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Frontier Utah met a kind pious & intelligent artist & a Countryman to boot, who took me emaciated sick & dirty to his humble home, my happiness seemed CompletedF You must from their own works read the history of the Latter day Saints & you will there learn how this de- spised people have been persecuted & driven from place to place until they have at length found a haven in all but an inaccessible valley of the Rocky Mountains; here are gathered together from every nation some 10,000 of those who felt happy in sacraficing all that the world holds dear for the sake of their faith & after strug- gling with innumerable difficultys & hardships are now again building up their Temple in the wilderness & are rapidly increasing both in spiritual & temporal wealth. "Mormonism, ["I is to believe "that Christ is the Son of God, also a firm belief in the Scriptures, then faith, repentance & baptism for the remission of sins; the lay- ing on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost, having a church organized according to the New Testament pattern, & to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." When we arrived at this valley in order to accomplish the remaining 600 miles, the distance that still intervened between the City & Califor- nia, the waggons were sold & 10 of our Compy sta rted for their original destination through moun tains covered w ith snow, with a prospect of being slain by Indians or of feeding either upon their mules or each other,' the other 13 remained behind earned their 6 The artist was William Warren Major (18041854), a prominent Mormon, member of the High Council, and one of the thirty-eight adopted sons of Brigham Young. Baptized into the Mormon church in London in 1842, he emigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois, two years later and accompanied the Brigham Young party to Salt Lake Valley in 1848. He was the first artist to arrive in Utah and kept busy for the next five years painting landscape scenes and especially portraits of Indian leaders and local settlers. Hosea Stout, for example, recorded that "Major the painter took a pull at me for my likeness." His most noted paint- ing was that of Brigham Young and his second wife with their children which today can be seen in the Beehive House, the official residence of Brigham Young. Major, a self-trained artist, exhibited in his work a certain "stiffness but also the charm of a sharply-felt naive portrayal in the manner of an English `conversation piece."' In April 1853 he was called to serve a mission to England where he arrived in December only to die October 2, 1854, from the effects of a severe cold. Robert S. Olpin, The Art-Life of Utah (2776~2976), A Bi- centennial Scrapbook (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Art Center, 1976), n.p.; Andrew Jensen, Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jensen History Company, 1901-1936), vol. 3, p. 671; Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 2844-2862, ed., Juanita Brooks (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1964), pp. 25, 242, 255, 265,290, 324, 343. 7 Hudson, of course, is here referring to the fate of the Donner Party, who in the spring of 1846 started for California from Illinois with about one hundred people, under 68 |
