Pioneers
Mormon Pioneers
After the murder of Joseph Smith the Mormons realised that they could not stay safely in the heartland of America.
Pioneer wagons ©
Latter-day Saint settlements were being attacked by mobs who burned crops, destroyed homes and threatened the people.
The Mormons were persecuted for several reasons:
- They didn't keep slaves, which was seen as a threat to the surrounding slave-owning culture at a time when the abolition of slavery was a big issue.
- Their doctrine of plural marriage was seen as a serious attack on the social and ethical rules of the period.
- The rapidly growing and tightly-knit Mormon communities had the potential to exercise considerable political power.
- They were considered outsiders who led a completely different sort of life.
Brigham Young ©
After Smith's death the new Church leader, Brigham Young , decided that their future lay in the American West.
He decided that the people would emigrate en masse.
It would be a migration like that of the Israelites who had been forced to leave Egypt in search of the Promised Land.
And although the Mormons got to their promised land sooner than the Israelites, they encountered great hardship and suffering along the way.
The first year of migration took the 16,000 migrants to Winter Quarters by the Missouri Rivers.
The second stage of migration took them to the Rocky Mountains and to the Great Salt Lake Basin, which they reached in 1847.
Salt Lake City
The Great Salt Lake Basin was extremely remote, and at that time was outside the USA. It was 1000 miles from the nearest significant town in the East, and so a very long way from their persecutors. Brigham Young decided that this was the place where the Mormons should create their new land.
The area was an inhospitable desert, but the Mormons were inspired by it, and named it Zion. They gave the local river the name Jordan. And they began to build Salt Lake City, which is still the headquarters of the Church.