The White Indian Boy: The Story of Uncle Nick Among the Shoshones
9781465684080
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I was born in Illinois in 1842. I crossed the plains by ox team and came to Utah in 1850. My parents settled in Grantsville, a pioneer village just south of the Great Salt Lake. To protect themselves from the Indians, the settlers grouped their houses close together and built a high wall all around them. Some of the men would stand guard while others worked in the fields. The cattle had to be herded very closely during the day, and corralled at night with a strong guard to keep them from being stolen. But even with all our watchfulness we lost a good many of them. The Indians would steal in and drive our horses and cows away and kill them. Some times they killed the people, too. We built a log schoolhouse in the center of our fort, and near it we erected a very high pole, up which we could run a white flag as a signal if the Indians attempted to run off our cattle, or attack the town or the men in the fields. In this log schoolhouse two old men would stay, taking turns at watching and giving signals when necessary, by raising the flag in the daytime, or by beating a drum at night. For we had in the schoolhouse a big bass drum to rouse the people, and if the Indians made a raid, one of the guards would thump on the old thing. When the people heard the drum, all the women and children were supposed to rush for the schoolhouse and the men would hurry for the cow corral or take their places along the wall. Often in the dead hours of the night when we were quietly sleeping, we would be startled by the booming old drum. Then you would hear the youngsters coming and squalling from every direction. You bet I was there too. Yes, sir, many is the time I have run for that old schoolhouse clinging to my mother’s apron and bawling “like sixty”; for we all expected to be filled with arrows before we could get there. We could not go outside of the wall without endangering our lives, and when we would lie down at night we never knew what would happen before morning. The savages that gave us the most trouble were called Gosiutes. They lived in the deserts of Utah and Nevada. Many of them had been banished into the desert from other tribes because of crimes they had committed. The Gosiutes were a mixed breed of good and bad Indians. They were always poorly clad. In the summer they went almost naked; but in winter they dressed themselves in robes made by twisting and tying rabbit skins together. These robes were generally all they had to wear during the day and all they had to sleep in at night.
