The boy who had refused us his horse didn’t object, though, to taking five dollars for his pay. I’ve always found a heap of difference among the human beings one meets in his travels.
The years that have followed these wild days have not been so filled with exciting adventures, yet no year has passed without its rough and trying experiences; for it has been my lot to live always on the frontier. Even now my home is in Jackson’s Hole—one of the last of our mountain valleys to be settled. In 1889 I first went into this beautiful valley, and a few years later I pioneered the little town now called Wilson, in my honor.
It was here that I was brought again into close contact with my Shoshone friends—the Indians from whom for many years I had been all but lost. In 1895, when the so-called Jackson’s Hole Indian war broke out and several Indians were killed and others captured and brought to trial for killing game, I was called on to act as interpreter. My sympathies went out to the Indians at this time. They were misunderstood and mistreated as they always have been. The Indian has always been pushed aside, driven, and robbed of his rights.
It is a sad thought with me to see the Redmen giving away so rapidly before our advancing civilization. Where thousands of the Indians once roamed free, only a scattered few remain. The old friends of my boyhood days with Washakie have almost entirely passed away. Only once in a great while do I find one who remembers Yagaki, the little boy who once lived with their old chief’s mother. But when I do happen to meet one—as I did last year when I found Hans, a wealthy Indian, who lives now on his ranch at the Big Bend in Portneuf Canyon—then we have a good time, I tell you, recalling the days of long ago when Uncle Nick was among the Shoshones.
Caspar W. Hodgson
A lily pond in the Yellowstone Park, which was part of the land of the Shoshones.
GLOSSARY
Editorial Note. The Indian words and definitions given in this glossary have been carefully checked by a scholar of national reputation, who has studied the Shoshone language. He has pronounced the words as nearly correct as one can represent in our symbols these differing dialects of the Indian tribes. It has been the effort of the editor to be accurate, but it is difficult to give exactly the sounds of the Indian language.