The facts were as follows:--These people were emissaries of the Mormons,
a new sect which had sprung up in the States, and which was rapidly
increasing in numbers. This sect had been created by a certain Joseph
Smith. Round the standard of this bold and ambitious leader, swarms of
people crowded from every part, and had settled upon a vast extent of
ground on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, and there established a
civil, religious, and military power, as anomalous as it was dangerous
to the United States. In order to accomplish his ulterior views, this
modern apostle wished to establish relations of peace and friendship
with all the Indians in the great western territories, and had for that
purpose sent messengers among the various tribes east of the Rocky
Mountains. Having also learned, by the St. Louis trappers, that
strangers, long established among the Shoshones of the Pacific Ocean,
were now residing among the Comanches, Smith had ordered his emissaries
among the Pawnees to endeavour to meet us, and concert together as to
what measures could be taken so as to secure a general league, defensive
and offensive, against the Americans and the Texans, and which was to
extend from the Mississippi to the western seas.
Such a proposition of course could not be immediately answered.
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