Joseph Smith on the Trek West

GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS.

The Apostates have boasted so much of carrying out Joseph’s measures that it may not be amiss to give the saints one chapter of his opinions about the Church going to the west.

   The Quincy Whig of Sept. 24th 1842, contains the following, which we believe is the first Revelation ever given for this Church to go into the wilderness. Read it an then read what Joseph says on the subject.

JOE SMITH--If he will listen to a word from us we would advise him to locate his New Jerusalem away to the far west, in the Oregon Country, and there to build his temple and govern the Saints in his own way.  In that case the advantages would be two fold; for himself and followers he would procure peace and quietness; for there would be no danger of their molestation in the enjoyment of their peculiar notions in that distant country: - to the government, the location of himself and followers would be an advantage, because it greatly needs settlers in that region;  and doubtless Government would do something right handsome for Joseph in the grant of a gift of lands, &c, if he would guarantee the emigration of any number of settlers.

REMARKS.--So much hypocrisy, so barefaced an attempt at wholesale murder, has not even been contemplated by another paper in the United States, however servile, mean, debased or licentious.  Locate the Mormons in Oregon, only think of it. After the Society has lost in Missouri, some one or two millions of dollars, besides many valuable lives;-- after they have builded a temple in Ohio at a cost of sixty or seventy thousand dollars, and after they have commenced a beautiful city at an expense of at least two or three millions of dollars in Illinois:  when their numbers in all parts of the world amount to probably between one and two hundred thousand persons, without the least possible chance under the depreciated state of the currency, and the general stagnation of business to dispose of any property, but never mind, go to Oregon! --Take your journey, men, women, and children, on horses, mules and asses, for wagons will not pass over the Rocky mountains this many years to come, and a passage round Cape Horn, of twenty thousand miles, would be too long a trip and too expensive; therefore go on horseback and on mule back, and those who are fortunate enough to escape famine and flood, will have an excellent chance to fight among the thirty or forty tribes of Indians; - and should any get to Oregon, there are from ten to twenty thousand; breeds of all nations, Americans, English, Russian, French, Spanish, New Hollanders, Tahetians, Chinese, &c, who are every thing but refined society, and they will settle the matter of Mormonism, forever, and we, the Editors of the Quincy Whig and all others that believe as we do, will live on the plunder you leave behind as have our contemporaries in Missouri.  

Sense, feeling humanity and kindred consanguinity as members of a great and growing nation would shudder at the thought of even supposing that men women and children, on account of the religion of Jesus Christ should be asked to exile themselves from their happy country, rights and privileges.  Yea strange, wicked, wild and outrageous, would have been considered a proposition for one or two hundred thousand people to abandon ALL for a wilderness five thousand miles off full of savages.  It seems to me that nothing but the heart of a beast, would ever have conceived such a mode of extermination, ruin and death.  

But this much is certain, as said the Apostle of old; “for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height or depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord”--nor willingly from our homes, unless it comes with a thus saith the Lord, though we may meet with Pharaohs, Nebuchadnezars, Neros, Boggses and a host of others equally destitute of compassion or mercy.--Times & Seasons, Oct. 15, 1842.

          Joseph Smith, Editor.

Going to Oregon or going to California we look upon as much the same thing.  California probably has the finest climate but Oregon is the most prosperous country and the easiest of access.  I hope this may settle the question, who is carrying out Joseph’s measures, and who are apostates.  Let not the Apostates any longer steal the livery of the Prophet to serve the Devil in.

But did not Joseph contrive the California scheme a little before his death?  No, nor at any other time.  He contrived  a scheme for twenty-five men without families to take a mission among the Indians and take measures for establishing a stake among them at which they could have the Gospel preached and be taught in the arts of civilization.  Quite another thing from taking out thousands of women and children to perish by famine, flood and Indian war.  What he did devise would have been accomplished before now but for apostate usurpation, and shall be soon in spite of it.

VOREE   HERALD

VOL. 1.] Voree, W. T., Thursday, February, 1846. [No. 3.

“Truth Shall Prevail”

UPDATE:

Let us not think for a moment that Brighamites would allow Joseph Smith to remain ambiguous on the topic. They would soon be able to produce an earlier contradictory statement in the form of the now discredited Rocky Mountain Prophecy. What other evidence of their appointment by God will they find pencilled into the margins of history next?