CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO MY OLD SHOSHONE FRIENDS
“What became of your old Indian mother, Washakie, Hanabi, and the rest?” This question has been asked me again and again. “Did you ever see them again?” “What other experiences did you have with the Indians?” Such queries as these have been sent to me from even far-off France by people who have read the first edition of my little book.
To satisfy my readers on these points and others that may be of interest, I have added a few more chapters to my story.
When I left my dear old Indian mother up north on “Pohogoy,” or Ross Fork,—a place near the Snake River,—I promised her I would come back to her. That promise I intended to keep; but I was prevented from doing so by other pressing duties, till it was too late.
She waited a year for her “Yagaki” to return, then her sorrow became so great she couldn’t bear it longer and she started out to hunt me up. The Indians told me later that after I had been gone a few months my old mother would roam off in the mountains and lonely places and stay until hunger would drive her home. Finally she came to my white mother’s home in Grantsville to find her boy. My mother made her welcome, taking my Indian mother into her home, feeding her, and providing her with a room as one of the family.
Then she wrote me that my two mothers wanted me to come home. I wished with all my heart to do so, but at that time I was about five hundred miles away, out on the mail line, badly wounded in the head by an Indian arrow. When I recovered enough to travel, I had to go to work again. The Indians at this time were burning stations and killing men every chance they got. Riders became so scarce and hard to get that I could not well leave, no matter how I felt.
When I finally did get away, I found that my own mother, as I have said before, had moved into Cache Valley, and my old Indian mother had left her, broken-hearted because she had not found her papoose. She had stayed with my white mother for more than two months. When I did not return as she expected, she grew suspicious that my white mother had hidden me away; and no words could comfort her or change her mind. Finally she went off with some Indians who came there.
My mother urged me to hunt her up. She had taken quite a fancy to the Indian woman. She thought it my duty to find and care for her the rest of her life. I felt so too. She had been a dear friend to me. She had cared for me and protected me from harm, even saving my life several times.
The next word I got of my Indian mother was that she was dead. This sad news came from a band of Shoshones I found in the Bear Lake Valley. Hearing they were there, I had gone to see them, thinking to meet some of my old Indian friends. But those I wished most to see were not among the band. My dear old mother, they told me, had died about three years after I left. Washakie was then out in the Wind River country. As these Indians were going there, I decided to go with them.
Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
Washakie’s encampment at South Pass, Wyoming, 1861. South Pass is a pass through the Rocky Mountains, where the Oregon and Salt Lake trails crossed the Continental Divide.
We found Washakie at South Pass. He was very glad to see me, and treated me like a brother. But he could not tell me just where our mother was buried, as he had happened to be away from her when she died. He only knew that her grave was somewhere on Ham’s Fork[7] in Wyoming. He found an Indian who said he knew where it was. I offered to give him a pony if he would guide me to it. He agreed, and we went back to the head of Ham’s Fork. We found the camping place they were at when she died, but not the grave, though we hunted for three days together, and I stayed another day after he left. Since then I have passed the place many times and have searched again and again; for I did desire to carry out my old Indian mother’s wish to be buried like the whites, but I have never found her grave.
[7] A branch of the Green River.
It was the custom of the Indians to bury their dead in some cleft of rocks or wash. They left no mark over the grave, but they usually buried with the body articles the deceased had treasured in life, as weapons, clothing, etc. In the grave with my dear old mother they placed the beaded and tasseled quiver she had made of the skin of the antelope I had killed, the auger I had sent to Salt Lake for, and other things of mine she had kept after I went away. There are those who think an Indian has no heart. This dear old woman certainly had one that was tender and true. Her soul was good and pure. Peace to her memory.
Washakie’s wife Hanabi was another good woman. She, too, had died before I returned to the Indians. Her little girl papoose, the baby when I was with them, grew up, I have been told, and married.
Washakie married another squaw by whom he had several children. One of them, Dick Washakie, is still living in the Wind River country. He is a wealthy Indian, and has considerable influence.
When these Shoshone Indians made their treaty with the government there were three reservations set apart for the Shoshone tribe—Fort Hall, Lemhi, and Wind River. Washakie was given his choice. He took the Wind River reserve because, as he told me afterwards, it had been his boyhood home, and his father was buried there. Here Washakie spent the rest of his life, honored by his tribe and respected for his goodness and his wisdom by all the whites who knew him. During the early nineties he passed to the Happy Hunting Grounds.
I saw Washakie many times before he died. We were always brothers. When I lived in Bloomington, Bear Lake County, Idaho, the chief often came and stayed with me. He was always made welcome in my home, and his lodge was always open to me. During the time of Chief Joseph’s War, Washakie brought his band and camped for some months near my ranch on Bear River; and every day he would come to get the news of the war. My wife would read the paper and I would interpret it for the Indians.
While this war was on, the whites would not sell ammunition to the Indians without a letter of recommendation, or “Tabop,” as they called it. The Indians all came to me for these letters. My home for years was their headquarters. They would have eaten me out of house and home if the ward authorities had not come to my rescue and helped to feed these Red Brethren.
“I would … ride the round of the traps.”