Transcript

We traveled across the plains with an independent company. So called, because, the immigrants owned their own teams. We saw a great many Indians and a few Bufflo. This was a long and weary trip. There was a little over one hundred wagons, divided up in 10’s, 50’s and 100’s. Captains over the 10’, 50’s and over all those named Smith. We traveled through the day, the boys taking turns driving the loose and lame cattle ahead of the train. There was a few cows worked in the yoke with the oxen. I remember one muley cow that worked beside an ox team across the plains and then went out on the west mail line, hauling oats for several years for a man named Lesley, who said she was the best ox he had.

We crossed the Platte River on a ferryboat. One yoke of cattle and one wagon at a time. The last time we crossed it, at a ford, father was wading in water above his waist, holding onto the ox bow to keep the oxen moving up-stream, so as to come out at the right spot on the other side. We rode in the wagon across the streams, my brother, father and me taking turns. The Captain rode a mule the Saints had bought for him at Florence. He rode ahead of the train, to find the road across all of the streams, to determine their depth and locate the camping places.

Our camp was formed of a circle, with half the wagons on one side and the other half on the other side, with the tongues of the wagons on the inside, with an opening in each end which was closed by pulling up a wagon after the cattle were all unyoked and turned loose inside the circle, then driven out to grass by those detailed to herd them, then driven back in the morning to be yoked up and we rolled out. Everyone keeping in their place and everything kept in order. It was a beautiful sight to see those covered wagons and teams at a certain distance from each other, winding their way over hill and dale, across streams and climbing hills on their way to Utah. Through the tops of mountains to where God said he would set up his kingdom in the last days, never more to be torn down, or given to another people.

We arrived in Salt Lake City, in the fall of 1858.