Epistle to the Saints, 24 July 1888 [LE-39712]

THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' MILLENNIAL STAR.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them."—ISAIAH viii, 20.

No. 36, Vol. L. Monday, September 3, 1888. Price One Penny.

A PIONEER ADDRESS.

THE following address from President Wilford Woodruff was read before the assembled Sabbath schools of Salt Lake City at their celebration of Pioneer Day:

To the Pioneers and Citizens, and to the Officers and Members of the Sabbath Schools.

MY DEAR FRIENDS, Forty-one years ago this day I passed through Immigration Canyon with President Brigham Young. He was taken sick on East Canyon Creek, and I made a bed for him in my carriage. When we came upon the bench, where we had a fair view of the valley before us, I turned the side of the vehicle to the west, so that he could obtain a fair view of the valley. President Young arose from his bed and took a survey of the country before him for several minutes. He then said to me, "Drive on down into the valley; this is our abiding place. I have seen it before in vision. In this valley will be built the City of the Saints and the Temple of our God." I drove down to the encampment already formed by a portion of our company, who had cut a road through the quaking-asp groves of timber which were in the bed of the canyon and come in ahead of us. We arrived in the encampment at 11:30 on the morning of the 24th of July, 1847. The brethren had already turned out City Creek and irrigated the dry and barren soil, being the first irrigation ever performed by any one in these mountains in this age. They had also commenced to plough some ground, and that noble pioneer, William Carter, whose circumstances prevent him meeting with the pioneers to-day, broke the first ground and laid the first furrow. The ploughshare that performed the work is on the stand to-day. On my arrival in camp, before I ate my dinner, I planted two bushels of potatoes in the ground broken up. President Young commenced to recover from his sickness the hour he entered the valley. On a day or two following our arrival a remarkable incident occurred. While President Young was walking with several of the apostles on the higher ground north-west of the encampment, he suddenly stepped out, struck his cane into the barren ground and sagebrush, and exclaimed, "Right here will stand the Temple of our

God." We had a peg driven down, and it was nearly in the middle of the Temple as it stands to-day, which Temple was built without any regard to the spot designated by President Young at the time. On the 26th we went to the top of a high point on the north of the city, which President Young named "Ensign Peak." We also visited the Hot and Warm Springs. On the 27th we drove to the West Mountains, and visited the Salt Lake, President Young being the first man to dip his hand into the briny water. We walked dryshod to the Black Rock and took a bath in the lake. Afterwards preparations were made for laying out the city, and I with other brethren, assisted President Young in laying out the ground and streets with chain and compass. He laid out a block of ten acres upon which to build a Temple, and city lots of one acre and a quarter, and streets eight rods wide, all of which have been published by historians. President Young left Winter Quarters on the 7th day of April, accompanied by seven other apostles and other men all told 143 men and three women. The apostles were Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, Willard Richards, Orson Pratt, Amasa Lyman, and Ezra T. Benson. Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor arrived soon after, leading companies of families. Orson Hyde remained at Kanesville. We traveled the first 500 miles without any grass. With the exception of the little grain we fed our animals, they lived entirely on the bark of cottonwood limbs and saplings which they knawed from the cottonwood we would lay before them for their night's meal. This company of 143 men traveled 1,000 miles, making their roads and building their bridges. In one instance we had to form a guard of a wedge shape for three days and nights to keep our company from being trampled to death by an enormous herd of buffalo that had gathered from the mountains and were migrating in a solid body to the plains below. The herd was judged to be sixty miles in length, and numbered not less than one million. They were traveling east, and we were traveling west. We were three days passing through the herd, and we all breathed freer when we were clear of them. No other class of men will ever witness the same scene again upon the face of the earth. Brother Wm. C. A. Smoot, sen., got his horses loose and mixed with the herd, and it was with great difficulty that we obtained them again.

Notwithstanding our first care was to secure an abiding place, a home for the people, we did not lose sight of other important matters. President Young contemplated at that early day the building of a railroad across the continent, and we marked out the route which we thought the national road would take to unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Brothers Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow entered the valley two or three days before the body of the pioneers; but where are those men to-day, and where is President Brigham Young and the apostles who accompanied him? All are in the spirit world, mingling with the martyred prophets, where they can plead for their brethren. Not one of them living to-day except myself, and but few of the pioneers remain. We have buried a whole quorum of twelve apostles since we entered these valleys of the mountains. The remnant of Zion's Camp, Mormon Battalion, and the pioneers, number but very few to-day. Those of us who remain will soon pass away, but our posterity lives and are numbered in the Primaries, the Sabbath Schools, and the Mutual Improvement Associations, and are this day assembled in this great Tabernacle to celebrate the arrival of the pioneers into this great American desert, which to-day, through the blessing of God and labor of the pioneers, is blossoming as the rose.

This company of pioneers spent about a month in this valley, during which period we erected what is known as the Old Fort, surrounding three sides of the ten-acre block with an adobe wall on the outside, and the east side with log cabins. We also arranged for this fort to have four entrances, one on each point of the compass.

Most of the pioneers returned to Winter Quarters, where they reached in the fall, making a journey of over

2,000 miles, besides the labors performed while here in building a fort, laying out the city, and exploring the adjacent valleys.

I wish to say a few words to the members of the Sabbath Schools, and to all who are assembled in this Tabernacle to-day to celebrate the arrival of the pioneers into this valley. It is not wisdom for us to occupy your time with a long address upon an occasion of this kind; but I have referred to a few incidents of our peculiar journey into this barren desert, that you can keep in mind the toil, the care, and the hardships which your fathers endured in laying the foundation of the Zion of our God which is to be established in the mountains of Israel in fulfillment of the blessings the old Patriarch, Jacob, pronounced upon his posterity that should be fulfilled in the valleys of the everlasting hills in the latter days; and upon the heads of the rising generation of the Latter-day Saints rests the responsibility of building up the kingdom of God upon the foundations which their fathers have laid. And also of building up a State in which shall dwell virtue, temperance, industry, frugality, and honesty; a State which will do honor to the American Government, where wholesome laws shall be administered in equity and justice to all of its citizens according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution given by inspiration of Almighty God to our forefathers.

I feel to say to our children, honor your father and your mother and your God, that your days may be long and prosperous in these valleys of the mountains which the Lord your God hath given unto you.

That God may bless you all, and enable you to fulfill the object of your creation here on earth to the satisfaction of yourselves and your Creator, is the earnest desire of your friend and brother,

WILFORD WOODRUFF.