http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cgi-bin/docviewer.exe?CISOROOT=
/Diaries&CISOPTR=7670&CISOSHOW=3685
"…town on the Des Moines river. Near that town we stopped a week or two to work to earn some necessaries flour &c. We were in company with several English breth- ren -- namely Robert Harris, Thomas Bloxam, and some others. At Mount Pisgah -- a place where the pioneers had made a farm to raise sustenance for those who should follow -- we fell in with a consider-- able number of English brethren, with whom we travelled to Council Bluffs. Distance from Nauvoo about 330 miles. Here we received a requisition from the United States for five hundred men to volunteer to go to California to fight in the Mexican War. This was one of the most barbarous and cruel {mean} requi- sitions that could have been made upon any people under the circumstances. The notion had gone out amongst them that the Mormons had gone out to join the Indians against the {U} Government. This requisition was got up as it was said to test our loyalty -- and with a scheme laid, that if this call was not attended to an army should come and re-enact the Missouri scenes; only to destroy entirely the Mormons as a people.
"However, the men were forthcoming, which took the flower of the camp. The young, stout and robust men thus left their families shel- terless and many of them without food to travel on foot a journey of several thousand miles {on foot} across deserts and plains almost impracti- cable to cross. Why I mention this is because some were obliged to be responsible for those {whose} families who were thus bereaved in such an ^ unfavorable time. There were no houses for shelter, no neighbours but Ind- ians, and nothing save the open uncultivated prairie to live upon, the summer was now nearly spent (we arrived at the Bluffs July 15th) and every thing to be done, inasmuch as {it} circumstances rendered it impracticable to travel further that season. My Uncle and myself took charge of the cattle, and agreed to exercise a general providing watch-care over 6 families. Namely D. Browett's, John Cox, Levi Roberts, Robert Harris, Richard Slater and Robt. Pixton's I cannot now understand what ideas could have been entertained by us to think we could perform such a task or by them to have thought that we could do it.
To provide shelter, wood, (and until pay could be sent back by the men) provisions and other necessaries, for 6 families consisting of some 40 persons -- more or less, -- when houses are already built, and most of the ne- cessaries of life prepared is no small matter, but under those circumstances was a task incompre- hensible to be done by us! Yet in our willing zeal we undertook it. I was very small of my age -- quite unhealthy and somewhat young, or unques- tionably I should have been one of the volunteers. Thus started the celebrated "Mormon Battalion". My uncle and myself being now so constantly and arduously engaged with the cattle &c of the families left in our care, we soon fell sick. We crossed the Missouri River about the Last of August, and from the day we crossed that river we were both taken sick, and here commences one of the..."
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