In '43 came the first
great emigration, when 1,000 people went to Oregon. The Indians, awed
and uneasy, watched the white line of wagon tops. "Were there so many
pale faces as this in the Great Father's country?" one of the chiefs
asked.
Four years later the Mormons emigrated. It was like the moving of a
nation, an exodus of angry fanatics, sullen, determined men burning
with rage at the murder of their prophet, cursing his enemies and
quoting his texts. The faces of women and children peered from the
wagons, the dust of moving flocks and herds rose like a column at the
end of the caravan. Their camps at night were like the camps of the
patriarchs, many women to work for each man, thousands of cattle
grazing in the grass. From the hills above the Indians watched the red
circle of their fires and in the gray dawn saw the tents struck and the
trains "roll out." There were more people from the Great Father's
country, more people each year, till the great year, '49, when the cry
of gold went forth across the land like a trumpet call.
Then the faces on the Emigrant Trail were as the faces on the populous
streets of cities.
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