Pioneer Day is a time for stories. Each year, storytellers surface in sunrise devotionals, around campfires, and at family dinner tables to regale with tales about noble ancestors, weary travelers, and hard-working community builders. Such storytelling goes back to the pioneers themselves, who sang that “soon [they’d] have this tale to tell.”
But the pioneers’ music also cherished truth as “the fairest gem” and “the brightest prize.” Most had converted to a new faith, which also necessitated leaving behind family and traditions and homelands for the cause of truth. This year, may we honor the sacrifice of these pioneers by telling stories that are true, complete, and unvarnished.
The truth
We begin by observing that truth alone is not enough. Many deceptions operate by pairing a little bit of truth with other errors. Our best pioneer stories might invoke a phrase used in the courtrooms of many nations—we seek “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Indeed, a modern revelation teaches that “truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come,” with the added warning that “whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:24–25; emphasis added). Our best pioneer stories will present the entire truth by including all that we can and removing the errors that creep in over time.
The whole truth
Most stories do not contain the whole truth. True facts get omitted and forgotten over time. For example, tellings of the arrival of Brigham Young’s vanguard company usually omit that three of the participants were enslaved Black men—Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby. Audiences watching speakers on devotional stages flanked by United States flags have forgotten that the Salt Lake Valley formed part of Mexico in 1847 and that what is now the state of Utah was already inhabited by approximately 20,000 Indigenous people.
Frequently, the most insidious challenge to the whole truth is oversimplification. Storytellers imagine the past as a simpler and safer time, like the scenes in a Norman Rockwell painting. Complexity and individuality are often victims of oversimplified storytelling.
Consider the last film version of a pioneer story that you watched. Chances are, the story focused on a family or two in a single pioneer company. Most likely, the story’s protagonists pulled a handcart alone across a barren landscape. You watched them struggle uphill, shiver in the blowing snow, ration their food, and weep at the graveside of their infant child. Perhaps you, too, shed a tear, before rejoicing at a scene of dramatic rescue.
The complete history of the pioneers turns out to be far richer and far more interesting. An estimated 70,000 people crossed the Plains, and the mortality rate for the group was only slightly higher than the national average at the time. One-third of the companies made the trek without a single death! Many of the pioneers came from different countries and spoke different languages. Sometimes they could not even understand one another; other times they disagreed with each other; sometimes they carried nationalistic or racialized stereotypes about one another. They had to lay aside their own prejudices and weaknesses to forge a multinational, multilingual, and multiethnic community of Saints seeking a common cause of Zion.
You can read this full article from Church historian Keith A. Erekson on Church News here.
And for more inspiring and unconventional pioneer stories, check out these articles below:
► He had never written a screenplay, but his movie led to the first monument honoring Black pioneers
► Meet the trailblazing woman who took the gospel to India
► I’m a Pioneer: 3 extraordinary sisters in Utah’s first Spanish-speaking branch
► I’m a Pioneer: Finding community after prison camp
