Hyrum Smith, Testimony, 1 July 1843 [Extradition of JS for Treason]
Source Note
, Testimony, , Hancock Co., IL, 1 July 1843, Extradition of JS for Treason (Nauvoo, IL, Municipal Court 1843). Copied [3–6 July 1843]; handwriting of and ; docket by , [6 July 1843, , Hancock Co., IL]; docket by , ca. [6] July 1843; notation by , ca. [6] July 1843; twenty-eight pages; Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.
immediately learned from that “the ’s order which had arrived was only a copy of the original and that the original order was in the hands of who was on his way to , with an additional army of 6,000 men” Immediately after this there came into the a messenger from bringing the awful intelligence of an awful massacre of the people who were residing in that place and that an army <a force> of two or three hundred detached from the main body of the army under the superior command of Colonel Ashley, but under the immediate command of Captain who the day previous had promised them peace and protection; but on receiving a copy of the ’s order “to exterminate or to expell” from the hands of Colonel Ashley, he returned upon them the following day and surprised and massacred the whole population of the and then came on to the town of having <and> entered into conjunction with the main body of the army— the messenger informed us that he himself with a few others fled into the thickets which preserved them from the massacre, and in <on> the following morning they returned and collected the dead bodies of our <the> people and buried <cast> them into a well; and there were upwards of twenty who were dead or mortally wounded and there are several of the wounded <who> are now living in this one of the name of Yocum has lately had his leg amputated through <in consequence of> the wounds he then received, he had a ball shot through his head the ball <which> entered near his eye & came out at the back part of his head, and another ball passed through one of his arms. The army continued during all the while they had been in encamped in continued to lay waste fields of corn making hogs, sheep & cattle common plunder & shooting them down for sport: one man shot a cow and took a strip of her skin the width of his hand from her head to her tail and tied it around a tree to slip his halter into to tie his horse to. The was surrounded with a strong guard & no man woman or child was permitted to go out or come in under the [p. 11]