Part 18

Spring at length came; the order to march, long hoped and impatiently waited for, was given; they had been promised a warm reception in the narrow defiles of Echo Cañon by Lieutenant-General Wells and his Mormon host, and they eagerly courted that reception. If General Wells were able, as he boasted, to send them to the right about, they would have nothing to do but to go. They had grown rusty from inaction, and stood ready to be polished, even by so rough an implement as General Wells. But news came that the whole affair had been somehow arranged—that Colonel Kane, Brigham Young, and Governor Cumming had fixed matters so that there would be no fighting—not even further train-burning. Yet the Mormons fled from Salt Lake City in anticipation of their entering it; they were somehow, required to encamp as far from the Mormon settlements as possible; and they have ever since been treated by the federal executive as though they had volunteered to come here in defiance of, rather than in obedience to, that executive’s own orders.

Whether truly or falsely, this army, probably without an individual exception, undoubtingly believes the Mormons as a body to be traitors to the Union and its government, inflexibly intent on establishing here a power which shall be at first independent of, and ultimately dominant over, that of the United States. They believe that the ostentatious, defiant refusal of Brigham Young, in 1857, to surrender the territorial governorship, and his declaration that he would hold that post until God Almighty should tell him to give it up, were but the natural development of a polity which looks to the subjugation of all earthly kingdoms, states, empires, sovereignties, to a rule nominally theocratic, but practically autocratic, with Brigham Young or his designated successor as despot. They hold that the instinct of self-preservation, the spirit of that requirement of the Federal Constitution which enjoins that each state shall be guaranteed a republican form of government, cry out against such a despotism, and demand its overthrow.

The army undoubtingly and universally believes that Mormonism is, at least on the part of the master spirits of “the church,” an organized, secret, treasonable conspiracy to extend the power, increase the wealth, and gratify the lecherous appetites of those leaders, who are using the forms and terms of religion to mask and shield systematic adultery, perjury, counterfeiting, robbery, treason, and even murder. It points to the wholesale massacre at Mountain-meadows, the murder of the Parrishes, and a hundred more such, as instances of Mormon assassination for the good of the church, the chastisement of its enemies, or the aggrandizement of its leading members—to the impossibility of bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to justice, to the territorial laws of Utah which empower Mormon functionaries to select the grand and petit jurors even for the United States courts, and impose qualifications which in effect secure the exclusion of all but Mormons from the jury-box, and to the uniform refusal of those jurors to indict or convict those who have committed crimes in the interest of Mormonism,[9] as proof positive that all attempts to punish Mormon criminals by Mormon jurors and officers must ever prove abortive, and demands of the federal government that it shall devise and put in execution some remedy for this unbearable impunity to crime. It is uniformly believed in camp that not less than _seventy-five_ distinct instances of murder by Mormons because of apostacy, or some other form of hostility to “the church,” or mainly for the sake of plunder, are known to the authorities here, and that there is no shadow of hope that one of the perpetrators will ever be brought to justice under the sway of Mormon “popular sovereignty” as now established in this territory. The army, therefore, turns an anxious eye to Washington, and strains its ear to hear what remedy is to be applied.

Footnote 9:

Judge Cradlebaugh asserts that on the list of jurors recently imposed on him for the investigation at Provo of the Parrish and other murders, he knows there were not less than _nine_ leading participants in those murders.

Manifestly, the recent responses from that quarter are not calculated to allay this anxiety. The official rebuke recently and publicly given to the federal judges here, for employing detachments of troops to arrest and hold securely Mormons accused of capital crime, elicits low mutterings of dissatisfaction from some, with a grave silence on the part of many whom discipline restrains from speaking. As the recent orders from Washington are understood here, no employment of federal troops to arrest or secure persons charged with or even convicted of crime is allowed, except where the civil power (intensely Mormon) shall have certified that the execution of process is resisted by a force which it cannot overcome by means of a civil _posse_. How opposite this is to the orders given and obeyed in the fugitive slave cases at Boston, etc., need hardly be indicated.

Very general, then, is the inquiry in the army, Why were we sent here? and why are we kept here? What good can our remaining do? What mischief can it prevent? A fettered, suspected, watched, distrusted army—an army which must do nothing—must not even be asked to do anything in any probable contingency—what purpose does it subserve beyond enriching contractors and Mormon magnates at its own cost and that of the federal treasury? Every article eaten, drank, worn, or in any manner bought by the soldiers, costs three to ten times its value in the states; part of this extra cost falls on the treasury, the residue on the troops individually. Their position here is an irksome one; their comforts few; home, family, friends are far away. If the policy now pursued is to prevail, they cannot be needed in this territory. Why, then, are they kept here? Brigham Young will contract, and make money by contracting, to put down all resistance to this policy at one-tenth the cost of keeping the army here: why, then, not withdraw it?

I have not so bad an opinion of the Mormons as that entertained by the army. While I consider the Mormon religion, so called, a delusion and a blight, I believe many of its devoted adherents, including most of those I have met, to be pure-minded, well-meaning people; and I do not believe that Mormons generally delight in plunder or murder, though the testimony in the Mountain-meadows, Parrish, and one or two other cases, is certainly staggering. But I concur entirely in the conviction of the army, that there is no use in its retention here under existing orders and circumstances, and that three or four companies of dragoons would answer every purpose of this large and costly concentration of troops. The army would cost less almost anywhere else, and could not anywhere be less useful.

A suspicion that it is kept here to answer private pecuniary ends is widely entertained. It is known that vast sums have been made out of its transportation by favored contractors. Take a single instance already quite notorious: twenty-two cents per pound is paid for the transportation of all provisions, munitions, etc., from Leavenworth to this point. The great contractors were allowed this for transporting this year’s supply of flour. By a little dexterous management at Washington, they were next allowed to furnish the flour here—Utah flour—being paid their twenty-two cents per pound for transportation, in addition to the prime cost on the Missouri. As Utah has a better soil for growing wheat than almost anything else, they had no difficulty in sub-letting this contract at seven cents per pound net, making a clear profit of one hundred and seventy thousand dollars on the contract, without risking a dollar, or lifting a finger. Of course, I expect contractors to bargain for themselves, not for the government, but somebody is well paid for taking care of the public’s interest in such matters. Has he done his duty?

Again, pursuant to a recent order from Washington, the Assistant Quartermaster-General here is now selling by auction some two thousand mules—about two-thirds of all the government owns in this territory. These mules cost one hundred and seventy-five dollars each, and are worth to-day one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty dollars. I attended the sale for an hour or so this forenoon; the range of prices was from sixty to one hundred and fifteen dollars; the average of the seven hundred already sold about seventy-five dollars. Had these mules been taken to California, and there properly advertised and sold, they would have brought nearly cost; even at Leavenworth, they must have sold for at least one hundred thousand dollars more than here, where there is practically no demand and no competition for such an immense herd; and, after every Mormon, who can raise a hundred dollars or over, shall have supplied himself with a span of mules for half their value, one or two speculators will make as much as they please, while the dead loss to the people will be at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Nobody here has recommended the sale of these mules; they were being herded, under the care of detachments of the army, at no cost but for herdsmen, and they could have been kept through next winter, in secluded mountain valleys, at a cost of about ten dollars per head; whereas the army can never move without purchasing an equal number; and they can neither be bought here nor brought here for two hundred thousand dollars more than these animals are now fetching. _Somebody’s_ interest is subserved by this sale; but it is certainly not that of the army nor of the people. The order is to sell seven hundred wagon’s as well; but these would not bring thirty dollars each, while they cost at least one hundred and thirty, and could not be replaced when wanted even for that, while the army cannot move without them, and keeping them costs absolutely nothing. Who issues such orders as this, and for whose benefit?

Look at another feature of this transaction. There is at this moment a large amount due to officers and soldiers of this army as pay, in sums of forty to five hundred dollars each. Many of those to whom this money is due would very much like to take mules in part-payment, either to use while here, to sell again, or to bear them and their baggage to California, or back to the Missouri, on the approaching expiration of their terms of enlistment. In many instances, two soldiers would doubtless club to buy a mule on which to pack their blankets, etc., whenever their time is out. Hundreds of mules would thus have been bought, and the proceeds of the sale considerably augmented, if the government, by its functionaries, had consented to receive its own honest debts in payment. But no! on some ridiculous pretense of ill-blood between the pay and the subsistence bureaux of the War department, this is refused—it would be too much trouble to take certificates of soldiers’ pay actually due in payment for these mules; so the officers and soldiers must purchase of speculators at double price, or go without, and the mules be sold for far less than they would have brought, if those who must have them had been enabled to bid directly for them. Two or three speculators reap a harvest here at the sore cost of the soldiers and the treasury.

But it will be said that forage is dear in Utah. It would suffice to answer that idle mules obtain, save in winter, only grass growing on the public lands, which may as well be eaten in part by government mules as all by those of the Mormon squatters. But let us see how it costs so much. There have recently been received here thirty thousand bushels of corn from the states at a net cost, including transportation, of three hundred and forty thousand dollars, or over eleven dollars per bushel. No requisition was ever made for this corn, which could have been bought here, delivered, for two dollars per bushel, or sixty thousand dollars in all. The dead loss to the treasury on this corn is two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, even supposing that the service required it at all. _Somebody_ makes a good thing of wagoning this corn from the Missouri at over ten dollars a bushel. Who believes that said somebody has not influential and thrifty connections inside of the War department?

I will not pursue this exposition; Congress may.

Let me now give a sample of retrenchment in the public service in this quarter:

The mail from Missouri to Salt Lake has hitherto been carried weekly in good six-mule wagons; the contract time being twenty-two days. The importance of frequent and regular communication with head-quarters, at least so long as a large army is retained here at a heavy extra cost, and because of some presumed public necessity is evident. Yet the new Postmaster-General has cut down the mail-service on this important central route from weekly to semi-monthly. But the contractors, who are obliged to run their stages weekly because of their passenger business, and because they have to keep their stock and pay their men, whether they work or play, find that they cannot carry the mail every other week so cheaply as they can every week. For instance, a mail from the states now often consists of twelve to sixteen heavy sacks (most of them filled with franked documents), weighing as many hundred pounds. Double this, and no six-mule team would draw it at the requisite pace, and no mail-wagon stand the jerks and jolts of an unmade road. So they say, “please let us carry the mail weekly, though you only pay us for carrying it semi-monthly.” But no! this is strictly forbidden! The post-master at Salt Lake has express written orders to refuse it, and of course he at St. Joseph also. And thus all this central region, embracing, at least a dozen important military posts, and countless Indian agencies, is reduced to a semi-monthly mail-service, though the contractor would gladly make it weekly at the same price!

XXV. FROM SALT LAKE TO CARSON VALLEY.

PLACERVILLE, Cal., _July 31, 1859_.

There are two emigrant trails from Salt Lake City to Carson Valley and the pass thence into California—the older and more favored, starts north-west from the Mormon Zion, passes north and west of Salt Lake, crossing Weber and Bear Rivers near their mouths, with several small creeks, and gradually veering west and south-west so as to strike the head springs of the Humboldt, which stream it follows more than three hundred miles to its “sink,” within a hundred miles of the eastern Base of the Sierra Nevada. The other route leaves the Mormon capital in a south-westerly direction, touches Lake Utah on the north, passes west of that Lake through Provo, and thence southerly through Fillmore, the nominal capital of the territory, and so down by Soyier River and Lake nearly to the southern boundary of Utah, whence it stretches west, nearly upon the southern rim of the Great Basin, on which are the “Mountain-Meadows,” where a large emigrant party from Arkansas was so atrociously massacred in 1857. Thence this trail turns north-west to hit the sink of Carson River. (I can get no tolerable map of Utah, and the above may not be entirely correct, but is nearly so.) It will be seen that each of these routes must necessarily be very circuitous, and that almost, if not quite half the territory lies between them. So, last year, Major Chorpening, the contractor for carrying the Salt Lake and California Mail, resolved to seek a shorter route midway between them, which he partially succeeded in establishing. This route passes Camp Floyd, forty-three miles south of Salt Lake City, and thence strikes west south-west through “the Desert,” so called, which it penetrates for one hundred and fifty miles or more; thence turning north-west to reach and follow the original emigrant and mail-route down the Humboldt. Even thus, it is somewhat shorter than any other traveled route from Salt Lake to Carson Valley, but still very tortuous, and at least one hundred and fifty miles longer than it should be. Capt. Simpson, of the U. S. Topographical Corps, has recently made his way quite through the desert, on a route which makes the distance only five hundred and sixty-one miles from Camp Floyd to Carson Valley; whereas it is six hundred and seventy by the present mail-route, and further by any other. Capt. Simpson is now engaged in further surveys, whereby he hopes[10] to shorten the distance from Salt Lake City to Genoa, near the head of Carson Valley, to about five hundred and fifty miles; and two of Major Chorpening’s superintendents are now examining the new portion of this route, intending to recommend a transfer of the mail to it should they deem it practicable for wagons, and not hopelessly destitute of grass and water. I trust they will find it passable; meantime, let me give some account of so much of it as I have traveled, as I am not aware that any is yet extant.

Footnote 10:

These hopes have since been fully realized. The new direct central route is not only one hundred miles shorter, but is said to be better supplied with grass and water, than that I traveled.

I left Camp Floyd in the mail-wagon from Salt Lake City, on the morning of Thursday, July 21st, pursuing a south-west course over a low mountain-pass. Twenty miles on, we found a small brook making from the mountains south of us across a thirsty plain, which, I presume, soon drank it up. The vegetation was the same eternal sage-bush and grease-wood, which I am tired of mentioning, but which, together or separately, cover two-thirds of all the vast region between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. In places, the sage-bush, for miles in extent, is dead and withering, seemingly parched up by the all-pervading drouth; the grease-wood is either hardier, or chooses its ground more judiciously; for it is rarely found dead by acres. There is some bunch-grass on the sides of two or three mountains, but very little of aught that can be relied on to sustain human or animal life. The mountains and plains seem to divide the ground very fairly between them—the soil of both being mainly a white clay; while the former have that creased, gullied, washed-away appearance, which I have repeatedly noticed. Sometimes they are nearly perpendicular on one or more sides, like the Buttes further east; but usually they can be ascended on any side, and seem to rise but one to three thousand feet above the plains at their bases. These plains appear from a distance to be level as so many tables; but, on attempting to cross them in a wagon, you find them creased and scored by innumerable water-courses, now dry, but showing that, in the wet season, water is most abundant here. In most instances, a gradual slope of a mile or two intervenes between the foot of a mountain and the adjacent plain or valley; this slope is apt to be intensely dry, sterile, and covered with dead or dying sage-bush. I judge these slopes to be composed of the rocky, gravelly material of the mountains, from which the lighter clay has been washed out and carried off. They often seem to be composed almost wholly of small bits of rock. The valleys or plains are from five to fifteen miles across, though they seem, in the clear, dry atmosphere of Utah, not half so much. These plains have an imperceptible slope to some point near their respective centers, where a wider water-course runs toward some adjacent valley; in some cases, a marsh or naked space near the center indicates that the surplus water from the surrounding mountains forms here in winter and spring a petty, shallow lake, which the hot suns soon evaporate or the thirsty soil absorbs. The mountains are thinly belted or dotted with low, scrubby cedar, seldom ten feet high, and often nearly as far across the green top formed by three or four stalks or stems starting from a common root. The mountains seem to have no particular, or rather no general direction; some of the valleys being nearly or quite surrounded by them. Even in the wettest seasons, I cannot perceive that this region sends off any surplus water to Salt Lake or any other general reservoir. Such is the face of the country for some two hundred miles directly south-west of Camp Floyd.

We found a station, a change of horses, and something that was called dinner, on the little stream I have already mentioned, and halted here, twenty miles or more from Camp Floyd. In the afternoon, we came on, over a higher, rockier mountain-pass and a far rougher road, to the next station—Simpson’s Spring, nearly fifty miles from Camp Floyd—where we halted for the night. I fear the hot suns of August will dry up this spring; while there is no other fit to drink for a weary distance south and west of this point.

The station-keeper here gave me an incident which illustrates the character of the country. Some few days previously to our arrival, he ascertained that his oxen, eight in number, had gone off, two or three nights before, taking a southerly course; so he mounted a horse and followed their trail. He rode upon it one hundred miles without reaching water or overtaking the cattle, which had lain down but once since they started, and were still a day’s journey ahead of him. If he continued the pursuit his horse must die of thirst, and then he too must perish; so he turned about and left his oxen to die in the desert or be found and eaten by savages. There was not a shadow of hope that he would ever see them again.

We had to drive the same team (mules of course) all next day, making fifty miles; but we stopped to rest and feed them at a sub-station, only twenty miles from our starting-point. It was about the forlornest spot I ever saw. Though at the foot of a low mountain, there was no water near it; that which was given our mules had been carted in a barrel from Simpson’s Spring, aforesaid, and so must be for most of each year. An attempt to sink a well at this point had thus far proved a failure. The station-keeper here lives entirely alone—that is, when the Indians will let him—seeing a friendly face but twice a week, when the mail-stage passes one way or the other. He deeply regretted his lack of books and newspapers; we could only give him one of the latter. Why do not men who contract to run mails through such desolate regions comprehend that their own interest, if no nobler consideration, should impel them to supply their stations with good reading matter! I am quite sure that one hundred dollars spent by Major Chorpening in supplying two or three good journals to each station on his route, and in providing for their interchange from station to station, would save him more than one thousand dollars in keeping good men in his service, and in imbuing them with contentment and gratitude. So with other mail-routes through regions like this.