Part Seven

"It was about the 20th of February that we bade adieu to Mormon settlements, and formed our encampment on Willow Creak. We had hoped that here, unmolested, we should have been permitted quietly to wait till the snow should thaw in the mountains sufficiently, to permit us to leave a valley, which to many of us, had emphatically been a vale of tears. We soon found, however, that our hope in this respect was a delusive one; that the place of promised security was the scene of our greatest trials."
"His arrest was all a farce-a piece of Mormon jesuitism-to blind the eyes of the emigrants. He was sent there by the order of Brigham, to lay a snare for the emigrants. The plot was a cunning one, which Brigham had no doubt would certainly succeed. This Danite was to represent himself as a disaffected Mormon-anxious to leave the valley. Having obtained the sympathies of the emigrants, he was to propose to drive off a band of cattle, as some compensation for the robberies he had suffered from the Mormons. He would not compromise the company-would not travel with the company, but occasionally come into camp to get provisions....The Danite would then come in as a witness-fines of course would follow, and then we should have lost our teams if not our lives."
"Were Brigham to come in person and tender back the money he robbed us of, there is not a man among us but would exclaim: "Your money perish with you! In our distress and anguish of soul, you robbed us of our all, and exposed our wives and little ones to the danger of perishing with famine, amid the wastes of the desert! When we had but a morsel, and long long miles intervened between us and civilized man, you robbed us of that, and now, when we are full, do you hope to wipe out the blot from your polluted soul, by coming and offering back to us the morsel? Never, never, NEVER!"' (A Winter with the Mormons, David L. Bigler, The Tanner Trust Fund, pgs, 103-111)