The white Indian boy

by Elijah Nicholas Wilson

After breakfast, General Johnston and I went up on to the mountain so that he could see the Indian camp. He had a good pair of field glasses and could see everything very plainly. He asked if I knew anything about that bunch of willows he could see a little to the west of their camp. I told him I knew it very well, for when the express first started it came this way, and we had a station right where the Indian camp is now, so I had been there many times. He said, “Then you can take me to it in the night?” I told him I could, and pointed out to him the way we would have to go. He told me he wanted to make the attack the next morning at daybreak. We went back to camp, and found all the soldiers asleep, except the guard; and in a very short time we were rolled in our blankets and dreaming of the time when all the Indians would be good Indians.

When I awoke that afternoon, I saw General Johnston and his staff going up the mountain to where we had been that morning. They got back to camp just before sundown, and held a hasty council with the remainder of the officers; then orders were given to pack up, and we got in line just at dark. I told General Johnston he would have to take his men down this canyon in single file, and in some places we would have to travel along the side of the mountain over very narrow trails; that we would have to climb above high cliffs, and pass through some very dangerous places. He said that I was to go ahead, and, when I came to the bad places, to dismount and they would follow suit. We had about two miles to go before we would come to the bad places, and when I got off the next man would get off and so on down the line. By doing this, we got down the canyon very well, except that three of our pack mules rolled over a cliff and were killed.

The head of the company got out of the canyon about eleven o’clock that night. We were within six or seven hundred yards of the Indian camp, for the lake lay almost at the foot of the mountains. As the soldiers came down they formed into lines, and General Johnston and I started to find the bunch of willows we had seen from the top of the mountain. We soon found it, and went back to the soldiers. The general said that was all he wanted with me until after the fight, and told me to take care of the two Indians we had with us. So I got Yaiabi and his friend, and we climbed a small hill not far away, where we could see the fight when it commenced.

The soldiers didn’t all get out of the canyon until about three o’clock in the morning, and the pack train was not all out when daylight came. In the meantime, General Johnston had strung the soldiers around the Indian camp.

Just as day was breaking, an old Indian chief started a fire in front of his tepee, and was standing there calling to some of the other Indians, when a soldier shot him without orders. Then the fight commenced. How the guns did rattle! It was almost too dark at first for me to see much of the fight, but it was getting lighter all the time. As we were coming down the canyon that night, the General gave me his field glasses to carry for him and I still had them.

Along the edge of the lake grew a lot of bulrushes. Soon after the firing began, I could see the papooses running into these rushes and hiding. From the volleys that were fired it got so smoky that I could not see very plainly, but the shooting soon stopped, and as the smoke rose, I could see everything that was going on. By this time they were in a terrible mixup, and were fighting fiercely, the soldiers with their bayonets and sabers, and the Indians with their clubs, axes, and knives. I could see little children not over five or six years old with sticks fighting like wildcats. I saw a soldier and an Indian that had clinched in a death struggle. They had each other by the hair of the head, and I saw a squaw run up to them with an ax and strike the soldier in the back and he sank to the ground, then she split his head with the ax. While she was doing this, a soldier ran a bayonet through her, and that is the way it was going over the whole battle ground. And what a noise they made! with the kids squalling, the squaws yelling, the bucks yelping, the dogs barking, and the officers giving their orders to the soldiers.

This was the worst battle and the last one that I ever saw. It lasted about two hours, and during that short period of time, every Indian, squaw, and papoose, and every dog was killed. After the battle, I was sent to bring up the baggage wagons to haul our wounded to Camp Floyd.

As we were on our way back to Camp Floyd with the wounded, and were passing through a rocky canyon, we were fired at by some straggling Indian, and I was shot through my left arm about half way between the wrist and elbow. The same bullet that went through my arm killed a soldier at my side. The one shot was all we heard, and we did not even see the one who fired it. I have sometimes wondered if that bullet was not sent especially for me.

That spring the great war between the North and the South broke out, and General Johnston sold all of the government cattle and wagons very cheap, and went back East with his pack mules. I bought a yoke of oxen for eighteen dollars and a new wagon for ten. There must have been as many as ten thousand oxen bought at from twenty-five to fifty dollars a yoke. That summer the gold mines were opened in Montana and everything had to be hauled with ox teams, and the same oxen we had bought for eighteen dollars were worth from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a yoke. The poor people that had been living on greens and “lumpy dick” for two or three years now began to get very wealthy and proud. The young ladies began to wear calico dresses, and I even saw young men who could afford to wear calico shirts and soldiers’ blue overcoats and smoke store tobacco.