Deseret's unlimited gold and an earlier Ghost Dance

As the wagon rolled west across the prarire, The passenger in black turned to his companion. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

"No," said the man in the European suit, "But I'm sure it might. Have you come up with a better idea yet?"

"No. That's why I'm here, riding through a war zone in a wagon. So how are we supposed to find them."

"From what everybody told us, finding them won't be the problem."

He was correct. The Ghost Dance Confederacy now controlled much of the great plains. There were constant minor incursions and everybody figured that a massive military invasion was coming. The liberated area was continually patrolled by squads of ten warriors, each maintaining contact with the coordinator of ten of those teams, Communicating by mirrors, semiphore, or when weather limited visibility, by fast riders, information followed the decimal heirarchy all the way to Wovoka and his war council or to Salt lake City.

The wagon was following a shallow valley when ten riders appeared above. Most of them were indians, but a couple were white and one of them looked Chinese. They were heavily armed, besides rifles, shotguns and pistols, they also carried things the travelers didn't recognize. They each had several round objects the size of oranges hanging from their belts and some of them had three foot long tubes the thickness of a man's arm on slung across their backs.

The man in the European suit gently pulled back on the reins and brought the wagon to a halt and they waited as the armed men conferred, closely watching them.

"Is this a gang of outlaws or are these the people who are supposed to be our allies? I can't tell." said the man wearing black.

Having apparently reached some kind of agreenment, one of the white men wearing the worn remnants of some kind of uniform handed his rifle to the indian beside him, who handed him his shotgun. Holding the shotgun casually but ready for immediate use, the white man rode down toward the wagon.

1He stopped a dozen yards away. "Who saw the finger of God?" he demanded.

The man in the European suit looked at the man in black, who shrugged and said, "God has a finger? That's news to me."

The man in the suit looked back to the armed man on horseback. "God doesn't have a finger." he said.

The white man on horseback lowered the shotgun a little more in their direction. "This land is controlled by the Ghost Dance Confederacy. Turn around and go back the way you came."

"We have business in Salt Lake City."

"Business in Salt Lake City." repeated the man skeptically, "What sort of business?"

The man in the suit hesitated and looked to his companion, who said to the rider, "We're friends of Orson Hyde."

The white man pulled out a pad and pencil, "Names?" he asked. They told him. "Wait here." he told them and he rode up the slope to join his companions. He handed the sheet of paper off to the Chinese, who rode away out of sight of the wagon. After a few minutes the Chinese reappeared and rode down to the wagon, leaving his rifle slung over his shoulder. He pointed west. "You'll find an overnight camp set up for you five miles up the trail," he said. He turned and rode off to join the others and they all turned and rode away.


2Sometime later in Salt Lake City, Joseph Smith was walking past a half open door and he heard Brigham Young yelling. "God Damn it, Orson, We're fighting for our lives here. We can't get all broken hearted every time we hear a sad story."

Orson Hyde calmly said, "Their people are being murdered, massacred. We can probably help them."

"It's their own fault. They killed the savior. Everybody knows they're a wicked and stubborn people. That's why God sent Jesus to be born among the Jews, because no other people would be wicked enough to kill the savior.

"Well," he went on, sounding disgusted, "Almost everybody knows that. I know... Joseph has another one of his goofy ideas about how the Jews that are around now are the same as the ancient Hebrews and they're still tied up with the prophecies in the Bible, now those ancient guys kicked ass, but they're not like the Jews are today. That's why God made the Latter Day Saints the Children of Israel. The Jews weren't worthy anymore."

"So Joseph sent you all over Europe, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine, to talk to all the Jews you could find. Not to try to get them to repent and be baptized and pay tithing, like how we talk to everybody else." Brigham Young laughed. "He sent you to tell the Jews that the time had come for them to return to the land of their ancestors. Sounds like a great idea to me. I wish all the Jews would leave and go somewhere else. But I just run Deseret. I don't run Egypt or the Ottoman empire or the Arabs who are living there, so there's nothing I can do."

Joseph Smith had heard enough. The idea was exciting, rescuing the world's Jews to restore the Biblical Kingdom of Israel in it's rightful place among the nations of the earth. He was planning to restore the Nation of Israel anyway, but he hadn't fully considered the immediate danger to the survival of the Jews. They would have to figure something out. This would be interesting.

He walked quietly down the hall and sat in a chair and opened the Bible he always carried. He began to read in Hebrew the story of Esther, how she saved all the Jews in an entire nation. His mind considered. This would require something much larger, all the endangered Jews in the world.

The door to Brigham Young's office opened and Joseph saw Orson Hyde emerge with two men he hadn't seen before, all three of them looking deeply discouraged. One looked like a regular European, the other had a long beard with steaks of grey and was dressed in black clothes that Joseph immediately recognized as Orthodox Jew. None of them spoke.

3Joseph stood as they approached. They recognized him from the pictures they had both seen. When the two strangers stopped in front of him Joseph put out his hands and held each of the visitors by a shoulder. "We'll work out a way to help your people," he said.

Smiling, he shook hands with Orson Hyde.


1) having an obscure book of mormon question asked is a smart way to determine who are strangers/outsiders and who are not

2) well brigham young is being his usual racist and in character, nice to see this , though i guess he'll defer to joseph once he hears joseph's idea

3) If there's any 19th century american that can bring the jews literally to america, as well as take advantage of them while boosting deseret, it's him. Plus it'll follow his articles of faith, in a war, where there's a literal gathering of israel... in the american continent.


Between an awful typhoon that ruined my acad schedule til sembreak and the internet being iffy since then, i wont be able to make the research needed for my 1844 era POD but here's my outline (which would be heavily written in a future TTL mormon view so it'll look more... miraculous than this)

-Brigham young remains in Nauvoo in the critical weeks before the original death of Joseph Smith

-He takes over the city and the nauvoo legion in all but name when Joseph smith get imprisoned some other people (he was supposedly next to joseph in the church hierarchy and is a powerful leader in his own right, it can work for this short time)

-A spy(probably taken from whatever hearsay in a bar or farm with the mobs) tells him about a murder attempt on the prophet and a rough timeframe of when it will happen

- The mobs storm around the same time as OTL but this time the Nauvoo legion has prepared to arrive a few minutes after to fight/scare off the mob, a small firefight occus as the mob disperses

Now the butterflies occur in a large scale

-Since the legion was a few minutes late, Hyrum Smith still gets shot and killed, as he was the first one shot, which fits well in this story as he isn't mentioned at all, and removes a large power threat to brigham young

-Joseph Smith can be injured, but minor enough to let him recover and still be quite healthy until his 70's-80's, but i prefer him injured visibly to stir up the mormons

-His other companions still live and are not injured severely, such as john taylor perhaps just getting shot once

-They get escorted and brought to nauvoo

-Next update i had in mind would deal with the repercussions of this and their new exodus scheme

If anyone wants to make an update out of my outline, be welcome to do so, just pm me for more ideas i have, but chances are, you're probably a better writer than i am :)
 
Yellow flames swirled in the fireplace as Joseph Smith leaned back in his chair. "I'm afraid I know less about the situation than you gentlemen do, so fill me in."

The two visitors looked toward Orson Hyde. He was the one who knew Joseph Smith. Orson began, "The situation is worst in Eastern Europe. Massacres are common. Entire villages are getting wiped out, every Jew killed, a lot of them tortured, and the killers don't spare old people or children. Not even babies. Torah scrolls are always desecrated too, with pig's blood and urine and feces."

Joseph winced, and Orson Hyde said, "I would very much like to see that stop, as quickly as possible."

"We're all agreed on that," said Joseph.

"At the moment it's not quite so bad for the Jews in Western Europe, but only a fool would consider them safe. I don't think they've seen the last of their troubles."

Joseph considered. "Obviously, we can't do this all at once, so we'd have to start with the Jews who are in the greatest danger." The others nodded agreement. "So where are the Jews in the greatest danger right now?"

Without looking at each other, both of the visitors said at the same time, "Russia."

Joseph stood up, "The last guy who tried to invade Russia didn't do too well." He walked to the office door, opened it, and shouted into the hallway, "Somebody find Lot Smith."
 
Hmmmm, are we seeing some sort of naval rescue? since the mormons have their fleet based on the west, will this mean trans-siberian jewish escape to deseret?

A literal jewish "promised land" in america would be another self-fulfilling prophecy for joseph smith. Score another one for him
 
On the other hand, how well do the British hold British Columbia at this point in time? North of the Fraser Delta, the coast is full of fjords. Some of them, like Bella Coola, Kimsquit, the Dean River and the Skeena Valley and the Nass Valley lead inland and are not blocked by Vancouver Island. Then there's the Alaska Coast from the Unuk valley leading to Prince of Wales Island (Ketchikan) to the Stikine (navigable over 150 miles upstream to Skagway (inconvnient) to the Yukon and Bering Sea (more inconvenient, but no way can the British maintain a blockade up there, and since the area is prime whaling territory, American whalers can be induced to smuggle things from the US East Cost for gold in trade, which opens up ....other possibilities. And along the way, there's more gold to be discovered in the Klondike, the Tanana (Fairbanks) and later, the Seward Peninsula and Noatak. Maybe even Northeast Siberia. When you're dealing with something like polygamy, it's always best to be able to move between several different jurisdictions and be spread widely over territory you know better than anybody trying to suppress you.
And yes, the Ghost Dance could catch on all the way to Mongolia and maybe even China.

The HBC has trading posts roughly everywhere, strong relations with the the 100k natives who live there, and the RN has the strongest naval presence in the eastern Pacific. Meaning the British have pretty thorough control.

Nothing will happen in BC without the natives, then the HBC, and then eventually the Colonial authorities finding out about it, and if the British don't like it, it will end.
 
Even from a distance, the crew of the US Navy vessel looked baffled. The deck rails were lined with men simply standing and watching them. Eventually a puff of smoke appeared from one of the ship's guns, then another, followed by a pair of crackling booms. A cannonball splashed into the water a couple of hundred yards away..


I don't know about the American navy, but by this time the RN had timed exploding shells with shrapnel. With guns that had a range 3 times that of a gatling gun.

This is a trick that will work once. After that it will be a massacre of the little boats. At least against any navy that no longer cares about capturing the merchant ships, which i suspect the USN may be pretty quickly.
 
This is a cool story, but I have a hard time buying your depiction of Joseph Smith as being a really intelligent, reasonable, forward-thinking guy. At the time when he was assassinated his church was on the brink of falling apart due to his increasingly crazy antics which led to him alienating numerous high ranking church members.
 
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