By the Trail had gone Jason Lee, in 1834, to plant the sturdy oak of Methodism in the Willamette Valley and the north Pacific Coast. His task was nobly done; the developments of to-day attest the wisdom of the church in sending him and his coequal coadjutors, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepherd, and P. L. Edwards.

Over this same track went Marcus Whitman, in 1835, to found the mission at Waiilatpu, near the present site of Walla Walla, and to find there the early grave of honorable martyrdom at the hands of the people he was attempting to save. The call to these two intrepid equals, Lee and Whitman, came through the visit of the two young Indian chiefs who, immediately after the expedition of Lewis and Clark, had gone to Saint Louis to obtain a copy of the “white man’s Book of heaven.” The names of these two, as previously stated, 126 were Hee-oh’ks-te-kin and H’co-a-h’co-a-cotes-min.

On the sixth day of April, 1830, in Kirkland, Ohio, Joseph Smith, Jr., had organized the body best known as the Mormon Church. Fourteen years later he was mercilessly, and unjustly, mobbed at Nauvoo, Illinois, and after three more years of drifting about from pillar to post, the Latter-Day Saints prepared to emigrate to upper California under the absolute domination and guidance of Brigham Young, who was often styled the successor to the “Mohammed of the West,” as Joseph Smith was sometimes called. This cult had some queer traits. W. W. Phelps, one of their more prominent members, thus characterized the leaders of Mormondom: Brigham Young, the Lion of the Lord; P. P. Pratt, the Archer of Paradise; O. Hyde, the Olive Branch of Israel; W. Richards, the Keeper of the Rolls; J. Taylor, Champion of Right; W. Smith, the Patriarchal Jacob’s Staff; W. Woodruff, the Banner of the Gospel; G. A. Smith, the Entablature of Truth; O. Pratt, the Gauge of Philosophy; J. E. Page, the Sun Dial; L. Wright, Wild Mountain Ram.

Expelled from Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, the trembling Saints sought less turbulent surroundings by immersing their all in the wild conditions both of men and wilderness in the untamed lands of the great West. They were not able to sustain the physical cost of the trek of more than a thousand miles under the hardest of circumstances. The Trail was the home of the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, the Otoes, Omahas, Utes, and others, who knew neither law nor mercy. The waters were often alkaline and deadly as Lethe. A thousand miles afoot was the record some had to make. They appealed to the government, then at war with Mexico, to permit a number of their men to enlist as soldiers to be marched over the ancient Santa Fe Trail, and thus be able to draw wages on the journey. This was granted. These recruits had little, if anything, to do, but they are known in history as the Mormon battalion. They went to California, 1847-49, and were present when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill.

In 1847, July 24, Mormondom threw up its first trenches in the valley of the Great 128 Salt Lake, as that saline body was then known and recorded. In this salubrious region was planted the analogy of the harem of Mohammed, and the seraglio of Brigham became the center of the sensual system of the Latter-Day Saints. So blatant was the apostle Heber Kimball that he said he himself had enough wives to whip the soldiers of the United States.

Evangelical Christianity waited almost twenty years before an attempt was made to plant the high standards of Christendom in the Wahsatch Mountains. In the sixties went the denominations in the order here named: Congregational, Protestant Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal; in 1871 the Presbyterians went, and then the Baptists. It was dark. Mighty night had beclouded the intellect and obscured the spiritual senses; civilized sensuality swayed with unchecked hand the destinies of the masses. The blinded people groped for light in the pitchlike blackness of the new superstition.

“None but Americans on guard” in such a night! Hear the roll call. None but tried and true Christian soldiers were 129 mounted on those ramparts: Erastus Smith, the heart-winner; Thomas Wentworth Lincoln, the scholarly but quiet Grand Army man, who always kept his patriotic fires banked; George Ellis Jayne, another veteran of the Civil War, tireless evangelist who possibly saw more Mormons made Christian than any other pastor of any church in Utah; George Marshall Jeffrey, eternally at it; Joseph Wilks, methodic, patient, sunny; Martinus Nelson, weeping over the straying of his Norwegians; Emil E. MÖrk, rugged and steadfast; Martin Anderson and Samuel Hooper, both of whom died by the Trail, falling at the “post of honor.” Last, but not least of these to be named, stands the energetic and “Boanergetic” Thomas Corwin Iliff, that Buckeye stentor and patriot, who with heart-thrilling tones has raised millions of dollars in aiding and in establishing hundreds and hundreds of churches in these United States. For thirty years he commanded the Methodist as well as the patriotic redoubts of Utah and bearded the “Lion of the Lord” in his very den.

But there were never truer watchmen on 130 the high-towered battlements of the real Zion than the Protestant Episcopal Bishop, Daniel S. Tuttle; the knightly Hawkes of the Congregationalists; the truly apostolic Baptist, Steelman; the Presbyterian leaders––who surpasses them? See the saintly Wishard, the polemic McNiece and McLain; the scholarly and tireless Paden!

They were loyal to the core, commanding the Christian forces as they deployed, enfiladed, charged, marched, and stormed the trenches of religious libertinism in the fertile and paradisaical valleys and roomy caÑons of the Mormon state of Deseret. These never surrendered, compromised, or retreated.

Glorious Brotherhood! Permit us the honor of saluting you. Your like may never march abreast again in any campaign! Living, you were conquerors; dying, you are heroes.

Of these above named Messrs. Hooper, Anderson, Steelman, and McNiece have entered the “snow-white tents” of the other shore.