OCR Text |
Show Page 161 any lapse in discipline among the emigrants - the fate of the Donners 3 constantly nagged at the Prophet. Parley was humbled. He also carried a great deal of news. Since their departure into the unclaimed wilderness, the Mormons had seen the United States take the whole continent - the war was winding down, though terms had not been set. (Unknown to the pioneers, Winfield Scott's occupation of Mexico City just ten days before had delivered their new Zion indisputably into American hands). Perhaps to Orson came the sad and sweet reports of Vanson's death - and the birth of another son to Sarah on July 10. Parley could not have told him of a second birth in his family that had taken place September 15. A little girl had been born to Adelia Ann Bishop, one of the "young ladies" who had 4 ridden out of Nauvoo in Orson's carriage on Valentine's Day 1846. The two pioneering brothers embraced at the Platte on September 25 and went their respective ways - Parley to suffer through the first Salt Lake winter, where the crops so optimistically sown had failed, and Orson on to the main Camp of Israel on the Missouri. They would not see each other again for seven years. With November the returning band achieved Winter Quarters without mishap, though the Indians had stolen many of their horses. Orson stood in the council house the first Sunday and described the lakes and valleys they had claimed, repeating the prophetic imago of the exalted house of the Lord "in the tops of the mountains." Where others in America chanted about continental occupation and "Manifest Destiny," Orson had developed a whole theology of the West - Isaiah had seen it clearly, he reported, and the curious parallels between Mosaic history and the saga of that summer caravan did not escape him. Orson found -his three young wives settled in sod houses on the west bank of Missouri. He met there again that contemplative, thin little image of himself, Orson Junior, who was now ten, Celestial, his five-year-old, and two infants by different mothers. Taking the children to name and bless |