Isaac "Ike" Potter was a white man with several wives in Utah County, who was an apostatized Mormon who had turned outlaw. He was a notorious cattle and horse thief and possibly one of the principal brokers in the sale of Black Hawk's stolen cattle. Reports of white men leading Ute raids were common and Ike Potter was the most notorious of them. In late June 1867 Ike Potter and a band of Utes and allies sent a demand for beef and other supplies to William W. Cluff, a Mormon Bishop at Coalville in Washington County. The demand was supposedly rejected and Potter responded that Black Hawk would come down and wipe out the Mormons. Charges were made against Potter for inciting natives to incendiary deeds against Mormon settlements. A raid on a sawmill brought out the militia, which accidentally learned where Potter and his men were camped. They surrounded the camp and arrested Potter, two other apostate Mormons Charles Wilson and John Walker (19), 16 Utes and Navajos on the charge of stealing a cow. They were marched back to Coalville to stand trial. Local Danites were afraid that Potter would be freed by a 'gentile' Judge Snyder (who had previously discharge them after arrest for alleged theft) and decided to take matters into their own hands. On August 1, 1867 while under guard in the schoolhouse at Coalville, ten or twelve armed persons, appeared about twelve o'clock at night at the building and ordered the prisoners to leave.