The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 6
605 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
to Mexico were old enough to have been a part of the heroic move-
ment of Mormondom into the Rocky Mountains a generation earlier."
At the outset, the travellers arranged and directed themselves very
much in the fashion of those in the 1840's. The parties were organ-
ized into long wagon trains. Captains, captains of ten, chaplains, and
historians were appointed. There seemed every reason to expect that
organization and numbers would work to their advantage. Moreover,
it was a common religious cause in which those going to Mexico
were engaged. This fact, combined with the persecuted background
of the event, gave the movement an aura of drama. The Los An-
geles Daily Herald, in its account, could think of no better term
than "pilgrimage" to describe the spectacle."
It was soon discovered, however, that history had little prepared
them for the hardships of mass transportation in the broken desert
country of the Southwest. In fact, from retrospect, one is surprised
by the Mormons' seeming, inattention to the trials and experience
of those who had travelled the same or similar routes for more than
a generation. Hiram C. Hodge, for example, had already written
of his unexpected discovery that, rather than desert flatlands, Ari-
zona's surface was overwhelmingly mountainous, only about one
third plains or level desert country."2 United States military detach-
ments combing the area for Indian marauders had also encountered
the problem of terrain." Even among their own churchmen, there
were many who could have told the Mormons bound for Mexico
much that would have saved them hardship. Latter-day Saints des-
tined for Arizona and the borderlands in the 187o's had often turned
22For only two of many examples see the accounts of Henry Lunt as reported in
"Journal History of the Church" (multivolume manuscripts, Church Historian's Office,
Salt Lake City, Utah), January 22, 19o2, and of Hannah H. Hill, one of the wives of
Miles P. Romney, in Romney, Life Story of Miles P. Romney, 311-312.
22Los Angeles Daily Herald, March 21x, 1887. The two best descriptions of these early
efforts are to be found in Smith, Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 304-305, and in Jenson,
"Juarez Stake."
24i877 Arizona as It Was (reprint; Chicago, 1962), 32.
BBIn the words of Lt. John Bigelow, Jr., mountainous Arizona is "a mass of rock
fashioned by plutonic and atmospheric forces into every variety of shape and form-
an imposing exhibition of blocks and boulders, bold bluffs and promontories, broad
slippery slopes, peaks, domes, and crests, and jagged and serrated ridges. In their dazzling,
reflected sunlight, they are anything but an attractive prospect to a traveller." On the
Bloody Trail of Geronimo (reprint; Los Angeles, 1958), 191. And, for a moving account
of the immense labor imposed on both animals and men by the cruel requirements of
Arizona trails and mountain passes during this period, see a description by the young
army bride, Martha Summerhayes, in Milo Milton Quaife (ed.), Vanished Arizona:
Recollections of My Army Life (Chicago, 1929), 79-82.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/22/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.