Mrs.C.V.Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and the summary is concise, accurate and reliable:
"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten conviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:'
"1.The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S.Marshall Rodgers.
"2.The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs.Also his failure to make any allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the occurrence "3.The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a judicial investigation.
"4.The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the only paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre until several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged in it.
"5.The testimony of the children saved from the massacre.
"6.The children and the property of the emigrants found in possession of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the massacre.
"7.The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the massacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J.Forney, who was, in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory.To all these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians.
"8.The testimony of R.P.Campbell, Capt.2d Dragoons, who was sent in the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to California and to inquire into Indian depredations."C.
CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATEDIf ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill, Nevada.If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand.If ever there was an oyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to a swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or a summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand.
Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the world listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look;and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I met Conrad, he was "Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office"--and he was not only its Superintendent, but its entire force.And he was a street preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby he expected to regenerate the universe.This was years ago.Here latterly he has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might be expected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye.It is extravagant grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter sheet.He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all alone; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block and employs a thousand men.
[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people mercilessly in his little "People's Tribune," and got himself into trouble.Straightway he airs the affair in the "Territorial Enterprise,"in a communication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce it here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor.Long as it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of journalistic literature the history of America can furnish, perhaps:]
From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan.20, 1870.
SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr.Sutro incidentally exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me to protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that any attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action, aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, must entail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its costs, (c)personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d)assassination, and after all nothing would be effected.
YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING.
In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a)assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (of which I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has been taken elsewhere, so the President of one of the companies assures me.