machinery and continuing threat of prosecution for polygamy, Smith's star was descendant. In 1892 he had taken up residence in cabins with two wives in Big Canyon, east of Tuba City, Arizona where Mormons had early proselytized local Hopi and Navajo Native Americans. Although relations with the Indians, especially the Hopi, were initially cooperative, the growing numbers of Mormons in the Tuba City area began to cause friction in an area with limited water, grazing and farming resources. Non-Mormons were also jealous of the Mormon influence in the area. Another plot was hatched to eliminate the old Mormon, Lot Smith, and to spark conflict between the Mormons and the Native Americans. This time some of the war-like Navajo were chosen as pawns and scapegoats. On June 20, 1892, Smith found a flock of sheep turned into his fenced field of new barley by Navajo sheepherders. Horseback, Smith tried to drive the sheep out but Navajos at the gate repeatedly used their blankets to shoo the animals back in. Angered, Smith returned to his cabin to get his pistol. His wife, fearful of the consequences, pleaded with him not to go back. His ire kindled, Smith returned to his barley crop and again tried to drive the sheep out. Now, each time a sheep was shooed back from the gate, Smith would shoot the animal. The Indians retaliated in kind, shooting several of Smith's nearby milch cows. At an impasse, Smith began to ride away back to his cabin. Along the way a pistol-packing Navajo, Cat-chose, had set up to ambush Smith. Nearly simultaneously, Smith was shot in the back by a rifle and mortally wounded. Smith died that evening, accompanied by keening mourning of a crowd of Native American friends and onlookers. Although the plotters succeeded in killing Lot Smith, they were thwarted in their attempt to spark a conflict between the Mormons and the Native Americans. The local Mormon community was stunned and saddened by the loss of a patriarch, but revenge was forestalled by the local Mormon bishop who advised the community to "do nothing and say nothing." Smith was buried near his cabin. A decade later, his remains were returned with great pomp and ceremony to Farmington, Utah where his grave became something of a symbol of the Mormon pioneer as frontiersman, soldier, and Indian fighter. References Peterson, Charles S., Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing Along