Transcript

... One fine day I went up 6 Ave [Salt Lake City] to where a man by the name B.R. Anderson has built a round tower where tourists and others have a view of the city and valley. I think it grand to look over the city. I see the old Emigration Square where the city and county building now stands, where I landed sixty years ago last October, where I turned over my team and wagon to Capt. Charles Harper.

I must go backward a little and explain. When I landed at the place called Mormon Grove on the prairie six miles from Atchison last of June 1855 and there we stopped for about 6 weeks in fitting up and getting ready to cross the plains to Utah and I was called on as a teamster to take charge of a church team and wagon and bring a load of emigrants to Salt Lake City. The oxen were put in a big corrall and each teamster was to pick out his team but he must take for his middle yoke one yoke of those wild Spanish cattle with long horns. I picked out my three yoke and had them hitched to the wagon and my number of emigrants and drove to camp that evening in good shape, but the captain came to me and said, “Young man, you have too good a team, you must give up those wheelers and take a small yoke of steers,” and I felt very bad in parting with my best yoke of cattle, as the privilege was given to each teamster to go and pick his team. We got along fine until we struck the big Blue river. About a third of our wagons had got across, but the river was raising so fast it was impossible to cross. While waiting there came a lot of soldiers both cavalry and infantry, under the command of Gen. Harney and he asked the reason why we didn’t cross. We told him and he ordered a platoon of cavalry to cross. One soldier was drowned but his horse made shore. They were going out to punish the Sioux Indians for killing and robbing the U.S. mail carriers from California.

In a day or two we got across and we traveled along the little Blue where the wild plums and wild grapes were plentiful and when we got on the south Platt fish and buffalo were in abundance. As the buffaloes came down from the hills to the Platt to water they would come in single file. They had worn a deep path in the soil. I remember one time we had to cut the train in two to let them pass. As we crossed over from south to north Platt, place called Ash Hollow, there we found the soldiers again. They had just fought with the Indians the day before and had killed about three hundred of them. They were just hauling them to a little hollow and throwing a lot of dry quaking asp over them and cremating them.