Description
I’ll Ride Him: The Courage of Lot Smith
In 1846, Lot Smith was 16 years old. The captain came into the Latter-day Saint camps and asked for volunteers to join the army and march to California. Lot volunteered, but he was too young. The story is told that when he was requested to walk beneath the rope to measure his height, he stood on tiptoe to make the ranks. No one ever asked his age and Lot was mustered into the Battalion.
At one point in Arizona men were fainting and falling out of the ranks for thirst. Finally, camp was made and a well dug. Canteens were filled and the red-haired teenager—hail and strong—was sent back to bring water to the men. He was given instructions to carry his water to the man farthest back along the line of march, but Lot could not resist the pitiful cries of the men for water. He disobeyed orders and supplied the men all the way to the last man.
When it was learned that he had disobeyed orders, Lot was roped by the thumbs, tied to the back of a wagon and forced to march in the burning sun. When Colonel Philip St. George Cooke learned of the cruel order, it was rescinded and Lot was let go. Notwithstanding the punishment, he never regretted saving his comrades.
Years later, in 1857, Lot and his men stopped United States military supply wagons bound for Utah to support troops ordered to destroy his people. At Simpson’s Hollow, Wyoming, Lot burned a train to the ground when the officers refused to turn it around and go back to the states. His efforts stopped the army from reaching Utah.
Eventually, Lot was sent south to colonize and there he lived out his days on his ranch standing in defense of his people.
Then in 1946, one hundred years after Lot’s service in the Battalion, in Cardston, Alberta, Canada, Sally Smith, Lot’s granddaughter, met a man who had known her grandfather. He said to her:
“I want to tell you a story of your Grandfather Lot Smith. You’ve probably never heard it, but it is a true story, and I was there and witnessed it. Lot Smith did a great service for a whole colony of people, something that no one else could have done. When he was with the Mormon colonists in Mexico, the Mexican citizens who were already living there were determined to get rid of the Mormons. So one day a mob came to annihilate them, but under the pretense of giving them some chance at saving their lives, they set up this proposition.
If any of the Mormons could ride one of their wild Mexican mules they would spare the lives of the colonists. This Mexican mule had the reputation of being so wild that no one had ever ridden him. So, one of the leaders of the mob arrogantly asked, ‘Will any of you volunteer to ride it?’
Lot Smith stepped forward. Sneeringly one of the men asked, ‘Are you the one who is going to try riding this mule?’
Lot Smith replied, ‘No, I’m not going to try, I’ll ride him.’
When he got on, that mule really did all he could to live up to his wild reputation. He bucked, pitched, and spun around, employing every trick he knew to be rid of his load. After he found that his rider was sticking to him like a burr, he took off like a streak of lightning across the desert.
You know your grandfather had never had a razor touch his face in his whole life, and he had a long red beard. Well, I will never forget the picture they made as that mule streaked past me like a flash, and Lot Smith sat solidly on his back with that flowing red beard parted in the breeze and streaming out behind him on each side of his face. It looked like streaks of red flames of fire in the sunset. Lot Smith not only did a great service for his church, but through this brave act he saved all the lives of those people in the Mormon colony in Mexico.”
Source: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/memories/KWCT-LN6
