Transcript

We traveled by train to Omaha, Nebraska, where we started on our long journey with eighty wagons in our train, under the direction of Captain Murdock.

One night we traveled all night long. The Indians were so bad; they had stolen a woman from a train ahead of us, so we walked all through the night to escape them and get past their camps. This night it was very difficult for my father [Andrew Mineer] to keep up with the wagon train. He kept going slower and slower because of his rheumatism. I kept hold of his hand and tried to help him as much as I could. Finally he could not keep up with the train any longer, and told me to keep hold of the last wagon and continue on and he would catch up with us later when we camped. He was finally left behind. Soldiers were camping in the hills and had a big bonfire. Father mistook this for our camp and went in that direction. When he got there, he was surprised to see so many soldiers. He did not know how they would accept him. They asked him what he could do, and he said he could play the violin, so they had him play all night long.

In the morning, one of the men brought him to our camp just as we started out to travel on. Mother [Ingrid Jensen Mineer] had cried all night because she was afraid the Indians had taken him and she would never see him again. We all thanked our Father in Heaven that he was with us again, for the train would have had to start on without him. It was too dangerous to wait for anyone.

After three and one-half months walking over a hot desert, up the rugged hills, and down the hills and canyons, we finally came out of Emigration Canyon, dirty and ragged. When I saw my mother looking over this valley with the tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she made this remark: "Is this Zion, and are we at the end of this long, weary journey?" Of course to me as a child, this had been a delightful pleasure jaunt, and I remember it only as fun. We children would run along as happy as could be. My older sisters used to make rag dolls as they walked along for us little children to play with. But to my mother, this long, hot journey with all of us ragged and footsore at the end and the arrival in the valley of desert and sagebrush must have been a heartbreaking contrast to the beautiful home she had left in Sweden. But to me and to my mother, the gospel had been worth all it had cost.