Autobiography 1883 Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine Notes 3
On the Elder John D Lee arrived from Harmony with an express
and an awful tale of blood. A company of Californian emigrants of about 150
men women and children many of them belonging to the mobbers of Missouri
and Illinois had been massacred. They had many cattle and horses with
them aAs they travelled along South they went damning Brigham Young Heber
C Kimball and the heads of the Church saying that Joseph Smith ought to have
been shot long before he was. They wanted to do all the evil they could
so they poisoned beef and gave it to the Indians and some of them died. They
poisoned the springs of water and several of the Saints died. The Indians became
enraged at their conduct and they surrounded them on a Prairie and the emigrants
formed a bulwark of their waggons; but the Indians fought them five days
until they killed all their men about 60 in number. They then rushed into
the correll and cut the throats of their woman and children except for some 8 or
10 children which they brought and sold to the whites
The Indians stripped the men and women naked
and left them stinking in the boiling sun. When brother Lee found it out
he took some men and went and buried their bodies. It was a horrid job
The whole air was filled with an awful stench. Manay of the men and
women were rotten with the foul disease before they were hurt by the Indians
The Indians obtained all their property cattle horses and guns &c
Their was another large company of emigrants who
had 1000 head of cattle who was also damning both Indians and Mormons
They were afraid of sharing the same fate. Brother Lee had to send
interpreters with them to the Indians to try to save their lives while at the
same time they were trying to kill us.
