and was three days & three nights without food. In the meantime my wife & three small children, in a Skiff passed down Big Blue river a distance of fourteen miles & crossed over the & therr borrowed a rag carpet of one of her friends & made a tent of the same, which was the only shield, from the inclemency of the weather, during the three weeks of my expulsion from home. Having found my family in this situation & making some enquiry, I was informed, I had been hunted throught through , & counties & also the Indian territory Having made the enquiry of my family, why it was they had so much against me, the answer was “He believes in the book of Joe Smith & the book of Mormon God damn him, and we believe Joe Smith to be a damned rascal!!!?” Here on the bank of the were eight families, exiled from plenteous homes, without one particle of provisions or any other means under the heavens to get any only by hunting in the forest. I here built a Camp twelve feet square against a Sycamore log, in which my wife bore me a fine son, on the 27th of December The camp having neither chimney nor floor nor covering sufficient to shield them from the inclemency of the weather, rendered it intolerable In this doleful condition I left my family for the express purpose of making an appeal to the American people, to know something of the toleration, of such vile & inhuman conduct & travelled one thousand & three hundred miles, through the interior of the & was frequently answered “That such conduct was not justifiable in a republican government; yet we feel to say that we fear Joe Smith is a very bad man & circumstances alter cases, we would not wish to prejudge a man, but in some circumstances the voice of the people ought to rule.” The most of these expressions were from professors of religion & in the aforesaid persecution, I saw one hundred & ninety women & children driven thirty miles across the prairie, with three decrepit men only in their company, in the month of Novr the ground thinly crusted with Sleet, & I could easily follow on their trail by the blood that flowed from their lacerated feet!! on the stubble of the burnt prarie. This company not knowing the situation of the country, nor the extent of , built quite a number of cabins that proved to be in the borders of .