Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea, there are no fish.  Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all the Utah bands were very degraded.  No agency had been established among them.  They had few guns and blankets.  For several years they were engaged in constant hostilities with the people of the young and feeble settlements,—­their own method and implements of warfare improving steadily all the while.  Ultimately, however, the Mormons inaugurated a system of Indian policy, which was highly successful.  They propagated their religion among the Utahs, baptized some of the most prominent chiefs into the Church, fed and clothed them, and thereby acquired an ascendency over most of the bands, which they attempted to use to the detriment of the army during the winter of 1857-8, but without success.  Brigham Young, being vested with the superintendence of Indian affairs, during his entire term of service as Governor, abused the functions of that office.  He taught the tribe, that there was a distinction between “Americans” and “Mormons,”—­and that the latter were their friends, while they were free to commit any depredations on the former which they might see fit.  These infamous teachings were counteracted with considerable success by Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, to whom allusion has frequently been made; but it was impossible wholly to neutralize their effect.  Some of the Mormons even took squaws for spiritual wives; and in all the settlements, from Provo to the Santa Clara, there are scores of half-breed children, acknowledging half-a-dozen mothers, some white, some red.  The Utahs, though a beggarly, are a docile tribe.  Several Government farms have now been established among them, and they display more than ordinary aptitude for work.  But they require to be spurred to regular labor.  None of the charges which have been preferred against the Mormons, of direct participation in the murder of Americans by the Indians in the southern portion of the Territory, have ever been substantiated by legal evidence; but no person can become familiar with the relations which they sustain to those tribes, without attaching to them some degree of credibility.  The most noted instances were the slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier, in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were spared who were too young to speak.

The history of events in Utah since the encamping of the army in Cedar Valley and the return of the Mormons to the northern settlements is too recent to need to be recounted.  It has been established by satisfactory experiments, that law is powerless in the Territory when it conflicts with the Church.  No Gentile, whose property was confiscated during the rebellion, has yet obtained redress.  The legislature refuses to provide for the expenses of the District