Only the Brave: The Continuing Saga of the San Juan Pioneers Read online

  © 2014 GNL Enterprises, LP.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company ([email protected]), P.O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book. Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lund, Gerald N., author.

  Only the brave : the continuing saga of the San Juan pioneers / Gerald N. Lund.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Summary: The story of the Mormon pioneers who settled in the San Juan Region in Utah.

  ISBN 978-1-62972-026-5 (hardbound : alk. paper)

  1. Mormon pioneers—Fiction. 2. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 3. San Juan County (Utah)—History—Fiction. 4. San Juan County (Utah), setting. I. Title.

  PS3562.U485O55 2014

  813'.54—dc232014036885

  Printed in the United States of America

  Lake Book Manufacturing, Inc., Melrose Park, IL

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Note to Readers

  Bibliography

  PREFACE

  _____________________

  A Change of Characters

  I feel like I need to clarify something for you, the reader, before you begin this book. While you will find the same historical characters in this sequel that you met in The Undaunted, you will not find any of the fictional characters from that book here. I am sure many readers will wonder why. It is a valid question, so let me explain.

  The Undaunted: The Miracle of the Hole-in-the-Rock Pioneers was published in 2009. It is the story of the men, women, and children who were called to leave their homes in established settlements throughout Utah to go the Four Corners area of southern Utah. Their purpose was to build stable communities there. Theirs is a story of fortitude, valiance, sheer grit, and undaunted determination. What they did is an inspiration to us all.

  To help tell that story, I created two fictional families. The first was the family of John Draper, a coal miner from Yorkshire, England. The other was the family of Patrick J. McKenna, a prosperous businessman in Cedar City, Utah, who immigrated to America from Ireland as a young boy. David Draper and Abby and Molly McKenna, children from those two families, are the lead characters in The Undaunted. The book closes with the marriage of two of those characters shortly after their arrival in Bluff, Utah, in the spring of 1880.

  In Only the Brave, I introduce two new families—the Westlands from Beaver, Utah, and the Zimmers from Richfield, Utah. Both families are longtime members of the Church; both are called to join the San Juan Mission in southern Utah several years after the pioneer company first arrived. The Westlands arrive in the early summer of 1884, four years after the founding of Bluff. The Zimmers come a few months later.

  But why? some will ask. If this is a sequel to the Hole-in-the-Rock story, why not just continue with the characters we know and love? There are a couple of answers to that.

  One of the things I most enjoy in writing fiction, particularly historical fiction, is the creation of characters who become like actual people to me. Over the years, as I have told their stories and followed them through various circumstances, they have taken on lives of their own. Then, as have I listened to readers tell me which characters they particularly like, I have come to learn that the characters should—perhaps even must—take on lives of their own if they are to be worth caring about.

  What I mean by that is this: as I develop my characters, I find that they often surprise me with what they do. I’ll start them going one way, and suddenly, it’s as if they’re saying, “Wait. I would never do that. Stop trying to push me in a direction I don’t want to go.”

  I know, I know. They are the creation of my imagination, so I should be able to make them do whatever I want, right? But it doesn’t work that way for me. They become so real that I feel I have to be true to who they are and not who I originally planned for them to be. And I’ve learned that when I let the characters play out their own stories this way, they become more real for readers as well.

  I’m not alone in that feeling. One novelist said, “When my characters are out of control, I know that everything is fine. In many ways, the novel is smarter than the writer if you’re working at it right” (James Crumley, in Deseret News, June 18, 1995, E-6).

  So while I came to love working with John and David Draper and Patrick, Sarah, Abby, Molly, and Billy Joe McKenna, I decided to leave them to their own lives and introduce new lead characters to you in this book. The historical characters that figured so prominently in The Undaunted are still here—Jens Nielson, Ben and Hyrum Perkins, Kumen Jones, Platte D. Lyman, and the incredibly brave women who came with them, but the Westlands and the Zimmers will take over the role of carrying the story forward in Only the Brave.

  I came to this approach with The Work and the Glory, my first attempt at historical fiction. We followed the Steed family through nine volumes, beginning in Palmyra shortly after Joseph Smith’s First Vision and ending when the pioneers finally arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. My originally intent was to carry their story all the way forward to modern times. In fact, I even publicly stated on several occasions that I planned to write a volume ten to do just that.

  That proved to be a mistake. When I started to write a final volume, it was as if I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t make it work. For a while, I couldn’t figure out why. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 really ended what we might call the Restoration period of the Church’s history. The fundamental doctrines, organization, and policies of the Church had been established by this time. By 1847, the Church had a new prophet, a new home, and new challenges. And as I thought about taking the Steed family into that next stage of Church history, I felt as though the Steeds were saying to me, “Look, you’ve told our story. Thank you. Now, go tell someone else’s story and leave us alone.” So that’s what I did.

  I didn’t stop telling the story of the Church’s history—I just didn’t do it with the Steed family. In Fire of the Covenant, I wrote about the handcart Saints, especially those who came in the Willie and Martin companies in 1856. Maggie McKensie and Eric Pederson took over as the lead fictional characters in that work. Then the McKennas and the Drapers took over when I decided to tell the story of the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers in The Undaunted. I say all of this only to show that a change of characters is not new to this volume.

  A Different Story

  A second reason I decided to use new characters in Only the Brave relates to something that happened after The Undaunted was published. To be honest, I’d h
ad no plans to write a follow-up volume to the story of the San Juan Mission. In my mind, the “real” story of the San Juan Mission was the incredible journey those pioneers made, which was so unfamiliar even to people like me who were born and raised in Utah. When those Saints finally reached Bluff in April of 1880 and said, “This is where we will stay,” that was the end of the story in my mind.

  But then the third- and fourth- and fifth-generation descendants of those early Saints started challenging that decision. They were thrilled, they said, that someone had finally told the story of their grandparents and great-grandparents. “But,” they would say, with considerable passion, “that was not the end of it. What happened as they stayed on to fulfill their mission is equally fascinating, equally compelling, and equally inspiring. You have to let people know the rest of the story.”

  By that time I was on to other projects and pushed those thoughts aside, though the idea intrigued me. But it didn’t let up. More people kept asking about another volume. So I started doing some research. I went back to Bluff several times, but I also started looking into the stories of other settlements in the region: Monticello, Blanding, White Mesa, and so on. It didn’t take long for me to see that these descendants were exactly right. April of 1880 did end one aspect of the San Juan story, but what ensued in the years that followed is equally, if not more, incredible. It required tremendous faith, unwavering courage, and unrelenting determination to carry out their calling.

  That is the genesis of Only the Brave—which explains why you now have a sequel to The Undaunted but doesn’t really explain why I excluded my previous fictional characters. Normally, sequels carry on with the same main characters. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw that while the settlement of San Juan County is a continuation of the Hole-in-the-Rock story, it is, by its very nature, a very different story, and would require very different characters.

  In The Undaunted, we emphasized that these early Saints had been warned of the challenges they would face when they got to the region of the San Juan, which was filled with lawless white men, hostile Indians, and vast isolation. Three metaphors were used by Church leaders in describing the role of the Saints going south:

  • They were to become a buffer between the white man and the Indian.

  • They were to be like the shock absorbers on a wagon, which soften the blows for those riding in the wagon, or in this case, those in the other settlements.

  • They were to be like a lightning rod, which draws down the fires of heaven upon itself so they do not consume others.

  And that’s when I saw it: as difficult as that six-month journey across the desolate red rock country of southeastern Utah was, those who made it never once faced any of those three metaphoric challenges during the actual trip.

  But once they got to Bluff, they learned in rapid order that the metaphors represented reality. They faced new challenges, new trials, new adversities—many of which were even tougher than anything the actual journey had thrown at them. And that’s when I decided I wanted to start with new characters. I wanted this story to begin with those who followed, those who crossed a road already blazed across the wilderness. I wanted them to be people who came to an established fort and a settled community but almost instantly were smacked in the face with what they were called to be—buffers, shock absorbers, lightning rods—as well as with what they were called to do.

  And there was something else, too. I began to sense what a profound influence these hardy pioneers had on their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In other words, I realized that their story continues on through the rising generations. I began thinking about continuing that story as well. But if I was going to do that, I decided, I needed new characters that I could develop through the decades that were ahead of them. So I decided to start with new lead characters.

  My apologies to the Drapers and the McKennas. It’s not that they couldn’t have done it. It was just that I wanted to introduce new elements early in this story that would explain how the San Juan pioneers became who they became. It would have seemed contrived and forced to put these elements into the Drapers’ and the McKennas’ lives. So I bid them farewell and started anew. My only hope is that you will quickly fall in love with our two new families as they carry the story forward.

  Some Practical Matters

  In writing historical fiction, it becomes necessary to have fictional characters interact with actual historical people. That creates several dilemmas. I am committed to being as true to the historical sources as possible. However, a novel requires a lot of details that are rarely found in historical sources. I have tried to resolve those dilemmas in appropriate ways.

  In describing the day-to-day lives and events of my fictional characters, I sometimes included names of people who would likely have been present but are not named specifically in the historical records.

  I sometimes wanted to share dramatic or amusing stories that were experienced by known people, but I wanted to place them in the context of the novel. In those cases, I have the fictional characters experience the events and then indicate in the notes whose account it really was.

  In many cases the fictional characters interact with prominent men and women in day-to-day activities. In those interactions, I strive to be true to the realities we do know about real people. For example, Bishop Jens Nielson, who served as bishop in Bluff for over twenty years, gives a priesthood blessing to one of the novel’s fictional characters. Obviously, that is not “true history,” but I believe it is “true to history” because we know he gave blessings on a regular basis.

  Many dates are as given in the sources, but many of the personal stories and insights into daily life are not dated. I have tried to put them in the story close to the time they actually occurred, but they may sometimes be off by a year or two.

  I have sought diligently to be true to the times, events, and known character of those wonderful pioneers of the San Juan Mission. I am astonished at who they were and what they did, and I seek only to honor them and their accomplishments. If I have erred in that effort, the fault is mine and not theirs.

  Indian Matters

  The indigenous peoples of North America were called “Indians” for centuries because Christopher Columbus and other early explorers thought they had reached India. From earliest colonial times, they were also commonly referred to as “savages” or “primitive peoples.” Some early colonists who were more sympathetic to the natives referred to them as the “noble savage,” which is only slightly less demeaning. Those terms have obviously come to be considered offensive, and today even the name “Indians” is often deemed incorrect, with some people preferring instead “Native Americans,” “American Indians,” or “indigenous peoples.”

  Members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are taught that all people are children of God, and therefore the pioneers viewed Native Americans as their brothers and sisters. Brigham Young taught his people that it was better to feed the Indians than to fight them and called on the pioneers to befriend and serve them. They lived among three major tribes: the Navajo, the Utes, and the Piutes. While there were renegade Indians who fought the Mormons and all other whites, most of these tribal peoples had a good relationship with the Mormons.

  The pioneers used the cultural terms and language of their day. They most often referred to the native peoples as “Indians.” They called their women “squaws” and their young children “papooses,” and these terms carried no offense. In a similar manner, when they later described interactions with the Indians, they quoted what seems to be the simple pidgin English that many of the Indians had learned to speak.

  Many of the Indians named in the novel have anglicized names, such as Mike, Jack, or Toby. Undoubtedly, these were names given to them by pioneers who found their real names difficult to pronounce and remember. But that is how they are identified in the historical records, and so that is how I refer to them.

  All of this creat
ed a dilemma. A historical novel should reflect the language of its own time and culture, but much of the terminology used in the 1880s would be offensive today. To resolve that dilemma, when I as the author talk about the native peoples in narrative or descriptive sections, I try to avoid anything that might give offense. However, when the pioneers are speaking or when readers are given insights into the pioneers’ thoughts, I use language that reflects how they spoke and thought.

  PROLOGUE

  _____________________

  The San Juan

  The people who came to explore and live in what is now southern Utah, where vast blocks of earth were thrust upward to form great rifts, immense plateaus, and scattered mountain ranges, gave it many names. The Navajo called the area Dee-nay-tah, “the land of the people.” John Wesley Powell named it the Colorado Plateau. Then, when invisible lines were drawn on maps to define states and territories, it took on yet another title—the Four Corners region.

  On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley with the first company of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. Tens of thousands followed. The new arrivals were sent out in every direction to establish settlements.

  The Mormons decided that the one lasting solution to make a successful life in this highly volatile area was stability. Stability meant families, homes, towns, farms, ranches, businesses, law, civil order, religion, and faith.

  And thus it was that in April 1880, about 250 Mormon settlers, who had left their homes in the more settled parts of the territory, arrived as families to the region of the San Juan in southern Utah. They came to build, not to destroy. They came to befriend the natives and live side by side with them.