History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

MOVE TO MISSOURI. 85
said, if ye are faithful, ye shall assemble yourselves
together to rejoice upon the land of Missouri, which
is the land of your inheritance, which is now the land
of your enemies. Behold, I the Lord will hasten the
city in its time, and will crown the faithful with joy
and with rejoicing. Behold I am Jesus Christ the son
of God, and I will lift them up at the last day. Amen."
While preparing for the journey to Missouri, a letter
was received from Oliver Cowdery, reporting on
his missionary work, and speaking of another tribe of
Lamanites, living three hundred miles west of Santa
Fe, called the Navarhoes (Navajoes), who had large
flocks of sheep and cattle, and who made blankets.
W. W. Phelps, 14 with his family joining the society,
was commissioned to assist Oliver Cowdery in selecting,
writing, and printing books for schools. Thus
the move from Ohio to Missouri was begun, Joseph
and his party starting from Kirtland the 19th of June,
going by wagon, canal-boat, and stage to Cincinnati,
by steamer to St Louis, and thence on foot to Independence,
arriving about the middle of July.
lighting in novelties flocked to hear them. Many travelled fifty and a
hundred miles to the throne of the prophet in Kirtland, to hear from his own
mouth the certainty of his excavating a bible and spectacles. Many, even in
the New England states, after hearing the frantic story of some of these
elders, would forthwith place their all into a wagon, and wend their way to
the promised land, in order, as they supposed, to escape the judgments of
heaven, which were soon to be poured out upon the land. The state of New
York, they were privately told, would most probably be sunk, unless the
people thereof believed in the pretensions of Smith.' Mormonism Unveiled,
115-16.
14 Howe writes thus of Phelps: 'Before the rise of Mormonism he was an
avowed infidel; having a remarkable propensity for fame and eminence, he
was supercilious, haughty, and egotistical. His great ambition was to embark
in some speculation whei'e he could shine preeminent. He took an
active part for several years in the political contests of New York, and
made no little display as an editor of a partisan newspaper, and after being
foiled in his desires to become a candidate for lieutenant-governor of that
state, his attention was suddenly diverted by the prospects which were held
out to him in the gold-bible speculation. In this he was sure of becoming
a great man, and made the dupes believe he was master of fourteen different
languages, of which they frequently boasted. But he soon found
that the prophet would suffer no growing rivalships, whose sagacity he had
not well calculated, until he was met by a revelation which informed him
that he could rise no higher than a printer.' Mormonism, Unveiled, 274.