Wagons Ho!

By Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent.

[Joe Vogel, Wagon Master] It's going to be a beautiful, wonderful wagon train and we want everybody to be happy. Be careful. Don't walk up to any horses and start petting them. Just stay back, look at them, enjoy them so nobody gets hurt. We hope everybody has a good time.

With those words of encouragement from Wagon Master Joe Vogel, it was time to leave the winter quarters. Horses were hitched, bags stowed, wagons lined up. And this is the big sendoff.

[Unidentified male modern-day pioneer] We're expecting a great day.

Media from across the world, dignitaries from Nebraska, Iowa, Utah filled the stages. In the background, the men, women, and children scurry about nervous and eager to get started.

[Unidentified female modern-day pioneer] It's just my daughter and I.

[Unidentified organizer] I'm going to put you here on seven with Pete. He is going long term with us the whole way.

The majority of these modern-day pioneers are Mormons. Most came from the United States. A few from different countries like Australia, Japan, or Austria.

[Elisabeth Pietsch] I'm coming from Austria, Vienna. Very far away. And we try to stay the whole time so I hope it will work. We were thinking about the Mormons, because if the pioneers would not go the train before us, there would not be a church in Austria. And we are happy in the church. So that is the reason that we come.

[Osamu "Sam" Sekiguchi] When we were in Japan, we read the story about the pioneers, and that story touched our heart very much. But that is only information we could learn from books or magazines so we really wanted to experience the same things, and also we can learn many lessons from pioneers like a patient or family ties or something like that. And we would like to teach our children like that.

With the dignitaries on board, all cameras are trained on the wagon master and the trek begins.

[Vogel] Wagon, ho.

To understand this journey, we must start at the beginning of the 1800's. Mormonism was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in Fayette, New York. Smith translated a document from golden plates given to him by an angel. This document, The Book of Mormon, became the cornerstone of the new religion. Elder Fletcher is the director of the Visitors' Center at the Mormon Trail Museum in Omaha. He is also a missionary sent here from Utah to spread the word of Mormonism.

[Elder Fletcher] It was a new religion. It was a religion that people didn't understand. And it was growing very, very fast. And you had a group of -- you had a group of Mormon people come into an area, and it just kind of seemed to swell. People became very nervous. Here was a people they didn't understand, they were going to take over. And so they received a lot of persecution on that basis.

It was the idea of a new faith that frightened many townspeople. In Illinois Joseph Smith was jailed and then killed by a mob.

[Fletcher] Well, the people in Illinois thought that's the end of Mormonism. Their leader is gone, It'll just die. Instead of that, it just continued to build.

After Joseph Smith was murdered, Bringham Young took over. He told the people of Illinois that they would leave.

[Fletcher] Brigham Young and other leaders sat down and with maps and journals from John C. Fremont, from Pierre DeSmit, and from other people determined they would go to the place called the Great Basin or the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. No one else was there. No one would bother them. They wouldn't be pushed out. They could settle and worship in peace again.

On April 5th, the advance group of 142 men, 3 women, and 2 children left the winter quarters. It took 111 days to reach Utah.

[Unidentified modern-day pioneer, reading from journal] So they went 50 miles this day. She said they had very bad hills. They were very rough. They went a mile, turned to the left, went a mile, turned back, went up through the rough hill over the prairie, and then they got to a river and it was dry and there wasn't any feed there. And just doing, that they broke two axle trees and some spokes out of their wagon. That's just one day.

150 years after that entry was logged in a journal, another group of men, women, and children walked the route to Salt Lake City not in fear of persecution but in honor of their history.

[Ranley Johnson] Right over there my great grandfather published the first newspaper west of the Missouri in 1859 -- no, 1854. He was a Mormon, and Bringham Young had him establish this little settlement to replace the supply place in Genoa further up the trail. This was a surprise, because I didn't plan on being here, but I'm very happy that I am here at this moment.

Joseph Ellie Johnson printed this paper, "The Huntsman's Echo." He was one of the missionaries left behind by order of Bringham Young. They would set up weigh communities. They planted crops, organized supplies, and offered words of support for the thousands of followers heading west. Once Johnson's missionary time was up, he moved to Utah eventually returning to Nebraska.

[Johnson] To tell you the truth, my great grandfather liked Nebraska so much that he went to Utah and came back and stayed here for a while, see.

I like Austria.

14 days have passed since this new adventure started. Two weeks of rain and cold weather, the spirit is not dampened.

[Elisabeth Pietsch] It feels good. It was a very interesting experience, this two weeks. We told you the weather was not so fine the most time. It was very wet, and it was very cold sometimes and Nebraska windy. Now we know what Nebraska windy is. We didn't know it in Austria.

For Austrians, Elisabeth and Fredy Pietsch, their first visit to the U.A. has opened their eyes. They've been touched by the generosity of people they've encountered.

[Elisabeth] In Columbus there was a nice blind woman. And she came into the wagon and she wanted to see everything and she tasted with her fingers everything. I think it was 20 minutes before and she looked at the horses and everything. When we went away from Columbus on Monday morning, they gave me a package with fruit and popcorn and there was standing on the side a little card from the blind woman and I was so touched, yes. She was so nice.

Fredy hopes to walk the entire route, all 1,030 miles.

[Fredy Pietsch] I have good Austrian shoes. It's raining in the mountains in Austria.

[Elisabeth] Mountains.

[Fredy] Mountains in Austria, yes. And good shoes. I go 10-12 miles, 14 miles.

[Elisabeth] Sometimes, yeah.

While Fredy just walks, others are pulling a hand cart just as their ancestors did. These carts originally were made in Omaha and were used during the second wave of the great migration.

[Petra Malo] There was 85,000 saints that immigrated from Wales and Scotland and that, and Brigham Young realized they couldn't afford a wagon for everybody. It was called the perpetual -- it was a perpetual fund. And everybody -- the eldest people would give into this fund and they could make these, they knew, in Omaha. They had a wheelright. They could make these and put these together for a little bit of nothing. So that was the cheapest way to go to bring the most people. It's an incredible history and legacy.

Osamu Sekiguchi, call him "Sam," brought his family from Japan to be part of this event. So far the trip has been anything but boring.

[Sam] Last week we had much rain every day and also wind is so strong. Sometimes it's difficult for us to walk. One day I tried to push the hand cart. It was hard.

Sam sees himself as a missionary for the L.D.S. In Japan there are over 100,000 Mormons. That's a tiny fracture of a culture dominated by Buddhism.

[Sam] Most of Japanese people are Buddhism. Although they say they are Buddhism, they don't believe anything, I think. We were Buddhism before I was converted to L.D.S. church. But we didn't know anything about Buddhism. So most of the people don't have any interest about religion, I think.

After the wagon train stops for the night, Sam gets out his laptop computer, hooks up the batteries complete with solar panels, and then he writes messages to the people of Japan and zaps them back on the internet.

[Sam] I'm trying to send my message to many elementary schools in Japan. One is American school in Tokyo area. They're Americans, but most of those children were born in Japan so they have never visited the U.S. at all, so they are not familiar with American history or pioneer history, so I'm telling the story about pioneers to them. It's kind of interesting.

First thing I want to tell you about is between Wood River and Shelton, as soon as we get on to gravel roads, that path follows almost exactly the path of the Mormon Trail of that gravel road. We will keep winding along the Wood River all the way from Wood River to Shelton. The communities of Wood River and Shelton have made 6,000 cotton ribbons out of cotton material that have been torn by all kinds of individuals and groups. And those 6,000 ribbons are on 600 stakes. 10 ribbons to a stake. They're on that seven-mile stretch all the way from Wood River to Shelton representing the 6,000 Mormons who were supposed to have died en route to Salt Lake City.

Back then death arrived in many forms -- lack of suitable food, new diseases, accidents caused by fatigue. So far these modern day pioneers have avoided those pitfalls. This trek is only a third of the way complete but these modern pioneers realize it's going to be a long haul. Each day they learn a little more about their ancestors and the hardships they encountered.

[Elisabeth] We are thinking why we are doing this, but it's good feeling to see the people all remember these things, and it's always nice for our church to think about the pioneers. I'm feeling close to them.

As the spring rains subside, the hot dry winds continue to blow. Flatlands of Nebraska will give way to the foothills and then the mountains of Wyoming and Utah. The final destination, some 700 miles and 60 days away is a state park in Utah named, This is the Place State Park. Reporting for Statewide, I'm Bill Kelly.