Note 33 — Chapter VI · The burning of the Steamer Stonewall.—Indian Mounds and Earthworks at Cahokia.—Confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri.—Sacs and Foxes.—Education of Indians.—Nauvoo.—Winona.—Sioux Encampment.—Ancient Mounds near St. Paul’s.—The Sioux War in Minnesota.—Note upon the Ogallalas.
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Nauvoo was once brought into prominent notice in connection with the Mormons, as it was here that they built their first great temple.
Judge Williams had personally known Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and Rigdon his chief colleague. Joseph Smith, he said, was an illiterate man, but, was remarkable for a kind of shrewdness combined with great insight into character.
Rigdon, who had been formerly a Baptist preacher, was well educated, and was generally employed in obtaining converts and explaining to them the meaning of Smith’s visions and the doctrines of the new religion.
He described Brigham Young, with whom he was also acquainted, as being a person of determined character, with a domineering manner.
When I was at Salt Lake City, in the following December, I had a long interview with that able and astute leader of men.
Within twenty years from the time when he conducted the flight of the Mormons across the deserts from Nauvoo to Utah, he had succeeded in establishing a highly satisfactory condition of good order and prosperity throughout the territories under his government; and controlled, with unquestioned authority, a community consisting of one hundred and forty thousand people.