Oxen are integral to the Mormon pioneer saga, though some Latter-day Saints today might assume they don't exist anymore.
Not so, says Dixon Ford, a 73-year-old member of the Hidden Valley Ward, Kaysville Utah South Stake. He himself owns four teams that he has trained for demonstrations and shows. One of his teams is on continual display at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City; two others are at the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville, near Logan, Utah. And he keeps one team on his own property.
Brother Ford and his animals, Thor and Zeus, were an attraction at the celebration in June at Kearney, Neb., commemorating 150 years since the first handcart companies came west to the Salt Lake Valley. Right after the Kearney celebration, he pushed on east to Omaha, Neb., where he spent two days at the Church's Mormon Trail Center putting on oxen demonstrations. With their readiness to respond to his mostly non-verbal commands, the animals showed themselves to be more intelligent thatn some people might think.
Ox-drawn wagon trains were a necessary part of the handcart companies, Brother Ford noted in an interview. "There's a myth going around that the handcarts carried everything the pioneers needed on the journey. That's not true. The handcarts only carried what they used daily, had to have daily access to. The bulk of the goods were carried in wagons drawn by oxen."
In addition to personal appearances at such events as the celebration in Kearney, family reunions and other events where pioneer heritage is celebrated, Brother Ford's oxen have appeared in movies, sometimes he along with them. The most recent is "Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration," the one now playing at the Legacy Theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City.
His team will also appear in "Rescue at the Sweetwater," Lee Groberg's and Heidi Swinton's PBS documentary on the rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies that is due to premiere in November.
Brother Ford has trained oxen continuously for the past 15 years, but his interest goes back much further than that, to his association with his grandfather, Martin Ford, in Wallsburg, near Heber City, Utah. Martin Ford was second-generation Mormon pioneer stock, his own father having crossed the plains in the late 1850s.
"He could drive them all day without having to say a word to them," Brother Ford recalled. "And I said, 'What about "gee" and "haw" and those kinds of things?' He said, 'Well, we have them trained so well, the way the pioneers had them trained, that they just obey visual signals.' He said, 'We do teach them verbal commands, but that's only so that somebody who doesn't have the understanding to do that when they drive them can shout at them and they will do what they want.' "
Brother Ford uses a whip in his own driving, but not for striking the animals. It is to give them non-verbal cues.
He said, for example, that the animals will stop if he says, "Whoa," or puts the whip on the ground, or stops himself, or falls down.
"If I want them to go to the right, I will say 'gee'," or I'll just point my whip to the right, or I will just walk to the right, and they'll keep the proper distance from me and turn and both of them go to the right. That will require one going backward and one going forward."
Likewise, they go left if he says "haw" or if he simply turns to the left. The animal on the "nigh" side, nearest the driver, will communicate to the other what is wanted by shaking its head in a certain way.
Brother Ford said myths abound about oxen. Part of that may be due to confusion about what exactly an ox is by definition.
He said they stem back 8,000 years to the ancient Egyptians, who had oxen 2,000 years before they had horses.
"You can make oxen from any breed of the bovine family," he said. "You can make an ox from any sex of the bovine family: bull, cow or steer. Steers are preferred. It has to have horns to hold the yoke on, and when it turns 4 years old, if it's trained to the extent identified as 'handy,' you call it an ox."
The "handy" designation means that the ox will go anywhere the driver commands without means of halters, reins or any other attachment, "just your voice command or the position of your body, the way you point the whip, or sometimes I think even the way you're thinking," Brother Ford says.
Most cattle don't get to be oxen "because they're not trained," he said. "It's an honorary title. It's like doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. They have to go to school."
He jokingly added, "They might have gone to school here at Ox-Ford University," a play on his last name.
Size doesn't matter in the oxen designation. "It depends on the breed you use," he said. "Bigger breeds will get bigger oxen. But the oxen that were here (in the Salt Lake Valley) in 1847 were mostly Red Durham."
Brother Ford gained much of his knowledge about oxen by reading thousands of pioneer diaries, he said. He learned through experience as well as reading that oxen can go at an "ox pace" of only 2 mph. If pushed beyond their limit, they will signal by wobbling their heads that they are getting exhausted. Some pioneers didn't understand that, he said, and drove their oxen to death.
"I get more information reading women's diaries than I do men's about oxen," he said. Women were more successful often times because they were better at comprehending the visual communication from their animals. Thus, the story of Mary Fielding Smith arriving in the valley 20 hours ahead of others in her pioneer company because of her skill with her oxen resonates with Brother Ford.
He is transmitting his knowledge to his grandson; interest in ox driving seems to alternate generations, he quipped.
And he is writing a book, in which he is including a section where he debunks myths about oxen. The myth section is starting to dominate the entire book, he said.
He laughs when he tells the following incident: "One time, up in Logan, a history teacher brought his class to look at the oxen, and without asking me what oxen were, he said, 'Now this is not the real ox. The real ox's breeding is lost in antiquity. We think it was a cross between a cow, a buffalo and a small pony.' "
Such misconceptions are part of the reason he decided 15 yeas ago to get back in earnest to oxen training and demonstration.
E-mail to: rscott@desnews.com
