on this day in 1856:

There were so many dead and dying that it was decided to lie by for the day. In the forenoon I was appointed to go round the camp and collect the dead. I took with me two young men to assist me in the sad task, and we collected together, of all ages and both sexes, thirteen corpses, all stiffly frozen. We had a large square hole dug in which we buried these thirteen people, three or four abreast and three deep. When they did not fit in, we put one or two crosswise at the head or feet of the others. We covered them with willows and then with the earth. When we buried these thirteen people some of their relatives refused to attend the services. They manifested an utter indifference about it. The numbness and cold in their physical natures seem to have reached the soul, and to have crushed out natural feeling and affection. Had I not myself witnessed it, I could not have believed that suffering would have produced such terrible results. But so it was. Two others died during the day, and we buried them in one grave, making fifteen in all buried on that camp ground. It was on Willow creek, a tributary of the Sweetwater river. I learned afterwards from men who passed that way the next summer, that the wolves had exhumed the bodies, and their bones were scattered thickly around the vicinity.

“What a terrible fate for poor, honest, God-fearing people, whose greatest sin was believing with a faith too simple that God would for their benefit reverse the order of nature. They believed this because their elders told them so; and had not the apostle Richards prophesied in the name of Israels God that it would be so? But the terrible realities proved that Levi Savage, with his plain common sense and statement of facts, was right, and that Richards and the other elders, with the ‘Spirit of the Lord,’ were wrong.” ¹

the willie handcart company was a group of mormon settlers attempting to make their way to zion (salt lake city). on oct. 19, 1856, a blizzard descended over the sweetwater river where they were camped and halted them in their tracks. they resorted to eating their livestock. the martin company, who left for salt lake city a month after the willie party set out, also became snowbound and one of the members resorted to cannibalism:

One young girl went to bed with her family, only to awaken screaming in pain in the night. A man was eating her fingers while she slept. He was dragged off into the snow, began eating his own fingers, and was found dead the next morning. ²

now, the mormon church blanketly and actively denies that any further cannibalism occurred, but folklore and many historians say differently.

brigham young university has all the journal entries from the travelers here. i like the way they have it set up: the site autodirects the day’s entries.

this is the perfect sort of thing to read as you’re nestling into your warm bed these upcoming winter nights.

¹ john chislett, “mr. chislett’s narrative,” in the rocky mountain saints, t. b. h. stenhouse (new york: d. appleton and company, 1873), 329.

² mike w. brown, public affairs officer, rock springs district, bureau of land management.