As a Mormon woman said, "A polygamist is the most
ingenious liar imaginable." In the earlier days on their arrival in
Zion, when securely in the toils, their money in the hands of the
elders, too far in the wilderness to make hope of return possible, these
people have awakened to the horrors of the system, and women on the day
of their arrival were hurried to the Endowment House to swell the number
of polygamic wives in the land. Perhaps of all the women in Utah those
who live in constant terror of their husbands entering polygamy are the
most to be pitied. These plural marriages are performed in private in
the Endowment House, a building in the same enclosure with the
Tabernacle and Temple. Here they take oaths of allegiance to the church
that absolve them from obedience to the laws of our country, when they
conflict with their laws. They consider their obligations to their
religion such that they perjure themselves on the witness stand in the
most unblushing manner. They thus defeat the attempts to gain evidence
of their marriages.
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