Transcript
Transcript for Johnson, Sixtus Ellis, [Autobiography], in A Voice From the Mountains: Life and Works of Joel Hills Johnson [1982], 247
We camped on Saturday afternoons to wash and fix up the wagons, and we rested on Sundays. Some evenings after supper a violin was brought out and the time was spent in singing and dancing until the bugles sounded for the people to retire.
Do you suppose those people were unhappy to be going to a desert country, a land where the trapper said nothing would grow? No, they were usually cheerful! But one night some were dissatisfied and quarreling. So, taking a stick, I drew a line on the ground and said, "All who whant to follow me step on the right, and all who don't step on the left." They all stepped on the right. We had only two deaths in our company. A very old woman died and a boy was drowned. We arrived in Salt Lake just in time to escape the snows. Those same women who had given me such balck [black] looks now thanked me with tears in their eyes.