UBC: Roberts, Devil's Gate

Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So in 1856, as part of an immigration scheme, Brigham Young decided that Mormon converts coming from Europe should come to Salt Lake City by handcart, pulling their 17 lbs of personal possessions per person across the middle of the continent, from Iowa City to the Great Salt Lake.

The scheme was a disaster from the start, with poor communication, slipshod management, and a criminal failure of leadership from Brigham Young and his Apostles, who exhorted the immigrants to come to Zion without following through to be sure they wouldn't starve to death on the way. When disaster happened, as disaster was bound to, they pretended they hadn't known the parties were leaving so late in the season and, throwing Apostle Franklin Richards under the bus, Brigham Young--the master of spin and retcon, as we also see with the Mountain Meadows Massacre--pretended he HAD said they shouldn't try to make the journey so late.

This is an excellent book, tracing the set-up and the course of the disaster, and following the aftermath as far as possible given the Mormon church's general reaction to disaster, which is to smother the whole thing in silence, and given the way that the sincere faith of the survivors turned their experience from "Brigham Young hung us out to dry" to "It was God's will that we made it to Salt Lake City alive." Roberts (a non-Mormon) is respectful and thoughtful about the faith of the people involved, even while condemning the leadership of the church.

(There is a Mormon Handcart Historic Site, where you can go and try pulling a handcart for yourself. From Roberts' experience of trying to do it solo, I advise you take some friends.)



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