, I
have written it down and shall read it. I hope that what I shall say
will be in harmony with the spirit of this great conference—I think the
greatest I have attended in its high spiritual tone.
At
the near close of this one hundredth year of the entering into these
valleys of your fathers and your mothers, some of yours and mine, I wish
to speak a few further words of humble tribute and thanksgiving to
them, and especially to the meekest and lowliest of them, those great
souls, majestic in the simplicity of their faith and in their living
testimony of the truth of the restored gospel, to those souls in name
unknown, unremembered, unhonored in the pages of history, but lovingly
revered round the hearthstones of their children and their children’s
children who pass down from generation to generation the story of their
faith and their mighty works, and the righteousness of their lives and
living, those souls who worked and worked, and prayed and followed, and
wrought so gloriously.
I
would not take away one word of praise or gratitude, honor or reverence
from the great men who led these humble ones of ours. They were mighty
men in brain and brawn, in courage and valor, in honesty and in love of
truth, living near the Lord—Brothers Brigham and Heber and Wilford and
Willard and Charles, the two Orsons and Parley and John and George and
Erastus and Lorenzo and Daniel and Joseph and Jedediah, and a host of
other giants, each and all richly blessed with the Lord’s divine love
and with that gift of the Holy Ghost that made them leaders truly like
unto Moses of old. I yield, we yield, to no one in our gratitude for
them and for their work of directing the conquest of the wilderness and
of saving men’s souls. Their names shine lustrously on those pages of
history which record only the doings of the makers of epochs—those
choice spirits, chosen before the foundation of the world, to be the
leaders and builders of dispensations of God’s dealings with men; and
these leaders of ours to be the builders of that dispensation which of
old was named the “dispensation of the fulness of time[s]” [
Eph. 1:10;
D&C 112:30]. Unnumbered eternities will remember and honor them.
But
I should like now and here to say a few words about those who trod
after where those giants led, some in the same companies that the
Brethren piloted, some in later companies following that year and the
years after, some in the fateful handcarts, with their unexcelled
devotion, heroism, and faith, all trickling forward in a never-failing,
tiny stream, till they filled the valley they entered and then flowed
out at the sides and ends, peopling this whole wilderness-waste which
they fructified, making it to fulfill the ancient prophecy that the
desert should blossom as the rose.
I
would like to say something about the last wagon in each of the long
wagon trains that toiled slowly over the plains, up mountain defiles,
down steep, narrow canyons, and out into the valley floor that was to be
home—this last wagon: last, because the ox team that pulled it was the
smallest and leanest and weakest, and had the tenderest feet of any in
the train; it was slow starting, and slow moving; last, because, worn
and creaking, it took more time to fix and to grease, for young Jimmy
generally had trouble in getting the wagon jack under the “ex” [the
point where a shaft called the “reach” crosses the axle]; last, because
its wind-rent cover was old and patched and took hours to mend and tie
up to keep out the storm; last, because the wife, heavy with child, must
rest till the very moment of starting; last, because sickly little
Bill, the last born, poorly nourished, must be washed and coaxed to eat
the rough food, all they had; last, because with all his tasks—helping
little Bill, cooking and cleaning up the breakfast (Mother was not able
to help much)—Father took a little longer to yoke his cattle and to gird
himself for the day’s labor; last, because his morning prayers took a
few more minutes than the others spent—he had so many blessings to thank
the Lord for and some special blessings to ask the Lord to grant,
blessings of health and strength, especially for his wife, and for
little Bill, and for the rest, and then the blessings for himself that
his own courage would not fail, but most of all for the blessing of
faith, faith in God and in the Brethren who sometimes seemed so far
away. For they were out in front where the air was clear and clean and
where they had unbroken vision of the blue vault of heaven. The Brethren
had really visioned the glory of the Lord, who walked near them, put
his thoughts into their minds; his Spirit guided and directed them,
petitioned thereto by the thousands of Saints who were back in Winter
Quarters, back in Iowa, back in the States, and beyond, even across the
waters, for the faithful poured out their souls in fervent prayer to
Almighty God that the Brethren should be inspired. The Saints buoyed up
the Brethren out in front with encouragement, with praise, and sometimes
even with adulation. Knowing the Brethren were prophets of God, the
Saints gave them full confidence, daily, almost hourly, expressed. The
Brethren lived in a world of commendation from friends and the tried and
true Saints. Rarely was their word or their act questioned by the
faithful Saints. This was as it should be and had to be to carry out the
Lord’s purposes.
But
back in the last wagon, not always could they see the Brethren way out
in front, and the blue heaven was often shut out from their sight by
heavy, dense clouds of the dust of the earth. Yet day after day, they of
the last wagon pressed forward, worn and tired, footsore, sometimes
almost disheartened, borne up by their faith that God loved them, that
the restored gospel was true, and that the Lord led and directed the
Brethren out in front. Sometimes, they in the last wagon glimpsed, for
an instant, when faith surged strongest, the glories of a celestial
world, but it seemed so far away and the vision so quickly vanished
because want and weariness and heartache and sometimes discouragement
were always pressing so near.
When
the vision faded, their hearts sank. But they prayed again and pushed
on, with little praise, with not too much encouragement, and never with
adulation. For there was nearly always something wrong with the last
wagon or with its team—the off ox was a little lame in the right front
shoulder; the hub of the left front wheel was often hot; the tire of the
hind wheel on the same side was loose. So corrective counsel, sometimes
strong reproof, was the rule, because the wagon must not delay the
whole train. But yet in that last wagon there was devotion and loyalty
and integrity, and above and beyond everything else, faith in the
Brethren and in God’s power and goodness. For had not the Lord said that
not even a sparrow fall[s] unnoticed by the Father [see
Matt. 10:29],
and were they not of more value than sparrows? And then they had their
testimony, burning always like an eternal fire on a holy altar, that the
restored gospel was true, that Joseph was a prophet of God, and that
Brigham was Joseph’s chosen successor.
When
the train moved forward in the early morning sun and the oxen with a
swinging pull that almost broke the tongue got the last wagon on the
move, the dust in the still morning air hung heavy over the road. Each
wagon from the first stirred up its own cloud, till when the last wagon
swung into line, the dust was dense and suffocating. It covered that
last wagon and all that was in it; it clung to clothes; it blackened
faces; it filled eyes already sore, and ears. The wife, soon to be a
mother, could hardly catch her breath in the heavy, choking dust, for
even in the pure air she breathed hard from her burden. Each jolt of the
wagon, for those ahead had made wagon ruts almost “ex” deep, wrung from
her clenched lips a half-groan she did her best to keep from the ears
of the anxious, solicitous husband plodding slowly along, guiding and
goading the poor, dumb cattle, themselves weary from the long trek. So
through the long day of jolting and discomfort and sometimes pain, and
sometimes panting for breath, the mother, anxious only that the unborn
babe should not be injured, rode, for she could not walk; and the
children walked, for the load was too heavy and big for them to ride;
and the father walked sturdily alongside and prayed.
When
in the evening the last wagon creaked slowly into its place in the
circle corral and the Brethren came to inquire how the day had gone with
the mother, then joy leaped in their hearts, for had not the Brethren
remembered them? New hope was born, weariness fled, fresh will to do was
enkindled; gratitude to God was poured out for their knowledge of the
truth, for their testimony that God lived, that Jesus was the Christ,
that Joseph was a prophet, that Brigham was his ordained successor, and
that for the righteous a crown of glory awaited that should be theirs
during the eternities of the life to come. Then they would join in the
songs and dancing in the camp, making the camp’s gaiety their own—as
much as Mother’s condition would permit.
Then
the morning came when from out that last wagon floated the la-la of the
newborn babe, and Mother love made a shrine and Father bowed in
reverence before it. But the train must move on. So out into the dust
and dirt the last wagon moved again, swaying and jolting, while Mother
eased as best she could each pain-giving jolt so no harm might be done
her, that she might be strong to feed the little one, bone of her bone,
flesh of her flesh. Who will dare to say that angels did not cluster
round and guard her and ease her rude bed, for she had given another
choice spirit its mortal body that it might work out its God-given
destiny?
My mother was one of those babes so born in 1848, ninety-nine years ago.
Another
morning came, when courageous little Bill, who, with a hero’s heart,
had trudged through long days of hot sun and through miles of soggy mud
in the rain, his little body drenched, little Bill, weak and wan, must
be crowded in to ride with Mother, for he was sick from a heavy cold.
Months before, on that cold winter’s night when they fled Nauvoo for
their lives to escape the fiendish wrath of a wild mob, Bill became
dangerously ill with pneumonia, which left him with weak lungs. This old
illness now returned. He grew worse and worse. The elders came and
prayed he might get well. But the Lord wanted little Bill with Him. So a
few mornings later a weeping mother and a grief-stricken father and
that last wagon swung into place in the line, leaving beside the road,
under some scrub brush, a little mound, unmarked save for heaped up
rocks to keep out the wolves, a mound that covered another martyr to the
cause of truth.
So
through dust and dirt, dirt and dust, during the long hours, the longer
days—that grew into weeks and then into months, they crept along till,
passing down through its portals, the valley welcomed them to rest and
home. The cattle dropped to their sides, wearied almost to death; nor
moved they without goading, for they too sensed they had come to the
journey’s end.
That
evening was the last of the great trek, the mightiest trek that history
records since Israel’s flight from Egypt, and as the sun sank below the
mountain peaks of the west and the eastern crags were bathed in an
amethyst glow that was a living light, while the western mountainsides
were clothed in shadows of the rich blue of the deep sea, they of the
last wagon, and of the wagon before them, and of the one before that,
and so to the very front wagon of the train, these all sank to their
knees in the joy of their souls, thanking God that at last they were in
Zion—“Zion, Zion, lovely Zion; Beautiful Zion; Zion, city of our God!” [Hymns,
no. 44]. They knew there was a God, for only he could have brought
them, triumphant, militant, through all the scorn, the ridicule, the
slander, the tarrings and featherings, the whippings, the burnings, the
plunderings, the murderings, the ravishings of wives and daughters, that
had been their lot, the lot of their people since Joseph visioned the
Father and the Son.
But hundreds of these stalwart souls of undoubting faith and great prowess were not yet at their journey’s end.
Brother
Brigham again called them to the colors of the kingdom of God, and sent
them to settle the valleys, near and remote, in these vast mountains of
refuge. So again they yoked their oxen and hitched up their teams, and
putting their all in the covered wagon, this time willingly, unwhipped
by the threat of mob cruelty and outrage, they wended their slow way to
new valleys again trusting with implicit faith in the wisdom and divine
guidance of their Moses. The very elements obeyed their faith, faith
close kin to that which made the world.
These
tens of thousands who so moved and so built were the warp and the woof
of Brother Brigham’s great commonwealth. Without them Brother Brigham
had failed his mission. These were the instruments—the shovelers, the
plowers, the sowers and reapers, the machinists, the architects, the
masons, the woodworkers, the organ builders, the artisans, the
mathematicians, the men of letters, all gathered from the four corners
of the earth, furnished by the Lord to Brother Brigham and the prophet
leaders who came after, that he and they might direct the working out of
His purposes. These wrought as God inspired Brother Brigham and the
other prophets to plan, all to the glory of God and the upbuilding of
His kingdom.
Upright
men they were, and fearless, unmindful of what men thought or said of
them, if they were in their line of duty. Calumny, slander, derision,
scorn left them unmoved, if they were treading the straight and narrow
way. Uncaring they were of men’s blame and censure, if the Lord approved
them. Unswayed they were by the praise of men, to wander from the path
of truth. Endowed by the spirit of discernment, they knew when kind
words were mere courtesy, and when they betokened honest interest. They
moved neither to the right nor to the left from the path of truth to
court the good favor of men.
So
for a full hundred years, urged by the spirit of gathering and led by a
burning testimony of the truth of the restored gospel, thousands upon
tens of thousands of these humble souls, one from a city, two from a
family, have bade farewell to friends and homes and loved ones, and with
sundered heart strings, companioned with privation and with sacrifice
even to life itself, these multitudes have made their way to Zion, to
join those who were privileged to come earlier, that all might build up
the kingdom of God on earth—all welded together by common hardship and
suffering, never-ending work and deep privation, tragic woes and
heart-eating griefs, abiding faith and exalting joy, firm testimony and
living spiritual knowledge—a mighty people, missioned with the salvation
not only of the living but of the dead also, saviors, not worshippers
of their ancestors, their hearts aglow with the divine fire of the
spirit of Elijah, who turns the hearts of the fathers to the children
and of the children to the fathers.
And
thousands upon thousands of these tens of thousands, from the first
till now, all the elect of God, measured to their humble calling and to
their destiny as fully as Brother Brigham and the others measured to
theirs, and God will so reward them. They were pioneers in word and
thought and act and faith, even as were they of more exalted station.
The building of this intermountain empire was not done in a corner by a
select few but by this vast multitude flowing in from many nations, who
came and labored and wrought, faithfully following their divinely called
leaders.
In
living our lives let us never forget that the deeds of our fathers and
mothers are theirs, not ours; that their works cannot be counted to our
glory; that we can claim no excellence and no place because of what they
did, that we must rise by our own labor, and that labor failing, we
shall fall. We may claim no honor, no reward, no respect, nor special
position or recognition, no credit because of what our fathers were or
what they wrought. We stand upon our own feet in our own shoes. There is
no aristocracy of birth in this Church; it belongs equally to the
highest and the lowliest; for as Peter said to Cornelius, the Roman
centurion, seeking him: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter
of persons:
“But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (
Acts 10:34–35).
So
to these humble but great souls, our fathers and mothers, the tools of
the Lord, who have, for this great people, hewed the stones and laid the
foundations of God’s kingdom, solid as the granite mountains from which
they carved the rocks for their temple, to these humble souls, great in
faith, great in work, great in righteous living, great in fashioning
our priceless heritage, I humbly render my love, my respect, my reverent
homage. God keep their memories ever fresh among us, their children, to
help us meet our duties even as they met theirs, that God’s work may
grow and prosper till the restored gospel of Jesus Christ rules all
nations and all peoples, till peace, Christ’s peace, shall fill the
whole earth, till righteousness shall cover the earth even as the waters
cover the mighty deep [see
Moses 7:62]. Let us here and now dedicate all that we have and all that we are to this divine work. May God help us so to do.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/1997/07/to-them-of-the-last-wagon?lang=eng&clang=eng
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(A video of a dulcimer similar to Clegg being played can be found if you type into your browser: I'll Fly Away being played on the hammered dulcimer by Martin Moore.)
