| 671 he should find any collected together, and take away their arms:' Colonel Wight did so precisely, according to the orders of General Parks. And my brother, Joseph Smith, Sr., made no words about it. And after Colonel Wight had dispersed the mob and put a stop to their burning houses belonging to the Mormon people and turning women and children out of doors, which they had done up to that time to the amount of eight or ten houses which were consumed to ashes-after being cut short in their intended designs, the mob started up a new plan. They went to work and moved their families out of the county and set fire to their houses, and not being able to incense the Mormons to commit crimes, they had recourse to this stratagem to set their houses on fire and send runners into all the counties adjacent, to declare to the people that the Mormons had burnt up their houses and destroyed their fields, and if the people would not believe them, they would tell them to go and see if what they had said was not true. Many people came to see; they saw the houses burning, and being filled with prejudice, they could not be made to believe but that the Mormons set them on fire. . . . And the houses that were burnt, together with the preëmption rights, and the corn in the fields, had all been previously purchased by the Mormons of the people, and paid for in money, and with wagons and horses, and with other property, about two weeks before; but they had not taken possession of the premises. But this wicked transaction was for the purpose of clandestinely exciting the minds of a prejudiced populace and the Executive, that they might get an order, that they could the more easily carry out their hellish purposes, in expulsion or extermination or utter extinction of the Mormon people.
"After witnessing the distressed situation of the people in Diahman, my brother, Joseph Smith, Sr., and myself returned back to the city of Far West, and immediately dispatched a messenger with written documents to General Atchison, stating the facts as they did then exist, praying for assistance if possible, and requesting the editor of the Far West to insert the same in his newspaper; but he utterly refused to do so. We still believed that we should get
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