Wild Bill Hickman

William Adams "Wild Bill" Hickman (April 16, 1815 – August 21, 1883) was an American frontiersman. He also served as a representative to the Utah Territorial Legislature and wrote a public confession to committing several murders which he claimed were under orders from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints prophet Brigham Young.

Hickman was born in Warren County, Kentucky. When he was four years old he moved with his parents to the Missouri Territory, two years before Missouri statehood. He married his first wife, Bernetta Burchartt on 30 August 1832 at 17 years old.

While living in Missouri, Hickman encountered members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints traveling from Kirtland, Ohio to their new gathering place in Clay County, Missouri and ultimately agreed to be baptized into the religion in 1838.

Upon the killing of Joseph Smith in 1844, he and many other Mormons followed Brigham Young westward into Mexican territory. During this period Hickman began to practice polygamy under the instruction of Brigham Young, marrying Sarah Elizabeth Luce as his second wife in January 1846.

In the spring of 1848, Hickman moved to an encampment in Iowa called Council Bluffs where he performed what he would later call "my first act of violence under the rule of Brigham Young" in tracking down and killing a Native American who had threatened the prophet.

The Latter-day Saints traveled westward through Native territory, where Hickman claims to have committed several other murders against Native Americans he and his co-religionists happened across before finally arriving in Salt Lake City in 1849 where he started a homestead ten miles south of the city proper.

Early the following year, in 1850, tensions in Utah Valley between Mormon colonists and the native Timpanogos people had been increasing. Ultimately the murder of a native man led to the Timpanogos taking Mormon cattle as an informal weregild. In response to this insult, the Mormon militia was raised, and Hickman joined them in what would come to be known as the Provo River Massacre. During the course of violence, Hickman records killing the chief of the band, Old Elk, whose head he removed with his Bowie Knife and which he brought back to Fort Utah and hung from the walls. The massacre ultimately killed around 50 Timpanogos men and the surviving women and children were taken and sold as slaves to church members.

In 1852, the Mormon-controlled Utah legislature passed a law granting Mormons the preferred right to run ferries over the Green River, increasing tensions with the Mountain Men who associated with Fort Bridger, who had been running the ferries over the river. Rumors began swirling that Jim Bridger was arming Native groups in the area, and affidavits were drawn up to that effect. Hickman was sent along with a posse of 150 Mormon militia who killed a couple of the mountain men and stole several hundred head of stock and whiskey they found at the fort, although Jim Bridger himself was not there.