18 Days Until Trek - Driving Children Like Sheep

Don't worry, we won't drive you along the trail with willows. It is difficult to comprehend what trail life was like in certain circumstances. Sometimes, obedience and discipline were a matter of life and death. In the meantime, I'm going to go learn more about the Daniel McArthur Handcart Company. I can't imagine this. But it is important that we understand history as it happened, not as we wish it had.

“The Daniel McArthur Handcart Company, which left Florence, Nebraska, on July 13, escaped much of the suffering borne by the Willie and Martin companies, but Theo Didriksson describes the children’s treatment as harsh by today’s terms: ‘There were 30 children in the company and every morning they were sent ahead of the grownups, all in one bunch. Some of them had very little clothing, but they all wore hats. They were driven along with willows and had to keep walking as long as they could. No use to cry or complain but along during the day when it was hot they were allowed to rest and were given food. They were often two or three miles ahead of us. It was hard for parents to see their little five and six year olds driven along like sheep.’”

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

Uh, yeah. This AI-generated image doesn't help make that story more palatable. Perhaps I need some help creating these images. Perhaps we need a competition to create AI-generated images for these stories. That's actually an awesome idea. Email me the images you create and the blog post that it represents.