William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

Big Elk and Pied Riche saw in Brigham Young, what Red Cloud and Black Hawk still see — a White brother, whose big chief and medicine man, Joseph Smith, was shot in Illinois for asserting that the Red-skins are of sacred race, no less than for preaching the Red doctrines of common property and plurality of wives. Brigham Young, on the other side, regards the Red-skins, like his leader Joseph Smith, as a peculiar people, chosen though chastised, and holding in their custody, not knowing what they hold, ancient and celestial traditions. Some of these old and sacred traditions existed among the Indians of Vermont and New York, in which countries Joseph Smith resided in his youth, as well as in the prairies of Illinois, where his system put on its final shape. These Indians held their lands in common, kept as many squaws as they could louse, and sought for blood atonements in their feuds. Smith tried to introduce these principles of the “ sacred race,” as well as to diffuse a knowledge of their personal god, their government by seers, their cure of maladies by spells and charms. He failed