In September and October 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, Parley P. Pratt and Ziba Peterson were called to go on a mission to the Lamanites. (See D&C 28:8; 30:5.)
Church History in the Fulness of Times, the manual for Religion 341-43, prepared by Church Educational System 1989, 1993), contains this information, beginning on page 79:"The destination of the missionaries was the borders by the Lamanites.' (D&C 28:9.) This phrase was understood to refer to the line between Missouri and the Indian territory to the west. . . . Before departing, the missionaries bound themselves in writing to giveheed unto all [the] words and advice' of Oliver Cowdery. They pledged to proclaim the `fulness of the Gospel' to their brethren, the Lamanites.1 On 18 October they began their fifteen-hundred-mile westward trek.
"The missionaries visited a friendly tribe of Seneca Indians on the Cattaraugus Reservation near Buffalo, New York, where they paused just long enough to introduce the Book of Mormon as a record of their forgotten ancestors. `We were kindly received,' Parley reported.2 Leaving two copies of the book, the missionaries journeyed onward. So far as is known, these were the first American Indians to hear the message of the Restoration in this dispensation."
At Sandusky, Ohio, the missionaries stopped for several days among the Wyandot Indians. Parley P. Pratt wrote: "They rejoiced in the tidings, bid us God speed, and desired us to write to them in relation to our success among the tribes further west."3
It was winter when the missionaries left Sandusky, Ohio, for Cincinnati. "The winter of 1830-31 is known in midwest annals as the winter of the deep snow. The latter part of December 1830 was `bitter cold, a blinding, swirling blur of snow, and leaden, lowering skies, combined to make this storm a thing to paralyze that prairie country. It seems to have continued for days, unabated - a wonder, at first, then a terror, a benumbing horror as it became a menace to [the] life of men and animals.' "4
At Cincinnati on Dec. 20, the missionaries boarded a steamboat bound for St. Louis. However, because ice floes choked the Ohio River, they had to disembark in Cairo, Ill. They continued on foot.
"Twenty miles from St. Louis, a howling storm of rain and snow forced a week's delay and left snow nearly three feet deep in some places. Slowly they pressed westward, trudging through the knee-deep snow for whole days without a house or a fire, `the bleak northwest wind always blowing in our faces with a keenness which would almost take the skin off,' wrote Parley. . . . For three hundred miles they carried their clothes, books, and food in knapsacks on their backs. All they had to eat was frozen corn bread and raw pork. . . . On 13 January 1831 the missionaries arrived in Independence, Missouri, the extreme western frontier of the United States."5
Notes:
1 Letter dated Oct. 17, 1830, in Ohio Star, Dec. 8, 1831, p. 7.
2 Parley P. Pratt, ed., Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, Classics in Mormon Literature series (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985), p. 35.
3 Pratt, Autobiography, p. 39.
4 Eleanor Atkinson, "The Winter of the Deep Snow," Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1909, p. 49.
5 Pratt, Autobiography, pp. 42-44.
