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Show 92 and may soon undertake sending in troops by the south route, for which reason you readily see the necessity for your being constantly on the alert.... You are probably aware, of this, that a Lt. Ives with a surveying party of some 100 men is about to proceed or is proceeding up the Colorado to explore it to its sources."^0 The feelings of Brigham Young on February 4 are apparent in a letter he wrote to Henry W. Bigler and John S. Woodbury of Nephi the same day he wrote Lyman; "The present administration has openly come out and is following the lead of Missouri and Illinois, determined to crush out 'Mormonism' by killing every man,woman and child that will not renounce it."^-1 Other disturbing letters were also included in the latest mail from the coast. Orson Hyde, the Mormon Apostle who had recently returned from the now-defunct Carson Valley settlement, received a letter from one "Lucky Bill," an informant still in the valley. Hyde was warned that a company was then fitting out at Placerville "to come into our settlements for the purpose of robbing and plundering. 2 The Mormons seemed to have a great fear of the Californians and disliked very much the fact that they had them at their backs while they were facing the federal army on the east. It was an uncomfortable situation, at best, and contributed greatly to the feelings of isolation and encirclement. According to George A, Smith, "Our greatest danger lies in the people of California- a class of reckless miners who are strangers to God and his righteousness. They are likely to come upon us from the south and destroy the small settlements." 3 That the Mormons perceived their western neighbors to be a great threat is confirmed by Albert Carrington, the editor of the Deseret News. In an article he wrote on February 17, he declared: |
