A Teenager’s Mormon Battalion Journal | David L. Bigler, ed., The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith

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Since the publication of the Hosea Stout Journals in 1964, the University of Utah Press has made a significant contribution to the study of western history by publishing a number of important diaries, journals, and letter collections. The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith, ably edited by David L. Bigler, follows this valuable tradition and is a fine addition as volume 7 in the Publications in Mormon Studies Series edited by Linda King Newell. Born in Boilston, Oswego County, New York, on 1 August 1828, Azariah Smith marched into Fort Leavenworth on his eighteenth birthday in 1846 as one of five hundred volunteers for the Mormon Battalion. Though one of the youngest members of the Battalion, Azariah Smith has become one of its most significant members since he was one of only two members who kept diaries about their experiences. The other diarist, Henry William Bigler, was thirteen years older than Smith. The Bigler diary has been available to historians for over a century and has been published in various versions, notably the 1932 volume of the Utah Historical Quarterly and a 1962 University of California Press volume edited by Erwin G. Gudde entitled Bigler’s Chronicle of the West: The Conquest of California, Discovery of Gold and Mormon Settlement as Reflected in Henry William Bigler’s Diaries. With the publication of the Smith diary, these two important primary sources about the Mormon Battalion experience and the historic discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill are now available to the public. 

Azariah Smith begins his account with a brief biographical sketch noting that his parents, Albert and Esther Dutcher Smith, joined the Mormon church in 1839 and that he was baptized in 1841 at the age of thirteen. The Smiths lived in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois before moving to Council Bluffs where Azariah, his father, and his uncle Thomas P. Dutcher enlisted in July 1846 as members of the Mormon Battalion. 

Azariah’s diary covers four significant periods in the saga of the Battalion: the march from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe and on to California; the occupation of California as federal soldiers; the dis charge and subsequent participation in the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill; and the journey from the gold fields to the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1848, in which Battalion members opened the Mormon-Carson Pass Emigrant Trail that would be used by tens of thousands of gold rushers in subsequent years. 

While the journal has been used by students of the Mormon Battalion for some time and does not disclose any new or extraordinary information about the Bat talion, it does reveal the wonder, innocence, and homesickness that was the experience of one young man during the two-year sojourn. It is a refreshing and insightful glimpse of a young man’s initial encounter with the West. On the Santa Fe Trail near the Arkansas River in Kansas, 15 September 1846, Azariah noted: “We travailed today 15 miles, and crossed the river and camped by it on the other side, haveing to go a mile and a half after wood, I got on a mule and went after some. I got a stick on my shoulder, and got on the muel, but the mule threw me off and went to camp; it hurt me some, but not Seriously. Comeing back I saw a rattlesnake, which is the first one I have saw on the road” (p. 26). 

After reaching Santa Fe, Azariah and his father attended Catholic mass, which Azariah describes with a good measure of tolerance and wonder: “They had a great many Images which [were] most beautifull; the Priest acted with great reverence, bowing and kissing the Images, and all sorts of motions. They also had good music. The people dispersed with out much cerimony” (p. 32). 

Impressed by the Catholic services, Smith returned again the next week and reported, “After the me[e]ting I stayed to see the Ladies, some of which looked very prety, others looked like destruction” (p. 41). Once they reached San Diego, he records, “While we were drilling this afternoon the bells in the Catholic Church rung for nearly an hour and sounded most beautifull. After being dismissed from the drill I went in the Church and there was twelve images which looked very nice” (p. 78).

Throughout the journey, Azariah’s father was his best friend. Journal accounts describe them climbing mountains to roll rocks down, playing ball, and visiting the beach where they “ran races, jumped and sung songs for the first time since we left Nauvoo” (p. 81).

After their discharge, they went north and obtained employment in September 1847 digging a raceway for a sawmill owned by John Sutter under the supervision of James Marshall. An eyewitness to the discovery of gold, Azariah recorded on Monday, 24 January 1848, “Mr. Marshall found some pieces of (as we all suppose) Gold, and he has gone to the Fort, for the Purpose of finding out”(p. 108). The discovery was confirmed, and a few weeks later Azariah and others were searching for gold in their spare time as “Mr. Marshall grants us the privelege of picking up Gold odd spells and Sundays, and I have gathered up considerable. When we shut down the gates the gold is found in the bottom of the tale race” (p. 110).

Yet the gold did not strongly attract Azariah Smith, as he recalled fifty years after the discovery, “I was home-sick as well as physically sick. I wanted to see mother and I did not care whether there was gold in the locality or not” (p. 122).

The last leg of Smith’s journey was from the gold fields east across the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Great Basin to Salt Lake City, a difficult, trail-blazing effort that became the route to California for more than six thousand forty-niners the next year and thousands of others in subsequent years.

David L. Bigler, national secretary of the Oregon California Trails Association and a long-time student of western trails, has done an outstanding job editing the diary of Azariah Smith. The general introduction, introductions to the five sections, the epilogue, and the frequent notes provide with great care and skill context, explanations, and insights that add immeasurably to our understanding of the Mormon Battalion story in general and the life of Azariah Smith in particular.

The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith edited by David L. Bigler (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 159 pp., $17.50.