Time
passed, and I saw Brigham Young frequently, but not with any degree of
intimacy, for Mother and her family were not favorites with the new leader.
Rumors of different kinds were afloat and some circumstances took place which
were not calculated to establish the man very firmly in the confidence of the
family of the Prophet fallen in death.
Just when
the following incident took place I do not remember except that it must have happened
after Brigham Young and others had decided to leave Nauvoo and the State of Illinois.
He sent word for me to call at his house and receive a gift he had for me—something
to “remember him by.” I did not, and received from his hand a small pistol
which, from its construction, I afterwards learned was a duelling weapon. It
was not a revolver but carried a single shot. The barrel was not very long and
the handle was short and stubby. The hammer and trigger on the under side were
unguarded, that is, they were not enclosed in the usual protecting band of
metal. . . . Upon hearing of Elder Young’s gift, Father’s cousin, George A.
Smith, also of the Twelve, desired me to call upon him at Uncle John Smith’s
home, to receive something he wished to give me. I made the visit and well
remember that a large, good-natured, and fine-appearing he was, and what a
venerable look Uncle John wore. The latter was then the acting Patriarch of the
church, succeeding in that office his brother Joseph, my grandfather, and his
nephew, Hyru, who was my uncle.
Imagine
with what peculiar feelings that day I accepted from Cousin George A. the gift
of a knife, known as a bowie knife, or “Arkansas toothpick!” It was a great
weapon, with a blade some eight or nine inches long and nearly two inches
broad, heavy in proportion, and sharp as a razor. It was accompanied by a
scabbard with a loop attachment by which it could be suspended from a belt. At
the time I accepted it I reflected that about the only use I could make of such
a heavy knife would be to cut kindling wood at the woodpile! . . . I can now
make some allowances for the nature of these two rather singular gifts upon the
hypothesis that at that time the contemplated trip across the plains and into
the wilderness had aroused the fighting spirit that lies dormant in the nature
of every man, a spirit which was particularly rife just then in Nauvoo. I remember
well its exhibition in the antics of some of the sons of leading men acting
most boisterously and with swagger and braggadocio, ridding their hoses down
Main Street to the river to water them, shouting and singing at the top of
their voices, their revolvers and other arms swinging at their belts.
The only
revolvers in use then were “Allen’s pepper boxes,” a sort in which six barrels
cast together would revolve, (similar to the way the chambers now do), and be
discharged through each barrel in turn, instead of all chambers discharging
through the one barrel as in the more modern weapon. It was one of those “pepper
boxes”—an extremely feeble weapon about four inches long—which was handed to
Father, by Elder Philo Dibble, I believe, on the morning of June 27, 1844, and
which it is claimed he fired at the mob through the half-open door of the jail
room when he and his friends were trying to withstand the onslaught of the mob.
("The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith (1932) Edited by his daughter Mary
Audentia Smith Anderson", The
Saints' Herald 82, no. 2 [January 8, 1935]: 48)