Important Events Enroute
In October 1890, I and my husband and our children left Durango, Colorado and started for Utah. When we got to Mancus we stayed all night with John R. Young and his third wife, Tamer Black Young, who was my niece, and Lydia Knight Young, his second wife.
After dinner that evening Mr. Young opened his newspaper to the Conference news, and there was the Manifesto which had been given in Conference by President Woodruff. We were all greatly astonished, and we discussed it for some time. I could not believe that the authorities of the church had given up plural marriage, it had [Page 102] been called the crowning principle of the gospel. And it had been such a sacrifice on the part of many young women to go into that order of marriage, but they did it because it was taught that it was the only way that a person could get to the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom of God.
John R. Young said, “If it is really true and we are going to have such a whip lashing, I am going to get away as far as possible from the end of the lash. I am going to Old Mexico,” he said.
Indians on the Warpath
At Mancus we were warned that the Indians in the neighborhood of Bluff and the blue mountains, in the southeast corner of Utah were on the warpath, and it was unsafe to travel through that section.
October was here, and my husband felt that he must get home before winter set in. There was no one to get the winter’s wood for his family at home until he arrived. And he also wanted to go to Salt Lake for a new wagon and other things before the weather was too severe. So he said maybe the Indian reports were exaggerated, and so we traveled on. I was worried, day after day, but said nothing, because the children would be disturbed and unhappy if they knew I was worrying about Indians.
One morning after passing Blue Mountain we met the Stake President of San Juan County returning from Conference. We talked to him for a few moments when he asked, “Where did the Indians camp last night?” We told him we had seen no Indians. He said, “There is a large company just ahead of you, and they must have camped somewhere near you last night.” He said, “They may be going to some hunting ground to get supplies for the winter. The Indians hereabouts have been a bit uneasy of late, but they may have calmed down. I think you will get through all right,” he said.
About the second day after meeting him we came to the head of what we called Rock Canyon, a great gorge of almost solid rock near the southern end of which and at the opposite side of the road was a deep solid rock water hole perhaps 60 or more feet deep, where travelers drew water for themselves, their teams, and filled their large barrels to supply them while traveling on the sandy plains beyond.
I have seen 12 large barrels filled, after 12 teams had been watered, and the men said the water had not been diminished in the [Page 103] least. I have thought that perhaps there was a spring in that hole, but I do not know.
We came to this place in the afternoon, filled our barrel, and crossed the rock canyon which was crossed something after this fashion on layers of rocks. The mountain and the rock canyon were about like this.
In camping each night we put up our tent and set up a small sheet iron stove, took our bedding out and slept in the tent. This night when we came to the grass my husband said, “Here is a fine place to camp, plenty of grass.”
Just as he had set up the tent and was taking the other things from the wagon, a group of surly looking Indian men passed, going south. At the sight of them I felt very much afraid, we a lone family in the mountains with no human habitation near, and my husband without a thing to protect us, not even a good pocket knife. I plead with him to travel on to Moab which was about a day’s travel from our camp. He said it was impossible as beyond the point of the [Page 104] mountain just ahead of us, he would be obliged to make two trips up the steep mountain side. He could not take us and the luggage up at the same time. We would have to stay at the foot of the mountain while he took the luggage up, or he would have to unload the wagon, and leave everything at the bottom, while he took us up, and then we would have to remain there alone while he made the return trip for the load.
He said, “Now I will tell you what I will do. I will not tie the horses to the back of the wagon, as I usually do. I will put the hobbles and the bell on them, and turn them loose on the grass. Then if those Indians want our horses they won’t have to murder us to get them.”
I made the children’s bed that night in the middle of the tent, and ours at the side. My husband lay by the side of the tent, and I next to the children. Sometime after midnight I awoke. I put my arm over to my husband’s side of the bed, but he wasn’t there. Then I felt all over the children’s beds, they were all sound asleep. I raised the side of the tent to see if my husband could have just rolled out. No one was there, perfect silence reigned. I got up, went to the tent door, opened it slightly and put my face in the opening trying to solve the awful mystery of my husband’s where-abouts, with a thousand fears racing through my mind.
It was a bright moonlight night. As I stood there a man came out of the cedars onto the highway. A perfect hurricane of thoughts rushed through my mind. I thought if that is my husband he will have shoes on. I will hear his footsteps, and he will come to the tent immediately, but if it’s an Indian he may have moccasins on, and there will be no sound. The man was passing on the highway. Then the thought rushed into my mind, Oh they have carefully taken my husband from the side of the tent and murdered him, and that man is going to guard the narrow pass between the mountain point, and the rock canyon. And in an instant the Indians will rush to the tent and massacre me and the children. I gave an awful scream and the man stopped dead still. Then I heard, “Oh Lorena, what is it?” My husband rushed to the tent, and explained that he had awakened some time before and couldn’t hear a sound of the horses’ bells. He knew I would be afraid to stay alone while he went to investigate, so he rolled carefully outside the tent and put on his sox and trousers. He had left his shoes off so I would not, and so the Indians would not hear his footsteps while he investigated the whereabouts of his horses. He had been back quite a distance but had not seen nor heard anything of either Indians or horses. When I screamed he was just going around the point of the mountain at the north to find out, if possible, if the horses had gone in that direction. [Page 105]
He said he was obliged to go and find what had become of the horses, that I must be brave and trust in the Lord for protection. He told me to listen carefully and when he found the horses, if the Indians didn’t have them, he would ride them fast. Then when I caught a sound of the bells, and they were ringing fast I would know that he had them, and that he and they were all right.
He went, and I stood listening what seemed like ages. Finally I thought I caught the faint sound of bells. Presently, with my heart beating fast, I heard the bells distinctly, and knew my husband was safe. He had found the horses several miles back on the road.
At Moab
On our arrival at Moab we found several people there who were just returning from conference. My husband went out and talked with them about the Manifesto. They told him that it was a fact that that principle was dropped by the church. They said that the first presidency and the apostles were all united on it, and that it should be practiced no more.
My husband came to our tent and told me about it, and my feelings were past description. I had gone into that order of marriage solely for the purpose above mentioned and because I believed God had commanded his people to do so, and it had been such a sacrifice to enter it, and live it as I thought God wanted me to. And as I thought about it, it seemed impossible that the Lord would go back on a principle which had caused so much sacrifice, heartache, and trial before one could conquer one’s carnal self, and live on that higher plane, and love one’s neighbor as one’s self. My husband walked out without saying a word, and as he walked away I thought, “Oh yes, it is easy for you, you can go home to your other family and be happy with her, while I must be like Hagar, sent away.”
My anguish was inexpressible, and a dense darkness took hold of my mind. I thought that if the Lord and the church authorities had gone back on that principle, there was nothing to any part of the gospel. I fancied I could see myself and my children, and many other splendid women and their families turned adrift, and our only purpose in entering it, had been to more fully serve the Lord. I sank down on our bedding and wished in my anguish that the earth would open and take me and my children in. The darkness seemed impenetrable.
All at once I heard a voice and felt a most powerful presence.
The voice said, “Why this is no more unreasonable than the [Page 106] requirement the Lord made of Abraham when he commanded him to offer up his son Isaac, and when the Lord sees that you are willing to obey in all things the trial shall be removed.”
There was a light whose brightness cannot be described which filled my soul, and I was so filled with joy and peace, and happiness that I felt that no matter whatever should come to me in all my future life, I could never feel sad again. If the people of the whole world had been gathered together trying with all their power to comfort me, they could not compare with the powerful unseen Presence which came to me on that occasion.
And as soon as my husband came back I told him what a glorious presence had been there, and what I had heard. He said, “I knew that I could not say a word to comfort you, so I went to a patch of willows, and asked the Lord to send a comforter.”
In the trying years which followed, often a glimmer of that same light came to me again.
We came to Moab on our journey homeward and expected to stay there for a week and rest, but after staying one day in which I baked many loaves of bread in the house near to where we had pitched our traveling tent, the lady of the house told me that her daughter was very ill. I asked what was the matter with her, and she said, “It is a dreadful sore throat.” After she described it to me I told her that her daughter had diphtheria. She said that a young man of the house had been away and came home with the same thing a short time before.
Now I had baked all that bread in that house in another room. But was I scared?
Next morning early, after my husband had been directed how to ford the Grand River, we started out and came to the river, but it looked unfordable to me. And I dared not try to cross it, we with a lone team and no one in sight. A man with two teams and two wagons had been carried down with the stream two weeks before.
My husband rode across on one of his horses and put his feet up high behind him on the horse’s back and his feet were wet with the water.
There was a large island in the river; the larger part of the river ran on the Moab side. We were directed to go part way across the first stream and then go upstream for some distance and then [Page 107] onto the island, and follow a road to the other part of the river. I tried to get my husband to go back to town and get someone who had had experience in crossing that dreadful river to come and pilot us across. He finally went back toward town and met five cowboys who came and rode on both sides of the wagon, the two on one side and three on the other. They said in case the wagon was swept down stream they would each rescue one of us. It seemed while we were crossing the first part of the river where the current was strong that we were being carried down stream. When we got to the other shore we pitched our tents and took a bath and hung all our quilts and the clothing that we had worn, in fact all the clothing except what we were wearing, and burned sulphur to disinfect them. We decided we would watch ourselves carefully and we would say nothing about it unless some of us showed signs of ill health.
The next spring I read in the Deseret News about the epidemic of diptheria which had been going in Moab for months and that scarcely a person in that town had escaped.
After leaving camp on Grand River, the day before, we arrived at Green River. While traveling close to the mountain we discovered an animal traveling just a short distance ahead of us. It looked a dark brown in color and I asked my husband if it was a stray dog. He examined the tracks and decided it was a mountain lion. At a turn in the mountain and in a patch of high brush it disappeared.
On account of the team we were obliged to stop where grass was plentiful. When we arrived at the place where the animal had disappeared, we found plenty of grass for the team, and my husband said we must stop there for the night. After dark the coyotes howled and kept it up until daylight. I was so frightened that night thinking of the animal which had disappeared there, and the coyotes all around us, that I had cramps all night and was thankful for daylight when it came, as I fully realized that a camp tent is small protection out in the wilds.
We forded the Green River a few miles upstream from the bridge. Traveling from Green River toward Price I had terrible cramps in my stomach, and my husband had to stop several times and heat water. I sipped the hot water and was relieved each time but not permanantly. On one such occasion some section men were working near by, and insisted that we put a little of their brandy into the water.
Once we got onto the wrong road and my husband left the wagon and went to find out, if possible, if there was a short cut to the main [Page 108] highway. He went but a short distance until he came to the Big Spring Ranch. It was not in sight until we were right there. He made arrangements with the boss to stay there a few days and rest. There was a tough looking group there then, both men and women, and when they found that I was ill they would not allow us to stay over night. The women came out to find out what was the matter, and one woman brought a bottle out and told me if I would just take the contents I would have no more cramps. I was very sick and my husband urged me to take the medicine which he pronounced was brandy and water. And as my cramps were almost unbearable, I drank a little, and as the cramps returned I drank a little more. They told us to follow a not often used road and that at a certain distance we would find a spring of good water and plenty of grass. When we arrived at the place I was easier, but when my husband helped me from the wagon I told him that the medicine must be poison as my mind was almost a blank. He told me not to worry it was just the effects of the brandy.
We arrived at Price next evening.
My husband had decided to leave me in Huntington until spring. He was going to rent a house there, but my brother Daniel would not hear of it. He said he had lumber and urged my husband to help him build a large room on the back of his house. I lived there that winter but had flu three times before spring. Daniel furnished us with milk, pork and wood, which was all brought into the house ready to use. He positively refused pay for it.
He was one of the kindest men besides my father and my sons that I have ever met.
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