Existing comment:
5. The Mormon Battalion:
While in the midst of moving thousands of people across the wilderness of Iowa, the Latter-day Saints were asked by the United States government to provide a contingent of 500 men for the Army to support the war against Mexico. The battalion was raised in July 1846 and then marched 2,000 miles from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, by way of Santa Fe to San Diego, arriving in January 1847. The women and children accompanying the battalion and the sick among the soldiers were detached partway through the journey and sent to Fort Pueblo, Colorado, to spend the winter of 1846-47. They joined a group of Latter-day Saints from Mississippi who had come west on the Oregon Trail in the summer of 1846 expecting to find Brigham Young on the way to the Rocky Mountains. Since he was still at the Missouri River, the Mississippi group turned south from Fort Laramie to winter at Fort Pueblo. The combined groups joined or followed Brigham Young by a few days into the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1847. |