Apostle of the Outposts | Andrew Karl Larson, Erastus Snow: The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church

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Andrew Karl Larson’s Erastus Snow: The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church is a biography written, as the author candidly points out in his preface, “at the behest of Erastus Snow’s descend ants.” Larson’s treatment is almost purely one of chronological narrative. He takes up Erastus Snow’s life story at his birthplace, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and with measured pace follows it day by day to his death at Salt Lake City on May 21, 1888. Partial exceptions to this chronological mold are eleven chapters dealing with Snow’s pioneering role in Utah’s Dixie. Here Larson draws on his immense knowledge of life on the Mormon frontier to give a topical arrangement. For this reader these chapters were among the best. 

Erastus Snow is an intimate portrait. It is intimate not merely in the sense that it reveals the strength, warmth and emotions of its subject but intimate in the niggling and monotonous way of real life. The aches and pains of Erastus Snow become well known. Indeed the man emerges as something of a hypochondriac, though one hopes that this stems more from the Mormon penchant to revel in the intimacies of its leaders (a characteristic that Larson faithfully transmits to his pages) than a tendency on the part of Erastus Snow to make more of his infirmities than they merited. The routine, heartaches and essential harmony of Snow’s large polygamous family—four wives and thirty-five children—are major themes. Snow, as in the case of many polygamists, was in large measure an absentee father. The missions and Church assignments that separated him from his family were attended by homesickness, a continuing display of fatherly affection and responsibility, and too often by sorrow. Interestingly something of an inverse impression emerges from Larson’s book. When Snow was absent, correspondence kept him posted and involved in family affairs. These letters amply provide the stuff from which his family role may be portrayed. Conversely when he lived at home family relations were conducted viva voce, leaving only family tradition and various less detailed written accounts. 

Erastus Snow is a Mormon book. Its tone is often that of a sacrament meeting. Time-honored forms carry it along. Larson has a sure feel for the modes and values as well as the cliches of Mormon society. The book is largely devoid of interpretation except for its affirmation of Snow’s benevolence, long-suffering and tedious ministrations. 

Still, it is in the main sound history. The diaries, reminiscences and letters of the Snow family are a major source, providing not only the reel from which the narrative unwinds but also the rod dictating its flow and presentation. Much supplementary material has also been employed. Where Utah’s Dixie is concerned Larson’s research in the primary sources is prob ably unparalleled. For other phases of Snow’s far-ranging activities the author has drawn from a limited number of supporting sources and has in most cases shown perception in his selections. On rare occasions he has obscured the past rather than illuminated it by speaking in innuendo and by substituting blanks and initials for names. This is particularly true in Chapter 34, “Ecclesiastical Government,” which deals chiefly with judicial affairs. 

Occasional factual lapses occur in the portion of the study dealing with Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. In discussing the termination of Navajo hostilities along the Utah-Arizona border, Larson has Jacob Hamblin repeat his Fort Defiance peace conference of November, 1870 at a later and un determined date (pp. 440 and 443). The confusion leading to this double vision rises from James G. Bleak’s “Annals of the Southern Utah Mission,” where the incident is erroneously reported twice, and from James A. Little’s Jacob Hamblin, which places the date of a single conference in 1871 (pp. 106-111), thus suggesting a follow-up meeting to the one of the previous year. Errors also appear in a few other details, as in the statement that Jesse N. Smith was considered as President of the “first L.D.S. Stake in Arizona” (p. 334), an honor—if such it was—already claimed by Lot Smith. But considering that Erastus Snow leads him across the entire range of Mormon affairs, from the 1830s to 1888, Larson’s history is remarkably sound. 

Larson characterizes Erastus Snow as the “Apostle of the Outposts” (pp. 730-31). An equally valid appellation, and one that adds to the meaning, would be that of a missionary. Even among a people given to missions [as are the Latter-day Saints], Snow had few peers. His entire life was a mission. In his integrity, devotion to duty, practicality and ability to symbolize the Church he was the ideal missionary. He was tempered in the crucible of backwood proselyting debates—some of which held spectators for as long as forty-eight hours. He shared the full cup of hardship and adventure with the great of the Church in 1846 and 1847. Scandinavia was his battleground and his field of harvest for the half-decade after 1848, St. Louis his school in the logistics of moving people during the stormy days that preceded the Utah War. Then followed the work of colonizing which, because it lay beyond the Church’s general line of advance, was handled as a mission. First Dixie for fourteen years, then Colorado and Arizona, and finally Mexico. Apostle of the outposts, indeed. Apostle of the outposts because he was the ideal missionary. 

His life also provides an extraordinary commentary on Mormon leadership. His beginnings in the Church were inauspicious, marked with none of the fanfare that accompanied the mounting star of a Sidney Rigdon or a John C. Bennett. His progress to power was slow but it was constant, marked by few sensations and by fewer defeats. It was based upon performance, not self-promotion. In time he became an indispensable cog in the wheel of the Mormon establishment. He was less colorful than many, due in part to what appears to have been an almost total lack of humor. [That he may have lamented its absence is suggested by Snow’s wistful note about his jocular colleague George A. Smith: “His lively disposition and cheerful spirit has contributed much to relieve my mind of its business cares and lighten my burdens” (p. 291).] 

Snow employed few artifices. He was not one to make frequent prophecies, as did Heber C. Kimball. When he did prophesy his efforts were not always attended by immediate fulfillment, as in the case of a prediction that southern Arizona’s San Pedro Valley, where Saint David stands a lonely re minder of grand Mormon dreams, “would be settled from one end to the other with Saints” (p. 355). Neither was Erastus Snow given to theological exegesis after the fashion of Orson Pratt. Doctrine was revealed. Erastus Snow was not one to undertake its improvement. While he may have suffered some loss of visibility as a result of his orthodoxy, he did not raise misgivings as to his doctrinal soundness. 

Snow came to an early understanding of Brigham Young’s role and of his own relation to it. At times he was almost fawning in his subservience to the Church President. This was apparent in his repeated deference to Young’s desires on details of construction of the Saint George Tabernacle and Temple. The latter pushed Snow—sometimes almost mercilessly—with respect to the Washington cotton factory. As Larson put it, “a word from Brother Brigham was the equivalent of a command” (p. 501). With complete sincerity Snow joined in the adulation heaped upon Brigham Young by pioneers of the southern frontier. He doubtlessly recognized that the brass bands, youth choirs and dusty entourages that met the Prophet on his approach to Dixie as well as the adoring rhetoric of its meetings contributed to the esprit de corps of the shock troopers who seized and held Dixie. On a smaller scale Snow played a similar role himself. His junkets about Dixie as well as his longer passages into Arizona were hailed and celebrated by the true believers. Revered in time as the “Beloved Apostle,” he, like Brigham Young, became an element in a Mormon ceremony of veneration. 

The delegations that met Brigham Young or Erastus Snow often had meanings other than ceremonial. Such a meeting could also be the means of securing the ear of authority. Entirely characteristic was William J. Flake’s hard ride out to meet Snow as he approached the Little Colorado villages in 1878 (p. 634). Flake had broken with the United Order, to which Young had called him, and was under the severe indictment of more steadfast members. Getting the jump on his critics, Flake met Snow, crawled into his buggy with him, and made a strong case for his seeming breach. If Flake family tradition may be depended upon, Snow not only gave his blessing to a non-Order town but let Flake nominate its bishop and stake president. 

Snow’s role in relation to the Arizona United Orders indicates that he could, entertain ideas at variance to those of Brigham Young. The latter had established the Arizona Mission in 1876 with one of its stated purposes being the perfection of Mormon unity through experimentation in the United Order. By giving the go-ahead to Flake and others to live in less tightly structured villages, Snow drastically redirected the course of the colony. While he concurred heartily in the cooperation and union of Mormon society, he did not see Young’s “all things in common” pattern as essential in the original Arizona villages. In one deviant Order village he said that the practice of eating at the common table, as was done in the first Order towns, was no more an element of Mormon unity than sleeping all in one bed (“Minutes of the Allen City United Order,” Church Historians Office, p. 38). 

Not only did the “Apostle of the Outposts” occasionally make decisions that altered policy established by Brigham Young, but along with other lead ers he appears (in Larson’s treatment) to have been capable of deceiving the flock for its own good. Speaking of the attempt to populate the Muddy in southern Nevada and build up navigation on the Colorado River, Larson finds it difficult to believe that the Church leaders (who on this issue had to include Snow) were serious. The navigation proposal must therefore have been primarily a dodge to keep people on the Muddy and Virgin Rivers. Rather than suspecting Erastus Snow and his brethren of even mild promo tional duplicity, this reviewer is of the opinion that the Colorado River navigation boom is more rightly viewed as a sincere if passing phase of a persistent interest in a water outlet to the Pacific. Apparent in the State of Deseret and San Bernardino Mission, it was finally shifted from the Colo rado River and Muddy Villages only in 1870, when Jacob Hamblin success fully negotiated an agreement with the Navajos opening the route to Arizona and ultimately to Mexico, with eventual if distant prospect of a seaport there. 

To the people of southern Utah Snow was essentially the strong auto crat—Brigham Young’s alter ego. Field commander for the entire southern frontier of the Church, he bore a heavy burden of decision making and implementation. Until 1869 he was not aided in this process by the usual administrative structure of the L.D.S. stake. Upon him fell not only the responsibility for ecclesiastical, political and economic direction but a vast number of decisions that were essentially private. But the latter were often charged with staggering potential for good or evil. As example may be cited the case of Allen Frost, a crusty Englishman, who after repeatedly “seeking counsel” from. Erastus Snow migrated from Kanab to Arizona into a social and economic situation that forced him progressively away from the Church. Although Snow was usually authoritarian in approach, he was a practical leader and when circumstances called for it could follow a democratic course. The first years of his Dixie experience show him best in his role. Still very much the neo phyte on that frontier, he conferred frequently with the people, drawing heavily upon their joint wisdom. Then, as he gained in experience and confidence, one sees increasingly the authority of the Mormon leader rather than the democracy of the people. 

Missionary and Church leader, Erastus Snow probably influenced a vast part of 19th century Mormondom more than any man save Brigham Young. His life merits the attention given it by Andrew Karl Larson. For those interested in the history of “Zion’s Outposts,” The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer will be of great value. Hopefully, however, it will not be regarded as the last word on Erastus Snow, for his role in the extension of the Kingdom deserves a more interpretive study. 

Erastus Snow: The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church. By Andrew Karl Larson, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971. 814 pp. $14.95.