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Show From Deseret Semi-Weekly News. Tuesday April 14, 1891. A L AF FROM "MOR MO N" HIS TORY. Some Recollect i ons of the Salmon Rive r Indian Mission. It was in the year 1855 that President Brigham Young first sent a company of about twenty missionaries . to the Salmon River country, which lies well to the north of I da h o. Their mission was to try and civilize the Bann ock and Shoshone Indians. As was, and is, uaual with our people, the call was obeyed in the face of obstacles. A four hundred miles march through sa gebrush, with small provisions dismal desolate prospects, and with the tedious locomotion of cattle was, to say the least, not very agreeable. But thus they went with Elder Thomas s. Smith of Farmington appointed president. Some of the missionaries returned to their homes in Utah in the autumn of the same year and went back to the mission in the following spring, accompanied by fresh recruits, numbering in all forty men~ Among those called the second year was Elder Thomas Day, now a veteran ' residing in Circleville piute County, Utah. From him the writer has received the following sketch, given from~mory, as his memoranda and journeys, were destroyed in the general conflagration at Muddy in 1868. This man while expecting to be sent on a mission to England, his native land, was surprisedat the April Conference of 1856 to hear his name called in co~~ection with the northern Indian mission. Going home from conference he was accosted with: We l l, Brother Day are you intending to respond to this call? If it were, I, I would refuse to go." "Go?" Why, yes, i.f it takes my head off!" was the earnest reply. Go? Yew, but how? the same authority that bade him go while recognizing the good that he might do to those wretched children of God, the poor Indians had not forgotten the ne ed of the poor missionary. Each man was required to |
