These
men revealed the fact to some other Mormons who were employed by
Captain Sutter at a grist-mill he was building still lower down the
American Fork, and six miles above his fort. All of them struck
for higher wages, to which Sutter yielded, until they asked ten
dollars a day, which he refused, and the two mills on which he had
spent so much money were never built, and fell into decay.
In my opinion, when the Mormons were driven from Nauvoo, Illinois,
in 1844, they cast about for a land where they would not be
disturbed again, and fixed on California. In the year 1845 a ship,
the Brooklyn, sailed from New York for California, with a colony of
Mormons, of which Sam Brannan was the leader, and we found them
there on our arrival in January, 1847. When General Kearney, at
Fort Leavenworth, was collecting volunteers early in 1846, for the
Mexican War, he, through the instrumentality of Captain James
Allen, brother to our quartermaster, General Robert Allen, raised
the battalion of Mormons at Kanesville, Iowa, now Council Bluffs,
on the express understanding that it would facilitate their
migration to California. But when the Mormons reached Salt Lake,
in 1846, they learned that they had been forestalled by the United
States forces in California, and they then determined to settle
down where they were.
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