AN INTRODUCTION TO UNCLE NICK
If you ever go to the Yellowstone Park by way of Jackson’s Hole, you will most likely pass through Wilson, Wyoming. It is a picturesque little village situated at the foot of the Teton Mountains. A clear stream, rightly named Fish Creek, winds its way through the place. On the very edge of this sparkling mountain stream stands a log cabin. The cabin is so near the creek, indeed, that one might stand in the dooryard and catch fish. And this is what “Uncle Nick” Wilson, who lived in the cabin, has done many a time. That is a “true fish story,” I am sure, because I caught two lively trout myself last summer in this same creek only a few rods from the cabin.
Who was Uncle Nick Wilson? you ask. He was an old pioneer after whom this frontier town was named. He was the man, too, who wrote this story book. You would have liked Uncle Nick, I know. He was a rather short, round-faced man with a merry twinkle in his eyes. He took things easily; he spoke in a quiet voice; he was never too busy to help his neighbors; he liked a good joke; he was always ready to chat awhile; and he never failed to have a good story to tell, especially to the children.
Uncle Nick had one peculiarity. He did not like to take off his hat, even when he went into a house. I often wondered why, but I did not like to ask him. One day, however, some one told me the reason. It was because he had once been shot in the head with an arrow by an Indian. The scar was still there.
From outward appearances one would hardly have guessed that Uncle Nick’s life had been so full of exciting experiences. But when he was sitting about the campfire at night or at the fireside with a group of boys and girls, he would often get to telling his tales of the Indians and the Pony Express; and his hearers would never let him stop. My own two boys never got sleepy when Uncle Nick was in the house; they would keep calling for his stories again and again.
This was one reason why he wrote this story book. He wanted boys and girls to have the pleasure of reading his stories as often as they pleased. How he was induced to write it is an interesting story in itself.
Some years ago two professors of a certain Western university were making a trip with their families to the Yellowstone Park by way of Jackson’s Hole trail. As they were passing through Wilson, one of the women in the party met with a serious accident. Her little boy had got among the horses, and the mother, in trying to save the child from harm, was knocked down and trampled.
Help must be had at once; but how to get it was a problem. The nearest doctor was over sixty miles away. While the unfortunate travelers were worrying about what to do, Uncle Nick’s wife came to the rescue. She quietly assumed command of affairs, directed the making of a litter, and insisted that the wounded lady be carried to her cabin home a short distance away. Then she turned nurse, dressed the wounds, and attended the sufferer until she was well enough to resume the journey.
The party meantime camped near by, and whiled away about three weeks in fishing and hunting and enjoying Uncle Nick’s stories of the Wild West. Every night they would sit about the cabin fire listening to the old frontiersman tell his “Injun stories” and his other thrilling adventures of the early days. They felt that these stories should be written for everybody to enjoy. They were so enthusiastic in their desire to have it done that Uncle Nick finally consented to try to write them.
It was a hard task for him. He had never attended school a day in his life; but his wife had taught him his alphabet, and he had learned to read and spell in some kind of way. He got an old typewriter and set to work. Day by day for several months he clicked away, until most of his stories were told. And here they are—true stories, of real Indians, as our pioneer parents knew them about seventy years ago.
The book gives the nearest and clearest of views of Indian home-life; it is filled, too, with stirring incidents of Indian warfare, of the Pony Express and Overland Stage, and other exciting frontier experiences.
Uncle Nick may have had no schooling except as he got it in the wilds, but he certainly learned how to tell a story well. The charm of his style lies in its Robinson Crusoe simplicity and its touches of Western humor.
Best of all, the stories Uncle Nick tells are true. For many months he was a visitor at our home. To listen to this kindly, honest old man was to believe his words. But the truth of what he tells is proved by the words of many other persons who knew him well, and others who have had similar experiences. For several years I have been proving these stories by talking with other pioneers, mountaineers, pony riders, students of Indian life, and even Indians themselves. Their words have unfailingly borne out the statements of the writer of this book. No pretense is made that this volume is without error. It certainly is accurate, however, in practically every detail, and true to the customs and the spirit of the Indian and pioneer life it portrays.
Professor Franklin T. Baker of Columbia University, who read the book in manuscript, has pronounced the book “a rare find, and a distinctive contribution to the literature that reflects our Western life.”
The rugged, kindly man who lived through the scenes herein pictured has passed away. He died at Wilson, the town he founded, in December, 1915, during the seventy-third year of his age. But he has left for us this tablet to his memory, a simple story of a simple man who lived bravely and cheerily in the storm and stress of earlier days, taking his part even from boyhood with the full measure of a man.
Howard R. Driggs