Dixie Saints (mormon pioneers)

1846 Pueblo Experience
Francis Parkman, Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as historical sources and as literature.

In the summer of 1846, the legendary writer, Francis Parkman (1823-1893), made his historic trip up and down the Oregon Trail which would become the basis for his best-selling book of the same name, The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. First he records an unusual Indian report on the early progress of the Mormon Battalion nearby.

"On the next day, the camp (indian) was in commotion with a new arrival. A single Indian (named Stabber) had come with his family from the Arkansas (River)...he gave out that he brought great news to tell the whites...He had been on the Arkansas, and there he had seen six great war parties of whites (Mormon Battalion).

He had never believed before that the whole world contained half so many white men. They all had large horses, long knives, and short rifles, and some of them were dress alike in the most splendid war dresses he had ever seen. From this account it was clear that bodies of dragoons and perhaps also of volunteer cavalry had passed up the Arkansas.

The Stabber had also seen a great many of the white lodges (wagons) of the Meneaska, drawn by their long-horned buffalo. These could be nothing more than covered ox-wagons used no doubt in transporting stores for the troops.

Soon after seeing this, our host met an Indian who had lately come from amoung the Camanches, who had told him that all the Mexicans had gone out to a great Buffalo hunt;