1857, WA Territory: Mormon itinerants
Way back in the earliest times of frontier-era newspapers in Washington Territory, two things could be counted on.
Thing one: you could use Chinuk Wawa in your news reporting. Your readers could translate that Chinook Jargon for themselves.
An old anti-Mormon cartoon (image credit: Eborn Books)
Thing two: Latter-Day Saints were viewed with deep suspicion. As you can infer from the below, that new religion’s doctrine of polygamy would go over like a lead balloon in a “pioneer” society, such as the Pacific Northwest, where women were scarce.
MORMON ITINERANTS. — Two Mormon mis-
sionaries have been in town a part of the
present week, and held forth at the school
house on Tuesday evening to a small audi-
ence. – We learn that nothing was said in
their discourses concerning polygamy, or
any other objectionable doctrines of the
Mormon church. This is the last commu-
nity in the world where Brigham Young’s
disciples could have a hope of making pros-
elites [proselytes]. It would seem from the following,
which we find in the last number of the
Oregon Standard, that some of the faith-
ful have been canvassing Lewis River val-
ley, Clarke [Clark] county, and that the citizens
there regarded their “waw-waw” [‘words’] as “wake
closh:” [‘bad’]“We have received the proceedings and
resolutions of a meeting of the citizens of
Lewis River valley, Washington Territory,
relating to Mormon preaching among them.
We have no room for their publication at
present, owing to the length of Convention
proceedings. The resolutions express strong
objections to Mormon preaching, and they
have the signatures of about forty persons.”
— from the Olympia (WA Territory) Pioneer and Democrat of September 18,1857, page 2, column 3
