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Show 157 ficult time coping with if the mountains were abandoned. Joseph Smith had prophesied in 1842 that the Saints would "become a mighty people in the midst of the Hocky Mountains," and that c i t i e s and temples would be built "from one end of the [[mountain] country to the other." Brigham Young himself bad affirmed in 1846 that "the next temple would be b u i l t in the Rocky Mountains."12 As yet, there were no temples in the Rocky Mountains; only the foundations for one had been laid in Salt Lake City. IS To leave the Rocky Mountains for Alaska, Sonora, Vancouver, or anywhere else would be to falsify the words of the prophets unless i t was determined that the time had come to return to Jackson County and redeem Zion. In the early days of tbe "war," i t was believed that events were following in t h i s track, but, for the present, church leaders were silent or downplaying the idea. From his many comments, both public and private, i t is plain that Brigham Young considered Utah to be a special place given t o the Saints by the Lord.as a sanctuary and a stronghold against aggressors. Here i t was that the prophet saw a vision and heard a voice saying, "Here i s the place wnere my people- Israel shall pitch t h e i r t e n t s , " as he entered the Salt Lake Valley in l847« In a speech from the Bowery on September 13, Brigham Young asserted: "We are s t i l l on the backbone of the animal, where the bone and sinew are, and we intend to stay here, and a l l hell cannot help themselves."15 And on November 5> Young wrote to William Cox in San Bernardino that there "is no place for the saints to gather neither is t h e i r any other place except Utah."1" President Young's feelings about Utah surfaced again in a meeting with two business men, who came t o Salt Lake City to make a proposal to the prophet in May of 1858. John B. Cooper and James M. Harbin, representatives of one Colonel Kinney of California, met with Young on May 24 to offer the sale of a huge t r a c t of land to the church. Thirty million acres of the so-called |