Mormon Women on the 1846 Iowa Trail

In 1996, Bettie McKenzie mined the diaries, letters and memoirs of fourteen Mormon women who had crossed Iowa on the first, deadly, section of the Mormon trek in 1846.  It is an AQA-recommended source for your GCSE, and you can read the whole article, if you wish, here.  I have analysed it for you below, drawing out the both the hardships, suffering, and tragedies, and the occasions of joy, ease, and good fortune that Mormon women experienced on the trek.  Alternatively, in Source A, I have listed for each women the hardships, suffering, and tragedies (in black), and the instances of joys, ease, and good fortune (in green) that McKenzie has recounted. 

EXPERIENCES OF HARDSHIP, SUFFERING, AND TRAGEDY

1.  Separation and Loss:

• Mormon men were sent to Europe as missionaries, to the Mormon Battalion to fight in the war against Mexico, or went ahead in the Vanguard to Salt Lake City, leaving the wife to make the journey alone with children or large families. 
• Others lost their spouses or close family members during the journey, leaving them to manage without support, or in extended families ruled by not-their-husband. 
• e.g. Mary Richards, a convert who had joined the Mormons from England in 1843, and was therefore fairly much a stranger in a strange land, felt the parting from her husband, who went on a mission to England, “a trial beyond description”

2.  Workload:

• Many women were from retail or farming families.  Now they found themselves in charge of driving a team of oxen across the wilderness, and they had to learn how as they went. 
• In a patriarchal society, moreover, as the observer Thomas Kane (not a Mormon, but who tried to help them) wrote, once camp had been struck: “Inside the camp the chief labors were confined to the women … the empire of the tented town was with the better sex.”
• They had to gather firewood, buffalo chips, and other resources themselves. 
• They had to care for the sick, the children and the animals, and do all the domestic tasks such as cooking and organising. 
• Nonetheless, added Kane, “whatever their manifold labors for the day”, they had to be finished in time for when their husbands returned for evening prayers. 

3.  Harsh Weather and Travel Conditions:

• They faced extreme weather, including freezing temperatures, relentless rain, snow, and wind.  Many had to sleep in wagons or makeshift shelters, enduring wet clothes, mud, and cold. 
• The women navigated treacherous paths, sometimes facing snake bites, broken carriages, and other accidents.  The journey’s physical demands pushed many to their limits. 
• e.g. Bathsheba Smith describes the hardship as beyond words: “I will not try to describe how we travelled through storms of snow, wind and rain-how roads had to be made, bridges built, and rafts constructed-how our poor animals had to drag on, day after day, with scanty feed-or how our camps suffered from poverty, sickness and death.”

4.  Scarcity of Resources:

• Food shortages were common, and families sometimes had little more than cornmeal to eat.  Clothing and other essentials were also scarce. 
• Many struggled with poverty, often arriving at their destination without sufficient resources.  Some faced permanent physical debilitation, and their health was severely impacted by the journey. 
• e.g. Aurelia Rogers, who was a child on the trek, remembered: “we had no milk nor butter, our provisions had also nearly given out, so that in the spring and summer following, we really suffered for something to eat….  Many a night I have gone to bed without supper, having to wait until I was hungry enough to eat our poor fare”. 

5.  Sickness and Death:

• Sickness was a constant threat, with women, children, and other family members suffering from illnesses such as scurvy, measles, and fever.  Deaths were frequent, and bodies were often buried without proper coffins due to the lack of resources. 
• Women were expected to care for the sick and dying, so they had to witness sometimes entire families succumb to illness and death.  The constant exposure to mortality deeply affected their mental and emotional well-being. 
• And of course they got ill themselves.  e.g. Louisa Pratt explained: “The shaking ague fastened deathless fangs upon me.  I shook till it appeared my very bones were pulverized.  I wept., I prayed, I besought the Lord to have mercy on me….  I was in my wagon my children all sick in the tent”

6.  Childbirth Challenges:

• Several women gave birth under harsh conditions, often without proper shelter or assistance.  Many lost their newborns shortly after birth, and some never recovered physically or emotionally. 
• Several also lost multiple children during the journey, whether from illness or the harsh conditions.  The emotional weight of these losses was compounded by the fact that they had to continue the trek without proper time to grieve. 
• e.g. Jane Richards gave birth to a child on 23 July.  McKenzie writes: “Frightened and ill, Jane was not willing to part with her baby; and she carried him with her through Iowa's July heat and storms” until her the party reached Mt Pisgah on 2 August.  On can hardly imagine the mental trauma she was going through during that period. 

INSTANCES OF JOY, EASE, AND GOOD FORTUNE

1.  Escape:

• A major positive feeing was one of relief, that they were getting away from the persecution and dangers of Missouri. 
• e.g. Eliza Lyman, after a difficult journey in which she gave birth to a son, commented: “It was not a pleasant journey for me as I have been very nearly helpless all the way, but it is all right, we are going from the land of our oppressors to where we hope to raise our children in the fear of the Lord where they will never suffer by the hands of our enemies as we have done."

2.  Spiritual Comfort:

It is perhaps telling that the word ‘praise’ does not occur at all in the article, and the word ‘thank’ only once – when Elizabeth Lyman, recovering from sickness, wrote: “I am now like a skeleton … but the Lord preserved my life for some purpose, for which I thank him” – which tells us something about the depth of hardship the women faced.  Nevertheless:

• All the women turned to prayer, and found spiritual meaning in their religious beliefs, which gave them purpose, determination and hope. 
• e.g. Bathsheba Smith, reflecting on the idea of polygamy, wrote: “being proud of my husband, and loving him very much, knowing him to be a man of God … I have joy in having a testimony that what I had done was acceptable to my Father in Heaven”. 

3.  Social Support and Community:

• Women often found comfort in the company and support of others, whether through community activities such as camp dances, music, and singing, or support from neighbours who helped build shelters, share food, and provide companionship. 
• During periods of rest or leisure, women found joy in creative diversions, including games, riddles, concerts, storytelling, and even humorous acts such as travellers dressing up for amusement.  These activities provided laughter and distraction from the hardships. 
• e.g. Louise Barnes Pratt noted that at times: "We have large camp fires around which we all gather, sing songs, both spiritual and comic, then all unite in prayer."
• These women were strong and resourceful.  On 7 June, Louise Barnes Pratt records: “the ladies met to organize … If the men wish to hold control over women let them be on the alert.  We believe in equal rights”. 

4.  Small Comforts and Indulgences:

• Despite the difficulties, women enjoyed small luxuries such as fresh food (e.g. wild strawberries), homemade treats (mince pies). 
• Women experienced a sense of relief as their families’ health improved, or the change of seasons brought better conditions.  This allowed them actually to enjoy the journey. 
• Many women reflected on moments of good fortune, such as narrowly avoiding snake bites, as blessings or luck. 
• When better living conditions at certain points, such as log cabins, huts, or well-equipped wagons, allowed the women easier cooking, warmth, or a more settled routine, the journey could be enjoyed. 
• e.g. Ursalia Hascall, who was in a well-organised, well-equipped party, wrote: “Never slept better.… We have had everything on the way to make us more comfortable than anyone could possibly expect, and in this way we travelled until we came to [Winter Quarters].”

5.  Good Weather and Abundant Nature:

• Women found beauty and joy in their surroundings, particularly during favourable weather.  They admired the landscapes and felt blessed by the abundance of nature, which lightened their spirits along the way. 
• e.g. Leonora Taylor enthused on 1 June that the “Country was really lovely gently rolling ridges … all covered with rich grass and lovely Flowers every few Miles there is a creek and a little Grove of Trees”. 

HOW RELIABLE IS ALL THIS?

At first sight, an historian would be mad not to be grateful for the huge amount of eyewitness testimony of the Trek, but – whilst not suggesting that the material is false or useless – we do need to treat it with care. 

For a start, these are just fourteen women – moreover, fourteen very strong, intelligent, literate women with the kind of character which led them to write a record.  Many of them went on to be powerful church leaders.  By default, we do not hear from the hundreds of other Mormon women who made the journey, who may have had different characters and came from different circumstances.  We cannot be sure that these fourteen women are representative. 

When you search the internet about her, Bettie McKenzie was an amazing woman.  But she was not a trained, professional historian, and she was distilling mountains of information into the twelve pages of her article – the 18 lines she gives to Mary Richards, for instance, come from a book 360 pages-long of Mary’s journal and letters.  We do not know on what basis McKenzie selected her material, or – without reading all the sources for ourselves – how representative of our fourteen women’s reflections her choices were. 

And how reliable are the sources left by the fourteen women about their actual feelings and experiences?

• Three of the women (Louisa Barnes, Eliza Lyman and Mary Richards) kept a diary, but how reliable will entries written at the time be? We might wonder if bad times were recorded as more dreadful, and good times as better, simply because they were written ‘in the heat of the moment’. 
• Three of the women (Bathsheba Smith, Ursalia Hascall and Mary Richards) have left us letters, but letters – written to someone you fear might worry, or whom you fear might say ‘I told you so’ – often understate the negatives and overstate the positives.  McKenzie’s article contains only good about Ursalia Hascall’s journey, and the “moving” letter of Bathsheba Smith that McKenzie quotes begins: “My Dear husband we are all well as usual”. 
• Nine of the fourteen women left us their memoirs of the journey, and Eliza Lyman edited her journal because it was “too long”.  How reliable are their memories thirty, forty, fifty years after the event? Memories not only change over time, and become memories-of-memories, but they can change to become what you want them to be. 

The writer Eric A. Eliason (1997) saw the trek as a ‘pioneer myth’ of heroism and sacrifice which is still celebrated annually today.  In fact, he points out, most Mormons, even before the transcontinental railroad, went at least part of the way by train.  And, whilst there is no doubt that the pioneers of 1848 travelled overland by wagon:

“Mormon pioneers on the whole probably suffered less angst and hardship on their journeys than did their Gentile counterparts due to the atypically well organized and corporate nature of their migratory enterprise and the fact that a community of fellow believers awaited their arrival.”

No one is going to accuse our fourteen women of telling lies but – as any teenager trying to persuade their parents to let them go to a party will know – there are truths you mention, and truths you downplay.  There is ALWAYS a difference between ‘your truth’ and the objective truth.  So, did our fourteen witnesses subconsciously ‘ham up’ their experiences to meet the expected narrative?

Having said that, whilst one way to assess the reliability of your sources is to assess their provenance, the other way is to measure them against the facts. 

In this case, we know that the circumstances evidenced in these fourteen women’s accounts all actually happened.  We know that the trek across Iowa was the worst part of the Mormons’ journey.  The Mormons did set off underprepared at the worst time of year.  The winters of 1846-7 and 1847-8 were especially harsh.  The journey across Iowa was a nightmare of mud, and disease did sweep though the camps at Mt Pisgah, Garden Grove and 'Winter Quarters'.  And we know that the Mormons survived by faith, determination and cooperation. 

What we see in these sources is how fourteen remarkable women felt they coped with those testing conditions.