Life of a Pioneer - Autobiography by James S. Brown

Author:James S. Brown [Brown, James S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-03-08T23:00:00+00:00

Fire Prepared to Roast the Missionary—Sentenced to Death.

Dear reader, it is impossible for me to describe the power, the cool resignation, the unshaken confidence, and the might that overshadowed my soul and body, that thrilled through every fibre of my existence. For there was absolutely not one particle of fear or tremor in my whole being. But I did feel thankful for that great and marvelous deliverance, because in the very moment that I defied the host the spirit of division rested upon the judge who had passed the sentence, his counselors, and the executioners, insomuch that the counselors faced the executioners, and they grappled with each other in a sharp tussle. From that ensued a fight, until the whole people were mixed up in it.

Even two of our old tottering Mormons, Tautene and Hauty, came in with their clubs, and were so enraged that they actually champed their teeth together till the froth filled the corners of their mouths, as I have seen it with mad dogs. Both of them had been great warriors in their time, and could boast of having eaten human flesh, but at this time they were so old and feeble that I took each of them by the arms and forced them from the fight into the house, where I had ordered all the Mormons to go. I told them to stay in the house or I would excommunicate them from the Church. As they seemed to be almost ungovernable, I gave Fute, a priest and a stout man, a club, and told him to keep them in the house if he had to knock them down to do it, while I went back to the battleground, picked up my Bible and hat, and returned to find my party reconciled to their fate, and feeling more like rejoicing than fighting. In an effort to free himself from her clinging embrace Hauty had struck his wife with a club. This was before I had got hold of him. She was trying to keep him out of the melee. The woman was very lame for weeks after receiving the blow.

During all this time our enemies quarreled and fought with clubs and stones, pulled hair and screamed. They did not cease fighting till sundown. Then, with many sore heads, and more sore limbs, they dispersed, and I doubt very much if the majority of them knew what they had been fighting for. After they left, a feeling of quiet and safety pervaded the village, especially in and about our residence, such as we had not before known on the island, and for weeks everything was strangely peaceful. People who once seemed surly and defiant, now had a tame and subdued expression in their countenances, and appeared to prefer passing by unnoticed rather than otherwise.

Some two months later, I was traveling alone in the timber, and at a short turn in the road I chanced to meet one of the old counselors who decided that I should be burned.

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