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Show Page 42 "Saints", as the Mormons were now styling themselves. The following three months were spent in western New York, mostly quelling troubles among members near the birthplace of the Church, at branches in Geneseo, Springfield, and Elk Creek. Orson clerked at the excommunication of high priest Ezra Landen in Geneseo, who was contemptuous of the more recent revelations of Joseph Smith; in all, Orson cut off twenty-four members in his three mission, fighting Methodist hecklers, fever, and ague before returning once again to find Kirtland sorrowing and 30 raging over the plight of the Missouri Saints. The wrangling and bitterness in the eastern branches over points of doctrine contrasted sardonically with the suffering of the Saints in "Zion." The frontier paradise had become a battleground with hundreds of Mormons dispossessed of their land by violent Jackson County vigilantes. Spurred by the theological claims the Mormons made to the land, an army of squatters with prior rights had elbowed the entire Mormon colony into the Missouri River in the midst of November storms. The forcible expulsion from Jackson County did not deter Joseph Smith's dream of "redeeming" Zion, however, and in February, 1834, he instructed Orson Pratt to go east with Orson Hyde to solicit "donations for Zion." At the conference where Orson received this call, an interesting point of practice was debated. Certain members were refusing to take the Sacrament from the hands of an elder who disobeyed the "Word of Wisdom. When the matter came before the high council, Orson argued that the Church was bound to receive the administration "so long as he (the elder) retained his office or license," while Lyman Johnson, Orson's companion, sided with the members who had refused the ordinance. The high council failed to address the question directly, calling simply for the revocation of the man's office, but the incident illustrates significantly Orson's legalistic |