| 667 stating that he would do so. He also requested him to call together the most influential men of the county on the next day that we might have an interview with them. To this he acquiesced, and accordingly the next day they assembled at the house of Colonel Wight and entered into a mutual covenant of peace, to put down mob violence and to protect each other in the enjoyment of their rights; after this we all parted with the best of feelings and each man returned to his own home.
"This mutual agreement of peace however did not last long, for but a few days afterwards the mob began to collect again, until several hundreds rendezvoused at Millport, a few miles distant from Diahman. They immediately commenced making aggressions upon the citizens called Mormons, taking away their hogs and cattle, and threatening them with extermination or utter extinction; saying that they had a cannon and there should be no compromise only at its mouth; frequently taking men, women, and children prisoners, whipping them and lacerating their bodies with hickory withes, and tying them to trees and depriving them of food until they were compelled to gnaw the bark from the trees to which they were bound in order to sustain life; treating them in the most cruel manner they could invent or think of, and doing everything they could to excite the indignation of the Mormon people to rescue them, in order that they might make that a pretext of an accusation for the breach of the law, and that they might the better excite the prejudice of the populace and thereby get aid and assistance to carry out their hellish purposes of extermination.
"Immediately on the authentication of these facts, messengers were dispatched from Far West to Austin A. King, judge of the fifth judicial district of the State of Missouri, and also to Major General Atchison, commander in chief of that division, and Brigadier-General Doniphan, giving them information of the existing facts, and demanding immediate assistance. General Atchison returned with the messengers and went immediately to Diahman and from thence to Millport, and he found the facts were true as reported to him; that the citizens of that county were
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