the heroic stand at Devil’s Gate
Since I can remember, I’ve always been moved by acts of self-sacrifice, especially those performed sacrificing for the benefit of others and out of devotion to God. There were multiple instances of this sort that occurred during the handcart migration on the Mormon Trail; there was no shortage of them, which is what made the trail so profoundly memorable, historically significant, and religiously influential. I could recollect any number of them and extrapolate on why that particular instance had merit to qualify as one of the more memorable instances of self-sacrifice and altruism you, or I, have ever heard of. However, one particular story stands out to me, not only for its selflessness but also because it was undertaken inadvertently and out of sheer commitment. Though it was completely unnecessary, it was embraced for the sake, well-being, and benefit of others.
When Captain George D. Grant arrived to rescue the stranded Willie and Martin handcart companies on the Mormon Trail, he made certain that the safety and passage of the pioneers was of the utmost concern. The priority of importance was on man, not goods or materialism. Approximately 100 wagons were shed and relieved of their supplies in order to outfit for the transport of the elderly, immobile, and ill. These discarded items varied in value, from the inexpensive but sentimental personal mementos of pioneers (described as “all that many poor families had on earth”) to the rare and valuable belongings of property owners in Utah. All of these items were left behind at Fort Seminoe, near Devil’s Gate, roughly 375 miles east of Salt Lake City. Additionally, some freight intended for Salt Lake City was also abandoned. These goods were either buried in cache pits on the fort grounds or stored within its confines for safekeeping.
As Captain Grant was about to disembark to help aid in the passage of the handcart trains to Salt Lake City, he reconvened with the men in his rescue company. A meeting was held, and Grant met with Daniel Webster Jones, Al Huntington, and Stephen Taylor. The three of them had actually hatched an idea, a proposal: instead of leaving the goods and freight at the fort unattended and left vulnerable to frontiersmen, why not station and leave some men to guard it? They met Grant with this appeal, and Grant responded – “it would be asking too much of anyone to stay here and starve for the sake of these goods; besides where is the man who would stay if called upon?” It was Daniel Webster Jones that responded, and replied with adamant conviction – “any of us would.” Taking this as an offer, Grant immediately charged and tasked Jones with safeguarding the goods for the duration of the winter, assigning him the duty of selecting a group of approximately 20 men to carry out the responsibility.
Initially, Jones was taken aback. Funnily enough, he hadn’t expected Grant to stand there and task him to the job right then and there; he had known Grant viewed him as a promising leader, but still. He had thought someone else may have been chosen, and would later jokingly remark about it by saying the captain picked him because “he was the best cook in the camp.” Which was true, as attested to and affirmed by others in the camp, but it was painfully ironic given the very limited supplies of foodstuff left to them. In reality, Jones meant it in jest at the situation, and, in times of challenging turmoil, it’s good to see light-heartedness like Jones administered here.
Personally, I think Jones would have charged himself with responsibility of the task regardless. I think by the very nature of the fact he was the first to raise the issue and declare he would stay behind was by itself a demonstration that he was willing. His selflessness was rooted in the harrowing conditions he witnessed among the pioneers when he arrived with the rescue company; he saw what they went through, they wore it on their tattered clothes, scars, frostbitten limbs, and emaciated faces. It was he who said – “we found [the pioneers] in a condition that would stir the feelings of the hardest of hearts.” To me, it seems that seeing the pioneers in their battered condition and dire state was what motivated Jones to offer himself; to at least let them retain some of the goods they brought with them would be a small but meaningful blessing, and perhaps it was this that drove Jones to act. Regardless of the exact rationale behind the action, it was clear he was a man of honor to his word, and honor his commitment to Grant was what he did.
When the pioneers and most of the rescue crew had left to continue the journey to Zion, save for some cattle for the guardsmen’s sustenance, Jones gathered the approximately 20 men who remained with him at the fort. He delivered a message and offered them a choice: they could either stay with him at the fort to guard the pioneer’s private belongings, some of the wealthier citizen’s property, and the city’s freight, or they could leave him be at the fort and catch up with the handcart emigrants. At that point, they were not far off, and the trek, though challenging in the winter, was still tenable even in the storm. Just by this motion raised by Jones alone, you could see why Grant surmised him to be a natural leader. The men were selected by Jones, but in turn, it was up to them to select Jones.
Surprisingly, all the men agreed to withstand and endure the winter alongside Jones; a commitment of five to seven months of time at the poorly decayed log fort during a harsh, early, and especially dangerous winter. These men voted to do this; they found it within the realm of possibility, something a lot of people wouldn’t find the resolve to. I would argue they saw it as possible not only by virtue of their faith, or divine providence, but because Jones himself was adamant about staying. Not only had he offered himself up for the benefit of others, but now these men – all hand-picked by Jones – remained by his side as well; it seemed that the dedication that Jones had showcased was a conduit that spread to the others.
Keep in mind that some of the men who chose to stay were also called in from the handcart emigrants. They knew full well the ordeal they were dealing with; the level of anguish they would have to endure yet again. The remaining contingent of men were composed of members from the rescue company, whose original plan was to come to the aid of the emmigrants quickly and leave with them just as quickly. There was no expected deviation to prolong their stay, let alone for a week, even less for months. For both of these companies of men that formed the guardsmen at the fort, deviation from their intended paths was the least anticipated, but for all of them, they faced it with honor, integrity, and unwavering faith.
The impact of the self-sacrifice of these men becomes all the more prominent when you read more into the conditions they had to endure, as mentioned by Moulton within her work. The cattle that remained with the men were just young heifers, barely a year or two old, meaning that the quality of the meat was subpar for the magnitude of the stay. Moreover, their life expectancy for such a brutal winter season was expected to be predictably low. Other than these livestock, the men had rough saltine crackers, which would subsist, under optimal conditions, only for the length of a single month; not even remotely enough time for the length of the duration of their stay. Within a short time, as expected, most of the cattle succumbed to the winter; the winter exposure led to their deaths, which brought about wolves that, to the misfortune of the men, would ignore the rotting corpses and instead target and kill the living cattle as their source of food. These carcasses would emit a stench that would attract more wolves, leading into a deadly cycle that would inevitably collapse the cattle supply, and so the men did what they had to in order to survive: they killed the cattle themselves. While they stored as much meat as possible, the premature butchering forced them to consume it in bulk earlier on in the season to avoid rot, leaving them unable to ration it across the months ahead. This rapid depletion of their primary food source left them facing an even more desperate struggle for survival.
The men resorted to hunting, which was quite a feat to perform in a deadly winter, not only because the grazing range of animals would be limited but also because the animals themselves were far better equipped for a winter matchup than the stranded men were. The issue of range became evident when Jones himself set out to hunt. He managed to kill a buffalo; a substantial kill, but it was over 15 miles from the fort site. Transporting the meat back took several days which spoke to the difficulty of relying on hunting for sustenance. The compounded problems and the increasingly dire situation eventually led the men to seek aid from frontiersmen around their vicinity. A journey to Reshaw post was a grueling 120-mile round trip, and unfortunately, it was to minimal avail, as the men barely found anything to eat there; as Jones put it, “we barely [had] enough to last us back.” Keep in mind that there was limited food at the fort, hunting was time-intensive and largely fruitless, and, as aforementioned, expeditions to neighboring areas yielded poor fruits. Their options for survival dwindled and this forced the men to subsist on sugar and coffee for a time being.
That is until they hatched an idea. Desperation drove them to consider boiling the hides skinned off cattle as a food source; a desperate, almost unthinkable measure, but one that was born out of necessity. It was an insane method to remedy starvation, but at that point, all one is really thinking about is addressing the problem with any solution. Their initial attempt involved seasoning the hides and attempting to eat them until they realized the indigestibility of it; an indigestibility manifested through vomit and violent sickness. Undeterred, they tried two more times. The second time, they scraped off what hair they could until the hide softened, then washed it, and boiled it, but ultimately the outcome was the same. The third time, they mimicked what children had done on the handcart train in their own attempts to remedy starvation: they scorched the hair off before boiling the hide, washed it in cold water, boiled it again, and topped it off with some sugar sprinkles. Obviously, it was a noticeably unappetizing meal, but Jones would later recount that it was “better than starving.”
Brigham Young had also sent a letter, via messenger, to the men. Within it, he reaffirmed what the men already knew: that by springtime, a relief party would be sent to haul them back. However, he also warned them of dangers they had not anticipated—Native American tribes were active in the area, and he advised them never to leave the fort without at least ten men for protection against potential attacks. The latter advice was ill-heeded as the men instantly greeted whatever Indians came across their path with open arms; they were desperate for intervention by that time, and “[there] never had been a time when [they] had [ten] able men.” It was by this point that even more grueling means to obtain food had been attempted. They had eaten everything from the rawhide cover of a horse’s packsaddle to “wrappings from the wagon-tongues [to] old moccasin-soles…[to]…a piece of buffalo hide that had been used for a foot mat for two months.” In a particularly humorous, self-deprecating, yet poignant comment made by Jones later, he reflected on the memory. A man in Salt Lake had accused Jones alone of eating the packsaddle, to which Jones jested, “this is slander… I would have taken [just] a wing or leg, but I don’t think I would have eaten [the whole thing]!” This jest underlined the gravity of the situation Jones faced, but, as showcased many times before, he understood the importance of retaining a sense of humor in the face of hardship: a skill not meant to provide comfort to himself, but to those around him.
In a twist of irony, when the first group of Indians arrived, they were selfless, albeit they did not have any obligation to be. A Shoshone clan had arrived and went hunting with the party at Devil’s Gate, returning to the fort with a modest, but valuable supply of buffalo meat. They were sparse rations, but rations nonetheless were a crucial lifeline for a starving group. This same group of Natives extended their support beyond just this offering; they had also ventured onward to communicate to the frontiersman John Baptise Richard at Reshaw post about the plight of the Mormons at the fort. Their news of the group’s ordeal enticed Richard’s sensibilities, and he moved to butcher several oxen and send them by pack train to the fort (Richard was an accomplished explorer, and it was Reshaw’s post that was named after him; “Reshaw” being the French pronunciation of “Richard”). The guardsmen encountered the pack train midway on their search to locate supplies at Reshaw.
The assistance from the Shoshone wasn’t an isolated act. Other Shoshone and Bannock tribes came to the aid of the men by trading and bartering meat for supplies; supplies the party had given freely from John Van Cott’s allotment. Cott’s stock was abandoned when he and his caravan abruptly withdrew earlier from the rescue party to return to Utah, fearing the worsening weather. A withdrawal that was met with reprimand from Grant and Brigham Young. I’d consider Cott’s supplies a donation to the greater good at that point with or without his consent; they sustained the men during one of their darkest times and ultimately served a greater purpose.
When spring came around, the party was finally able to hunt effectively; scores of antelope were killed. Coupled with the consistent supply of buffalo meat brought by Native Americans, the cloud of starvation was evaporated. The party eventually discerned that the trail was made crossable when the fog of weather was broken through, and they spotted handcart missionaries traveling eastwards along the trail. Soon after, wagons from Utah arrived for the return home – the guardsmen’s watch was over.
Regrettably, Jones and his party were later accused of improperly using some of the goods they had been entrusted to guard; these accusations appeared to originate from the wealthier property owners in Utah who had orchestrated the shipment of goods through the wagon companies, rather than from the recently arrived pioneers. I was under the assumption that Cott, who had turned back earlier in the journey, most likely testified against them. It’s a plausible explanation as I doubt any of the pioneers would criticize Jones’ company; they were grateful enough to have anything returned to them. Eventually, after a lengthy and thorough church investigation, Jones and the men were inevitably exonerated of any wrongdoing. I find it hard to imagine anyone in their right mind criminally charging these men; men who stood guard over the memorabilia of pioneers, the supplies of landowners, and the freight essential to the city with their lives. It was an act not borne out of necessity but one borne out of a profound sense of good conscience. To enforce and impose any form of legal liability, even in the slightest, would be unjust.
Personally, I would discount any use of any number of goods to aid the men in withstanding the duration of the winter. Asking these men to risk their lives to safeguard property, only to then lament about the misuse of goods in order to barter for food to survive, seems both irrational and immoral. Moulton put it best – “we might…question how the men who owned the goods and were safe and warm in Utah could have had the audacity to suggest that anything had been improperly used for survival. Those property owners in Utah…had enjoyed full dinners every day, while the men with Daniel Jones had survived on glue-infused soup made from boiling cattle hides.” These men choose to stay knowing the hardships at hand; they could have, at any point, abandoned the mission as Cott had done on the trail, but they choose not to. At a second point in their duration, these thoughts even reoccurred in some of the men, but yet again, they still chose to remain. Their loyalty, sacrifice, and perseverance were unquestionable.
It was a later occurrence that I read that solidified and spotlighted the significance of what Jones had done. William Ben Hodgetts, one of the pioneers who had trekked to Utah with the rescue company, had returned back to the fort to reclaim some of the goods that he had stored. Among these were four blue chests filled with memorabilia and childhood relics that his mother had entrusted to him and his sister before leaving their home in England. He reclaimed what was left after the winter storm, as did many other pioneers like him, and it was the bravery and fortitude of the company of men at the fort that ensured the safety and security of these goods.
Like William Hodgetts, we all understand the irreplaceable value of personal artifacts from our past: letters, trinkets, jewelry, books, bookmarks, plush toys, music boxes, or any type of the sort of tokens of childhood. These are not simply just material objects; they carry priceless emotional significance. As William’s sister Emily Hodgetts poignantly stated, “[they] are the only [memories] of my childhood home.” In this light, we owe a great deal of respect and gratitude towards men like Jones and his company, whose selflessness preserved these items. To defend a material, physical good is one thing; to defend the essence of someone’s history, their irreplaceable memories, is something far greater.
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