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BYU Studies, Vols 1-2 (1959-1960) pgs 129-147
"I did not devise the great scheme of the Lord's opening the way to send this people to these mountains. Joseph Smith contemplated the move for years before it took place, but he could not get here."[1] So spoke Brigham Young of the Prophet Joseph Smith's vision of the West, a vision that occupied the Mormon leader's mind as early as 1830. Before Joseph Smith moved Church headquarters from New York to Ohio, he declared that the Saints would colonize the West as part of the work of building up the New Jerusalem.
The Mormon view of colonizing the West was directly correlated with the effort the Saints made to build their New Jerusalem. While the Book of Mormon revealed that the city of Zion was to be established upon the western hemisphere,[2] the precise location of the New Jerusalem was not immediately made known. In September, 1830, a Revelation declared that it would "be on the border by the Lamanites"––the western border of the United States, near Indian Territory.[3] That same Revelation spoke of certain brethren going on a mission among the Indians, or Lamanites. When this mission––consisting of Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Richard Ziba Peterson––started westward from Fayette, New York, the following month, they went to preach the Gospel and to "rear up a pillar as a witness where the temple of God shall be built, in the glorious New Jerusalem."[4]
The Lamanite Mission had more success among certain sympathetic sectarians in Ohio than among the Indians, and several people in the vicinity of Kirtland were converted. Among them was Sidney Rigdon, who, after his conversion, went to see Joseph Smith, in New York. Upon Rigdon's arrival with the details of the conversion that had occurred, the Prophet sent John Whitmer to preside over the new churches in Ohio. In a letter of introduction, Sidney Rigdon also wrote to his fellow converts of the extensive area the Saints would occupy when the New Jerusalem was established; and at the same time, he turned their thoughts toward the West when he said, "The Lord has made known unto us some of the great things which he has laid up for those that love him, among which the fact, a glory of wonders it is, that you are living on the land of promise and that there (at Kirtland) is the place of gathering and from that place to the Pacific Ocean he has given it to us and our children."
[1] Journal of Discourses, IV, 41. Hereafter abbreviated J. D.
[2] See III Nephi 21; Ether 13.
[3] Doctrine and Covenants 28:9. Hereafter abbreviated D. & C.
[4] Journal History, October, 1830. Hereafter abbreviated J. H. Said the Painesville Telegraph, November 16, 1830, "Some persons came along here last week with a Golden Bible. One of them, Cowdery, declared he had seen and conversed with angels. He was bound on a divine mission to regions beyond the Mississippi where he contemplated founding a City of Refuge."