“Contents,” Ensign, Aug. 1982
Ensign
August 1982
Volume 12 Number 8
On the cover: Indian Encampment, Shoshone Village, 1860, by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), 24″ by 19″, oil on millboard, courtesy of the New York Historical Society, New York City. According to the artist, this painting depicts a Shoshone village on the Sweetwater River, with the Wind River Mountains in the distance. The article on page 28 tells the story of Amos Wright’s mission to the Wind River Reservation.
On the back cover: In 1880 Amos Wright left on a mission to the Shoshone Indians of Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. “The next day they commenced coming early,” he later wrote to President John Taylor. “I was in the water almost constantly until after sundown, except when confirming and recording. I baptized about one hundred and twenty persons that day.”
Inside front cover: Siege of the Crickets, by Dan Baxter, 15″ by 30″, oil on canvas, 1982.
In May of 1848, millions of crickets descended upon the grain fields in the Salt Lake Valley. “Man’s ingenuity was baffled. He might as well try to sweep back the rising tide of the ocean with a broom as prevail against these swarming pests. … Then the miraculous happened.” Thousands of sea gulls flew to the valley from the Great Salt Lake and began devouring the crickets, “until the plague was stayed, and the crops of the Pioneers saved.” (B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 3:331–33.)
Inside back cover: Jeremiah Contemplating the Destruction to Come, by Hagen Haltern. 10″ by 7″, pencil and graphite, 1980. Located in the Church Historical Department.
Jeremiah—like Lehi, his contemporary—prophesied that the people must repent or face destruction. They did not repent, and in about 587 B.C. the Babylonian conquest was complete. The temple was destroyed, and the people of Judah were carried into captivity.