Meridian Magazine :: History Bits: Coiling Up Inside Oneself

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Animal Heroes
By Davis Bitton

We pay tribute to our pioneer ancestors. To cross the ocean and plains, to settle in the inhospitable environment of the Great Basin, they endured much. Many lost their lives, or a certain number of years of their lives, due to overexertion and exposure to cold. They didn't enjoy all this, but made the best of it and hoped for a better day.

Alongside these human ancestors were animals. I wonder if we have ever adequately appreciated how important domestic cats were in those early cabins. And dogs, besides providing companionship, could be invaluable as hunting partners or in the management of flocks and herds. Most obvious, perhaps, are the beasts of burden.

In her overland journal Emmeline B. Wells tells of the loss of a horse named Old Bill to rattlesnake bites. "We greatly regret his death," she wrote, "for he has been a great use to us he was very large and strong and always true to his place." Those last five words make up an epitaph that any of us, animal or human, might be content with.

Mary Fielding Smith's ailing ox, who recovered and resumed his labors after being prayed over, is well known to the tens of thousands who have viewed the movie Legacy. But not many of us have Dick and Harry in our gallery of those who labored and sacrificed. These were two faithful oxen of John Lowe Butler. Trying to settle the forbidding soil of Palmyra, near Spanish Fork, the Butlers were hit by a flash flood due to a rapid spring thaw. Sadly, Dick and Harry were drowned. "The loved animals had brought them safely across the plains," wrote one of the family members, "and Caroline and the children wept."

When young George Q. Cannon, at age 22, joined a group of the so-called gold missionaries on their way to the California mines, he led a pack horse named Croppy. The irregular terrain had contributed to making Croppy lame. George lightened the pack to thirty pounds by moving most of it to his riding horse, but Croppy slipped and fell on a precipice. Several men held on to prevent a fatal plunge to the rocks below. At first the poor beast could not get up. Finally, when the light pack was removed, Croppy was able to stand. He had skinned his knee on a sharp rock. That night, Croppy made his way into the creek. Pulled out and saved, he determinedly returned to the creek the next night and drowned. To suggest suicide may be going too far, but clearly the poor creature found a way out of his misery.

When George Armstrong Hicks was called, along with others of his extended family, to settle Utah's Dixie, they yoked up Jim and Bolly. While crossing Black Ridge their wagon broke. Eventually they get it repaired and continue their journey. Anyone familiar with the settlement of southern Utah knows Hicks's song of twelve stanzas, "Once I Lived in Cottonwood." Two of the stanzas are as follows:

When I got to the Sandy I couldn't go at all,
For poor old Jim and Bolly began to puff and loll.
I whipped and swore a little but couldn't make the route,
For myself, my team and Betsy were all of us give out.
My wagon's sold for sorghum seed to make a little bread,
And poor old Jim and Bolly long ago are dead.
There's only me and Betsy left to hoe the cotton tree.
May heaven help the Dixieite wherever he may be.

One of the most poignant accounts is the 1879-80 expedition to southeast Utah that eventually settled Bluff. The route the settlers followed took them to the steep, rocky incline called Hole-in-the-Rock, which, after incredible efforts to blast away obstructions and construct supports at key points, they managed to descend. The human cost was enormous, but there was also a terrible toll on the animals-horses, cows, oxen, mules.

James Stanford Smith had to take his family down the terrifying incline alone after the others had gone ahead. Leaving three children on a ledge to await his return, he drove the team and wagon while his wife, Arabella (or Belle), was in charge of Nige, a horse on the back of the wagon that would pull the opposite direction whenever the whole outfit began to slip out of control. It was a frightening experience. Belle injured her leg. Nige was trembling, on wobbly legs, his hide torn and bleeding. But they got through, and the children were retrieved.

Farther along, another huge challenge was building a road up San Juan Hill. Charles Redd describes the ascent of the hill:

Seven span of horses were used, so that when some of the horses were on their knees, fighting to get up to find a foothold, the still-erect horses could plunge upward against the sharp grade ... After several pulls, rests, and pulls, many of the horses took to spasms and near-convulsions, so exhausted were they.

By the time most of the outfits were across, the worst stretches could easily be identified by the dried blood and matted hair from the forelegs of the struggling teams. My father was a strong man, and reluctant to display emotion; but whenever in later years the full pathos of San Juan Hill was recalled either by himself or by someone else, the memory of such bitter struggles was too much for him and he wept.

As for raising crops in the newly settled area, for many decades it was either human muscle power or animal muscle power. True, some steam-driven equipment made its appearance in the decades following the death of Brigham Young, but this was exceptional, limited to some threshing operations and the like. Plowing, cultivating, cutting hay, digging potatoes — you were lucky if you didn't have to do such things with shovel, hoe, and scythe.

Readers for whom anything before 1990 is the distant past may find it hard to realize that some of us still alive participated in that world before tractors and the power equipment of today. A good team of horses to draw plow, harrow, cultivator, potato digger, hay cutter, hay rake, or wagon was a valued and necessary source of energy on the farm.

It seems unlikely, and impossible to prove, that Mormons treated their animals any better than other people did. Kindness to animals was an oft-repeated theme in the editorials George Q. Cannon wrote for the Juvenile Instructor. Such prescriptive statements should not be considered descriptive of actual behavior; in fact, they imply the existence of a problem that needed to be corrected. But I like to think that many of the Saints were in fact kind to their animals.

When Thomas L. Kane encountered the refugee Saints in their camps in Iowa, he made this observation:

A strong trait of the Mormons was their kindness to their brute dependents, and particularly to their beasts of draught. They gave them the holiday of the Sabbath whenever it came around: I believe they would have washed them with old wine, after the example of the emigrant Carthaginians, had they had any.

Without mentioning all forms of animal life, or trying to sort out the tame from the wild, the "pests" from the "good," I wish to acknowledge the assistance of animals in the pioneer period. Let us give an imaginary pat, a smile, a hug, and where it would be appreciated a handful of oats or a sugar cube to Old Bill, Dick, Harry, Croppy, Jim, Bolly, Nige, and countless other animals who assisted in exploring, settling, and cultivating the place which God for us prepared far away in the West.

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About the Authors:

Davis Bitton died April 13, 2007, after having lived a long and a good life. In his own words, he is cheerfully taking in the new state of affairs and accepting the callings that will occupy himself on the other side of the veil.

During his lifetime, he was professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and for 29 years the University of Utah, enjoying many congenial students and colleagues. He presented papers at scholarly conventions and published articles and books. He loved good food, good books, the out of doors, music, art, the dappled things…

No one was been more important to him than his dear wife and companion JoAn, a woman loved by all who knew her. She rallied to his side, stood by him through thick and thin, grew with him, laughed with him, made good things happen, and, marvel of marvels, agreed to be his companion through time and all eternity.

His own epitaph was, “I have not lived a perfect life, but I have tried. And I know in whom I have trusted.”