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To the Hon. Elias Smith
Judge of the Probate Court
of Salt Lake County
Utah Territory.

Your petitioner Jacob Forney Superintendent
of Indian Affairs for the Utah Territory
respectfully represents that on the 8th or
9th day of September 1857 a party
of Emigrants numbering as is believed
between one hundred and thrirty
and one hundred and forty persons
on their way from their Territory to California
were massacred by a party com
prsied of Whites and Indians at a place
known as the "Mountain Meadows" in the
Territory, that out of said party of Em
-igrants seventeen children between the ages
of two months and eight years were spared alive
and your petitioner has by direction of
the Department of the Interior collected
said children for the purpose of sending
them to Fort Smith Arkansas near
which place the parents of most of
them it is believed resided before starting
on the trip which ended in their destrutc
tion. Your petitioner further states that