Learning From the Mormon Pioneers

Published July 24, 1986. Today we pause to honor the Mormon pioneers who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Many of us who now reside in Utah are descendants of those original 2,000 people who settled here that summer as well as the many other pioneers who came later.

One incident we often recall concerns the crickets and seagulls. Utahans are among the few who have erected a monument to a bird for its role in the development of the state. The Seagull Monument on Temple Square has particular significance for Susan and me. That is where, for reasons unknown at the time, I took her to ask if she would marry me. (After two hours of negotiation, she finally accepted.) Committing to marriage at the Seagull Monument was more symbolic at the time than we realized.

I have always been intrigued with the episode of the crickets and seagulls in early Mormon history. Most people know a simplified version of what actually occurred. They think the Mormon pioneers arrived in July of 1847, and the crickets arrived during the spring of 1848 and began to eat their crops.  Then the Pioneers prayed, and the seagulls flew in a few hours later. After some research, I found the incident to be otherwise.

The main body of the pioneers arrived on July 24, 1847, but Orson Pratt and John Brown first entered the valley on July 19. Note the contrasting irony of two journal entries of Orson Pratt. First he wrote, “We could not refrain from a shout of joy which almost involuntarily escaped from our lips the moment this grand and lovely scenery was within our view.”

Orson Pratt continued describing the beauty of the Salt Lake Valley. Then he added a short, significant sentence. “We found the drier places swarming with very large crickets, about the size of a mans thumb.”

The crickets were in the valley when the pioneers arrived. Still, the pioneers proceeded down Emigration Canyon and commenced to build their homes in the midst of the potential difficulty. The day they arrived, they began to plant their crops and continued to do so right through the mild winter of 1848. Then, the crickets descended and began to devour the crops in the spring of that year.

I always thought there was community fasting and prayer for divine intervention, then, a few hours later, the seagulls arrived, ate the crickets and saved the pioneers. That was hardly the case. There was much fasting and prayer, to be sure. And the birds did come, as everyone knows. But not for weeks.

Someday I would like to write a book titled “Between the Crickets and the Seagulls,” or maybe even “What To Do Until the Seagulls Arrive.” How would you have felt had you traveled 1,300 miles and endured many hardships before arriving at your Zion? What was the justice in swarms of large ugly crickets seemingly devouring your only hope of survival? How would you have felt had you been there?

In his best-selling book “The Road Less Traveled,” Dr. M. Scott Peck begins with this simple sentence. “Life is difficult. It is a fact we soon learn. And sometimes when we are surrounded by crickets, we may look up and see birds on the horizon. Then, as they come closer, we’re not sure whether they’re seagulls . . . or buzzards.

Maybe we are expected to fight a few crickets in life. We all have difficult situations we are trying to overcome.

Susan and I have encountered our share of crickets in life and that, in hindsight, is the irony of becoming engaged by the Seagull Monument. We, too, have pleaded for divine intervention. And while we were waiting a buzzard or two has flown by. After great effort on our part, help has come. But not always at the time wanted or in the way expected.

Alex Haley, author of “Roots,” once related something his grandmother taught him. She said, “God does not come every time you call. But when he does come, he is never late.” It was true with the early Mormon Pioneers and is still true today. It is also a lesson of life all eventually have to learn.