What I Tell My Kids About the Handcarts on Pioneer Day

On Wednesday I came home from recipe testing and found Lily at the counter with my flour scale, weighing her stuffed palomino. Pretzel came to just under a pound. Her rain boots added a pound and a half and her scripture storybook another one, and she was feeling pretty good about the pile until she remembered a coat. Her Primary handout said a child on a handcart could bring ten pounds, and what she wanted to know was who decided which ten.

How much of the handcart story is too much for a kid?

I told Lily I didn't know. Today is the 24th and in a couple of hours we'll be on a curb on Main Street with a beach towel and a grocery bag for candy, because I love the parade and won't pretend otherwise, but a parade doesn't answer her.

I taught third grade for five years, and the one rule from that classroom that's held up is to answer the question that was asked and then stop. Don't hand over the next question too.

For the grown-ups, here's the story as I understand it. Brigham Young's company came into the valley on July 24, 1847. In 1856 the Church began sending converts across by handcart, adults with 17 pounds of belongings and children with 10. The Willie and Martin companies left Florence, Nebraska, in August, which was late, and snow caught both in Wyoming in October. Of about 980 people somewhere over 210 died, and the Martin company lost roughly one in four. Rescue wagons went out from Salt Lake after Brigham Young called for help from the pulpit on October 5, and that part belongs in the story every time because it's what the Saints did when they found out.

Lily is eight and got the short version: people started too late in the year, it snowed, a lot of them died including some kids, and then others drove out and got the rest. She asked if the rescuers had horses and I said wagons.

Caleb is eleven, which is why he got more, and on Tuesday night after dinner I told him about Bodil Mortensen, ten years old, a girl from Denmark who was sent to gather firewood at camp and was found the next morning leaning against a handcart wheel, frozen, with sagebrush twigs still in her hands. He said "She was ten," went out to the trampoline and bounced by himself for a while. I let him.

The first Pioneer Day celebration wasn't until 1849, two years after the valley, and I'm fairly sure nobody threw candy at it.

Ben, who is two years and eight months, gets the wheel on the float and the word "cart."

Lily has been asking heavy things at odd moments since her baptism prep, which I wrote about in Getting Lily Ready for Baptism Took Longer Than the Interview.

Reading one real journal entry together

Caleb's follow-up came Wednesday morning in the car on the way to the library, his library books sliding around on the seat. "Didn't anybody tell them it was too late?"

Somebody did, as it turns out. Levi Savage was a sub-captain in the Willie company, and at a meeting in Florence on August 13, 1856, he stood up and said so in front of everyone, and his journal has it in a line short enough to read at the table.

"The lateness of the Season was my only objection, of leaving this point for the mountains at this time."

Levi Savage Jr., 1856

He went on to say they were "liable to have to wade in Snow up to our knees, and Should at night rap ourselvs in a thin blanket and lye on the frozen ground without abed." Caleb asked if Levi was bad at school, and I told him most people spelled like that then.

Savage was rebuked for lacking faith. When the company decided to go anyway, he's reported to have said "What I have said I know to be true; but seeing you are to go forward, I will go with you, will help all I can, will work with you, will rest with you, and if necessary, will die with you."

Caleb sat with that one for a minute and then said "So he was right and they did it anyway." I said yes, and left it there.

The page in my mother's folder

My Pearson line came through the Martin company. I found that out at eleven, from a manila folder.

My mother, Diane, brought a manila folder out to the kitchen table in St. George one afternoon, with ribbon scraps from her flower shed still on the counter. Inside was a single typed page. It named Karin, my great-great-great-grandmother, who crossed in 1856 with her husband and three children, and it said she was "faithful all her days." Under that was a small table of names and dates. One of the children, a girl of four, had a date written as "Nov. 1856" with a question mark after it.

I asked what happened to her. My mother looked at the page a while and said they came and they were faithful, and she put it back in the folder.

I didn't ask again for twenty years, and when I did, on the phone, my mother said she didn't know either. Her own mother had never told her and nobody had thought to ask the one who might have known. All that was left of a four-year-old was a month and a question mark.

I think about that table more than I think about the parade. Somebody in my family decided the faith was the story and the girl was a detail. I can see why, if losing her hurt enough. I still wish someone had written down her name.

I haven't found the girl's name in a roster. Caleb has asked me twice if I've looked.

A pioneer lunch that doesn't pretend

I tested this on Tuesday, and today's plan is lunch after the parade with four things on the table.

The cornmeal mush comes first, and it's one cup of cornmeal, about 160 grams, stirred into a cup of cold water before it goes near heat or it lumps, then whisked into three more cups of boiling water with a teaspoon of salt and stirred over low heat for fifteen minutes until it pulls away from the pot. Leftovers go in a loaf pan and get fried in slices tomorrow, which we'll eat at the cabin.

The beans take no effort because I cook pinto beans every Sunday for the freezer anyway (it's in How I Feed Six of Us on About $150 a Week), so these get only salt and a bay leaf and nothing else. No cheese, no cilantro, no sour cream.

Dried apples, because Lily will eat anything chewy.

Then the hardtack. Two cups of flour (250 grams), a teaspoon of salt and about three-quarters of a cup of water, mixed to a dry dough, rolled half an inch thick, cut in squares and poked with a fork. It bakes at 375 for half an hour a side and what comes out could prop a door. Caleb knocked one on the counter, listened, and said "That's a coaster." Lily dunked hers in milk and it softened about as much as a roof shingle would.

I also broke the rule on purpose by putting out butter and a jar of honey, which the handcart companies wouldn't have had, and I told the kids so. What I've read warns against making children reenact real deprivation, and I agree with that. I'll go as far as a bowl of mush and a cracker nobody can bite.

What I'm saving for Caleb alone is what happened when the flour ran out. The Willie company used the last of theirs around October 19 and after that they ate what they had, which by then included their oxen. I'll say it quietly with the plates in front of us and let the conversation go where it goes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I tell young kids that children died?

When they ask, and at the size they asked. Lily got a short answer with the rescue in it. I wouldn't tell a seven-year-old everyone was fine, because they'll hear the real version from somebody on the playground.

Was it a mistake to send the companies out so late?

I don't think I can say it was fine, and the record doesn't let me. Levi Savage said the lateness was the problem before they left and he was told he lacked faith. My kids have heard that Brother Savage was right.

Where do I find a real journal entry to read with my kids?

The Church History site has Willie company journals, including Savage's. Read the whole entry before you read any of it aloud, because some of them turn in places you won't expect.

Is a pioneer meal too much like playing pretend?

A little, and I don't mind. The mush is awful and the kids can tell. If the food is the only thing you do it becomes a costume party, so the journal goes on the table with it.

I still don't like how the handcart story gets used as a ruler. "You think this hike is hard?" has been said to me, and I've said it to my own kids, and I'm sorry every time. I don't like that an anonymous survivor's line about never hearing a survivor "utter a word of criticism" gets quoted as though it closes the subject, when a ten-year-old died with sagebrush in her hands and a man had warned them in advance.

with love, Melissa