During the Black Hawk War, James Lemmon was killed by an Indian called Squash-head, the father of Santaquin, about the middle of May, 1851. Mother was helping father to plant beans, when a neighbor came to borrow a wash-tub and board ; the man had a little girl with him. After giving the man the tub, she returned to help father in the lot and did not notice that James followed them and that in crossing the ditch by the fence he fell in and was swept down by the stream in the opposite direction. The child must have gone down the ditch about a quarter of a mile when Squash-head happened along and found the child and made off with him.
"When the alarm was given, all turned out to hunt, but no trace of the child could be found. Some time after- wards, however, the Indian commenced to brag about it, in consequence of which he was arrested and taken to Provo. He broke away, but was caught again by Joseph Kelly between Spanish Fork and Springville and lodged in a house belonging to Bishop Johnson. While Alex Williams was guarding him he told how he killed the child. He had tortured the little one by taking off its toes and fingers, and finally finished his brutal work by taking him by the heels and smashing the back of its head on a rock. The child was twenty months and six days old at the time of its death.
Williams then killed Squash head by cutting his throat with a case-knife which he had brought in with the Indian's breakfast. At the time of the tragedy the child's parents lived at Mountainville (now called Alpine), Utah County.
Note: The writer was a brother of the child who was killed. Geo. McKenzie, assistant-adjutant general of the Utah County War Veterans, said, after reading the above that it was written by some one who did not fully understand the whole matter.
Don C. Johnson says Squash Head killed him-self in the absence of Alex Williams and that it happened in Bishop Johnson 's house.
See Grass Valey Massacre
