Re-enactors Take Up Little-Known Mormon Battalion Trek
On a frontage road off I-25, near the outlet mall on Budagher’s land, there is a small obelisk topped with what looks like a wagon wheel.
It’s a memorial to the Mormon Battalion, which marched through New Mexico on a trek from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to southern California in 1846-47 in support of Gen. Kearny’s troop movements and occupation in the Mexican-American War.
This little-known chapter of Western history is being re-enacted with a trek that started in Iowa in July and expects to wind up in San Diego next February. The organizer, Kevin Henson of Michigan, expects to hike into Santa Fe at 3 p.m. today with a companion, Peter Guilbert of California, who is descended from two of the original trekkers.
They’ll be walking in along the Old Santa Fe Trail on the southeast corner of the Plaza clad in replica clothing from the 1840s. Henson will be carrying a reproduction musket.
No special ceremonies are planned. “We’ll probably just stand around and take pictures of ourselves, and we may be able to meet a few minutes with the director of the Palace of the Governors,” Henson told the Journal.
There will be a minor-key celebration, coupled with a presentation on the original trek, Saturday afternoon and evening at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Rodeo Road (see box).
A page of history
In their 1997 book “Women of the Mormon Battalion,” Carl V. Larson and Shirley Maynes described the beginnings of the unusual group. Larson and Maynes wrote that in 1846, the U.S. Army needed urgent assistance in the Mexican War. President James K. Polk authorized Col. (later General) Stephen W. Kearney, Commander of the Army of the West, to enlist a battalion of 500 Mormons for this purpose. Capt. James Allen was sent to the Mormon camps in Iowa, where Mormons were preparing to seek a refuge in the Salt Lake Desert.
The Mormons at that point no real reason to answer the president’s call. They had received no protection from persecution and mob action in Missouri and Illinois.
However, Governing Council President Brigham Young and the Council of the L.D.S. Church urged the men to enlist, telling them it was their patriotic duty to join. Five companies totaling more than 500 men were mustered in at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 16, 1846. There were 32 women, of whom 20 were laundresses hired at private’s pay, who left with the Battalion.
In addition to the 500 men, some of the Mormon officers chose to take their families. There were 15 or 16 families, including 50 or 55 children and dependents, who left Council Bluffs with the battalion.
Including stopovers, the Battalion took 194 days to march approximately 2,000 miles to San Diego. At the time, it was the longest infantry march of U.S. military history. After a year of service and many adventures, the Battalion was disbanded at Los Angeles, then returned to their families and helped settle the western states.
Modern re-enactments
Henson said he is a second-generation Mormon, so he had no known ancestors in the Battalion. But he is interested in history and especially what he calls the “historical trivia” that makes up the human stories.
As a Boy Scout leader in Michigan, he began studying and leading re-enactments of the Mormon Battalion Trek and incidents along the way. He and his group performed re-enactments at an event called “River of Time” in Michigan.
Henson studied the diaries and battalion records and his desire grew to re-enact the trek in more or less real time, on close to the same trails. His wife Denny supported him and even the couple’s four adult children came around, although at first, he said, “they just thought I was crazy.”
Henson and his wife created a Web site (battaliontrek.com) that explained the project, asking for support and any information.
And then he began hearing from descendants.
“My plan was just that I’d make the trek by myself, but then the descendants began calling and saying they wanted to join in,” he said.
Peter Guilbert is one such descendant. His third-great-grandfather Edward Wade was one of those men who signed up. Then Wade’s father Moses, Guilbert’s fourthgreat-grandfather, allowed as how he’d go, too.
Father and son left Moses’ wife and 16-year-old daughter in the Iowa camp and started out.
They trekked all the way to California, served out their enlistment, got their pay and went north to Sutter’s Fort, Guilbert said. There they planned to strike out for Salt Lake City, but they got a message from Brigham Young: Folks were starving in Salt Lake City. If they couldn’t bring food, stay in California and make some money.
Guilbert said his family’s records show that Edward loaded his father up with supplies and Moses went overland to Salt Lake City, while Edward stayed in what became Sacramento and eventually started the California branch of the family.
As for Moses’ wife and daughter, he was a widower by the time he reached the battalion’s end in California, he later learned. His wife had died of an epidemic that swept the camp. His daughter had to try to bury her mother by herself. A Mormon man passing through took pity on the girl and helped her, and she later married him and was reunited with her father in Salt Lake City.
Guilbert this history inspired him to join Henson’s trek re-enactment. He already participated in re-enactments from California history at state parks, so the idea wasn’t completely foreign, he said.
“I wanted to walk at least part of the way to honor my ancestors and to get a feel for what they did,” he said, adding that he started in Iowa with Henson, then left and rejoined him in Las Vegas, N.M.
“Being on this trek has been a wonderful blessing for me,” Guilbert said.
The Rio Grande Journey
Henson and Guilbert are marching in clothing and boots that replicate as much as possible the simple clothing of the Mormon battalion. Henson’s wife Denny sometimes walks with them, and otherwise drives an escort car.
The trekkers sometimes have stayed in homes or motels, but mostly they have camped. In their packs, they carry two replica Army tents like those used by the original battalion and two more modern tents, Henson said.
Henson said battalion records showed that the Mormons were welcomed and fed and watered all along the Rio Grande valley. “Everywhere they went, they commented on the beautiful music,” he said. “It seems the priests and friars had brought in pump organs to every little mission—they were busy teaching the villagers Bach and Beethoven. It must have been amazing.”
By the time they reached Santa Fe, battalion members recorded, their clothes were in rags. “They wrote that sleeves were falling off their shirts and everything was raggedy. They stopped in Santa Fe long enough to spend some of their little bit of money on some new clothes,” Henson said.
If You Go
WHAT: Mormon Battalion Trek Commemoration
WHEN: 2 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 410 Rodeo Road
SCHEDULE: Battalion descendants talk, 2 p.m.; potluck supper, 5 p.m.; presentation on the original Battalion Trek and re-enactment, 6 p.m.
