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The Most Frightened Boy In The West

By Erastus Perry Bingham

Pioneer Vignette

Deseret News

(Editor's Note: Erastus Perry Bingham was born in La Harp, Ill., March 20, 1846, and died June 4, 1929, in Ogden, Utah. This is another in a series of true accounts of early Utah and its founders as told by the pioneers themselves in interviews or written records and compiled by Harold H. Jensen of the Old Folks Central Committee.)

I was scheduled to have been born in Nauvoo, Ill., but the event took place while "We" were wintering among the Indians 200 miles up the Missouri River with Daniel Spencer's second division wagon train under Capt. Ira Eldredge.

Mother had been ill when our people were driven from Nauvoo and Grandfather Erastus Bingham had taken her under his care since father had been sent ahead to help prepare the route. Soon after the train caught up with father, President Brigham Young issued a call for 500 able-bodied men to join the Mormon Battalion. My father, his brother, and my mother's brother all joined as volunteers in the War with Mexico and marched away with the battalion.

After my birth, mother was unable to walk and was under Grandfather Bingham's care until our arrival in Salt Lake Valley September 19, 1847. Father was sent back with a sick detachment and arrived in the valley five days after Brigham Young and his company. Father carried some of the sick men on his back during the latter part of their journey. He suffered exhaustion from the heat and died three days after his arrival.

Again Grandfather took Mother and her two children under his wing. His feet were crippled and he couldn't farm, so President Brigham Young appointed him the herder of the church cattle. Grandfather built a cabin in Bingham Canyon, which was named for him.

Grandfather and his sons found good mineral ore there and took some samples of it to President Young. The church leader told them to say nothing about it as the news would create excitement and the people would desert the farms and wouldn't raise grain. He said word of the discovery would only create excitement and a panic, and people from the East would rush into the valley.

So nothing more was done about the discovery of ore in Bingham Canyon until many years later, when it became the largest open pit copper mine in the world.

One childhood experience I remember well was the sensation of being scalped. I was 10 years old and had wandered five miles away from where Plain City now stands. An Indian came out of the brush on horseback and I started to run.

The Indian whooped after me and tried to ride over me. I dodged from side to side. Suddenly he grabbed my coat collar and dragged me along for several rods. Then he slowed up and kicked me down.

He leaped from his horse to sit on me, then grabbed me by the "Scalp Lock" pulled out his knife and ran it around my head. My heart seemed to stop. And as the Indian galloped away I remember feeling to see if my hair was still there. It was. Since then I realized the Indian buck was just trying to frighten me. He did.

Until that incident I was completely unafraid of the Indians. From then on I was the most scared kid in the West.

 

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