I remember talking with a group of women from church when I was a teenager, and I mentioned that if I had been a member of the church during that time, I would not have been a pioneer. I would have unapologetically (well, mostly unapologetically) stayed back and worked to fit back into the community there, keeping my kids safe and educated instead. A few of the women just kind of wrote me off since I was a convert and hadn't grown up indoctrinated with how wonderful of a blessing the pioneer trek was and how no one who was faithful would have chosen to stay behind, and a few were a bit shocked that I didn't buy into it. But, seriously, what parent in their right mind would yank their children from their homes and relative security (issues of "the locals" hating no them aside), opportunities for growth and education, to trek across the country, get sick, possibly die, and if they did make it to Salt Lake, be so incredibly cut off from the rest of the world that there's no option to prosper in any way other than inside of the church.

To hear how the pioneer situation is taught to kids now, it's made out to be that the biggest things they had to deal with were boredom and missing a meal or two. The church isn't teaching the youth just how incredibly stupid and dangerous it was. Instead, it's painting pictures of pioneer kids dancing and singing through the prairies ala Sound of Music.

Obviously, pioneers were needed to settle the west but the way the majority of Mormon pioneers went about it was stupid.

How is putting the lives of your children at risk a noble thing?

I also hate when Mormons say the church must be true since so many risked their lives to follow the prophet. Guess what? People also fly planes into buildings or strap bombs to their body for their religion. It doesn't make it true.

I can understand that a lot of the devestation happened because a good chunk of members didn't listen to the "wait and start your journey at X time; don't follow us just because the Prophet is going right now; wait until you're ready" (or something like that) warning and took off unprepared because they were afraid of/too dumb to wait. But, still, not cool. And we fairy tale it up a bit and make it seem a bit glamorous. _Those_ saints must have been so incredibly spiritual, can you imagine that? Don't we all want to be like our pioneer ancestors? Ugh.

It's my thinking that if they hadn't done the trek the mormon church would have withered away like the Strangites.

They invested their entire lives. They were so heavily invested that jebus himself could have minced up to them, slapped them with that hand of his, told them it was a pack of lies and they would have defended the mormon church.

Then after they were in utah, oh boy howdy were they stuck. Then the next generation came along and they were just as stuck and just as invested.

Then the next generation came along and so forth.

If it hadn't been for them leaving and marching out of the United States, I think LDS.inc wouldn't be here.

My step-grandfather was a non-Mormon and got baptized when he married my previously widowed grandmother. But, a couple of years ago I stumbled across a history of the area they were from. It gave brief backgrounds on most of the original settlers. Well, come to find out that step-grandfather's grandparents and parents were original Mormon settlers of the area after immigrating from scandinavia. As best I could tell once they arrived and settled down they, and their subsequent 'non-mormon' children and grandchildren didn't have anything to do with the church anymore once they'd made the trip to Utah and Idaho.

I know I'm reading between the lines but to me the explanation is that once they'd made the trip from Denmark to the U.S. and then to Utah and Idaho they were 'stuck.' Few people would have had the assets or opportunity, and might also be psychologically averse to admitting they'd been wrong and just going back home where they'd come from ... so they stayed. In some cases drifting away from the church and in others embracing it because they didn't have anything else anymore.

I have one ancestor who after arriving in Utah did change his mind and returned to England while his wife and youngest son stayed (they also had older adult kids too who hadn't joined the church and stayed in England, so it was probably easier for him to return). I often wonder whether, if they had the assets and opportunity, how many other Mormon pioneers and immigrants would have done the same.

Hmmmmm. Same thing in my family, the father went back to England and lived there with the other eldest son.
South Africa included in this story?
I wonder if we are related......

And they wouldn't have been driven out if they hadn't have been so insistent on making it clear that they were better than everyone else and should be in charge of everything, right?

I'm pretty sure it was an order, er, commandment that the Saints go out to Utah to build up the church. Just staying behind would probably not have been an option but it certainly wouldn't have been easy.

One of my female ancestors chose to stay behind. Her douchebag husband took some of the more brainwashed older children, but my GGGG Grandma stayed behind with the younger kids.

Of course when this story was told, it was told as how it was such a tragedy that she 'looked back' across the Mississippi and ended returning to Nauvoo. I would like to know what happened to her. I hope she had a very happy life. I have a feeling that however her life ended up, it was better than being a polygamous wife to my GGGG grandpa living in the god-forsaken desert.

Perhaps those who were established in Nauvoo did, but many of those who came west from England, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, etc., had few prospects and short life expectancies.

Current mormon parents also fail if they put their church standing above the welfare of their children.

I actually have a modern-day example of this.

I received a calling a year or so ago to help out at girl's camp for the YW.

On one of the nights, they had a 2-hour testimony session, where anybody was invited to go up and bear their testimony.

This lady who was helping out went up. She tells all these little girls, ages 12-18 about how she was forced to choose between paying tithing and fixing her car to get her and her daughters safely to camp.

She chose to pay tithing. She and the girls made it to camp, but when she left camp to go buy some ingredients for a meal from Wal-Mart (which I'm betting she also paid for out of her own pocket), the car broke down in the parking lot.

Somebody at camp gave her an anonymous envelope with enough money to fix the car. She was bawling about how "the Lord provided for her" in her time of need.

Now, I still believe in God. And I believe that God takes care of people.

But this lady? I felt like saying "You were stupid, but got lucky that you didn't kill yourself, or worse your daughters from your stupidity...be lucky you have members of your church who are nice enough to help you."

...she had cried to some of the other ladies there, they felt bad, and took up a collection.

And I'm even more confident that even if she hadn't paid tithing, they would have done it anyway. Because despite being Mormon, they were nice.

My TBM sister is a perfect example of this. She and her husband try to look so very, vvvveeeeerrrrryyyyy righteous to everyone around them, and sometimes it actually woks - their family was featured in the New Era a while ago. I could have barfed - they were portrayed as this perfect, amazing, role-model Mormon family with a million kids, lots of animals, tons of canning going on, scriptures read and songs sung all the time, and so forth. Truly gag-worthy. The truth is, they tried to steal my declining mother's house, money, and belongings because they are the most greedy, selfish, pennypinching people I've ever been unfortunate enough to deal with, they make their children work, then don't pay them what they should (or buy them off with a .10 toy from D.I. (for actual paid jobs outside the home they're involved in), the house and yard are so bad CPS should have been called years ago, they cheat people, have to make tunnels through some rooms in their houses because the filth and junk has piled up so much, and the clothes and shoes the kids wear are either homemade (not well) or hand-me-downs proudly displayed by the children as an example of their parents' thrift. Worse, seasonal clothes are not purchased - there was many a time when a niece or nephew of mine was wearing snow boots in the summer because their parents would not, NOT, spend the money to buy them correct footwear. Yet, they're sitting front and center in church every single week, looking mighty spiritual and living up to the Proclamation in every way. Suffice it to say, after many court battles with her and seeing her true colors shine through as a Mormon and just as a person, we are completely estranged. This kind of Mormon makes me sick. And angry.

Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts is a great book about the reality of the handcart fiasco.

Those who wanted to wait and save money for a coveraged wagon and oxen were told to travel immediately as the saints had to be in SLC for the second coming.

Young just wanted human cannon fodder in case the federals tried to drum him out of SLC.

It tells the appaling true story of stupidity and greed (Young was just saving money with handcarts he didn't care about the human cost).

The whitewash of the handcarts started from the very start, they were a failure but the faithful were not allowed to voice this opinion.

BY was sent a letter telling him that the Martin and Willie companies had very inadequate supplies and must be met part way. The letter has been found in his papers, initialed by the receiving clerk. BY forgot all about them. He had a some big personal things going on at the time.

The story that really stayed with me is this.

Small children were not allowed to stay with their families or ride in the handcarts. They were put in herds and kept separate. They were moved long with switches and not allowed to complain or rest. It allowed everyone to move faster.

The size of the rations they were given are beyond appalling.

That sounds a lot like my ex-wife's experiences in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Thousands of people made the trip west for reasons having nothing to do with a supposed profit of god telling them to.

I had non-Mormon pioneers on my Mom's side of the family too. They took the OREGON TRAIL vs the Mormon trail and settled around Portland. I've even got a clipping from a Life magazine article of the hand carved gravestone, somewhere in Idaho of GGGGrand-Uncle who was just a boy, fell off the wagon and got run over.

Another ancestor headed off on his own at age 19 to get rich in the California gold rush. With no assets of his own he just tagged along with a wagon train that allowed him to join them in exchange for hunting for food. When they got to southeast Idaho the group changed their mind and headed for Oregon instead, so GGGrandfather set off alone, on foot with a backpack, for California anyways. Then he stumbled on the Mormons around Ogden, winter was coming, he had carpentry skills and realized they could use his help, so he planned to stay over the winter and continue in the spring, but then he met a Mormon girl, got baptized, married and stayed in Utah instead of going on the rest of the way to California.

People had lot's of reasons for packing up and heading west. I'd suppose even some of the Mormons had other reasons in addition to the church, even if the church reasons over-rode all others.

Just a thought.

Exactly. Unless your a mormon, you don't even think about the mormons when you hear the word "pioneer". You think "Oregon Trail". Far more pioneers headed to Oregon than ever went to Utah.

In defense of the Mormon pioneers, from what I can tell, the church lied to them about both the rewards and dangers of the journey. Most did not probably know it would be so bad.

If there was really all that hatred for MORmONS, then it seems that Joes former wife and kids should have had some problems, but they did not, so it appears that the Illini just wanted MORmONS to give up their trouble making MORmON ways more than giving up any thing else!

I called BS on the MORmON battalion story, it did nt make sense to me! I said I would have headed back across the Mississippi and made the best of it with my family, My nasty seminary teacher said I would have ended up dead for not obeying the prophet.

knowing what a POS Brig ham young really was, she might have been right but not for the reasons she thought of.

Gordon Hinckley / LDS INC cant stop talking/LYING about (SPINNING) it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3A5QGj7ZaM

Worse things have happened to equally-worthy non-Mormons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll

Oh! But where are the long-suffering Mormons on those lists??? It must be an anti-Mormon plot to make it look like other people suffered more that the Mormons did!!!

At This is the Place last summer we saw a huge bronze statue honoring the handcart people. What the plaque didn't say was that the pushcart folks were a tiny percentage of the number of people who came west. It also didn't mention how their leaders left them to perish because of inadequate supplies and support.

My ancestors were some of the rescuers of the Donner party. I don't know if there were Mormons in the Donner party,but many of the rescuers were.

I remember as a child in primary learning about the pioneers. I had no way to really comprehend the ordeal of it all, but it still horrified me, even with the happy, singing twist they put on it. It has always been a sore spot with me. More so since I became a mother. A couple years ago when the movie 17 Miracles came out, I obliged my mother by taking my kids and going with her to a special screening of it at the conference center. She was an events coordinator there for a while, so she got an invite. All of the actors were there, as well as Deiter and some other GA's. Everyone was, of course, in tears and so moved by their sacrifices. I was so angry about it that I actually had to step out for a few minutes (using one my of children as an excuse!). I had no idea what movie we were going to, otherwise I'm sure I would not have gone. This was before it came out in theaters. I can't imagine the heartbreak of those parents once they realized what they had gotten themselves into, for having to put their children through something like that. My heart goes out to those, especially the little ones, that had to suffer so needlessly for some greedy, self righteous people, and the whacked out suckers that fell head over heels for it.

Once upon a time about 20 years ago a good friend of mine (He is now ex-Mormon) went up to Bountiful, Utah to visit his 104 year old aunt. She was great - Lived in own home and with the exception of cooking and cleaning lived on her own. She was a daughter of a pioneer.

My great Grand Dad on my Fathers side came from France in 1884 to Utah because of the mountains as did a lot of Anglo/Europeans did. When you go to public school in Utah the teaching of U.S. history pretty much stops in 1847 and is given only light treatment after that.

The Mormons did establish a community here - yes. How ever there was a ranch trade and farming in the area. Prior to 1847 and well through the beginning of the 20th century people traveled through this area on their way to California. This is no secret.

Here's the part that just kills me (Laughing). I observe the Mormon church's absolute desperate need for acceptance. And when I observe their changes in their marketing I find it peculiar that the more science absolutely disproves "The One True Church" and all of its "truthful" facts (Name yours here.) The more it realigns it's own message to relate to the pioneers. In other words the LDS church keeps moving away from the "Book of Mormon" (which I take as absolute fiction.) and continues to tie it's self to the pioneers. After all there story is real and did happen. They did in fact struggle to make it across the plains. But road trip does not make a church.