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.