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Show 96 for the purposes above mentioned. You will also select a few young and middle aged to go as explorers to pass about after having made a location to find other suitable places and report back. The brethren are particularly instructed to conciliate the Indians and secure their friendship taking pains to learn their language and exercise a salutary influence over them and whenever there shall be found a man who does not pursue this course towards the Indians he must be dismissed from the mission and sent back. I remain Your Brother in the Gospel of Christ Brigham Young1 Attention is called to the calling of "old men and boys" to be the principals of this expedition as it was now conceived. Undoubtedly, it was Young's intention to keep the most effective men in the ranks of the Legion, showing that the military solution was far from abandoned at this time. In a letter to Bishop W. G. Young of Big Cottonwood, who was getting up a company to settle "Ibimpah Valley" on the western fringes of the Salt Lake Desert, he explained, "Let old men and boys be principally selected for this mission.... No one that is called to go in the standing army must be selected for this mission."2 It is also noted that Young wanted the grain planted in the desert so that a harvest could be made "the present season," despite his assertion that the expedition to the White Mountains was only "in case of necessity.1 The use of the term "White Mountains," so as not to confuse the reader, was a general term used by the Mormons to describe the unexplored regions west of their southern settlements. The term had its routes in the White Mountain |