Locust (9 page)

Minnesota’s governor John S. Pillsbury declared April 26, 1877, as “a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer” to deliver the people from the locusts and to comfort the afflicted. On the appointed day, Pillsbury closed his own flour mills in Minneapolis, perhaps to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy or to attract the attention of the national press, which enthusiastically covered the day’s events. However, not everyone was happy with the governor’s unusual merger of church and state. The Liberal League publicly denounced their government’s plea for divine intervention, stating, “We hold that this belief in the power of prayer is palpably untrue, its influence pernicious and in this day a marked discredit to the intelligence of Minnesotans.”

But the skeptics’ objections would be empirically refuted. According to a pamphlet published by the American Tract Society, “A very remarkable change in the weather occurred” the day after the prayers were offered. Historians affirm than an April snowstorm was followed by two days of hard frost—and the land was delivered from the scourge. Although there is no evidence that Pillsbury was in cahoots with meteorologists, given the Missouri governor’s conspiracy we have to at least ponder the possibility.

Although crop losses still occurred in 1877, relative to previous years the locust damage in Minnesota was markedly diminished. That fall, religious leaders were touting the efficacy of Christian faith, while the farmers were putting up their crops and the governor was making political hay. Pillsbury issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the plague having been lifted, although he had the good grace not to explicitly credit himself and his statewide day of prayer with the turn of fortune. And in Cold Springs, the faithful made good on their vow and built a chapel to the Virgin Mary under the direction of Reverend Leo Winter. Whether or not the people offered words of thanks for
fifteen years is not known, but the chapel itself only survived a bit longer than the promised period of prayers. The wooden structure was destroyed by a tornado in 1894 and not rebuilt until 1951. Although the granite structure was officially renamed Assumption Chapel in honor of Mary, it is still commonly called the Grasshopper Chapel in recognition of its origin.

In May 1877, the Dakota Territory joined the gubernatorial rush to religiosity. Although the governor dismissed the severity of the situation and contended that financial aid would “demoralize the people and make mendicancy honorable among some classes,” religiosity apparently was within the scope of his leadership. Not to be outdone by his eastern neighbor, Governor John L. Pennington proclaimed May 4 as his own territory’s day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Perhaps impressed by previous successes in Missouri and Minnesota, but more likely because of piety and empathy, the residents generally observed the special day. Banks closed and merchants suspended business in recognition of what might now seem to be a constitutionally problematical unification of church and state.

Kansans took a different tack regarding the role of religion. There were apparently few appeals from the churches for state-sanctioned prayers beseeching God to remove his six-legged servants from the fields. At least within some religious communities, direct action was favored over divine intervention. The Newton
Kansan
praised the devout and pragmatic settlers, saying, “The Mennonites are not afraid of the grasshopper. He is an old acquaintance of theirs; and they kill him at once without holding mass meetings or writing complaining letters to the newspapers.”

These glimpses of religious responses to the Rocky Mountain locust provide some insight into the pioneer communities’ view of themselves and their relation to God. Although a few people favored the bold interpretation that locusts were Satan’s minions, the general response appears to have reflected the caution of the ecclesiastical courts centuries earlier. Most settlers assumed a position of self-admonition with the hope that through humility, repentance, sacrifice, and prayer the Almighty could be persuaded to deliver them from their suffering. However, we have to infer this religious reaction from social snippets
and historical hints—with one remarkable exception. The Mormons were the West’s most fastidious historiographers. And not only did these pious people keep abundant records, but they also had plenty of locusts.

Having headed to Utah on a religious quest for a homeland, the Mormons were accustomed to seeing their experiences as part of a divine plan. Their trek into the wilderness of North America was the nineteenth-century version of the Israelites’ journey into the deserts of the Middle East. And just as Canaan was the promised land of the latter people, the Great Salt Lake Valley was the holy land of the former. Both pilgrimages were fraught with difficulties, although the Israelites were headed away from the land of the locusts and the Mormons were headed into swarms. Being inured to physical trials, the Mormons initially viewed the locusts as yet another test of their faith and devotion imposed by Providence.

The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assured their flock that the swarms were a means by which God reminded his children of their dependence on him. Like the flood sent by God to cleanse the world from its depravity, the physical privation wrought by the locusts was the Creator’s way of calling the settlers back from their materialism, worldliness, and self-sufficiency. Just as a parent uses punishment to teach a child a valuable lesson, the church leaders reminded the people that “the Lord chasteneth those he loveth.” And the Almighty was a strict father.

The Mormons were inundated with locusts in the 1850s. A correspondent from Pleasant Grove wrote, “I do not think there were any more in Egypt in the time of Moses than there are now on my place, for the ground is literally the color of grasshoppers.” As if the swarms were not difficult enough, the responsibility for this invasion was placed squarely upon the Mormon settlers. Their leaders scolded them for having flagrantly violated the will of God and avowed that the plague had been sent as a punishment for having failed to observe the Sabbath.

For most Christians, the Sabbath is the day of rest that comes at the end of a week. And by all accounts, the Mormon people had faithfully observed their Sunday obligations. But the Sabbath also occurs on another temporal scale. Mormon theologians explain that when the Israelites prepared to enter Canaan the Lord revealed to Moses a plan for storing food to ensure that the people would have full larders during the difficult times that would inevitably come. According to the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus:

Strict observation of Sabbath and Jubilee years is vitally important in Mormon theology. In this case, religious restraint complemented physical prudence. Farmers in the desert—either Canaan or Utah—where droughts and locusts could destroy a year’s harvest, were well advised to lay away a supply of food. Moreover, good agricultural practice suggests that periodically resting or fallowing the land fosters a more sustainable production system. As bad luck or divine providence would have it, the locusts began to arrive the year that the Mormon farmers failed to observe a Sabbath, and the insects bred prolifically and continued their devastations into the following year. On July 13, 1855, a prominent church official, Heber C. Kimball, issued his harsh critique of the farmers’ failure to heed President Brigham Young’s instructions:

Mormon historians note that if the farmers had obeyed Brigham Young and observed 1854 as a Sabbath year, the land might not have been so conducive to the locusts—and the hardworking pioneers would have had a time of rest. The insects would have found only fallow fields and moved on after leaving only a few eggs. Instead, the swarms arrived to find the desert converted into a banquet, and the pests proliferated. To make matters worse, the Mormons had also failed to put up stores of food, so not only did they lose three-quarters of their grain but they also had little in reserve. The theologians add that God would surely have provided a compliant people with a bumper crop before a Sabbath year, so the Mormon farmers were thrice punished for their disobedience. Insubordination, faithlessness, and greed—no wonder the locusts came to Utah.

In a community rooted in a single religion, the church leaders can count on civic support and affirmation of their views. The
Deseret News
echoed the theological interpretation of the locusts, proclaiming, “The destroying angels are abroad! They are coming this way. They are armed and legged and winged—as orthodox angels should be—and fully equipped for war. The maneuvers are not exactly according to the manual, but they act in concert and their march is irresistible.”
¹

The army of destroying angels that arrived in the 1860s presented a profound challenge to the Mormon faithful. The locusts’ arrival did not seem to correspond to any great misdeed on the part of the settlers, so how should the swarms be interpreted and what should be
done about them? Here is where the great Mormon leader, Brigham Young, exhibited his powerful capacity for religiosity and practicality in providing answers to his people.

On the one hand, his message was deeply spiritual. In reply to a letter from a Mormon farmer battling locusts in Kansas, Young replied, “The only remedy that we know for them out here, is to exercise faith and pray the Lord to bless our land and our crops and not suffer them to fall prey to the devourer, and to overrule circumstances that His purposes may be accomplished.” In this manner, he sustained the core of religious faith that was at the heart of Mormon life. But Young took the “lesson of the locusts” one step further, using the invasion of this menace to affirm the validity of Mormon practices and the importance of community. In a sermon at Tooele, Utah, in 1867, Young told his followers:

And so, the Mormon leader continued to teach that all of the world, even the locusts, was the work of the Almighty. And if the Mormons were attentive to their faith’s edicts regarding the maintenance of a well-stocked larder, then they should have no reason to fear the handiwork of the Creator. Thus, the locusts were not God’s curse but his way of testing whether the Mormons had been obedient. On those who had been greedy and exchanged their food for the money of strangers, rather than keeping their bread within the family as commanded, the locusts would inflict well-deserved punishment. Fundamentally, Young’s view of God and the locusts was consistent with the tenets of modern parenting. Their heavenly Father was simply
delivering a lesson in “logical consequences”: His children had been told what would happen if they disobeyed the church, and now those who chose to ignore a holy decree would suffer.

Brigham Young was, however, much more than a theologian with a capacity to put a spiritual spin on the natural world. He was an eminently practical man who understood that faith did not put food in the hungry bellies of Mormon farmers and communities besieged by locusts. Submission to divine will was laudable, and welcoming God’s creatures into the garden was virtuous, but in 1868 the crops were fast disappearing under a blanket of voracious insects. Having seen fields and orchards stripped near Provo and his people depending on prayer to combat the locusts, he was ready to mix in a bit of pioneer pragmatism with his religious rhetoric. It was true that just twenty years earlier flocks of seagulls had miraculously saved the faithful from Mormon crickets (which were named for this event and are actually not crickets at all but a bizarre, coffee-colored, wingless katydid that aggregates and marches in dense bands). However, relying on miracles is a risky strategy for a beleaguered religious community, living in a desert, with no reason to expect help from outsiders or the government. And so in a sermon given at Mill Creek the Mormon leader preached:

He went on to remonstrate that had the people been properly storing food in anticipation of the Sabbath, the ravages of the locust might have been negligible. But the core of his message was that God helps those who help themselves. Brigham Young heartily endorsed the admonition found in James 2:26: “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.”