Transcript

He [Shepherd Pierce Hutchings] went to Winter Quarters, thinking of going with the pioneers in forty-seven, but he not having a sufficient amount of provisions he could not go so he went back to Missouri. There he worked making and mending wagons until the year forty-nine when he again started for Salt Lake Valley, getting to Counsel [Council] Bluff in June.

Went to Counsel Point a short ways to visit with his wifes [Lucinda] (first wifes) father and mother. This was my first acquaintance with him. He wanted me to go with them to help with the work, so on the first or second day of July we started crossing the Missouri river.

On the fourth day of July we joined Captain [Silas] Richards company of 50. And brother [Augustus] Farnum was Captain of our ten. We had a very hard trip crossing the plains. Shephard being a wagon maker he had to mend all the wagons that broke down besides standing guard every few nights, then drive a wagon and three yoke of cattle all day. It made it very hard for him. His outfit was one big wagon, two yoke of oxen, one yoke of cows, a small wagon and one horse.

Well the camp rolled on crossing streams, rocks, and sand, all kinds of roads. We stopped one day in every week to wash and also on every Sunday to rest and hole meetings. There were some very hard storms on the road. When camped by a little stream called Deer Creek. It was early to camp but there was good feed, water and wood, which we hardly every found all three at once. After the camp was all arranged he took his gun, went out to see if he could kill something. He went a mile and a half or two miles when about fifteen or twenty large white wolves came out of the brush and surrounded him. He shot one. It did not scare them. They merely turned their heads and looked at him tumbling into the brush. Then he jumped, swinging his hat and gun at the same time holloed with all his might. Then they turned and walked off, looking back at him until they got in the brush. Then he went for camp looking over his shoulders, also he was glad to get away from his unwelcome visiters.

He got brother Decater Thompson to go back with him, thinking to kill some of them but they had eaten the one he had killed and was gone. So he did not get revenge that he wanted, so returned to camp.

When we got on the big mountain we had a big snow storm. When we got up in the morning it was snowing very fast. We hitched up and started, did not stop for breakfast. Before we had traveled very far the snow was two feet deep. Pretty soon we past the cloud and all right. We learned after that the snow was five feet deep where we had camped. By hurring we passed a deep snow.

We rolled into Salt Lake City on the evening of the twenty-ninth of October.