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Show 308 WESTERN WILDS. will not now anticipate my story by pointing out its truth and errors ; for in later chapters I give the facts, and have here set down but a small part of our conversation only such as I could remember beyond doubt, and jot down at my first halting- place next day. Lee talked over the whole history of his life, before and since the massacre. After that event he continued to reside in Harmony, was a leader in all public affairs there, and often entertained Brigham Young when the latter visited that section. Thence he was ordered " on a mission " to establish new settlements further into the wilderness ; and obeyed, as do all good Mormons, without a murmur, selling his fine place in Harmony for four thousand bushels of wheat. From Cedar City to Santa Clara, and thence to Kanab and Mangrum's set-tlement, he had continued to remove, and was finally sent down here to maintain a ferry and act as interpreter and mediator among the Indians. He spoke the tongues of all adjacent tribes, and had their good will. He dwelt at some length on his liking for the boy whom he had saved from the massacre and taken to live with him ; and re-lated with pride the boy's promise to come back as soon as he got old enough. Unfortunately for his own good, that boy, now a man, did return. He became a noted desperado, under the name of Idaho Bill, and is now serving out a long sentence in the Utah penitentiary ! Misfortune followed the poor children to the last. Mormon ac-counts say that eighteen were saved alive. Of these Jacob Hamlin says that one was captured by, or went off with, the Xavajo Indians, and may now be among them ; another was killed " because he knew too much," and the youngest, a mere baby, died on the way to the States, after being recovered by Dr. Jacob Forney, Indian Agent in 1859. Of the fifteen who reached St. Louis few could find any relatives, and the remainder were sent to the Orphan Asylum, and in time scattered thence all over the South- west, knowing of their families only by hear-say or vague remembrance. John Calvin Sorrow, the only one who remembered the massacre, lives somewhere in Arkansas ; the girl who was supposed to be his sister, is married to a resident of East Ten-nessee. With no family ties and no parental care, it is not surprising that some of the survivors have done badly. Midnight had come before we finished our talk, and turned in to-gether upon a straw tick beside the house. Little did I think that three years from that time I was to see Lee a prisoner before the Federal courts ; for, like all old residents of Utah, I had long aban-doned hope that the Government could be spurred into doing any thing to execute justice in that Territory. Even then I had no doubt |
