Description
They Understood Every Word
A story is told among the descendants of Matilda King Robison, of an event that happened sometime after 1867 at Cove Fort, Utah. The Fort was built to serve as a way station for travelers along the old Spanish Trail, and to serve as a protection for the local Latter-day Saint settlers from the Native Americans in the area.
One day, the men at the Fort left the women and children alone and went up into the canyons for wood. There had been no trouble with the Indians and so the gates were left unlocked. However, on this day as soon as the men had left:
“Several war-painted and fierce-looking Indians stalked through the gate. The frightened women quickly picked up their children and hurried to Matilda’s room, only to have the Indians follow. They banged loudly on the door and, as usual, demanded food. Not daring to refuse, the women gathered the Indians at the table and quickly set before them what food they had available.
“As the Indians quickly downed the food, one of them who appeared to be the leader, motioned to Matilda and grunted, ‘You sing now.’ At first Matilda hesitated. With the fright she felt, she was sure she could never control her voice. But with a second, gruffer request, the other sisters, fearing for their own and their children’s safety, pleaded with her, ‘Please, Sister King, sing for them.’
“Not knowing what else to do she started to sing the first song that came to her mind, hardly realizing that it was “Oh, Stop and Tell Me, Red Man, Who You Are,” a Latter-day Saint hymn by W. W. Phelps. The words of the song describe the fallen condition of the Indians who once was pleasant Ephraim, and their promised gospel blessings. After the first verse she stopped, but the Indians, who had stopped eating to listen, seemed intense and interested and demanded more. The women were looking at her in open astonishment. When she had sung the entire hymn, the Indians, to the utter amazement and relief of the women, quietly arose and filed silently out of the room and then the fort.”
When the Indians were gone the other women gathered around Matilda and exclaimed,
“Why, Sister King, we didn’t know you knew the Indian language.”
Matilda quickly told them that she didn’t know the Indian language.
“But you sang the entire song in their own language,” they said excitedly. “They understood every word of it.”
Just ordinary Saints on the Covenant Path doing extraordinary things when the Lord needs it–then and now!
Sources:
This story was first published in the “Cove Creek Gazette,” no. I. Spring 1975. 1:4. It appears the story was written by Irene Rowan. Provo, Utah, in January 1959, pgs. 152, 498, 4
