The Utahs, though a beggarly, are a docile tribe. Several
Government farms have now been established among them, and they display
more than ordinary aptitude for work. But they require to be spurred to
regular labor. None of the charges which have been preferred against
the Mormons, of direct participation in the murder of Americans by
the Indians in the southern portion of the Territory, have ever been
substantiated by legal evidence; but no person can become familiar with
the relations which they sustain to those tribes, without attaching
to them some degree of credibility. The most noted instances were the
slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier,
in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred
emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still
farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were
spared who were too young to speak.
The history of events in Utah since the encamping of the army in Cedar
Valley and the return of the Mormons to the northern settlements is too
recent to need to be recounted. It has been established by satisfactory
experiments, that law is powerless in the Territory when it conflicts
with the Church.
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