This Red-Handed Wretch:
Bill
Hickman and The Murder of Richard Yates
by Ben
Boulden
In the dying minutes of
October 18, 1857, the notorious lawman, lawyer, and admitted murderer, William
Adams Hickman – labeled, “this red-handed wretch,” by the New York World
and popularly known as Wild Bill – “used up” the mountaineer Richard E.
Yates. The Mormon militia, called the Nauvoo Legion, had arrested Yates on a
charge of spying for the approaching U.S. Army during the Utah War. Hickman
claimed Yates’s killing had been ordered by Mormon prophet Brigham Young. A
claim contradicted by the men Hickman implicated in Yates’s murder, and by
Mormon historians ever since, but the conditions in Utah at the time, gives a
ring of possibility to Hickman’s claim anyway. ...
I would LOVE to talk to you. Is there anymore information about the Mormon assassins that you know about that is not well known you’ve found in research?
ReplyDelete"In Hickman's book he says he found us starving with plenty of provisions in store houses, but did not dare to take them; that on his arrival he burst open the store houses and told us to help ourselves. Can anyone believe such stuff? If all his book is like this for truth, one would do well to believe the reverse." (ibid, page 89).
ReplyDelete"There is one circumstance connected with my experience while in Echo Canyon service which I wish to put on record--the killing of Yates by Bill Hickman. This Mr. Yates was a personal friend of mine, a kind-hearted, liberal man of whom I had received many kindnesses, and his being murdered did not agree with my feelings, but I knew of no way to mend the matter, for I knew nothing of the killing till he was buried.
ReplyDelete"I was camped with a small party about four miles west of the Weber valley and ten or twelve miles from Echo. One very cold morning about sunrise, Hickman and two others came to my camp. They seemed almost frozen, shaking and trembling in an unusual manner. Hickman asked me if I had any whisky. I told them I had not. He then asked if we had coffee. I replied that we had. "Then make us a good strong cup." While the coffee was being made, he took me outside and asked me if I knew Yates. I told him I did. "Well, we have just buried him."
"He then told about Yates being taken prisoner for tampering with Indians. And after talking quite excitedly, he said, "We have got away with him. What do you think the Old Boss," (meaning Brigham) "will say?"
"Now if Yates had been killed as Hickman related in his book he would not have manifested so much interest in what President Young would say. He tried hard to draw an approval from me of what he had done. I told him I knew nothing about such modes and did not know what Brother Young would say about it.
"Hickman killed Yates for his money and horse the same as any other thief and murderer would have done, and then excused himself by telling that he was counseled to do these things. I know positively that Governor Young's orders were to avoid bloodshed in every way possible. I was continually acting and around in places and under circumstances that gave me the best of opportunities to know."
--Daniel Webster Jones, Forty Years Among the Indians, Juvenile Instructor Press, 1890, pages 129-130.