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Mormon Battalion ). Most of Price’s cavalry, how- ever, did not arrive until after the Mormons as a result of a severe storm that scattered their mounts, and it took several days to recover them.
51. Erwin G. Gudde, Bigler’s Chronicle ofthe West: The Conquest of California, Discovery of Gold, and Mormon Settlement as Reflected in Henry William Bigler’s Diaries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 26 (hereafter cited as Gudde, Henry
W. Bigler).
52. Azariah Smith, Journal of Azarian Smith, 1846,
Mormon Battalion Papers, Utah State Historical Society (hereafter cited as Smith, Journal), p. 5.
53. Bauer, Mexican War, p. 138.
54. Gracy and Rugeley, “An Englishman,” p. 143. 55. Martin, Yuma Crossing, p. 110. In contrast to
Price, Doniphan had defended the Mormons during the Missouri persecution.
56. Bieber, Southwestern Trails, p. 85; Henry W. Bigler, Diary of Henry Bigler, (no date), Special Col- lections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson, p. 11 (hereafter cited as Bigler, Diary); Tyler, Mormon Battalion, pp. 158, 168. None of the journals con- sulted offered a reasonable solution to the large discrepancy between the number of Saints recruited and the number that arrived at Santa Fe even though Tyler noted that a group, mostly families, separated on September 16 and headed to winter quarters in Pueblo in care of Captain Nelson Higgins (Company D) and several other men. Until 1878, it was stand- ard army practice to allocate four laundresses per company and to provide them pay and rations.
57. Young, Cooke, p. 190.
58. Bigler, Diary, p. 11. These men were also referred to as pilots or spies.
59. Jackson, Wagon Roads, p. 20. George Stoneman would serve as governor of California from 1883 to 1887. Dr. Foster, a Santa Fe-based trader, volunteered his services to Cooke and would also serve as one of the guides. Hall resigned the Army upon learning that hehadbeenelectedaRepresentativetoCongressfrom Missouri. However, he intended to accompany Cooke to California and return in time to fulfill his position.
60. Young, Cooke, p. 192.
61. Cooke in House Reports, 31st Congress, 1st session, Executive Document 41, p. 552, indicated a third sergeant’s wife and wagon. There is a sig- nificant controversy regarding this issue, however. In an interview published in the May 26, 1901, Salt Lake Herald Melissa Burton Coray (now Kimball),
wife of Sergeant William Coray (Company B),
named herself; Mrs. Jesse D. Hunter (Lydia Ed-
monds Hunter), wife of Captain Hunter (Company
B); Mrs. Daniel C. Davis (Susanna Moses Davis,
wife of Captain Davis (Company E); Mrs. Ebenezer
Brown (Phoebe Draper Palmer Brown), wife of Ser-
geant Brown (Company A); and Mrs. Eleazer Davis
(wife of Private Eleazor Davis) as the five women
who accompanied the Battalion west. In Bertha
Richards, Letter to the Author, October 21, 1989,
the President of the National Mormon Battalion
Auxiliary indicated that this interview was the only
known source identifying a fifth woman, Mrs.
Eleazor Davis, and that the other (undefined) infor-
mation indicated that one woman returned to Santa
Fe with the men detached November 10, 1846, 62.
before Cooke turned the Battalion west from the Rio Grande. The monument at San Diego, from Stanley B. Kimball, Historic Sites and Markers along the Mor- mon and other Great Western Trails (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 231-232, records only the first four women named.
William Hemsley Emory, Lieutenant Emory Reports (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951), p. 100 (hereafter cited as Emory, Reports)', Henry Smith Turner, The Original Journals of Henry Smith Turner with Stephen Watts Kearny to New Mexico and California, 1846-1847, edited by
Dwight Lancelot Clarke (Norman: University of Ok- lahoma Press, 1966), p. 85; James Van Nostrand Williams, Reminiscences and Diary of James Van Nostrand Williams, 1846, Mormon Battalion Papers, LDS Library, Salt Lake City, p. 33 (hereafter cited as Williams, Diary). Kearny’s column had reached the Santa Rita copper mines on October 17, and met with Mangas Coloradas, who promised to send guides to point out a good wagon route for the Mormons to follow. Whether he did or not could not be confirmed in any of the journals, even Cooke’s. From Juanita Brooks (ed.), “Diary [of JohnD.Lee]oftheMormonBattalionMission,” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 42 (July, 1967), pp. 191-195, 288-292, the fact that Lee left the Bat- talion at this point may have been fortunate for Cooke because Lee’s journal was very critical of almost everyone and everything up to this point. Lee later was executed for the part he allegedly played in the September 7, 1857, Mountain Meadows Mas- sacre of a wagon train of civilian emigrants in southern Utah.
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