When Mormonism was no longer compelled to maintain the defensive it quickly assumed the offensive. This was apparently deemed necessary for the existence of the system. Two kinds of preaching were indulged in by the elders on their missions, home and foreign. At home they declared the beauty of the Smithian gospel, including the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were trying by every means, Machiavellian or otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians were called by the Mormons, at least to an extent which would allow them to remain undisturbed throughout the territory of Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were immersed for the remission of their sins, 139 but they were permitted to multiply unto themselves as many squaws as they cared for. It would take water stronger than the common alkaline pools contained to reach the morals of a heathen Ute.

Very many of the Indians thus were made Mormons and white men were appointed as their bishops. Brigham Young used to make visits to them to try to instruct them in various things. For a considerable period he was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. He was such official at the time of the lamentable Mountain Meadow Massacre, in 1857, and for which crime Bishop John D. Lee suffered death.

Possibly it was the influence of Mr. Young that kept the most of the red men from the warpath and thus saved the scattered settlers in the earlier days when there were so few to guard the isolated homes in the far-away nooks and caÑons of the mountains.

The other sort of preaching in which the elders indulged was that of an absolute and unqualified denial of polygamy in Utah. Such was the plan of the elders who went 140 to Europe. The public denial of John Taylor, later president of the church, is abundant evidence. When they deny polygamy now they have the consistency of definition to back them; to their manner of explaining, polygamy is the act of taking new wives; to the non-Mormon, polygamy is the possessing of more than one wife. For this reason we are very bold in saying that polygamy is publicly practiced in Utah––witness Joseph F. Smith as chief example.

Although we may read of it, none can comprehend just what it means to a girl-wife, two thousand miles away from her parents, to be treated as an alien, in a land under the flag of the free. This was the case in the strictly Mormon settlements in Utah thirty years ago. Reason only kept the Giant Despair from the threshold of the mind. The bravery of these women can be compared only to the English women of the Sepoy Rebellion days of 1857 in India, or to those of our American sisters who accompanied their valorous husbands to their isolated posts on the Indian frontiers, resolved to share equally in the dangers, and to die lingeringly and 141 cruelly if necessary. Retreat and surrender never grew in the hearts of such women. It was so in the times that were called the “dark days” in Utah––the time when the government applied its functions to the stamping out of polygamous practices, 1883 to 1893––ten terrible years for the Mormon as well as the non-Mormon.

Add to this the fact that, unannounced, a brawny, stalwart Indian might walk in at the door. More than once has it so occurred in our home. One day the door was suddenly opened and in walked a grinning brave, armed with a long knife, and followed by his squaw; extending his empty hand toward the far-from-home girl-wife, alone in the house, he said, “How-do!” In telling us of it, she said: “I was scared to death, I thought, but I would have shaken hands with him if I had died in the attempt. I would not let him know I feared him.” But this was not Weber Tom.

It was in those fearsome days when the leading men of Utah––farmers, bankers, stockmen, church dignitaries, all sorts and conditions of the Latter-Day Saints––were 142 being arrested and haled to the courts almost daily, that one morning there rode up to our door the battle-scarred old warrior, Weber Tom, chief of the Skull Valley Utes, or Goshutes.

If perfection is beauty, this Indian was most beautiful, for he was the ugliest creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and saying, “Too short, too short.”

This giant chief dismounted, and, seeing my wife standing near, reached the reins of the bridle to her and said, “Here, squaw, hol’ my hoss.”

She said, quietly, “Hold your own horse if you want him held.”

Having had to accommodate himself to the rudeness of a civilized woman, he made other provision for his cayuse and then asked her, “Wheh yo’man?”

She told him I was down in the field, and 143 he then proceeded to find me. He was in the depths of trouble. He had several squaw-wives and feared he was to be arrested for it.

Now he approached me. It was dramatic; it was high-class pantomime. It is too bad the kinetoscope, cinematograph, or some other moving-picture machine had not been invented. He seemed awed by a presence, yet so emboldened by the needs of his case that he walked stoically to his quest.

Squaring his Atlaslike shoulders, he began: “You heap big chief. You talky this way” (at the same time extending one finger straight from his lips). “Mormon he talky this way” (now extending two fingers, to show he understood them to talk with double tongue). “Mormon telly me sojer men ketchy me, put me in jug [jail]; me havy two, tree, four squaw. You heap big chief. You telly me this way” (one finger). Continuing, he said: “Me havy two, tree, four squaw. Mormon he telly me, me go jug; one my squaw he know dat, he heap cry, heap cry, HEAP cry, by um by die!”

This was accompanied by gestures, throwing 144 his body backward in imitation of the dying woman whom fear had killed, according to his dramatic story.

I told him something like this: “No, heap big lie. You go back Skull Valley, you stay home, no sojer ketchy you, you be heap good Injun!” Upon this he grunted deeply, shook hands cordially, went back to his many-wived tents over across the creek, and soon we saw them filing off through the sagebrush toward their Skull Valley home, many miles over the Onaqui range.