In the morning the people were surprised to find the meat gone, and their nooses all drawn out. They wondered how it could have been done. For many nights the nooses were drawn and the meat stolen; but once, when the wolves went there to steal, they found only the meat of a scabby bull, and the man-wolf was angry, and cried out, “Bad-you-give-us-o-o-o! Bad-you-give-us-o-o-o!”
The people heard him and said, “It is a man-wolf who has done all this. We will catch him.” So they put pemmican and nice back fat in the pis-kun, and many hid close by. After dark the wolves came again, and when the man-wolf saw the good food, he ran to it and began eating. Then the people all rushed in and caught him with ropes and took him to a lodge. When they got inside to the light of the fire, they knew at once who it was. They said, “This is the man who was lost.”
“No,” said the man, “I was not lost. My wives tried to kill me. They dug a deep hole, and I fell into it, and I was hurt so badly that I could not get out; but the wolves took pity on me and helped me, or I would have died there.”
When the people heard this they were angry, and they told the
man to do something.
“You say well,” he replied. “I give those women to the
I-kun-uh-kah-tsi; they know what to do.”
After that night the two women were never seen again.[55]
* * *
The Utes are strictly mountain Indians. They were a fierce, warlike tribe, and for years continuously raided the sparse settlements at the base of the Rocky Mountains on both their slopes. They were known to the Spaniards early in the seventeenth century. The Utah Nation is an integral part of the great Shoshone family, of which there are a number of bands, or tribes—the Pah-Utes, or Py-Utes, the Pi-Utes, the Gosh-Utes, or Goshutes, the Pi-Edes, the Uinta-Utes, the Yam-Pah-Utes, besides others not necessary to enumerate.
The word Utah originated with the people inhabiting the mountain region early in the seventeenth century, when New Mexico was first talked of by the Spanish conquerors. Pah signifies water; Pah-guampe, salt water, or salt lake; Pah-Utes, Indians that live about the water. The word was spelled in various ways, “Yutas” by the early Spaniards. This is perhaps the proper way. Other spellings are “Youta,” “Eutaw,” “Utaw,” and “Utah,” which is now the accepted one.[56]
The Utes, unquestionably, were the Indians concerned in the “Mountain Meadows Massacre.” The Utes, too, were the tribe that committed the atrocities at their agency, killing the Meeker family and others there, finishing their deeds of murder by the massacre of Major T. T. Thornburgh's command on the White River in 1879. The terrible story is worth recounting:—