As I was looking for something to share about Thanksgiving, I came across this very moving story that gives wonderful insight into our ancestry. I'm pretty sure the owner won't mind since I'm giving them full credit as well as sharing the link where I found this step back into history. Enjoy. I certainly did.
A PIONEER THANKSGIVING
Taken from a story written by:
Joseph Wallace Thompson
Taken from a story written by:
Joseph Wallace Thompson
As told to his daughter, Eleh T. Shumway Lazenby
My grandmother, Lucy Simmons Groves, who was one of the pioneers in Utah’s Southland, lived in a fort called Fort Harmony. It was late in the fall [about 1854], and people had gathered in their meager harvest, and it was very meager too. The men folks had a very busy season, with clearing the brush from a few acres of land, plowing, planting, digging a canal to irrigate their crops, and guarding the colony from the unfriendly Indians, and building a fort for protection, they were unable to raise much more than would be needed for man, and beast through the long winter months before another harvest.
Each family had a few sheep on which they depended for
wool to make clothing. They carded, spun, and wove the wool into cloth.
The people, true to the traditions which they had inherited from their
pilgrim fathers, my grandparents (Elisha Hurd Groves and Lucy Simmons)
were wondering just what they had to be thankful for. True, they had
been delivered from those bloodthirsty wretches which had so cruelly
murdered their beloved prophet and his equally loved brother, (Joseph and Hyrum Smith) and had mercilessly driven the people
from their beautiful city of Nauvoo, and the comfortable homes they
had only begun to enjoy. All this in the dead of a cold cruel winter,
so cold the people crossed the great Mississippi River on the ice, a
thing that seldom happened. Yes, they were out of the power of the mobs,
but it had cost them those dear homes, and the long, long journey of
a thousand miles or more through a wilderness infested by
wild beasts, and equally wild Indians. They had left behind almost everything that gave comfort and happiness, but they had a priceless heritage handed down to them from their Pilgrim parents. A strong will, and resolute determination that no trials could weaken or discourage, above all a faith in God that could not be shaken. So, they thought, even after all they had endured, and the present dark prospects, they had much to be thankful for.
wild beasts, and equally wild Indians. They had left behind almost everything that gave comfort and happiness, but they had a priceless heritage handed down to them from their Pilgrim parents. A strong will, and resolute determination that no trials could weaken or discourage, above all a faith in God that could not be shaken. So, they thought, even after all they had endured, and the present dark prospects, they had much to be thankful for.
Their little daughter, my mother [Lucy Maria Groves],
who was born during the cold days when they were out on the prairie
before coming to Utah, was then a little barefoot girl and was lonely
and wished for a little chum to play with. As the day of Thanksgiving
arrived, cold and stormy, they were huddled around the fireplace. Grandfather
said, “Well, we have no apples to toast on the hearth. We have
some corn, and I will parch some, and we have a nice fat deer hung up so we will roast some of it, and we will still have a Thanksgiving.
We’ll not regret the past. It has given us a wonderful experience,
so we will not long for nor wish for those things nowimpossible to obtain,
but be thankful for what we have.”
The day was far along and night would soon be approaching,
wrapping its dark shadowsover all the land. He said, “I will go
out and take care of the stock, and then we will enjoy our Thanksgiving
dinner.” As darkness came on, the snow began to fall. A real winter
storm was on. The wind moaned and roared outside, and as if to accompany
the elements from the hills nearby, and from every direction came the
mournful howl of wolves. Grandfather remarked that he would surely feel sorry for any human being who happened to be out
there tonight. As the night drew on, the storm increased in violence,
until it seemed to shake even the adobe and stone walls of the fort.
The man who had charge of the gate said, “For fear someone may
be out tonight, I will not fasten the gate. I will leave it slightly
ajar.”
The night grew wilder, and they all decided to go to bed.
Grandfather was just starting to bank the fire, when there came a hard
bang on the door like something heavy had fallen against it. He hurried
over to open the door, and as he raised the latch, the door flew open
and in fell an Indian. He was almost naked and so near frozen he could
hardly speak. He held a bundle in his arms wrapped in a rabbit skin
robe, which he had had to keep him warm in winter. As he fell on the floor, the bundle slid from his cold nerveless arms, and a faint
cry came from the depths of the robe. It was the cry of a baby. Grandmother
sprang up and hastily picked it up in her arms and unwrapped it, and
lo, a tiny Indian baby, warm and cozy, came into view. “Father,”
she said, “Thank God we are here to save these people.”
The baby was all right except for being hungry, but the
man had nearly frozen to death. The sun had risen on another day before
he recovered enough to tell his experience. He then told the story.
His tribe [Shebitt],1 not a large one, had been out on their annual
hunt to get a supply of venison for winter, and had killed plenty of
deer, but a large band of bad Indians from another tribe had surprised
them and killed them all including his wife. They took all their meat
and ponies. They had struck him down and left him for dead. He had no
idea how long he lay unconscious, but when he came to, all his friends and his wife were
lying there cold and stiff. When he turned her over, the little one
was lying there beneath the mother in a little depression in the ground,
cold but still alive, and unhurt. The robbers had stripped all the good
robes but had left this one, he thought because it wasn’t much
good. He wrapped his baby in it, and came many days to the white man’s
lodges to save his baby, and if the white man had not opened the door, he could not have done so. He was too sick, too cold, too hungry
to go one step farther. He said, “If white squaw take baby, and
raise up like white baby, she may have it for her own.”
He said, “Me now happy. Me want to die. You take care of baby. You good white mans. Me say goodbye.” And although he lingered a few days, he had fully decided not to live. Grandfather gave him good care, but he died and was laid to rest as if he were a white man.
Grandfather and Grandmother raised the baby, who grew
to be a beautiful woman, bright, intelligent and a lovely girl. They
loved the dusky little girl as if she were their own. They named her
Evelyn. She was a real playmate to little barefooted Lucy, their own
daughter. She grew to womanhood and married a good, honorable white
man. My grandparents often said that of all the Thanksgiving days, the
day on which little Evelyn came to them was the best of all.
----- Murland Packer
1 comment:
Great story, Ginger!
When we open our hearts, blessings pour in.
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