15 Days Until Trek - Infants on the Trail

We read earlier of young children in a handcart company who were old enough to walk and so were herded in front of the company. But what about the families with infants who were too young to walk, or walk great distances? I had assumed that they rode in the wagons or handcarts, and perhaps many did, but I had never thought of adults carrying toddlers on the trail to Zion. Some people like to ruck for their health and strength. Moms and sisters rucked with infants, apparently.

“Child care was greatly complicated by traveling, but pioneer women were quick to find substitutes for cradles and beds. Diapering infants was a constant problem, especially when water was scarce. Although references were scarce, it was probably common to dry, scrape, wash if possible, air, and reuse the cloth diapers. Many women probably learned from Indian women how to use grass, moss, and even pulverized buffalo dung, which was absorbent. Most camps allowed the babies to sleep in the wagons as long as possible. A few secured baskets or sacks as saddlebags in which infants and small children could be carried with a riding parent. But most small children were carried by sisters or mothers. Louisa Charlotte Graehl, the first woman in Geneva to join the Church in June 1854, migrated to Zion a year later with her husband, three young girls, and a baby boy. One daughter, Eliza, died en route. Their wagon came near wrecking, the horses were unruly, and they were forced to walk to camp; Louisa had to carry two of her children but never once complained. ‘I had to carry a little girl in one arm and a baby in the other and find my way through the high grass. I was very much afraid that I would trample on a rattlesnake. My husband had not been well since we left the old country and now he became even worse and had to stay in the wagon so I had to drive.’ They arrived in the Valley in October 1855.”

Selection from Stanley B. and Violet T. Kimball's 2011 book, Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the Gathering to Zion.

AI-image critique. The account suggested that the mother carried both her infant and toddler and the horses are kind of wonky in this image. Still, you get the idea that caring for children while walking across the continent was not for the faint of heart.