Although we may read of it, none can comprehend just what it means to a girl-wife, two thousand miles away from her parents, to be treated as an alien, in a land under the flag of the free. This was the case in the strictly Mormon settlements in Utah thirty years ago. Reason only kept the Giant Despair from the threshold of the mind. The bravery of these women can be compared only to the English women of the Sepoy Rebellion days of 1857 in India, or to those of our American sisters who accompanied their valorous husbands to their isolated posts on the Indian frontiers, resolved to share equally in the dangers, and to die lingeringly and 141 cruelly if necessary. Retreat and surrender never grew in the hearts of such women. It was so in the times that were called the “dark days” in Utah––the time when the government applied its functions to the stamping out of polygamous practices, 1883 to 1893––ten terrible years for the Mormon as well as the non-Mormon.
Add to this the fact that, unannounced, a brawny, stalwart Indian might walk in at the door. More than once has it so occurred in our home. One day the door was suddenly opened and in walked a grinning brave, armed with a long knife, and followed by his squaw; extending his empty hand toward the far-from-home girl-wife, alone in the house, he said, “How-do!” In telling us of it, she said: “I was scared to death, I thought, but I would have shaken hands with him if I had died in the attempt. I would not let him know I feared him.” But this was not Weber Tom.
It was in those fearsome days when the leading men of Utah––farmers, bankers, stockmen, church dignitaries, all sorts and conditions of the Latter-Day Saints––were 142 being arrested and haled to the courts almost daily, that one morning there rode up to our door the battle-scarred old warrior, Weber Tom, chief of the Skull Valley Utes, or Goshutes.
If perfection is beauty, this Indian was most beautiful, for he was the ugliest creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and saying, “Too short, too short.”
This giant chief dismounted, and, seeing my wife standing near, reached the reins of the bridle to her and said, “Here, squaw, hol’ my hoss.”
She said, quietly, “Hold your own horse if you want him held.”
Having had to accommodate himself to the rudeness of a civilized woman, he made other provision for his cayuse and then asked her, “Wheh yo’man?”
She told him I was down in the field, and 143 he then proceeded to find me. He was in the depths of trouble. He had several squaw-wives and feared he was to be arrested for it.
Now he approached me. It was dramatic; it was high-class pantomime. It is too bad the kinetoscope, cinematograph, or some other moving-picture machine had not been invented. He seemed awed by a presence, yet so emboldened by the needs of his case that he walked stoically to his quest.
Squaring his Atlaslike shoulders, he began: “You heap big chief. You talky this way” (at the same time extending one finger straight from his lips). “Mormon he talky this way” (now extending two fingers, to show he understood them to talk with double tongue). “Mormon telly me sojer men ketchy me, put me in jug [jail]; me havy two, tree, four squaw. You heap big chief. You telly me this way” (one finger). Continuing, he said: “Me havy two, tree, four squaw. Mormon he telly me, me go jug; one my squaw he know dat, he heap cry, heap cry, HEAP cry, by um by die!”