The Trek - 4

My family and I came from England
to New York. We then went
by rail to Iowa where othersaints were gathering
to form a handcart company.

I was fifteen years old and the middle
daughter of the family.
We were assigned to travel with the
Martin Handcart Company
as a supply wagon.

Great lumps of ice were floating down the river.
It was bitter cold.
The next morning there
were fourteen dead.
We went back to the camp
and had our prayers and sang,
“Come, Come Ye Saints
no toil nor labor fear.”

I wondered what made my mother
cry that night. The next morning,
my little sister was born.
It was the twenty third of September.
We named her Edith.
She lived six weeks, and died.
She was buried at the last crossing
of the Sweat Water.

One time I became lost in the snow.
My feet and legs were frozen.
The men rubbed me with snow.
They put my feet in a bucket of water.
The pain was terrible.

When we arrived at Devil’s Gate,
it was bitter cold.
We left many of our Saints there.
My brother, James, was as well
as he ever was
when he went to bed that night.
In the morning, he was dead.
There were times
when six, eight, or ten died
in a single night.
Each morning, the dead were
buried beside the trail.

One night, eighteen died.
The ground was frozen hard,
and the snow was so deep
that one large grave was dug,
and all were buried together.