After my return from the Colorado River, I had occasion to go to Salt Lake City. I arrived there soon after the United States army had entered Salt Lake Valley. The people north of Utah County had vacated their homes and moved south. Through the instrumentality of Colonel Thomas L. Kane, a peaceable solution of our difficulties with the general government had been arrived at, and the Saints were returning to their vacated homes. It is generally known that the enemies of the Latter-day Saints have accused them of shielding from justice the white men, who, it was supposed, joined with the Indians in the Mountain Meadow massacre. Mr. Cumming succeeded President Brigham Young as governor of Utah Territory in the early spring, before the arrival of the United States army in Salt Lake Valley. President Brigham Young requested Elder George A. Smith to have an interview with the new governor, and learn his views concerning the Mountain Meadow massacre, and assure him that all possible assistance would be rendered the United States courts to have it thoroughly investigated. Brother Smith took me with him, and introduced me as a man who was well informed regarding Indian matters in Southern Utah, and would impart to him any information required that I might be in possession of. He also urged upon Governor Cumming the propriety of an investigation of this horrid affair, that, if there were any white men engaged in it, they might be justly punished for their crimes. Governor Cumming replied that President Buchanan had issued a proclamation of amnesty and pardon to the "Mormon" people, and he did not wish to go behind it to search out crime. Brother Smith urged that the crime was exclusively personal in its character, and had nothing to do with the "Mormons" as a people, or with the general officers of the Territory, and, therefore, was a fit subject for an investigation before the United States courts. Mr. Cumming still objected to interfering, on account of the President's proclamation. Brother Smith replied substantially as follows: "If the business had not been taken out of our hands by a change of officers in the Territory, the Mountain Meadow affair is one of the first things we should have attended to when a United States court sat in Southern Utah. We would see whether or not white men were concerned in the affair, with the Indians." At Salt Lake City, I was appointed sub-Indian agent. During the summer of 1858, when I was at my home on the Santa Clara, one morning about 9 o'clock, while engaged in cutting some of the large branches from a cottonwood tree, I fell a distance of twenty or thirty feet to the ground. I was badly bruised and was carried to my house for dead, or nearly so.