Transcript

Transcript for Burgess, Margaret Jane McIntire, [Autobiography], in "Utah Pioneer Biographies," 44 vols., 6:185-86

After we spent the winter in the spring we crossed over the river to Winter Quarters and stayed there until President Young started for the Rocky Mountains, with his company. He advised those that had means to go on with, to go back over the river as the were Indians there getting mean and quarrelsome, therefore we moved back after he left. We went to a place called Kanesville, named after General Kane who was a great friend to the Mormon Church. So we all traveled back again and built us some cabins and a large log school house. And a great many who were not Mormons moved in there and helped to build up the place, built several stores and were pleasant and agreeable people.

Those who could get ready started out for the Great Salt Lake Valley the next season but we still had to leave some of our company behind. Our company was composed of one hundred wagons. We had a Captain Orson Spencer who had just returned from a mission to England.

The company was divided into two fifties each with a captain William Miller as one captain, Orson Hyde the other. We had some trouble with the Indians (Pawnees). They had been back to draw their money from the Government at a place called Tarpus [Sarpey's] Point. Just below Kanesville and the Cholera had broken out there many of the Indians took it and they traveled along with us only as they would take some cut-off, in fact we had to pass through their village. As the road passed through it (the village), the consequence was five of our brethren died with the cholera. My father had it and two others came down with father. Father felt so bad at the loss of our brethren that he dreamed of a cure, he tried it and was cured and he gave it to the others and who were likewise cured. We traveled hard to get out of that section of the country even late at night.

My father had three wagons one was intirely devoted to my mother and her small children, the side of the wagon being fixed into a frame to get out and in without fear. The company wagons were all made in that way. Our teams were mostly oxen. I drove a team across the plains and was only twelve years old. My brother two years older had to help drive the loose chattle [cattle] sometimes through rivers, over mountains, over the Black Hills then down Emigration Canyon.