The Mormon Menace: The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite. John Doyle Lee
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.
CHAPTER II - LEE BEGINS A CAREER
I formed a liking for Emily Conner. Emily was an orphan, and lived about four years at my aunt Charlotte's after her mother died, and until her father married again. She had a consoling word for me at all times when I was in trouble. From being friends, we became lovers and were engaged to be married, when my circumstances would permit. That winter I went to a school for three months.
Early in the spring the Indian war known as the Black Hawk war broke out, and volunteers were called for. I enrolled myself at the first call, in the company of Capt. Jacob Feaman, of Kaskaskia. The company was ordered to rendezvous at Fort Armstrong, Rock Island, where the troops were reorganized, and Capt. Feaman was promoted to colonel, and James Conner became captain of the company. I served until the end of the war, and was engaged in many skirmishes, and lastly was at the battle of Bad Axe, which I think took place on the 4th day of August, AD 1831, but am not certain as to the date.
The soldiers were allowed to go home about the 1st of September, 1831. Our company got to Kaskaskia, and were discharged, I think, on the 1st of September, 1831. I got back with a broken-down horse and worn-out clothing, and without money. I concluded to seek a more genial clime, one where I could more rapidly better my financial condition. I went to see and talk with Emily, the friend of my childhood, and the girl that taught me first to love. I informed her of my intentions. We pledged mutual and lasting fidelity to each other, and I bid her farewell and went to St. Louis to seek employment.
When I landed on the wharf at St. Louis I met a negro by the name of Barton, who had formerly been a slave to my mother. He informed me that he was a fireman on the steamboat Warrior, running the upper Mississippi, between St. Louis, Missouri, and Galena, Illinois. I told him I wanted work. He said he could get me a berth on the Warrior as fireman, at twenty-five dollars a month; but he considered the work more than I could endure, as it was a hard, hot boat to fire on. I insisted on making the effort, and was employed as fireman on the Warrior at twenty-five dollars per month. I found the work very hard. The first two or three times that I was on watch I feared I would be forced to give it up; but my spirit bore me up, and I managed to do my work until we reached the lower rapids near Keokuk. At this place the Warrior transferred its freight, in light boats, over the rapids to the Henry Clay, a steamer belonging to the same line.
The Henry Clay then lay at Commerce, now known as Nauvoo. I was detailed with two others to take a skiff with four passengers over the rapids. The passengers were Mrs. Bogges and her mother, and a lady whose name I have forgotten,