Symposium analyzes cow's role in handcart tragedy

SALT LAKE CITY — Did one small cow contribute to the 1856 Willie and Martin handcart disaster, in which some 220 people perished?

It did, according to an Idaho State University professor who spoke on the subject at a Sunstone Symposium session Friday afternoon at the Sheraton Hotel.

"The thing we can blame mostly is one small cow," Trent D. Stephens said, adding a new twist to the often-told pioneer tragedy.

Stephens, a professor of anatomy and embryology at Idaho State, said the handcart companies had expected to replenish their supplies at Fort Laramie, but the anticipated supplies were not there when they arrived on Sept. 30, 1856.

"Had the pioneers had adequate food, the deaths would have been less," he said, noting that starvation killed the most people.

Why were there no supplies available at Fort Laramie?

Prior to 1856, the pioneer routes had been relatively safe from American Indian attacks, Stephens said. However, late in the summer of 1854, one cow strayed from the company of a Mormon Scandinavian pioneer company, wandered into an American Indian village and was killed for food there.

Fort Laramie ended up sending 20 soldiers to the village to arrest the American Indians for theft. But all the soldiers were killed as the American Indians refused to surrender and tensions increased.

As a result of this chain of events, Fort Laramie's military company increased from 100 to 260 soldiers by 1856. The fort anticipated a supply train with food to arrive from Fort Kearney, Neb., but it had not arrived by the time the handcart companies came through. There was no surplus food to share.

"The fort was on rations at the time," Stephens said.

Fort Laramie was about the halfway point on the 1,000-mile pioneer trek from Iowa and Missouri to the Salt Lake Valley.

All the handcart companies received was some additional clothing, which they later discarded to speed up their travel.

The handcart companies also lost many of the cattle with them, some to American Indians and others to storms that scattered them along their route.

This bovine twist to the legendary, 1856 handcart disaster also is reminiscent of the traditional — but falsified — cause of Great Chicago Fire of 1871 in which a cow supposedly kicked over a lantern in the O'Leary barn to start the blaze.