Transcript

One evening while on the plains we were camped not very far from some brush. Just as we were finishing up our evening meal and it was starting to get dusk a big Indian came out of the brush. He looked up and down the group of people that was camped there for the night. Of course, I guess he was looking for an animal he could steal to slaughter. The children thought the Indian was looking to steal them during the night. I tried to get right underneath my dad when he laid down to sleep out on the ground so the Indian couldn't get me.

I had to walk all the way across the plains. If we would come to a river, then the children would have to get into a wagon or on a horse. They would throw three or four children on the back of a horse and they would hang on for dear life while they went through the river and it would just about scare me to death. I was scared of the horse and scared of the water too.

I went through the pleasures and hardships in common with the rest of the Saints during the trying journey of crossing the plains west of the Missouri River, walking the entire distance across the plains from then Winter Quarters, now known as Florence, Nebraska, to Salt Lake City, Utah. Arriving there 12 October 1863.