OCR Text |
Show Page 137 is told by the foreman to pick up a basket of chips and tumble them out again, then pick them up again and find no fault...It is unbelief that causes all our whining." 16 The celestial law would not abide whiners, as Orson pointed out, and his own example proved it. No one was to put in a turnip patch or cut hay without permission, as the well-being of the whole camp was at question. For now the emergency dawned full upon them - thousands in the wilderness, plagued with the sudden summer malaria that decimated them at Nauvoo, required more spiritual and psychological courage than their individualism could provide. Orson was elected to provide it. Every Sunday Orson regaled the huge congregations who had suffered through the week from sickness and privation with visions of the glory of worlds: "Elder Orson Pratt spoke first...on the organization of worlds and the planetary system. He said that we could distinctly see with a common spy glass in the constellation of Orion...unorganized matter enough to make many millions of worlds as large as the sun." 17 Orson's august conceptions thus helped the Saints muster some theological perspective as a bulwark against the blackleg and the weedy diet of the Missouri bottoms. When the Omahas began to make hostile noises about the loss of their timber to the use of the Mormon colony, Orson remonstrated with them, telling: them it would not be burnt but rather used for the construction of villages which would remain for the use of the natives, if they wanted them. He then used the opportunity to introduce to them the Book of Mormon; he must have sighed when they indicated that they would like to come back and hear about it, but a battle with the Sioux was impending. Orson spent considerable time hunting in the brush, gathering venison and wild turkey, wild elderberries and grapes, and subsisting on green corn, cucumbers, succotash and mushmelons. Leather boats allowed quick - j J^„, L.y,a r.fvpr) while Orson engaged in a good deal of |