Handcarts and Mormonism

I'm just thinking this morning about how what looks like heroism and sacrifice from one point of view looks like a terrible misdirection of human energies and a waste of the lives lost, from another.

Few incidents illustrate this bit of perspectivism better than the death of more than 200 of the so-called "handcart pioneers" in the spring and summer of 1856, an odd subplot within the story of Mormon westward migration.

If you don't know the story, here's one account.

Mormons see the handcart pioneers, more even than those who before them had made it out to the Great Salt Lake in covered wagons, as their church's answer to the Pilgrims and the hazardous crossing that ended at Plymouth.

David Roberts looked upon the handcart saga with a jaundiced eye -- jaundiced regarding Brigham Young's leadership in this connection especially -- in his recent book, Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy.