OCR Text |
Show INDIAN DEPREDATIONS 39 headquarters and took direction of affairs in this Indian trouble. Considering it best to make another effort to obtain the stolen horses, he took a party of men, and with them the five Indian prisoners and went through the mountains west of Grantsville into Skull Valley. The prisoners were evidently in sym-pathy with their thieving brethern and professed to know nothing of those who had stolen the horses. Their assertions received no credit from the whites. The party formed camp, went on a scout, and left Harrison Severe to guard the Indians for some twenty- four hours, rather a precarious business for one man under the circumstances. Rockwell and his men, not finding any trace of the stolen horses, deemed it unwise to turn the thieves in their power loose to commit more depreda-tions and perhaps shed the blood of some useful citi-zen, and they were sacrificed to the natural instincts of self- defense. Soon after the above events the Indians stole about one hundred head of cattle from a herd kept by Mr. Charles White near Black Rock, at the south end of the Salt Lake, drove them past the present site of Grantsville, through Skull Valley into the mountains west. Some of the cattle being too fat to drive, died by the way; the remainder were killed and the meat dried and stored in cedar trees. These Indians were first pursued by fourteen men from Salt Lake City under Captain Wm. McBride. They got track of the stolen cattle in the region of Skull Valley, but found the Indians too numerous for their numbers and they sent an express to Salt Lake City for assistance. General James Ferguson and Col-onels Geo. D. Grant and Wm. H. Kimball came out |