The white Indian boy

by Elijah Nicholas Wilson

Our intention was to get married; but before we could realize our hopes they were blighted and destroyed by certain men who should have been our friends. These men poisoned the minds of her parents against me, while I was away driving the stage and guarding the cattle of the people against the Indians; her parents refused to allow her to answer my letters; and finally they succeeded in making her give me up and marry one of the men who had turned them against me.

The little bunch of cattle, which I had bought with the money I had received for my team, were stolen that winter, presumably by the Indians. I hunted for them for a while, but not one did I ever get back. The money I had saved for a “wedding stake,” I gave to mother; and as I had no heart to stay in that town any longer, I started for the road again.

That summer I worked for John Bolwinkle of Salt Lake City, as his wagon boss, in charge of his ox-team freighting from Carson City, Nevada. A mail route had been established from Salt Lake City to Bannock, Montana, and Mr. Leonard I. Smith obtained the contract to carry this mail. Knowing of my experience in this business, he induced me to drive the stage from Salt Lake north that winter.

We started out some time in November with a wagon-load of dry goods to trade for horses along the road. Besides this, we had one light coach and two buggies, in which were seven passengers. We went on our journey through Ogden, Brigham City, and other towns north, buying what horses we could as we went along. For a few days we stopped at Soda Springs to arrange about making a mail station there. At that time a large company of soldiers were wintering in the town. It was the plan of Mr. Smith to make me division agent from Soda Springs to Salt Lake, but I was to go on with him to Bannock to get acquainted with the whole route.

When we got to Bannock, winter had set in. It snowed very hard while we were there, and kept snowing all of the way back. By the time we got to Snake River, the snow was deep, and there was no place where we could buy feed for our horses. We had two passengers with us, and Mr. Smith had not provided us with supplies enough to last us half way back to Soda Springs.

We could not travel as fast as he had planned on account of the deep snow, and the horses were getting very weak for want of food. For these reasons we could not come back on the road by which we had gone, so we kept down the Snake River to where the Blackfoot empties into it. There we ate the last of our provisions. We were still one hundred miles from any place where we could get more, and the snow was becoming deeper every day. When we got up the Ross Fork Canyon we had to stop for the night. Here three of the horses gave out, and we had to leave them and one of the buggies. We had left the coach at Beaver Canyon.

The next morning we started before breakfast, for we had eaten the last thing the morning before. The snow kept falling all the time, and by noon, it was at least three feet deep. All of us but the driver would walk ahead of the team to break the road. We had four horses on the buggy, and the buggy would push up the snow ahead of it until it would run in over the dashboard and sides. That day two more of the horses gave out and we had to leave them, but we reached the head of the Portneuf.

That night we all turned out and kicked the snow off a little space so the poor horses could get some frozen grass, but it was so very cold and they were so tired that they could not eat very much.

The next morning we made another early start, and Mr. Smith said we would get to Soda Springs that day, but I knew we could not get there that day, nor the next day, either. I told the passengers that if we were to leave the buggy, we might make it in two days, but the way we were fooling along with the worn-out horses, we never would get there. They told Mr. Smith what I said and he upbraided me for it. He said I had scared the passengers nearly to death and he wanted me to stop.

Well, by noon that day, we came to the road we had come out on, but Mr. Smith did not know the place and wanted to follow the road over which we had traveled in going to Bannock. I told him the way we wanted to go was south, but the way he wanted to go was north. He told me I was wrong and ordered me to keep still. “Well,” I said, “I will go to Soda Springs and you can go to the other place,” so I took what I wanted out of the buggy and started off, but I had not gone far when I heard some one calling me. It was so foggy and the frost was falling so fast that I could see only a few yards, and as I hesitated about going back, one of the passengers came up to me and asked me if I was sure I knew where I was going, and begged me to come back to the buggy.