Native American Biography: Chief Pocatello

 Chief Pocatello lived at a cross roads in history, and was caught in the changes taking place during his lifetime.  His Shoshone name is Tondzaosha meaning buffalo robe.  He led attacks against travelers along the Oregon Trail which led to the U.S. government sending troops to Cache Valley to chastise him.  However Pocatello somehow was informed and left the camp in Cache Valley before the Bear River Massacre.  He later agreed to relocate his people to Fort Hall, but because promised subsidies his people suffered economic hardship.  He attempted a move to Utah to join the Mormons, hoping this would provide some relief.  However the government again intervened and his people returned to the reservation.  He granted a right-of-way to the railway and this resulted in the name for the City of Pocatello.

Movie Review: ****^Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story

This is a 2009 movie released by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It was directed by T.C. Christensen.  This movie follows John Tanner from his conversion to his death.  It follows a couple themes.  The first is that of consecration.  John Tanner gave his all to the kingdom of God.  He said, "Any many who would look back from the plow is not worthy of the kingdom of God."  He sacrifices, and sacrifices and sacrifices.  In a very real sense, he saved the Kirtland Temple from foreclosure, and was present for the inauguration and all the spiritual experiences that came with it.
The other theme I find in this movie recurs over and over in the  scriptures.  When God has a need, he will raise up someone to meet the need.  He did this with Joseph, with Moses, with Joseph Smith,  and with so any others.  I think he also does this with us, although perhaps on a smaller scale.  There are times when we are raised up for the benefit of a family member, a friend, a ward or some other purpose.  May we be prepared for these occasions.
Great movie.  Available through You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHXcOVCrzvA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqiCfjLIBBc

Book Review: Wit and Whimsy In Mormon History

This book was edited by Davis Bitton and published be Deseret Book in 1974.  It has little bits, looking for a humorous bent.  Some of the stories are cute, but by the end of the book, it seemed to be just stuff from Deseret News, and much of it was tired.  However I found these two items enjoyable, among about ten of the hundred. 
Advise on corsets  The motions of the body, as well as beautiful, erect position, depend upon the action of numerous which should always be free from any artificial restraint; tight lacing, and corsets, and every form of dress, which compresses to the least degree any of the muscles, in the same proportion reduces their size and fullness, and destroys their tone, and the result is a shriveled, bony, emaciated appearance; I hope that mother in Israel will remember the responsibility that rests on them, to instruct the rising generation to refrain from such pernicious customs.  Desert News July 6, 1850

This poem has to do with the polygamy and a bill before congress.  Many women's groups popped up all over Utah and numerous rallies were held in support of the Church and there position on polygamy.

Little Eva’s Question 
Mamma, do you think that Congress,
Cannot stop that naughty Bill?
Then, wherever will he go to,--
Down!  Down! Don’t you think he will?
If he puts papa in prison,
O, how hard I’ll pray and cry!
And I’ll hope—I could not help i--
Every one of us may die!

Will he make poor aunty leave u--
Will her baby have to g--
And our darling brother David,--
Do you think it will be so?
Then I’ll have no sister Rettie,--
And papa will have no girl,
Only baby Hat and Allie;
And myself and sister Pearl.

William Cullom—what a mean name!
Sounds just like he was a knave;
And I know he is a rascal,
To want pa to be a sloave;
Simply  ‘cause he loves you mother,
And my dear, good auntie too;
He must think that men in Utah,
Don’t have enough to do!

And no little boy but Archie;
And I ‘spose he’ll have to oath,
That, when grown, should two girls love him,
He will never have them both:--
Aint that Bill a stupid fellow!
I just think he’s sick, don’t you?
And I wouldn’t wonder either,
If great Congress thinks so, too.

Let me ask you one more question,
Ere you tell me to be still;
He’s no brother to us, is he,
This base, low-lived, horrid Bill!
No he aint—but I’m not angry,--
Don’t you see I’m very cool?
No just once, ma, may I whisper,
Old Bill Cullom—what a fool!
Deseret New February 16, 1870

Book Review: In a Goodly Land

Stake Presidency with Vern Wardle on the right

Book Review: In a Goodly Land: Latter-Day Saints of the Stanislaus, John D. Nash and Mary M. Nash, Linrose Publishing Company, Fresno, CA 1997.  This book, on the title page says: A Hisotyr of Four Stakes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint (the Mormons) in the Great Central Valley of California: Modesto California Stake, Modesto California North Stake, Manteca Stake, Turlock Stake.
This book I found in the used book store, and was very excited about it.  In reading it I found the best description of New Hope I have read.  It includes a mad.  It clarified for me that the Saints did not all leave after the flood, but held on, and actually harvested their winter wheat.  They had plans for irrigation ditches for the farm, and had started working on these.  In the end Sam Brannan advertised for sale the property and the equipment, including the mill.  It would appear more dissension that lead to the doom of the community that the flood.  Also Brigham Young had selected the Great Basin as the home for the Saints rather than California.  However he initially asked the Saints to build where they were, and thus the title “In a Goodly Land.”  However a couple years late he called for the Saints to come to Utah.  Most of them did, and for a period there were not Mormons in the area.
The book describes the early missionary efforts in this area.  However most of the growth came from transplanted Saints from other areas.  However there was always some growth through missionary efforts.  The book also deals extensively with building funds and construction of new buildings.  I was interested in the Manteca area where we now live.  Manteca started as a Sunday School of the Stockton Ward.  They initially met in rented rooms, but eventually grew to an independent branch.  The first chapel was known as the Pine Street Chapel.  When the Modesto Stake was organized in 1964, Manteca became a part of this stake, while Tracy remained with Stockton Stake.  The Manteca area became part of the Modesto North Stake in 1975.  However when the Manteca Stake was created in 1981, Tracy and Manteca were reunited in a stake.  At that time there were five units, two in Tracy and three in Manteca.  As the Manteca chapel was more crowded, Tracy was used as the stake center.  The Union building was finished in 1984 and became the stake center.  However the stake continued to grow for some time. 
D. Leon Ward was the first stake president.  (His son is in our ward.)  The first stake patriarch was Charles Eitelgeorge.  He is still serving and has been the patriarch continuously since the stake was formed.  At one time there were two patriarchs as D. Leon Ward had been a patriarch before being called as the stake president, and returned to this call when released where he served until he moved from the stake.  Other stake presidents have been L. Dee Wallace and Rex A. Brown [President Crockett our current president was sustained after the book was published.
This book has a picture of our friend and distant cousin Vern Wardle, who served in the stake presidency.  It is fun to look at the appendices, as it lists all the bishops of the wards.  It is amazing how many of the members of our high priest group are former bishops.  It also lists the stake high councilmen.  I would by fun to have an updated book.
A couple other points of interest:  It describes the development of the welfare projects which were under ward or stake leadership.  It describes the establishment of the young women’s camp; Sister Dorothy Eitelgeorge played an important role in developing the spiritual “golden hours program”.  Richard Hammerstrom, whose son is in our high priest group, played important roles in the community with the Boys and Girls Club.  The dedication of the Oakland Temple in 1964 had a great effect on the Saints in the area, as temple blessings were within almost an hour.  There was at one time a youth chorus in Manteca, conducted by Kathy Harvey.

Book Review: ****Growing Up in Zion

Growing Up in Zion: True Stories of Young Pioneers Building the Kingdom.  This book was written as part of the sesquicentennial of the pioneers arriving in Salt Lake.  It was edited by Susan Arrington Madsen and published by Deseret Book in 1996.  I found it at the Book Exchange on Main Street in Manteca.
I read through it quickly, thinking I will go through it again when I want to use it as a research resource.  It presents people's stories, with the requirement that the be under 19, either from their own histories or journals.  This it does with longer essays, but also short quotes.  It generally covers the area included in the Territory of Deseret.  It has photographs from the era in question, and also has stories from children which were sent into the "Juvenile Instructor."  It covers the period from the Saints arrival in Salt Lake, until the early 1900s.  It has tales of hardship, hunger, dealing with a death, colonization, miracles, spiritual manifestations and daily life.  It has eye witness accounts of the building and dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, The miracles of the Sea Gulls and the devastation of the crickets and grasshoppers, eating roots, thistles and sego lilies.   It talks of the early homes, built with mud roofs which would leak whenever it rained.  It talks of the early relations with the Native American population.
I think I most enjoyed the stories of the Native Americans.  It seemed people were almost always scared of them, but mostly they were just looking for handouts.  In a few incidents they became church members.  And more often they were friends of the Saints.  There was on story when a couple of young men took the cattle to the Uintah Basin to feed because of drought conditions on the Wasatch Front.  The were in the Duchesne area and surrounded by Indians.  The Utes asked,  "Are you whites or are you Mormons."  It gave the impression that had they not been Mormons the Indians would have killed them. 
This book was a quick read and entertaining.  It gives a very good flavor for conditions in the earlier periods of our country.

Book Review: ****Prelude to the Kingdom: Mormon Desert Conquest

I was able to purchase this book for a reasonable price online.  It is in the references of the "Handcarts to Zion" book. 

This book is about the Mormon emigration and economic systems from the beginnings of the church up to the 1940s.  It was published in 1947 by Marshall Jones Company.  It was written by Gustav Larsen.  There are a couple concepts form this book which I find very interesting.

First it talks about the Nauvoo Covenant.  A group of priesthood holder met in the Nauvoo Temple, during that troublesome time after the Prophet Joseph had been murdered, and before the forced exile form Nauvoo.  They made a commitment to make sure the poor Saints would have the means to travel with the body of the church.  This covenant was the back bone of the Perpetual Emigration Fund.

This book is probably the best in talking about the Perpetual Emigration Fund, what it is and what it did.  It assisted over 100,000 people in immigrating to Utah.  It also became the emigrating arm of the church, so it assisted not only those who used the fund, but also all who were emigrating by supplying organization to the immigration in general.  

This book not only talks about the immigration, but also what the Saints did after arriving.  How their communal systems allowed an irrigation agricultural economy to work. It was an economy with limited water and limited arable land.    It told the story of economic missions such as the iron mission and the cotton mission.  It also included establishing in San Bernadino.  It talked about agriculture and the development of the irrigation system, as well as of the sugar beet industry.  One interesting thing it mentioned, which I had never thought about, was that the first alfalfa seed brought to America was done so by a Mormon convert from Australia.  It was first planted in the San Bernadino area.  I have always thought of alfalfa as having always been here.  It never occurred to me that there may have been a time when it wasn’t.  This story is not exactly corroborated by Wikipedia.  “The English name "alfalfa" dates from mid-19th century far-west USA, from the Spanish. Alfalfa seeds were imported to California from Chile in the 1850s. That was the beginning of a rapid and extensive introduction of the crop over the western US States.”  Wikipedia mentions that alfalfa was tried in the Eastern U.S., but never very successfully.  The spread of alfalfa took place in the West. 

The book ends with talking about the church welfare system.  It points out certain characteristics of the Mormon lifestyle, which allowed it to flourish in the desert.

                                                                                          

Movie Review: ****Onward Alone

http://www.byutv.org/watch/480-418
No longer available

This movie, available through BYUTV tells the stories of the women left behind by the Mormon Battalion.  It makes its presentation through modern dance, song and narration.

The Mormon Battalion was mustered to support the Union in the Mexican-American War while the Saints were in Iowa, after being driven from Nauvoo.  500 men marched from the Midwest to San Diego.  They pioneered the trail from Yuma to San Diego.

I had never considered the stories of the women who stayed behind.  This movie will increase your appreciation of this history.

Book Reviews: Pioneer Women and A Multicultural Portrait of the Move West.

These two books are both geared towards young people, most likely middle school age.  And they both do not have very positive things to say about Mormons.

The book "Pioneer Women: The lives of Women on the Frontier" Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, is the more balanced book with regards to Mormons, but it mostly focuses on the question of polygamy  It does present a fairly balanced story with one exception.  It starts a sentence, since a goodly percentage of Latter-day Saints had two or more wives..."  I think polygamy was the exception rather than the rule and only a minority of Latter-day Saint men had a second wife, and very few more than two.  It also presents an anti Mormon cartoon.  To the books credit is does label it this way.  It shows the several wives reacting to a Mormon bringing a new wife home.  Of course the new wife is younger than the other women.  In fact the current wives were part of the decision making process in marrying another wife.  The Priesthood was also a part of the decision making process, and permission from the Priesthood was a requirement for a polygamous marriage to be sanctioned by the Church.

To the book's credit, it does have some positive comments about Mormons.  One is in regards to suffrage for women.  Utah as a territory granted women the right to vote very early.  (After Wyoming the first territory to do so.)  This is downplayed as a way for Mormons to maintain power as non Mormon men were more likely single.


The second book, "A Multicultural Portrait of the Move West,"  Petra Press, Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1994, is pretty much a hit piece as far as the Mormons are concerned.  The author had a definite slant to her comments with regards to Native Americans and Mormons and often writes as fact things that were more rumor and unfounded accusations.  She writes of the Danites going up and down the state murdering people.  She does not provide any evidence to back this up.  She also says Mormons "challenged" the Constitution by practicing polygamy.



It is disparaging  that books such as this are promoted to young people, and that controversial statements are presented as fact, without any documentation.  So if someone wanted to red about different groups of pioneers, I would suggest the first book about Pioneer Women, and leave the other on the shelf and seek information elsewhere as it is not documented, and presents opinion as fact.