CHAPTER
4
THE SAINTS COME MARCHING IN
M,
.ormon settlement of Utah began in earnest in mid 1847, as a wagon-train moved laboriously down Emigration Canyon and out onto a prominence with a view of the valley of the Great Salt Lake. This pioneer company, as it began its journey, nearly 1,800 miles to the east, consisted of 143 men, three women, two children, seventythree wagons, ninety-three horses, fifty-two mules, sixty-six oxen, nineteen cows, seventeen dogs, and an unidentified number of chickens. 1 It was the advance company of a migration unparalleled in the history of the American West, and one which changed the face of the Great Basin, of Utah, and of Box Elder forever. All 147 members of that weary entourage were Mormons, members of a seventeen-yearold religious movement founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Only sixteen days after the first pioneer company arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, an exploring party was sent n o r t h to Cache Valley. The first company of Mormons to visit the Box Elder area consisted of four men, under the leadership of Jesse C. Little. Little recorded in his journal:
