Mormonism's First Foothold in the Pacific Northwest

MORMONISM'S FIRST FOOTHOLD IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

By William B. Smart

Oregon, that rich mosaic of bustling cities, stately firs, odorous fishing ports clinging to a craggy coastline, golden wheatlands sweeping toward distant, snow-capped mountains, has recently finished its first century of statehood.

Celebrating the event with their fellow Oregonians were no fewer than 32,500 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Organized into seven stakes, they own sixty-two handsome chapels and a 373-acre welfare farm. Portland is the headquarters of one of the church's most successful missions. The missionaries find ready ears in that beautiful green land, partly because so many members of the church are highly-respected— in some cases distinguished — members of their communities.

But it was not always this way. Mormonism never had an easy time in its early days, and Oregon was no exception. There was a day, a century and more ago, when mobbings, rotten eggs, threats of death — all the hazards of early missionary life — were used with enthusiasm by Oregon's stalwart but suspicious early settlers as they battled to determine what kind of society theirs would become.

The Pacific Northwest, in fact, is a classic case study of the church's growth — from early suspicion and violent opposition by good men and women who did not understand, to gradual tolerance, and finally to warm acceptance by their descendants.

Oregon at one time seemed marked for an even bigger role in the early drama of the church. How close it, instead of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, came to being the goal of the great Mormon pioneer exodus might never be fully understood.

The story of Mormonism in Oregon falls into two separate periods. The second period — the one known to history — began in 1887. In that year David C. Eccles built a tiny sawmill on the North Powder River in eastern Oregon and invited his fellow church members to settle around him. From that beginning, the Northwestern States Mission was organized in 1898 and the Union Stake in 1901. Since that time the church has enjoyed steady expansion in the Pacific Northwest.

But there was an earlier, considerably less successful beginning, known today only in yellowed Oregon newspaper files and in a long-forgotten missionary journal. That beginning tells a classic story of early struggles that stand in sharp contrast to later successes.

Mormon attention early turned to the fabled fertility of the Oregon Territory. As early as 1839, when Joseph Smith went to the nation's capital seeking justice and protection (and was told by President Van Buren: "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you . . ."), Henry Clay tersely told him, "You had better go to Oregon."

Five years later, when the Oregon boundary was the subject of a seething political issue and of a ringing, chauvinistic slogan — "Fifty-four forty or fight" — Joseph Smith showed clearly where the church stood. He presented a petition offering to raise a "company of one hundred thousand armed volunteers ... to protect inhabitants of Oregon from foreign aggressors" as well as to help deliver Texas.

Congress refused to listen to that petition. Nor did an offer to help build a series of stockade forts on the route to Oregon get a kinder reception, despite a declaration of the High Council in Nauvoo that:

. . . under our peculiar circumstances, we can do it with less expense to the government than any other people. We also further declare . . . that our patriotism has not been overcome by fire, by sword, nor by assassination. . . . Should hostilities arise between the government of the United States and any other power, in relation to the right of possessing the territory of Oregon, we are on hand to sustain the claims of the United States Government to that country.

About that time, in the spring of 1844, Orson Pratt and John E. Page were sent to Washington to present the two proposals. Pratt's report, mailed to Joseph Smith on April 25, 1844, tersely summarized the prospects of the church's moving to Oregon:

Oregon is becoming a popular question . . . the fever of emigration begins to rage; if the Mormons become the early majority, others will not come; if the Mormons do not become an early majority, the others will not allow us to come.

A Mormon exodus to Oregon was not to be. Congress gave no help. The exploring company Joseph Smith had appointed to search Oregon and California for a location "where we can build a city in a day" never got started. Two months later, Joseph himself was dead, the victim of assassins' bullets. In the confusion, the Oregon project was lost.

It never reappeared, but a sort of sister plan did. In England, in November, 1846, hardly five months after the Oregon boundary had been fixed at the 49th (not at 54^10) parallel, British church members sent to Queen Victoria a petition measuring 168 feet and containing 13,000 signatures. The members asked Her Majesty's help in sending Mormon emigrants to Vancouver Island, off what was then the Oregon coast, pointing out that Americans were moving rapidly into the Pacific Northwest. The petition suggested: "Will not your Majesty look well to British interests in those regions, and adopt timely and precautionary measures to maintain a balance of power in that quarter ...?"

Some report of the movement under way in England may have reached the ears of the Quincy (Illinois) Whig which carried a report, reprinted by the Oregon Spectator, that:

Nootka or Vancouver Island . . . we have it from good authority, is to be the final destination and home of the Mormon people .... The English . . . have one or two trading posts on the island but for the most part it is inhabited by Indians ... it is a long journey but can be accomplished. ... If the Mormons do emigrate to that distant land, they will be out of the reach of . . . white men, and may enjoy their peculiar notions . . . until the devil breeds his own discords and confusions among them.

Taking an increasingly anxious air over the possibility of a mass Mormon migration to Oregon, the Spectator reported in August, 1846, the arrival at the Sandwich Islands of the sailing ship Brooklyn with its cargo of Mormons, and added that "an immense emigration of Mormons . . . exceeding twenty-five thousand in number, are to set out in May from Illinois and Missouri, bound ... to the southern part of this territory."

Doubtless, this anxiety was caused chiefly by Sam Brannan, leader of the Brooklyn group, who, shortly before the ship sailed from New York, announced to the saints, "I declare to all that you are not going to California but Oregon, and that my information is official." He confirmed his intentions in a letter to Brigham Young, stating, "When I sail, which will be next Saturday at 1 o'clock, I shall hoist a flag with Oregon on it."

In the summer of 1846 the Spectator reported the invasion was on its way. The advance party of a large group of emigrants which reached Oregon City over the Barlow road late in August announced that "between 500 and 600 waggons accompanied with Mormons crossed the river at St. Joseph, bound for Oregon ... it is presumed that they will not arrive here this season."

They didn't reach Oregon, of course, that season or any other. Their leaders were inspired with different ideas, ideas that involved carving a great empire out of a desert instead of out of Oregon's fertile greenness.

By the 1850's, the Mormons were busy building their own Territory of Deseret, and the Oregon pioneers were equally busy preparing for statehood. But even though no Mormon invasion threatened, the Oregon press still kept very much aware of what was going on among their neighbors to the south. Oregon editors during this period developed a free-swinging, name-calling tradition of personal vituperation that gave the name "Oregon Journalism" to this sort of writing wherever it appeared. Not least among the epithets hurled at each other by Oregon editors during the decade 1845-55 was that of "Mormon." This despite the fact that one early editor, Asahel Bush, reported in his Oregon Statesman (April 13, 1852) that he did not "know of a single Mormon . . . within the limits of our territory . . . Mormonism is as foreign to Oregon affairs as is Mohammedanism."

Apparently some of the politicians in the territorial legislature were determined to keep things that way. The Statesman on December 26, 1854, recorded legislative proceedings to the effect that:

Council bill to prevent negroes and mulattoes from coming to and residing in Oregon was read. Mr. Logan offered an amendment to include Chinese. . . . Various other amendments were offered — one to include Brigham Young and the Mormons — another to include the know-nothings and the natural know-nothings — another half-breeds . . and still another, and a crowning amendment, was offered to embrace skunks.

The bill was tabled. No such legislation ever found space in Oregon statute books — possibly thanks to the penetrating humor of the frontier that led to that last amendment.

Finally, in 1857, the long-feared Mormon "invasion" of Oregon actually materialized. It consisted of exactly four men, missionaries, unarmed, and, indeed, "without purse or scrip." They were Silas G Higgins, Lorenzo F. Harmon, John H. Winslow, and David M. Stuart. Elder Stuart was the leader. Their calling, as reported by the Western Standard, was to "open the gospel dispensation in Oregon."

The group reached Oregon on May 9, 1857, aboard the schooner Columbia from San Francisco. Sailing up the Columbia River to St. Helens, they soon learned the gospel dispensation had already been opened. A missionary had been there earlier, as the elders learned in a manner calculated to dispel any hopes they may have held about receiving a welcome reception in Oregon. Mrs. Bodwell, wife of the hotelkeeper at whose place the missionaries had stopped, refused to serve them when she learned who they were. She remembered a John Hughes had stayed there two years earlier and had been run out of the country by a mob when he attempted to preach.

Despite this warning, the elders were able to preach peacefully in St. Helens. They then crossed the Columbia to Clark County, Washington Territory, where they found a group of church members who had been baptized by Hughes in 1855. The saints reported they had not met for over a year because of opposition. No record of an Elder Hughes seems to exist, either in the Oregon press or in church archives. He may not have been a regularly designated missionary. It is noteworthy that Elder Stuart felt it necessary to rebaptize the converts Hughes had left behind.

After reorganizing the "Lewis River Branch" with Daniel W. Gardner at the head, the missionaries separated. Harmon and Winslow continued their labors north of the Columbia while Higgins and Stuart crossed back into Oregon. At Hillsboro, where they preached on June 17, the pattern of opposition which was to plague them throughout their mission appeared. The missionaries were preaching before a full house, Stuart related in his journal, when a "Reverend Barton" arose to read a letter from Judge Drummond condemning the Mormons. Barton then led a mob which drove the missionaries from the town, forbidding them to return under pain of death.

The elders were led by a sympathetic gambler, whose name was never recorded, to the home of a Mr. Simonds, five miles from town, where they spent the night in safety, though Stuart wrote that Mrs. Simonds sat up all night, fearing what might happen with those desperate men in her house.

On the following Sunday, escorted by an armed band of sympathizers, the elders returned to Hillsboro and held services. The meeting ended peacefully, though the congregation was an armed camp with half the group ready to mob the missionaries and the rest prepared to defend them.

They next traveled to Portland and were promptly mobbed and egged in one of the town's principal halls. At Oregon City, a large branch of the church was established, with Joseph Tracey presiding. Moving on up the Willamette to Salem, the pair was again egged, and at that point the Oregon Statesman took up the gauntlet for religious freedom. On July 28, 1857, the paper editorialized:

Elders Stuart and Higgins of the Mormon church preached here on Thursday evening; some boys threw rotten eggs at them and broke up the meeting, though some of our citizens put a stop to the egging, resolved that the Mormons should have a hearing. They preached again on Saturday without molestation.

The disturbance was without excuse . . . the remarks of the speakers were in no way offensive. . . . Freedom of opinion and speech are as much boasted of as are any of our boasted liberties, and they ought to be held as sacred rights. These men have just as much right to preach Mormonism as other men have to preach Universalism, Methodism, Infidelity, &c. If any prefer not to hear them, they have but to stay away.

The Statesman found particular pleasure in venting its wrath on T. H. Pearne, editor of the Salem Christian Advocate, who strongly opposed the missionary work. Rev. Pearne called on all decent people to leave the Mormons alone and then, according to the Statesman's account, sneaked in a side room to listen. The Statesman blasted that hypocrisy, accusing the Advocate editor of assailing the Mormons purely because it was the popular thing at the time. When Pearne called for a law to prohibit the Mormons from preaching in Oregon, his opponent found material for another editorial. Quoting the Bill of Rights at length, the Statesman reminded one and all on November 3, that one basic principle of American law is that men are punished for committing crime, not for contemplating it.

Virtually nothing is known of the activities of Elders Harmon and Winslow in Washington Territory, since neither left journals. However, from Stuart's account, it is apparent their lot was not an easy one.

We preached 150 miles up the Willamette River and were mobbed in every place [he reported]. While we were battling away in Oregon for the gospel's sake, our brethren in Washington were having a hot time. An organized mob . . . ran the Elders out of the country at the point of the bayonet and ordered the saints to renounce Mormonism or leave the country.

The echo of these events found its way into the columns of the Oregonian on August 8 in a set of resolutions drawn up by the citizens of Lewis River. Its curious mixture of self-righteous patriotism and threat of mob rule is typical of the raw, direct-action spirit of the American frontier.

Our community is now under considerable excitement, owing to the presence of some Salt Lake pirates . . . self-styled Missionaries . . . now lurking about . . . preaching some of the peculiar beauties of Mormonism. Since the arrival of these hocus pocus actors, the three or four families among us that belong to this order of "earth's rejected" . . . have been revived. . . . Four new converts were caught, three of which have already backslid, while one, a female, who having been assured . . . she was "to become the mother of many nations," sticks with double-geared, steam-concentrated adhesion. If she is to be the mother, who are to be the fathers? . . .

Knowing that Salt Lake Mormonism is treason, we are resolved that men shall not sow the seeds among us. . . . Are Oregon and Washington Territories to have the seeds of this treasonable heresy sown upon their soils? Are we the sons of revolutionary sires to tamely submit to a lawless banditti? . . . Mormonism is not preached here; it is mere catchtrap deception which accounts for the new conversions....

My patriot brothers, prepare to drive these traitors from our land; maintain the legacy bequeathed to us by our revolutionary fathers! . . . Peaceably warn them to leave our country; if they refuse, force them from it. . . . Remember our patriot brothers who have fallen at Salt Lake. . . . Remember that these Mormons are resolved upon the overthrow of our government. . . . Let our motto be: Our country first, our country last, our country always. No Mormonism or treason among us.

Mormon preachers leave, or take what comes.

This type of opposition, the violence of which fortunately never reached in action the intensity of the words, failed to stop the proselyting movement. In October, 1857, converts were being made in increasing numbers. Stuart reported baptism of sixteen persons in the forks of the Willamette above Eugene, but announced in the Oregon Statesman at the same time that plans were being formulated for the exodus of the saints to Utah.

As a beginning to accomplish this, Stuart decided to consolidate the saints in one place and left for the Washington Territory to meet Harmon and Winslow and bring the church members back. He found the elders had been driven out, and the saints were afraid to recognize him in public or invite him to their homes. He wrote:

They had all backed out but Sister Louisa A. John [no doubt the "female" referred to in the Lewis River resolutions], who was neither afraid nor ashamed to invite me to her house, although her husband was in sympathy with the mob. I remained there two weeks trying to break the yoke of bondage from the necks of the Saints, but all to no purpose.

When Stuart left the Washington Branch, it quickly disintegrated. Only Sister John, later to marry a Mr. Bozarth, remained faithful. For forty years she privately held her faith until at last, when the Northwestern States Mission was organized in 1898, she was able to meet again with the saints. She was vividly remembered by the earliest Mormon families that settled in Portland around the turn of the century.

During the time the four missionaries were laboring with some success against prejudice and opposition, events were shaping elsewhere that would bring to a close the church's efforts in Oregon. Johnston's Army was marching upon Utah. In answer, Brigham Young issued a call for all scattered outposts of the church to return to Utah and prepare for whatever might come. The missionaries answered the call. They quickly gathered what faithful members they could on the "Coast fork of the Willamit" and prepared for the journey. They were not left undisturbed. Elder Stuart wrote:

We were employed in getting an outfit and protecting ourselves and the Saints from mob violence for we were continually beset by wicked men who sought our lives and declared openly that they would drive us from the country if we did not leave. Elder Keyes, the president of the Willamit Branch, had a rifle ball shot through his ax helve, while chopping in the woods alone, by some fiend in ambush. This circumstance gave the Saints a hint to hurry up.

Preparations complete, the exodus was begun March 6, 1858. The departure is unrecorded, but an event that occurred shortly after the group set out showed that pioneer Oregon and Mormonism were at odds to the end. On March 16,1858, the Statesman reported:

In obedience to the order of Brigham Young, calling in all the saints ... all the Mormons in this and Washington Territories, numbering sixty or seventy, have left for Salt Lake. . . . Mr. Bruner, of Josephine County, informs us that he met the train last week, about 20 miles beyond Eugene City, and that they were overtaken by about fifty men, who took from the Mormons two young girls they were taking with them. The mothers of the girls were Mormons and objected to the taking away of their daughters. Mr. Bruner says the discussion between the Mormons and the rescue party was rather rich.

So closed, on this dramatically tragic note, the gospel dispensation in nineteenth-century Oregon. But inevitably, not for long. Time and progress have a way of softening differences and opening understanding. Oregon's land was too good, its people too fundamentally solid and intelligent to allow misunderstanding and suspicion to prevail for long.

The spires of Mormon chapels reaching today into Oregon skies, the contributions being made to Oregon community, business and educational life by thousands of respected, valued Mormons, and the general feeling of co-operation and understanding between Mormons and non-Mormons throughout the entire Pacific Northwest, all testify that when the second beginning was made, four decades after that tragic little exodus to Utah, it found fertile and receptive soil.

For full citations and images please view this article on a desktop.