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On the evening of the
third day the
Indians made their most determined attack. Crouched low,
they circled about the train, shooting inaccurately. The Meadow offered
little cover and our assailants felt the lash of the corral sharpshooters.
Back they went to the hillsides, carrying their wounded with them. The seige was on again.
The fourth day was the worst
of all. The wounded were actually dying of thirst. The entire caravan was
weak from lack of water.
The morning of the fifth day
dawned. Our resistance was crumbling rapidly. Our ammunition was nearly
gone. The stench of our unburied dead was in our nostrils. And always with
us was the agony of thirst.
The cry of a sentry shook us
from our stupor. Two men mounted on horses and bearing a white flag, were
advancing towards us.
In a twinkling, hope
transformed our ranks. We cheered weakly. The horsemen came on at a walk
so slowly I thought they would never reach the corral. A square-made man
with an air of authority dismounted, smiling at our greetings. He left his
companion with the horses. Captain Fancher stepped forward. The stranger
took Fancher's hand. John D. Lee , he said, Indian Commissioner for
this district .
Eagerly we crowded about
him. He explained gravely that the Paiute
Indians were rebellious and
difficult to handle, but he believed he could persuade them to parlay. In
a lengthy conference between Lee and the men of our band, he gained our
complete confidence.
When the Indian Commissioner
rode off our hope and prayer went with him. He was gone two hours.
He came back at a gallop, a
wagon following his dust. He said, they've agreed to let you go if you'll
surrender your arms. At first the men objected, then finally agreed to the
terms. Slowly they filed to the wagon
Lee had
brought with him, rifles clattered in the bed.
John D. Lee smiled
grimly and and nodded to the driver. The wagon rumbled off over the low
rise. Mounting his horse, Lee spurred a short distance from the corral. He
rose in his stirrups and shouted, Do your duty.
Bewildered, we stood there.
The
Indians, shrieking, shooting, and yelling, tumbled down the slopes
triumphantly. For a moment the entire wagon train was frozen in
immobility.
I started to follow my mother
and stumbled. The last I saw of her, she was running toward our carriage
with little Billy in her arms. And the
Indians were upon us.
Now I could see that they
weren't all
Indians. Whites had painted themselves to resemble their
savage companions. With bloodcurdling yells they leaped on the defenseless
pioneers. I sought shelter under a wagon and peered out between the
spokes.
I saw my father fall to the
ground.
The
Indians and their white
companions killed and killed. The sight of blood sent them into a
fanatical frenzy. One huge white kept shouting For Jehovah.
The fiends slackened their
butchering only when there were no more victims. Dripping paint and blood,
they stood panting, searching for any signs of life among the hacked and
clubbed bodies.
A white man took me by the
hand and led me to a wagon where several other children had been placed. I
found my sister,
Sarah
Frances, there.
As we left, the
Indians and
whites were completing their looting. Some of the disguised Mormons were
washing their paint off at the spring.
Our wagon creaked to the
Hamblin ranch a mile away where it discharged its sobbing cargo. We were
held at the ranch for several days while the Mormons debated on how to
dispose of us.
~~~~~~
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