When we returned to our camp, she arose and followed us, and said she was hungry. We sent her to her own lodge. Some of the inmates were frightened at seeing her, as they had considered her a dead woman.
We returned to Harmony about the last of June. On the 3rd of July, I accompanied a hunting party of Indians into the mountains east of Harmony. While with them, I spared no labor in learning their language, and getting an insight into their character.
I had ever felt an aversion to white men shedding the blood of these ignorant barbarians. When the white man has settled on their lands, and his cattle have destroyed much of their scanty living, there has always appeared in them a disposition to make all reasonable allowances for these wrongs. Ever since I was old enough to understand, and more especially after being with them around their camp fires, where I learned their simple and child-like ways, and heard them talk over their wrongs, I fully made up my mind to do all I could to alleviate their condition.
From time to time, when the Saints have had any trouble with them, and I have had anything to do with settling the difficulty, I have made it a specialty to go among them, regardless of their numbers or anger. Through the blessing of the Lord, I have never yet failed in accomplishing my object, where no other persons have interfered in a matter they did not understand.
Returning from this hunting expedition, I made my way, in September, to Tooele Valley, to visit my family, and found them well. I remained with them but a short time, and returned to my missionary labors in Southern Utah.
Our crops had done well. After assisting to gather them, I labored for a season on the fort we were building, the better to defend ourselves in case of trouble with the Indians.
In November, I was sent alone among the Indians on the Santa Clara, to use my influence to keep them from disturbing the travelers on the southern route to California.
When there, without a white companion, a dispute arose between some of the Indians about a squaw. As was their custom, they decided that the claimant should do battle for her in the following manner:
The warriors of the band were to form in two files, and a claimant should pass between the files leading the squaw, and prepared to fight anyone that opposed his claim. The affair had made considerable progress, when one of the parties who had been roughly handled, claimed kinship with me by calling me brother, and asked me to help him.
Not wishing to take part in any of their barbarous customs, I objected. The Indians then taunted me with being a coward, called me a squaw, etc.