1834.

MORMONS IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

977

souri, was over twelve hundred. Their increase having produced some anxiety among the neighboring settlers, a meeting was held in the month just named, from whence emanated resolutions forbidding all Mormons from thenceforth to settle in that county, and intimating that all who did not soon remove of their own will would be forced to do so.

Among the resolutions was one requiring the Mormon paper to be stopped, but as this was not at once complied with, the office of the paper was destroyed. Another large meeting of the citizens being held, the Mormons became alarmed, and contracted to remove. Before this contract, however, could be complied with, violent proceedings were again resorted to : houses were destroyed, men whipped, and at length some of both parties were killed. The result was a removal of the Mormons across the Missouri into Clay county.

These outrages being communicated to the Prophet, at Kirtland, he took steps to bring about a great gathering of his disciples, with which, marshaled as an army, in May, 1834, he started for Missouri, which in due time he reached, but with no other result than the trausfer of a certain portion of his followers as permanent settlers to a region already too full of them.

At first the citizens of Clay county were friendly to the persecuted ; but ere long trouble grew up, and the wanderers were once more forced to seek a new home, in order to prevent outrages. This home they found in Caldwell county, where, by permission of the neighbors and State legislature, they organized a county government, the country having been previously unsettled. Soon after this removal, numbers of Mormons flocking in, settlements were also formed in Bavis and Carroll   the three towns of the new sect being Far West, in Caldwell; Adam-on-di-ah-mond, called Biahmond or Diahman, in Davis; and Bewit, in Carroll.

Thus far the Mormon writers and their enemies pretty well agree in their narratives of the Missouri troubles; but thenceforth all is contradiction and uncertainty.

The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, held two views which they were fond of dwelling upon, and which were calculated to alarm and excite the people of the frontier. One was, that the West was to be their inheritance, and that the unconverted dwellers upon the lands about them were to be destroyed, and the saints to succeed to their property.

The destruction spoken of was to be, as Smith taught, by the