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Show Page 134 The trains were now reaching the western extent of white settlement - and the lands of the Pottawatomie and the Omaha Indians. The Twelve had to decide soon whether an advance group would attempt the Great Basin that year or not - they were frustrated at the unexpectedly tedious pace of the emigration and resentful that the people had not supplied themselves better when counseled to do so the previous autumn. Furthermore, the vote of the people was for going west as a body; thus, the Twelve gave up hope of penetrating beyond the mountains before winter. Peculiar rumors circulated about this time among the stragglers - stories were told that Apostle Orson Pratt was carrying on a vendetta against the Twelve and refusing to contribute his share to the upkeep of the trains. Orson traced these tales to the reprehensible Higginbotham, who had refused to draw for Orson Pratt and had abandoned him on the prairie. Orson wrote a letter and dispatched it to Nauvoo denying Higginbotham's claims and protesting that he had dealt out "several hundred weight of his flour to the camp which Brother Higgin Botham knows..." Orson thus was forced to continue fighting the battle of his reputation even in the middle of the migration. ^ Orson remained at the Mount Pisgah farms until June 7, but, just as his three wagons were about to start, his young wife Louisa developed a fever. A camp physician diagnosed typhus, but said that departure would not injure her and might do her good, and so Orson rolled out of the fields on a Sunday afternoon. The prairies had changed completely by this time; the weather was warm and the roads well-marked and dry. But Louisa did not improve - after about fifty miles Orson halted the party at the bank of Platte River in a grove of black walnut trees. |