| 258 however, we got an interview, by which we learned who they were, and that they pretended to have been sent by the Governor to exterminate our people. Upon learning this fact, no resistance was offered to their will or wishes. They demanded the arms of the Militia, and forcibly took them away. They requested that Mr. Joseph Smith and other leaders of the Church should come into their camp for consultation, giving them a sacred promise of protection and safe return. Accordingly Messrs Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, George W. Robinson and myself, started in company with Colonel Hinkle, to their camp, when we were soon abruptly met by General Lucas with several hundred of his soldiers, in a hostile manner, who immediately surrounded and appeared before the city of Far West in battle array. A few of the Militia then paraded in front of the city, which caused the cowardly assailants to come to a halt at about a mile distant, in full view of the town. A messenger arrived from them and demanded three persons before the massacred the rest and laid the town in ashes. The names of the persons demanded were Adam Lightner, John Clemenson and his wife. They gave no information who this army were, nor by what authority they came; neither had we at that time any knowledge of the Governor's order, nor any of these movements, the mail having been designedly stopped by our enemies, for three weeks previously. We had supposed on their first appearance, that they were friendly troops, sent for our protection; but on receiving this alarming information of their wicked intentions, we were much surprised, and sent a messenger with a white flag to enquire [inquire] of them who they were, and what they wanted of us, and by whose authority they came. This flag was fired upon by Captain Bogard, the Methodist priest, who afterwards told me the same with his own mouth. After several attempts, us, and set up the most hideous yells that might have been supposed to have proceeded from the mouths of demons, and marched us, as prisoners, to their lines. There we were detained for two days and nights, and had to sleep on the ground in the cold month of November, in the midst of rain and mud-were continually surrounded with a strong guard, whose mouths were filled with cursing and bitterness, black-guardism and blasphemy; who offered us every abuse and insult in their power, both by night and day; and many individuals of the army cocked their rifles & taking deadly aim at our heads, swore they would shoot us. While under these circumstances, our ears were continually shocked with the relation of the horrid deeds they had committed, and which they boasted of.-They related the circumstance in detail of having, the previous day, disarmed a certain man in his own house, and took him prisoner, and afterwards beat out his brains with his own gun! in the presence of their officers. They told of other individuals laying here and there in the brush, whom they had shot down without resistance, and who were laying, unburied, for the hogs to feed upon. They also named one or two individual females of our society, whom they had forcibly bound, and twenty or thirty, one after another, committed rape upon. One of these females was a daughter of a respectable family, with whom I have been long acquained [acquainted], and with whom I have since conversed, and learned that it was truly the case. Delicacy at present forbids my mentioning the names. I also heard several of the soldiers acknowledge and boast of having stolen money in one place, clothing and bedding in another, and horses in another, whilst corn, pork, and beef, were taken by the whole army to support the men and horses; and in many cases, cattle, hogs and sheep were shot down, and only a small portion of them used, the rest left to waste. Of these crimes, of which the soldiers boasted, the general officers freely conversed, and corroborated the same. And even General Doniphan, who professed to be opposed to such proceedings, acknowledge the truth of them; and gave us several particulars in detail. I believe the name of the man whose brains they knocked out, was Carey; and another individual who had his chest broken open and several hundred dollars in specie taken out, was the same Smith Humphrey whose house the mob burned at De Witt.
After the Mormons were all disarmed, General Lucas gave then a compulsory order for men, women and children, to leave the State forthwith, without any exceptions-counting it a mercy to spare their lives on these conditions. Whilst these things were proceeding, instead of releasing us from confinement, Hyrum Smith and Amasa Lyman were forcibly added to our number, as prisoners, and under a large military escort, commanded by General Wilson, before mentioned, we were all marched to Jackson county, a distance of between fifty and sixty miles, leaving our families and our friends at their mercy, in a destitute condition, to prepare for a journey of more than two hundred miles, at the approach of winter, without our protection, and every moment exposed to robbery, ravishment, and other insult-their property robbed and their houses and lands already wrested from them.
We were exhibited like a caravan of wild animals on the way and in the streets of Independence,
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