This is the first week of September for the Garden Grove Company of Saints.

When they had first planned for their journey, they had anticipated that they would be in the Great Salt Lake Valley at about this time. The weather, and a long five hundred mile detour has delayed them by a month. Their supplies are running dangerously low, and travel has been slowed because many of the families have no spare animals, oxen, cows or horses, to help in pulling their wagons.

They have now left Nebraska and have entered Utah Territory. The landscape is different, and hostile. Janet Crooks Miller wrote "We had to find places to camp where there was good water, firewood and grass for the stock. Sometimes on reaching a camping place we would find that the group ahead had cleaned it up." By "cleaned it up" she did not mean that it had left it as the first group found it, rather that there was nothing left for the second group of pioneers or their animals.

Susan Zimmerman wrote that "Our supply of food was flour, meal, beans, dried bread, crackers, dried apples, sugar and milk, with some butter and bacon and a few dried parsnips." She remembered that they "had not had anything green to eat all summer, and wished for some vegetables from a garden."

There was food along the trail to be had however. The Crooks said that "there were deer, antelope, rabbits, prairie chickens and other small game to be had for food, as well as a few buffalo."

There was also at least one turtle. "One man killed a very large tortouse [sic] and divided it with five or six families, only keeping one meal for themselves." Evidently it was either a very large turtle if it fed five families, or a very little turtle meat goes a long way.

Then there were the buffalo, which the men hunted. One such hunt led to the terrible daytime stampede in which Sister Kingsley lost her life. George Crooks wrote that "the buffalo were suspicious of hunters and took to flight at the sight or scent of man. We did kill a few, however, but the meat was tough and we did not like it very well. I have learned, however, that only certain parts are used for cooking. The hump was considered a delicacy."

Susan Zimmerman was of a different opinion. She wrote that the buffalo meat "was fine. We could cut it in slices, salt it, and string it on sticks and jerk it over the fire then let it dry. It was sweet and good, we were truly in wild country." Janet Crooks Miller told her descendants that "we did not like the buffalo meat - it was tough."

On the prairie where there was no wood to be had, they used buffalo chips for fuel. It was commonly said by those crossing the plains that a buffalo steak cooked over burning buffalo chips required no pepper or other seasonings. Susan Zimmerman had different ideas about cooking in the open, particularly after they had to start using sage for fuel. "For a long time we had to burn buffalo chips, we called them dung. Then we got the wild sage, it was worse than the chips. How sick I got of the smell. We had to do all our cooking with it, everything was seasoned with it. When the wind blew, we could not relish our meals, but the Lord provided for our needs."

Last week we learned that the pioneers gathered saleratus, a natural baking soda, from an alkali lake bed. Zimmerman wrote that they used it as leavening to make "a good bread." It is not clear if she meant they baked bread during the trek, or used the saleratus after they had reached Utah.

On Monday, the 8th of September, Crooks recorded in his journal that they "crossed over the last Big Bend and camped." He also wrote that there was 3/8 of an inch of ice on the ground that morning. The pioneers of the Garden Grove Company are now about two hundred miles from the Valley.

 

Part 12

Part 14