It fell to my lot to cross the plains in Captain Jedediah M. Grant's company. Brother Grant was a man of wonderful energy. In fact, the various companies which followed on the heels of the pioneers were led by a host of stalwarts; so that in my youth I became acquainted with many solid men of Joseph's day. Foremost among them, to my mind, were Brigham Young, John Taylor. Geo. A. Smith, Parley P. Pratt, Uncle John Smith, and Uncle John Young.
The last-named stood as a father to me; and yet, during that pilgrimage I was like a waif upon the ocean. The camp fire was my home, and I was everybody's chore boy. While this arrangement taught me self-reliance, it chilled my heart, and turned me against those finer, more tender endearments of life which ever abound in happy, lovable homes; and from this experience I have learned to pity the child that grows up without a mother's care and caress.
On reaching the Valley, our people at first all lived in the "Old Fort." Father was the first to move out. He had built a two-roomed log house on the lot where Uncle Brigham later built the Bee-Hive and Lion Houses.
On one of father's trips to the canyon for wood, he took me with him. As we returned, we saw Apostle John Taylor and George Q. Cannon running a whip saw. They gave father a red-pine slab, which he hauled home and later placed across City Creek, and it remained in use for years as a foot bridge. It lay with the round side up, and after the bark peeled off, it became very slippery, especially when wet.
After Presidents Young and Kimball moved onto their lots the path leading to this footbridge connected their homes. One day Aunt Prescinda Kimball's little daughter Celestia, unknown to her mother, started to go to Aunt Zina's. It was in the spring of the year, 1850 and City Creek was swollen by the melting snows. The child evidently slipped off the slab and was drowned.
As soon as the family missed her, a cry of alarm was given. I was confined to the house with a painful flesh would in my left leg. Hearing the tumult, and seeing the excited people running along the creek, I surmised what had happened. Running to the slab, I dropped into the water and was carried by the swift current to Brother Wells' lot, where the fence had caught flood wood, and formed a dam and eddy. I dove under the drift, and finding the body, brought it to the surface, and gave it to Dr. Williams; but the precious life was gone.
Soon after we moved on to our city lot, fall of 1847, a band of Indians camped near us. Early one morning we were excited at hearing their shrill, blood-curdling war whoop, mingled with occasional sharp cries of pain. Father sent me to the Fort for help. Charley Decker and Barney Ward, the interpreter, and others hurried to the camp.
It was Wanship's band. Some of his braves had just returned from the war-path. In a fight with "Little Wolf's" band, they lost two men, but had succeeded in taking two girls prisoners. One of these they had killed, and were torturing the other. To save her life Charley Decker bought her, and took her to our house to be washed and clothed.
She was the saddest-looking piece of humanity I have ever seen. They had shingled her head with butcher knives and fire brands. All the fleshy parts of her body, legs, and arms had been hacked with knives, then fire brands had been stuck into the wounds. She was gaunt with hunger, and smeared from head to foot with blood and ashes.
After being washed and clothed, she was given to President Young and became as one of his family. They named her Sally, and her memory has been perpetuated by the "Courtship of Kanosh, a Pioneer Indian Love Story," written by my gifted cousin, Susa Y. Gates.