Description

He Quietly Dug A Well

In the summer of 1834, the Prophet Joseph Smith and approximately 230 others marched at the Lord’s command to Missouri. They went as the Lord said, “The strength of mine house, which are my warriors.” (DC 101:55) They went to “redeem my vineyard.” (verse 56) It was a march of roughly 900 miles in the heat of a Midwest summer. The following is the recollection of Zera Cole about one of those days as it is recorded by Oliver B. Huntington.

“One hot day in June [1834], after an unusually long, hard day’s travel, over a rolling prairies, without sufficient water laid in for the men and no water encountered for the teams, they made camp on a prairie, the end of which it was impossible to reach or even see.

“After tents were pitched and the teams turned out a strong guard had to be placed to keep the animals. Men were very quietly complaining of the location, the lack of wood, and no water to cook with, even if they had plenty of wood. Some teams were about “give-out” and a thousand other little troubles acted out if not spoken of.

“The Prophet sat in his tent door watching and listening to all that could be seen or heard. At last he quietly asked for a spade. There was no noise, no bustle, no show of greatness or power about this man who had seen the Creator of heaven and earth and had received from Him at different times unmeasured power only in keeping with circumstances, and as the spade was handed him he measured the extent of the camp with his eye and in the most convenient place for all he commenced to dig in the earth. There was no rock to split open, as with Moses of old, or he could have done that more easily or quickly. But he quietly dug a well only a few feet deep and then left it.”

Presently the water began to come in, and it kept rising in the well until the mules and horses came and drank therefrom, as the water was no near the surface. The Prophet went and sat in the door of his tent and witnessed the joy of all, even of the animals, as they quenched their thirst in this God-given supply. There was no wonder or proclamation over the matter, as Brother Cole stated it, and perhaps not a dozen in the camp witnessed it as he, Brother Cole, witnessed it, and he looked upon it as one of the greatest miracles ever performed by man as an instrument in the hands of the Great Creator.

Source: Oliver B. Huntington, “An Incident in Zion’s Camp,” Juvenile Instructor 37, no. 1 (1 January 1902): 20-21. See also Oliver B. Huntington, “History of the Life of Oliver B. Huntington, Written by Himself 1878-1990,” typescript copy, BYU Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah, 23, 34; “William Cahoon, Autobiography,” in Stella Shurtleff and Brent Farrington Cahoon, eds. Reynolds Cahoon and His Stalwart Sons (Salt Lake City, Utah: Paragon Press, 1960), 81-82