The Mormon Battalion Sick Detachment: 'Many Were Sick and Were Healed by Laying on of Hands' — Pueblo, Colorado (1846–1847)

When the Mormon Battalion reached Santa Fe, New Mexico in October 1846, the physical toll of marching from Iowa through 1,200 miles of desert and mountain territory had broken many of the men. Three separate detachments — totaling approximately 92 men, 19 women, and 10 children — were deemed too ill to continue the march to California and were redirected north to Pueblo, Colorado, to winter there.

Pueblo was a remote fur-trading post, far from any medical facility. The conditions were difficult: insufficient food, exposure, and the accumulated physical damage of months on the march.

The account that survives is direct:

*'Many were sick and were healed by laying on of hands.'*

This collective record of priesthood healing — documented in the historical literature on the Battalion — represents one of the more remarkable group-level spiritual events of the entire 2,000-mile march. The ordinance of administering to the sick by the laying on of hands and anointing with oil was performed repeatedly through the winter, and the consistent report is that those administered to recovered.

The women who had traveled with the Battalion played an indispensable role in the sick detachments' survival — cooking, nursing, and maintaining the community through the winter months in circumstances of significant physical hardship.

The three detachments left Pueblo on May 24, 1847. An advance party of 13 soldiers, trailing livestock, met Brigham Young's Pioneer Company on July 4, 1847. The main body of the detachments arrived in the Salt Lake Valley five to eight days after Brigham Young's Vanguard Company entered the valley — having survived the winter against considerable odds.