Sang As They Walked

Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked. They worked and played and gathered wood. They plodded along and did what they should. Their duty was plain: they had to be good as they walked and walked and walked.

But what if it was more like this?

Frolicking over the boundless plains, they called to the plovers and chased the cranes. Those pioneer children could scarcely believe their incomprehensible luck. While their hapless cousins (stuck in the East) had to practice their spelling and stay in their seats, these pioneer children prayed to a God who not only set them free. He filled their days with glee.

Maybe it’s because we’ve heard so many pioneer stories about frostbite and bleeding feet and death; we associate the pioneer experience with plodding drudgery. In making such an assumption, do we deprive ourselves of the beauty and fascination in our modern lives? Can we liberate ourselves to a more joyous lived Christianity merely by changing our perspective?

George Whitaker, a young convert from England who loved singing and dancing around the campfires with other pioneers said, “We felt as though we had been released from bondage and were free.” Can you imagine it? Not only were these young people alight with their burning testimonies, but their faith played an integral role in the adventure of a lifetime. The westward expansion they experienced firsthand would soon be over, but not before they had a chance to exit the United States and enter Zion.

Although the doors have closed on that eventful era, living the gospel of Jesus Christ can still be a joyous adventure. 

Henry Roberts (now better known as B.H. Roberts) crossed the plains at age ten with his sixteen-year-old sister Polly. Their mother had already arrived in Salt Lake City and waited patiently as her children sailed from Liverpool to New York and then took trains and boats to Florence, Nebraska, where they set out on foot. Henry and Polly were assigned to a wagon company, but the money sent by their mother never made it. They didn’t even have quilts or a change of clothing. At bedtime, young Henry covered himself with Polly’s flannel petticoat, often shivering through the night.

When the company’s supply wagons forded rivers, the sugar bags dripped syrup through cracks in the floorboards. Henry managed to lie under the supply wagons, catching sugary drops in his mouth and on his clothing. Once, when his bare feet ached from walking across the prairie, he snuck into a molasses barrel and slept in several inches of sticky goo. When he emerged the next morning, he was greeted with “yells of laughter.” With nowhere to wash, he walked along until the dust dried the molasses enough that he could peel it off.

B.H. Roberts had such fond memories of his trek across the plains that in 1912, at fifty-five years of age, while serving on the board of the MIA, he organized and led a Boy Scout march across the last stretch of the pioneers’ trail. From Echo Canyon to Salt Lake City, the boys followed their leaders, re-enacting the legendary trip. In 1912, each scout was equipped with adequate clothing and a haversack containing “a knife, fork, spoon, metal plate and cup, dishcloth, soap, towel, comb, extra pair of socks, toothbrush, and one quilt.” The only “essential” item Roberts had carried with him on his childhood journey across the plains was a knife, and he lost it at one of the river crossings. 

The order had gone out that everyone had to get out of the wagons and wade through the water. Henry spied a teenage girl slipping into a supply wagon so she wouldn’t get wet. He figured that if she could do it, he could too. Unfortunately for the stowaways, the wagon was grounded on a sandbar midstream, and the team of horses attached to the supply wagon was unhitched to help other wagons. Night fell, and the wagon settled further down into the water, the current causing it to vibrate. Henry decided to get out and wade to shore, but the girl was scared and begged him to stay with her. Gallantly, Henry said he would stay, but the team of horses didn’t return. By then, the two were hungry, and the sugar bags were getting wet. Intending to cut slits in a bag of sugar and bacon, Henry took out his “most precious possession,” a pocketknife with four blades (regular blade, pinches, a nail file, and an awl) that he’d managed to buy for his mother in England. Sadly, it slipped from his hand and fell through a crack into the muddy Platte River, never to be recovered.

Henry Roberts began the trek with very little and ended it with even less. Without the encumbrance of a knapsack or slingshot or even shoes, he was free to flit about as a sprite. As the wagon train approached the valley, Roberts excitedly left the company and scrambled up a mountain peak to see the stunning panorama. He breathed in a flaming sunset over the shimmering lake and spreading city. Later, his daughters reported that “it seemed a small world to the boy who had already seen so much.” Roberts himself described the scene this way: “I have heard the muses praise the scenery of far-famed Italy—her shores, mountains, landscapes, sunsets—but doubt if even that surpasses in splendor the enchanting scenery of our Deseret.”      

These little ones who crossed the plains nearly two hundred years ago hold an important key to applied Christianity: take care of each other, rejoice in God’s beneficence, and don’t lose sight of the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We’re all trekking through life with its ups and downs, but perspective can change everything. Instead of plodding, we can scamper through life finding joy in the journey. Looking back on his pioneer adventure, Charles Nibley said, “Of course there were inconveniences and more or less of hardship in such a mode of travel. But as I was a child of eleven years of age, I do not remember the hardships. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed the whole trip.”

At the end of our lives, when we’ve walked and we’ve walked, we could think of the ruts in the road. With eyes on the ground and a pack on our backs we could trudge to our heavenly home.

But I’d rather do it this way:

Galloping over the winded plains, gathering blooms in our arms, we’ll sing songs of praise as we smile through bright days, trusting that Christ heals our harms. Forgetting old sadness, we’ll dry all our tears, leaving us able to see, the Son rising over the very next hill, waiting for you and for me.

Rachel Terry teaches writing at Brigham Young University and researches synthesis in composition studies.

Art by Minerva Teichert (1888-1976)