OCR Text |
Show 34 has committed the depredation is the man that must pay the penalty, and not the whole tribe. It is our duty to teach them good morals, and the principles of the Gospel of Christ. We are their Saviours. As I have done all the time, I tell you again today, I will not consent to your killing one Indian for the sin of another. If any of them commit a depredation, tell the tribe to which they belong, that they may deliver up that man, or men, to be tried according to law, and you will make friends of the whole tribe. They have men among them they would be glad to have despatched; for instance, there is a man at Utah called Squash-head; it is said he has made his boast of taking father Lemon's child and killing it. We know the other Indians wish he was dead; they do not like to kill him for fear of losing their own lives. They would like to have that man tried and hung up for the murder of that child. We must pursue a different course with the Indians than we have pursued heretofore; and when we do the best we can, and all we can, the Lord will do the rest of it, if the people will do as they are told. You have not been counselled to follow them into the mountains, for there are not soldiers enough here to contend with them there, and kill one hundred of them. Though we could raise twelve thousand men, and should send them into the mountains, and let them undertake to follow the Indians on foot, where their horses could not find footing, the Indians would escape from them in spite of their efforts, and steal all their horses into the bargain, and laugh them to scorn. If we wished to destroy them, the only way would be to set dead falls and traps. They c'ame pretty nigh starving to death last winter; and they no-^ see, if they are driven from these valleys in winter, they must perish; therefore they now want to make good peace. Treat them kindly and treat them as Indians, and not as your equals. From the Mormon experience with the Indians, another postulated position needs examining. The charge was often made during the twelve years following the Gunnison Massacre (1853,) that the Mormons were guilty of complicity in the death of a detachment of United States 8Latter-day Saints' Millenial Star, Vol. l6, pp. 563-565, September 9, 1854. |