| 669 great state of alarm, and also in great distress. They saw themselves completely surrounded with armed forces on the north, and on the northwest, and on the south, and also Bogard, who was a Methodist preacher, and who was then a captain over a militia company of fifty soldiers, but who had added to his number out of the surrounding counties about a hundred more, which made his force about one hundred and fifty strong, was stationed at Crooked Creek, sending out his scouting parties, taking men, women, and children prisoners, driving off cattle, hogs, and horses, entering into every house on Log and Long creeks, rifling their houses of their most precious articles, such as money, bedding, and clothing, taking all their old muskets and their rifles or military implements, threatening the people with instant death if they did not deliver up all their precious things, and enter into a covenant to leave the State or go into the city of Far West by the next morning, saying that 'they calculated to drive the people into Far West, and then drive them to hell.' Gillium also was doing the same on the northwest side of Far West; and Sashiel Woods, a Presbyterian minister, was the leader of the mob in Daviess County; and a very noted man of the same society was the leader of the mob in Carroll County; and they were also sending out their scouting parties, robbing and pillaging houses, driving away hogs, horses, and cattle, taking men, women, and children, and carrying them off, threatening their lives and subjecting them to all manner of abuses that they could invent or think of.
"Under this state of alarm, excitement, and distress the messengers returned from the Governor and from the other authorities, bringing the fatal news that the Mormons could have no assistance. They stated that the Governor said that 'the Mormons had got into a difficulty with the citizens, and that they might fight it out for all he cared. He could not render them any assistance.'
"The people of De Witt were obliged to leave their homes and go into Far West; but did not until after many of them had starved to death for want of proper sustenance, and several died on the road there, and were buried by the wayside,
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