Produced by Bret Blakeslee
THE MORMON MENACE
BEING THE CONFESSION OF JOHN DOYLE LEE - DANITE
AN OFFICIAL ASSASSIN OF THE MORMON CHURCH
UNDER THE LATE BRIGHAM YOUNG
INTRODUCTION By
ALFRED HENRY LEWIS
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
New York
Home Protection Publishing Co.
156 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1905, by
A. B. NICHOLS
All Rights Reserved
electrotyped and printed by
the Herald Company of Binghamtom
CONTENTS (pages not numbered in text version)
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v
CHAPTER I - THE STORMY YOUTH OF LEE. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
CHAPTER II - LEE BEGINS A CAREER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CHAPTER III - LEE BECOMES A MORMON . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
CHAPTER IV - THE SAINTS BESET WITH TROUBLES. . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER V - THE MORMON WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
CHAPTER VI - LEE LOCATES THE GARDEN OF EDEN. . . . . . . . . 45
CHAPTER VII - THE SAINTS GATHER AT NAUVOO. . . . . . . . . . 52
CHAPTER VIII - LEE AS A MISSIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
CHAPTER IX - MORMONISM AND ITS ORIGIN. . . . . . . . . . . . 67
CHAPTER X - LEE CASTS OUT DEVILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
CHAPTER XI - HOT FOR LEE IN TENNESSEE. . . . . . . . . . . . 78
CHAPTER XII - OF PECULIAR INTEREST IN NAUVOO . . . . . . . . 86
CHAPTER XIII - DEATH OF JOSEPH SMITH . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
CHAPTER XIV - THE DOCTRINE OF SEALING. . . . . . . . . . . . 99
CHAPTER XV - THE SAINTS TURN WESTWARD. . . . . . . . . . . .104
CHAPTER XVI - LEE GOES TO SANTA FE . . . . . . . . . . . . .110
CHAPTER XVII - LEE IS TREATED BADLY BY THE BRETHREN. . . . .119
CHAPTER XVIII - THE DANITE AND HIS DUTY. . . . . . . . . . .129
CHAPTER XIX - THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS . . . . . . . . . . . . .139
CHAPTER XX - THE MUSTER OF THE DANITES . . . . . . . . . . .146
CHAPTER XXI - THE BLOOD FEAST OF THE DANITES . . . . . . . .151
CHAPTER XXII - THE DANITE CHIEF REPORTS TO BRIGHAM . . . . .157
CHAPTER XXIII - LEE NEARS THE END. . . . . . . . . . . . . .161
APPENDIX I - BLOOD ATONEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166
APPENDIX II - THE STORY OF LEE'S ARREST. . . . . . . . . . .168
APPENDIX III - DEATH OF JOHN DOYLE LEE . . . . . . . . . . .173
ILLUSTRATIONS (not included in text version)
The Mountain Meadows ii
The Danite 36
The Mormon Preacher 60
The Blood Atonement 138
John Doyle Lee 150
INTRODUCTION
THE MORMON PURPOSE
Almost a half century ago, being in 1857, John Doyle Lee, a chief
among that red brotherhood, the Danites, was ordered by Brigham
Young and the leading counselors of the Mormon Church to take his
men and murder a party of emigrants then on their way through
Utah to California. The Mormon orders were to "kill all who can
talk," and, in their carrying out, Lee and his Danites, with
certain Indians whom he had recruited in the name of scalps and
pillage, slaughtered over one hundred and twenty men, women, and
children, and left their stripped bodies to the elements and the
wolves. This wholesale murder was given the title of "The
Mountain Meadows Massacre." Twenty years later, in 1877, the
belated justice of this Government seated Lee on his coffin, and
shot him to death for his crimes.
In those long prison weeks which fell in between his arrest and
execution, Lee wrote his life, giving among other matters the
story of the Church of Mormon from its inception, when Joseph
Smith pretended, with the aid of Urim and Thummim, to translate
the golden plates, down to those murders for which he, Lee, was
executed. Lee's confessions, so to call them, were published
within a few months following his death. The disclosures were
such that the Mormon Church became alarmed; the book might mean
its downfall. In the name of Mormon safety Brigham Young, by
money and other agencies, succeeded in the book's suppression.
What copies had been sold were, as much as might be, bought up
and destroyed, together with the plates and forms from which they
had been printed.
In the destruction of this literature, so perilous to Mormons, at
least two volumes escaped. These have been placed in my hands by
certain patriotic influences, and are here reprinted as The
Mormon Menace. Much that was shocking and atrocious has been
eliminated in the editing, as unfit for modest ears and eyes.
What remains, however, will give a sufficient picture of the
Mormon Church in its hateful attitude towards all that is moral
or republican among our people. A black kitten makes a black cat;
what the Mormon Church was under President Young it is under
President Smith, and will be with their dark successors.
The purpose of the present publication of Lee's story is to warn
American men, and more particularly American women, of the Mormon
viper still coiled upon the national hearth. To-day, as in the
days of Lee, the Mormon missionary is abroad in the world. He is
in your midst; he makes his converts among your neighbors;
within the month, on one detected occasion, he stood at the
portals of your public schools and gave his insidious pamphlets,
preaching Mormonism, into the hands of your children.
More, the Mormon Church has, in addition to its religious, its
political side, and teaches not only immorality, but treason. On
a far-away 5th of November a certain darksome Guy Fawkes and his
confederates, all with a genius for explosives, planned to blow
up the British Government by blowing up its parliament, and went
some distance towards carrying out their plot. The Mormon Church
of Latter-day Saints, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, is
employed upon a present and somewhat similar conspiracy against
this Government, with Senator Smoot as the advance guard or agent
thereof in the halls of our national legislature.
As this is written, a Senate inquiry into this conspiracy wags
slowly yet searchingly forward. Stripped of formality of phrase
and reset in easier English, the question which the Senate
Committee is trying to solve is this: Is the Mormon Church in
conspiracy against the Government, with Senator Smoot's seat as a
first fruit of that conspiracy? As corollary comes the second
query: To which does Senator Smoot give primary allegiance, the
Church or the nation?
By every sign and signal smoke of evidence the conspiracy charged
exists, with President Smith of the Mormon Church its chief
architect and expositor. Smoot takes his seat in the upper house
of Congress with a first purpose of carrying forth, so far as
lies within his hands, the plans of the conspirators. What is the
purpose of the conspirators? To protect themselves and their
fellow Mormons in the criminal practice of polygamy, and prevent
their prosecution as bigamists by the Utah courts.
The inquiry has already uncovered Mormonism in many of its evil
details, and retold most, if not all, of those stories of pious
charlatanism and religious crime which, during seventy-five years
of its existence, make up the annals of the Mormon Church. As a
first proposal it was explained in evidence before the committee
that in no sort had the Mormon Church abated or abandoned
polygamy as either a tenet or a practice. Indeed, the present
conspiracy aims to produce conditions in Utah under which
polygamy may flourish safe from the ax of law. In the old days,
when Brigham Young ruled, the Mormons were safe with sundry
thousands of desert miles between the law and them. Then they
feared nothing save strife within the Church, and that would be
no mighty peril. Brigham Young would put it down with the
Danites. He had his Destroying Angels, himself at their head, and
when a man rebelled he was murdered.
Mormonism is not, when a first fanaticism has subsided, a
religion that would address the popular taste. It is a religion
of gloom, of bitterness, of fear, of iron hand to punish the
recalcitrant. It demands slavish submission on the part of every
man. It insists upon abjection, self-effacement, a surrender of
individuality on the part of every woman. The man is to work and
obey; the woman is to submit and bear children; all are to be for
the Church, of the Church, by the Church, hoping nothing, fearing
nothing, knowing nothing beyond the will of the Church. The money
price of Mormonism is a tithe of the member's income - the Church
takes a tenth. The member may pay in money or in kind; he may
sell and pay his tenth in dollars, or he may bring to the tithing
yard his butter, or eggs, or hay, or wheat, or whatever he shall
raise as the harvest of his labors.
In the old time the President of the Church was the temporal as
well as spiritual head. No one might doubt his "revelations" or
dispute his commands without being visited with punishment which
ran from a fine to the death penalty. When outsiders invaded
their regions the Mormons, by command of Brigham Young, struck
them down, as in the Mountain Meadows murders. This was in the
day when the arm of national power was too short to reach them.
Now, when it can reach them, the Church conspires where before it
assassinated, and strives to do by chicane what it aforetime did
by shedding blood. And all to defend itself in the practice of
polygamy!
One would ask why the Mormons set such extravagant store by that
doctrine of many wives. This is the great reason: It serves to
mark the Church members and separate and set them apart from
Gentile influences. Mormonism is the sort of religion that
children would renounce, and converts, when their heat had
cooled, abandon. The women would leave it on grounds of jealousy
and sentiment; the men would quit in a spirit of independence and
a want of superstitious belief in the Prophet's "revelations."
Polygamy prevents this. It shuts the door of Gentile sympathy
against the Mormon. The Mormon women are beings disgraced among
the Gentiles; they must defend their good repute. The children of
polygamous marriages must defend polygamy to defend their own
legitimacy. The practice, which doubtless had its beginning
solely to produce as rapidly as might be a Church strength, now
acts as a bar to the member's escape; wherefore the President,
his two counselors, the twelve apostles and others at the head of
Mormon affairs, insist upon it as a best, if not an only, Church
protection. Without polygamy the Mormon membership would dwindle
until Mormonism had utterly died out. The Mormon heads think so,
and preserve polygamy as a means of preserving the Church.
What the Mormon leaders think and feel and say on this keynote
question of polygamy, however much they may seek to hide their
sentiments behind a mask of lies, may be found in former
utterances from the Church pulpit, made before the shadow of the
law had fallen across it.
President Heber C. Kimball, in a discourse delivered in the
Tabernacle, November 9, 1856 (Deseret News, volume 6, page 291),
said: "I have no wife or child that has any right to rebel
against me. If they violate my laws and rebel against me, they
will get into trouble just as quickly as though they transgressed
the counsels and teachings of Brother Brigham. Does it give a
woman a right to sin against me because she is my wife? No; but
it is her duty to do my will as I do the will of my Father and my
God. It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and
unless she is I would not give a damn for all her queenly right
and authority, nor for her either, if she will quarrel and lie
about the work of God and the principles of plurality. A
disregard of plain and correct teachings is the reason why so
many are dead and damned, and twice plucked up by the roots, and
I would as soon baptize the devil as some of you."
October 6, 1855 (volume 5, page 274), Kimball said: "If you
oppose any of the works of God you will cultivate a spirit of
apostasy. If you oppose what is called the spiritual wife
doctrine, the patriarchal order, which is of God, that course
will corrode you with apostasy, and you will go overboard. The
principle of plurality of wives never will be done away, although
some sisters have had revelations that when this time passes
away, and they go through the vale, every woman will have a
husband to herself. I wish more of our young men would take to
themselves wives of the daughters of Zion, and not wait for us
old men to take them all. Go ahead upon the right principle,
young gentlemen, and God bless you for ever and ever, and make
you fruitful, that we may fill the mountains and then the earth
with righteous inhabitants."
President Heber C. Kimball, in a lengthy discourse delivered in
the Tabernacle on the 4th day of April, 1857, took occasion to
say: "I would not be afraid to promise a man who is sixty years
of age, if he will take the counsel of Brother Brigham and his
brethren, that he will renew his youth. I have noticed that a man
who has but one wife, and is inclined to that doctrine, soon
begins to wither and dry up, while a man who goes into plurality
looks fresh, young, and sprightly. Why is this? Because God loves
that man, and because he honors his work and word. Some of you
may not believe this - I not only believe it, but I also know it.
For a man of God to be confined to one woman is a small business;
it is as much as we can do to keep up under the burdens we have
to carry, and I do not know what we should do if we only had one
woman apiece."
President Heber C. Kimball used the following language in a
discourse, instructing a band of missionaries about to start on
their mission: "I say to those who are elected to go on missions,
Go, if you never return, and commit what you have into the hands
of God - your wives, your children, your brethren, and your
property. Let truth and righteousness be your motto, and don't go
into the world for anything else but to preach the gospel, build
up the Kingdom of God, and gather the sheep into the fold. You
are sent out as shepherds to gather the sheep together; and
remember that they are not your sheep; they belong to Him that
sends you. Then don't make a choice of any of those sheep; don't
make selections before they are brought home and put into the
fold. You understand that! Amen."
When the Edmunds law was passed, and punishment and confiscation
and exile became the order, even dullwits among Mormons knew that
the day of terror and bloodshed as a system of Church defense was
over with and done. Then the Mormons made mendacity take the
place of murder, and went about to do by indirection what before
they had approached direct. Prophet Woodruff was conveniently
given a "revelation" to the effect that polygamy might be
abandoned. They none the less kept the Mormon mind in leash for
its revival. The men were still taught subjection; the women were
still told that wifehood and motherhood were their two great
stepping-stones in crossing to the heavenly shore, missing which
they would be swept away. Meanwhile, and in secret, those same
heads of the Church - Smith, the President, Cluff, the head of
the Mormon College, Tanner, chief of the Young Men's Mutual
Improvement Association - took unto themselves plural wives by
way of setting an example and to keep the practical fires of
polygamy alive.
True, these criminals ran risks, and took what President Smith in
his recent testimony, when telling of his own quintette of
helpmeets, called "the chances of the law." To lower these risks,
and diminish them to a point where in truth they would be no
risks, the Mormon Church, under the lead of its bigamous
President several years rearward, became a political machine. It
looked over the future, considered its own black needs as an
outlaw, and saw that its first step towards security should be
the making of Utah into a State. As a territory the hand of the
Federal power rested heavily upon it; the Edmunds law could be
enforced whenever there dwelt a will in Washington so to do. Once
a State, Utah would slip from beneath the pressure of that iron
statute. The Mormons would at the worst face nothing more
rigorous than the State's own laws against bigamy, enforced by
judges and juries and sheriffs of their own selection, and jails
whereof they themselves would weld the bars and hew the stones
and forge the keys.
With that, every Mormon effort of lying promise and pretense of
purity were put forward to bring statehood about. What Gentiles
were then in Utah exerted themselves to a similar end, and made
compacts, and went, as it were, bail for Mormon good behavior. In
the end Utah was made a State; the Mormons breathed the freer as
ones who had escaped that Edmunds statute which was like a sword
of Damocles above their polygamous heads. To be sure, as a State
Utah had her laws against plural marriages, and provided a
punishment for the bigamist; the general government would consent
to nothing less as the price of that statehood prayed for. But
the Mormon criminals, the Smiths, the Lymans, the Tanners, and
the Cluffs, were not afraid. They had gotten the reins of power
into their own fingers, and made sure of their careful ability to
drive ahead without an upset.
The Mormon Church, now when Utah was a State, went into politics
more openly and deeply than before. Practically there are three
parties in Utah - Republicans and Democrats and Mormons. The
Gentiles are Democrats or Republicans; the Mormons are never
anything but Mormons, voting on this side or on that, for one man
or another, as the Mormon interest dictates and the Mormon
President and the apostles direct. Every Mormon who has a vote
occupies a double position; he is a Mormon in religion and a
Mormon in political faith. In that way every office is filled
with a Mormon, or with a Gentile who can be blind to Mormon
iniquities. To-day a bigamist in Utah has no more to fear from
the law than has a gambling-house keeper in the city of New York.
That Mormon conspiracy, whereof Smoot in the Senate is one
expression, was not made yesterday. It had its birth in the year
of the Edmunds law and its drastic enforcement. In that day,
black for Mormons, it was resolved to secure such foothold, such
representation in the Congress at Washington, that, holding a
balance of power in the Senate or House, or both, the Congressional
Democrats or Republicans would grant the Mormons safety for their
pet tenet of polygamy as the price of Mormon support. The Mormons
in carrying out these plans decided upon an invasion and,
wherever possible, the political conquest of other States. They
already owned Utah; they would bring - politically - beneath
their thumb as many more as they might. With this thought they
planted colonies in Nevada, in Colorado, in Idaho, in Wyoming, in
Montana, in Oregon, in Arizona. As a refuge for polygamists,
should the unexpected happen and a storm of law befall, they also
planted colonies over the Mexico line in Chihuahua and Sonora.
Before going to the latter move they talked with Diaz; and that
astute dictator said "Yes," with emphasis. Diaz welcomed the
Mormons; they might be as polygamous as they pleased. He wanted
citizens; and he was not blind to those beauties of enterprise
and courage and hardihood that are the heritage of the Anglo-
Dane. He bade the Mormons come to Mexico and make a bulwark of
themselves between him and his American neighbors north of the
Rio Grande. The Mormons hated the Americans; Diaz could trust
them. The Mormons went to Mexico; there they are to-day in many a
rich community, as freely polygamous as in the most wide-flung
hour of Brigham Young. Diaz smiles as he reviews those prodigal
crops of corn and cattle and children which they raise. They make
his empire richer in men and money - commodities of which Mexico
has sorely felt the want.
Once when a Methodist clergyman went to Diaz, remonstrated against
that polygamy which he permitted, and spoke of immoralities, Diaz
snapped his fingers.
"Do you see their children?" cried Diaz. "Well, I think more of
their children than of your arguments."
From this Mexican nursery the Mormon President can, when he will,
order an emigration into Nevada or any of those other States I've
mentioned, to support the Church where it is weakest. Moreover,
as related, the settlements in Mexico offer a haven of retreat
should any tempest of prosecution beat upon the Utah polygamists
through some slip of policy or accidental Gentile strength.
In Nevada, in Colorado, in Oregon, in Idaho, in every one of
those States wherein the Church has planted the standards of
Mormonism, the Mormon, as fast as he may, is making himself a
power in politics. He is never a Democrat, never a Republican,
always a Mormon. What sparks of independent political action
broke into brief, albeit fiery, life a few years ago were fairly
beaten out when Thatcher and Roberts were punished for daring to
act outside the Mormon command.
Now, pretend what they will, assert what lie they choose, the
Mormon President holds the Mormon vote, in whatever State it
abides, in the hollow of his hand. He can, and does, place it to
this or that party's support, according as he makes his bargain.
He will use it to elect legislators and Congressmen in those
States. He will employ it to select the Senators whom those
States send to Washington. And when they are there, as Smoot is
there, for the safeguarding of polygamy and what other crimes
Mormonism may find it convenient to rest upon from time to time,
those Senators and Representatives will act by the Mormon
President's orders. "When the lion's hide is too short," said the
Greek, "I piece it out with foxes." And the Mormons, in a day
when the Danites have gone with those who called them into bloody
being, and murder as a Churchly argument is no longer safe,
profit by the Grecian's wisdom.
But the darkest side of Mormonism is seen when one considers the
stamp of moral and mental degradation it sets upon those men and
women who comprise what one might term the peasantry of the
Church. Woman is, as the effect of Mormonism, peculiarly made to
retrograde. Instead of being uplifted she is beaten down. She
must not think; she must not feel; she must not know; she must
not love. Her only safety lies in being blind and deaf and dull
and senseless to every better sentiment of womanhood. She is to
divide a husband with one or two or ten or twenty; she is not to
be a wife, but the fraction of a wife. The moment she looks upon
herself as anything other than a bearer of children she is lost.
Should she rebel - and in her helplessness she does not know how
to enter upon practical revolt - she becomes an outcast; a
creature of no shelter, no food, no friend, no home. Woman is the
basis or, if you will, the source and fountain of a race; woman
is a race's inspiration. And what shall a race be, what shall its
children be, with so lowered and befouled an origin?
At the hearing before the Senate Committee President Smith,
stroking his long white beard in the manner of the patriarchs,
made no secret of his five wives, and seemed to court the Gentile
condemnation. This hardihood was of deliberate plan on the part
of President Smith. He was inviting what he would call "persecution."
He did not fear actual prosecution in the Utah courts; as to the
Federal forums, those tribunals were powerless against him now
that Utah was a State. Being safe in the flesh, President Smith
would bring upon himself and Mormonism the whole fury of the
press. It would serve to quiet schism and bicker within the
Mormon Church. An opposition or a "persecution" would act as a
pressure to bring Mormons together. That pressure would squeeze
out the last drop of political independence among Mormons, which
to the extent that it existed might interfere with his disposal
of the compact Mormon vote. In short, an attack upon himself and
upon Mormonism by the Gentiles would tighten the hold of
President Smith, close-herd the Mormons, and leave them ready
politically to be driven hither and yon as seemed most profitable
for Church purposes.
Gray, wise, crafty, sly, soft, one who carries mendacity to the
heights of art, President Smith gives in all he says and does and
looks the color of truth to this explanation of his frankness. He
would not prodigiously care if Smoot were cast into outer Senate
darkness. It would not be an evil past a remedy. He could send
Smoot back; and send him back again. Meanwhile, he might lift up
the cry of the Church persecuted; that of itself would stiffen
the Mormon line of battle and multiply recruits.
President Smith looks forward to a time when one Senate vote will
be decisive. He cannot prophesy the day; but by the light of what
has been, he knows that it must dawn. About a decade ago the
Democrats took the Senate from the Republicans by one vote -
Senator Peffer's. In Garfield's day the Senate, before Conkling
stepped down and out, was in even balance with a tie. What was,
will be; and President Smith intends, when that moment arrives
and the Senate is in poise between the parties, to have at least
one Utah vote, and as many more as he may, to be a stock in trade
wherewith to traffic security for his Church of Mormon and its
crimes. Given a balance of power in the Senate - and it might
easily come within his hands - President Smith could enforce such
liberal terms for Mormonism as to privilege it in its sins and
prevent chance of punishment.
There be those who, for a Mormon or a personal political reason,
will find fault with this work and its now appearance in print;
they will argue that some motive of politics underlies the
publication. It is fair to state that in so arguing they will be
right. The motive is three-ply - made up of a purpose to
withstand the Mormon Church as a political force, limit its
spread as a so-called religion, and buckler the mothers and
daughters and sisters of the country against an enemy whose
advances are aimed peculiarly at them. The morals of a people are
in the custody of its women; and, against Mormonism - that
sleepless menace to American morality - these confessions of Lee
the Danite are set in types to become a weapon in their hands. It
was the womanhood of the nation that compelled the present Senate
investigation of Smoot and what Mormon influences and conspiracies
produced him as their representative; and it is for a defense of
womanhood and its purity that this book is made. The battle will
not be wholly won with Smoot's eviction from his Senate seat;
indeed, the going of Smoot will be only an incident. The war
should continue until all of Mormonism and what it stands for is
destroyed; for then, and not before, may wifehood or womanhood
write itself safe between the oceans. Congress must not alone
cleanse itself of Smoot; it must go forward to methods that shall
save the politics of the country from a least of Mormon interference,
and the aroused womanhood of the land should compel Congress to
this work. He who would hold his house above his head must mind
repairs, and the word is quite as true when spoken of a country.
Alfred Henry Lewis. New York City,
December 15, 1904.
THE MORMON MENACE OR, THE CONFESSIONS OF JOHN DOYLE LEE
CHAPTER I - THE STORMY YOUTH OF LEE
In justice to myself, my numerous family, and the public in
general, I consider it my duty to write a history of my life. I
shall content myself with giving facts, and let the readers draw
their own conclusion therefrom. By the world at large I am called
a criminal, and have been sentenced to be shot for deeds
committed by myself and others nearly twenty years ago. I have
acted my religion, nothing more. I have obeyed the orders of the
Church. I have acted as I was commanded to do by my superiors. My
sins, if any, are the result of doing what I was commanded to do
by those who were my superiors in authority in the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
My birthday was the 6th day of September, A.D. 1812. I was born
in the town of Kaskaskia, Randolph County, Illinois. My father,
Ralph Lee, was born in the State of Virginia. He was of the
family of Lees of Revolutionary fame. He served his time as an
apprentice and learned the carpenter's trade in the city of
Baltimore. My mother was born in Nashville, Tennessee. She was
the daughter of John Doyle, who for many years held the position
of Indian Agent over the roving tribes of Indians in southeastern
Illinois. He served in the War of the Revolution, and was wounded
in one of the many battles in which he took part with the sons of
liberty against the English oppressors.
At the time of my birth my father was considered one of the
leading men of that section of country; he was a master workman,
sober and attentive to business, prompt and punctual to his
engagements. He contracted largely and carried on a heavy
business; he erected a magnificent mansion, for that age and
country, on his land adjoining the town of Kaskaskia.
This tract of land was the property of my mother when she married
my father. My grandfather Doyle was a wealthy man. He died in
1809 at Kaskaskia, Illinois, and left his whole fortune to my
mother and her sister Charlotte, by will. They being his only
children, he divided the property equally between them.
My father and mother were both Catholics, were raised in that
faith; I was christened in that Church. When about one year old,
my mother being sick, I was sent to a French nurse, a negro
woman. At this time my sister Eliza was eleven years old, but
young as she was she had to care for my mother and do all the
work of the household. To add to the misfortune, my father began
to drink heavily and was soon very dissipated; drinking and
gambling were his daily occupation. The interest and care of his
family were no longer a duty with him; he was seldom present to
cheer and comfort his lonely, afflicted wife.
The house was one mile from town, and we had no neighbors nearer
than that. The neglect and indifference on the part of my father
towards my afflicted mother served to increase her anguish and
sorrow, until death came to her relief. My mother's death left us
miserable indeed; we were (my sister and I) thrown upon the wide
world, helpless, and, I might say, without father or mother. My
father when free from the effects of intoxicating drink was a
kind-hearted, generous, noble man, but from that time forward he
was a slave to drink - seldom sober.
My aunt Charlotte was a spit-fire; she was married to a man by
the name of James Conner, a Kentuckian by birth. They lived ten
miles north of us. My sister went to live with her aunt, but the
treatment she received was so brutal that the citizens complained
to the county commissioners, and she was taken away from her aunt
and bound out to Dr. Fisher, with whose family she lived until
she became of age.
In the meantime the doctor moved to the city of Vandalia,
Illinois. I remained with my nurse until I was eight years of
age, when I was taken to my aunt Charlotte's to be educated. I
had been in a family which talked French so long that I had
nearly lost all knowledge of my mother tongue. The children at
school called me Gumbo, and teased me so much that I became
disgusted with the French language and tried to forget it - which
has been a disadvantage to me since that time.
My aunt was rich in her own right. My uncle Conner was poor; he
drank and gambled and wasted her fortune; she in return give him
blixen all the time. The more she scolded, the worse he acted,
until they would fight like cats and dogs. Between them I was
treated worse than an African slave. I lived in the family eight
years, and can safely say I got a whipping every day I was there.
My aunt was more like a savage than a civilized woman. In her
anger she generally took her revenge upon those around her who
were the least to blame. She would strike with anything she could
obtain with which to work an injury. I have been knocked down and
beaten by her until I was senseless, scores of times, and carry
many scars on my person, the result of harsh usage by her.
When I was sixteen years old I concluded to leave my aunt's house
- I cannot call it home; my friends advised me to do so. I walked
one night to Kaskaskia; went to Robert Morrison and told him my
story. He was a mail contractor. He clothed me comfortably, and
sent me over the Mississippi River into Missouri, to carry the
mail from St. Genevieve to Pinckney, on the north side of the
Missouri River, via Potosie, a distance of one hundred and
twenty-seven miles. It was a weekly mail. I was to receive seven
dollars a month for my services. This was in December, 1828. It
was a severe winter; snow unusually deep and roads bad. I was
often until two o'clock at night in reaching my stations. In the
following spring I came near losing my life on several occasions
when swimming the streams, which were then generally over their
banks. The Meramec was the worst stream I had to cross, but I
escaped danger, and gave satisfaction to my employer.
All I know of my father, after I was eight years of age, is that
he went to Texas in the year 1820, and I have never heard of him
since. What his fate was I never knew. When my mother died my
uncle and aunt Conner took all the property - a large tract of
land, several slaves, household and kitchen furniture, and all;
and, as I had no guardian, I never received any portion of the
property. The slaves were set free by an act of the Legislature;
the land was sold for taxes, and was hardly worth redeeming when
I came of age; so I sold my interest in all the land that had
belonged to my mother, and made a quit-claim deed of it to Sidney
Breeze, a lawyer of Kaskaskia, in consideration of two hundred
dollars. I was born on the point of land lying between and above
the mouth of the Okaw or Kaskaskia River and the Mississippi
River, in what is known as the Great American Bottom - the
particular point I refer to was then called Zeal-no-waw, the
Island of Nuts. It was nineteen miles from the point of the
bluffs to the mouth of the Okaw River; ten miles wide up at the
bluffs and tapering to a point where the rivers united. Large
bands of wild horses - French ponies, called "punt" horses - were
to be found any day feeding on the ever green and nutritious
grasses and vegetation. Cattle and hogs were also running wild in
great numbers; every kind of game, large and small, could be had
with little exertion. The streams were full of fish; the forests
contained many varieties of timber; nuts, berries, and wild
fruits of every description, found in the temperate zone could be
had in their season.
Near by was the Reservation of the Kaskaskia Indians, Louis
DuQuoin was chief of the tribe. He had a frame house painted in
bright colors, but he never would farm any, game being so
plentiful he had no need to labor. Nearly all the settlers were
French, and not very anxious for education or improvement of any
kind. I was quite a lad before I ever saw a wagon, carriage, set
of harness, or a ring, a staple, or set of bows to an ox yoke.
The first wagon I ever saw was brought into that country by a
Yankee peddler; his outfit created as great an excitement in the
settlement as the first locomotive did in Utah; the people
flocked in from every quarter to see the Yankee wagon.
Everything in use in that country was of the most simple and
primitive construction. There were no sawmills or gristmills in
that region; sawed lumber was not in the country. The wagons were
two-wheeled carts made entirely of wood - not a particle of iron
about them; the hubs were of white elm, spokes of white oak or
hickory, the felloes of black walnut, as it was soft and would
bear rounding. The felloes were made six inches thick, and were
strongly doweled together with seasoned hardwood pins; the linch
pin was of hickory or ash; the thills were wood; in fact all of
it was wood. The harness consisted of a corn husk collar, hames
cut from an ash tree root, or from an oak; tugs were rawhide;
the lines also were rawhide; a hackamore or halter was used in
place of a bridle; one horse was lashed between the thills by
rawhide straps and pins in the thills for a hold-back; when two
horses were used, the second horse was fastened ahead of the
first by straps fastened on to the thills of the cart. Oxen were
yoked as follows: A square stick of timber of sufficient length
was taken and hollowed out at the ends to fit on the neck of the
ox, close up to the horns, and this was fastened by rawhide
straps to the horns.
The people were of necessity self-sustaining, for they were
forced to depend upon their own resources for everything they
used. Clothing was made of home manufactured cloth or the skins
of wild animals. Imported articles were procured at heavy cost,
and but few found their way to our settlements. Steamboats and
railroads were then unthought of, by us at least, and the
navigation of the Mississippi was carried on in small boats that
could be drawn up along the river bank by means of oars, spikes,
poles, and hooks. The articles most in demand were axes, hoes,
cotton cards, hatchels for cleaning flax, hemp and cotton,
spinning wheels, knives, and ammunition, guns, and bar shears for
plows. In exchange for such goods the people traded beef, hides,
furs, tallow, beeswax, and honey. Money was not needed or used by
anyone - everything was trade and barter.
The people were generous and brave. Their pleasures and pastimes
were those usual in frontier settlements. They were hardy, and
well versed in woodcraft. They aided each other, and were all in
all a noble class of people, possessing many virtues and few
faults. The girls were educated by their mothers to work, and had
to work. It was then a disgrace for a young woman not to know how
to take the raw material - the flax and cotton - and, unaided,
manufacture her own clothing. It is a lamentable fact that such
is no longer the case.