The three principal THE INDIAN FARMS.farms which now form the nuclei of future reservations are those at Spanish Fork, San Pete, and Corn Creek. The two latter have often been denuded by the grasshopper; the former has fared better. Situated in Utah Valley, under the shelter of lofty Nebo, it extends northward within four miles of the Sweetwater Lake, and on the northeast is bounded by the Spanish-Fork Creek, rich in trout and other fish. It was begun five years ago for the Yutas, who claim the land, and contains a total of 13,000 acres, of which 500 have been cultivated; 900 have been ditched to protect the crop, and 1000 have been walled round with a fence six feet high. Besides other improvements, they have built a large adobe house and two rail corrals, and dug dams and channels for irrigation, together with a good stone-curbed well. Under civilized superintendence the savages begin to labor, and the chiefs aspire to erect houses. Yet the crops have been light, rarely exceeding 2500 bushels. San Pete Farm, in the valley and on the creek of the same name, lies 150 miles south of Great Salt Lake City; it supports, besides those who come for temporary assistance, a band of thirty souls; 200 acres have been planted with wheat and potatoes, two adobe houses and a corral have been made, and irrigating trenches have been dug. Corn-Creek Farm, in Fillmore Valley, was begun about four years ago; 300 acres have been broken up, several adobe houses have been built for the Indians and the farm agent, with the usual adjuncts, corral and fences. The crickets and grasshoppers have committed sad havoc among the wheat, corn, and potatoes. It is now tenanted by a Pahvant chief. The Uinta Farm is near Fort Bridger. Those lately opened in Deep Creek and Ruby Valleys have this year lain fallow in consequence of Indian troubles; the soil, however, is rich, and will produce beets, potatoes, onions, turnips, and melons. It is proposed to place the Pa Yutas and Washoes in the Truckee Meadows, on the lands “watered by the majestic Kuyuehup, or Salmon-Trout River,” where, besides fish and piñon forests, there are 15,000 acres fit for cultivation and herding. The Indian agents report that the cost will be $150,000, from which the Mormons deduct at least two 0’s.
THE YUTAS.The Yuta, though divided into many tribes and bands, is a distinct race from its prairie neighbors, speaking a single langue mère much diversified by dialect. They are a superstitious brood, and have many cruel practices—human sacrifices and vivisepulture—like those of Dahomey and Ashantee. Their religion is the usual African and Indian fetichism, that germal faith which, under favorable influences and among higher races, developed itself by natural means—or as explained by a mythical, distinct, and independent revelation—into the higher forms of Judaism, Christianity, and El Islam. In the vicinity of the Mormons many savages have been baptized, and have become nominal Saints. They divide white men into Shwop or Americans and Mormons. Their learned men have heard of Washington, but, like the French peasant’s superstition concerning Napoleon, they believe him to be still alive. They have a name for the Book of Mormon, and have not learned, like their more civilized Eastern neighbors, to look upon it as the work of Mujhe Manitou, the bad god, who, like Wiswakarma of the Hindoos, amuses himself by caricaturing and parodying the creatures of the good god. They are not cannibals—the Wendigo is a giant man-eater of a mythologic type, not an actual anthropophage—but, like all Indians, especially those of New England, they “feel good” after eating a bit of the enemy, a natural display of destructiveness: they will devour the heart of a brave man to increase their courage, or chop it up, boil it in soup, engorge a ladleful, and boast they have drunk the enemy’s blood. They are as liable to caprice as their Eastern neighbors. A prisoner who has distinguished himself in battle is as often dismissed unhurt as porcupined with arrows and killed with cruel tortures; if they yield in ingenuity of inflicting pain to the Algonquins and Iroquois, it is not for want of inclination, but by reason of their stupidity. Female captives who fall into their hands are horribly treated; I was told of one who, after all manner of atrocities, scalping included, escaped with life. They have all the savage’s improvidence; utility is not their decalogue. Both sexes, except when clothed by a charitable Mormon, are nearly naked, even in the severest weather; they sleep in sleet and snow unclothed, except with a cape of twisted rabbits’ furs and a miserable attempt at moccasins, lined with plaited cedar bark: leggins are unknown, even to the women. Their ornaments are vermilion, a few beads, and shell necklaces. They rarely suffer from any disease but rheumatism, brought on by living in the warm houses of the whites, and various consequences of liver complaint, produced by overgorging: as with strong constitutions generally, they either die at once or readily recover. They dress wounds with pine gum after squeezing out the blood, and their medicine-men have the usual variety of savage nostrums. In the more desert parts of the Territory they are exceedingly destitute. South of Cedar City, even ten years ago they had fields of wheat and corn of six acres each, and supported emigrants; some of them cultivate yearly along the stream-banks peas, beans, sweet potatoes, and squashes. They live upon the flesh of the bear, elk, antelope, dog, wolf, hare, snake, and lizard, besides crickets, grasshoppers, ants, and other vermin. The cactus leaf, piñon nut, and various barks; the seed of the bunch-grass and of the wheat or yellow grass, somewhat resembling rye; the rabbit-bush twigs, which are chewed, and various roots and tubers; the soft sego bulb, the rootlet of the cat-tail flag, and of the tule, which, when sun-dried and powdered to flour, keeps through the winter, and is palatable even to white men, conclude the list of their dainties. When these fail they must steal or starve, and the dilemma is easily solved, to the settler’s cost.
The Yutas in the vicinity of the larger white settlements continually diminish; bands of 150 warriors are now reduced to 35. Some of the minor tribes in the southern part of the Territory, near New Mexico, can scarcely show a single squaw, having traded them off for horses and arms; they go about killing one another, and on kidnapping expeditions, which farther diminish the breed. The complaint which has devastated the South Sea Islands rages around the City of the Saints, and extends to the Rio Virgen. In six months six squaws were shot by red Othellos for yielding their virtue to the fascinations of tobacco, whisky, and blankets; the Lotharios were savage as well as civilized. The operation of courting is performed by wrapping a blanket round one’s beloved; if she reciprocates, it is a sign of consent. A refusal in these lands is often a serious business; the warrior collects his friends, carries off the recusant fair, and, after subjecting her to the insults of all his companions, espouses her. There is little of the shame which Pliny attributes to the “Barrus.” When a death takes place they wrap the body in a skin or hide, and drag it by the leg to a grave, which is heaped up with stones as a protection against wild beasts. They mourn till the end of that moon, allow a month to elapse, and then resume their lamentations for another moon: the interval is gradually increased till the grief ends. It is usual to make the dead man’s lodge appear as desolate as possible.
The Yuta is less servile, and, consequently, has a higher ethnic status than the African negro; he will not toil, and he turns at a kick or a blow. The emigrant who addresses him in the usual phrase, “D— your eyes, git out of the road or I’ll shoot you!” is pretty sure to come to grief. Lately the Yutas demanded compensation for the use of their grass upon the Truckee River, when the emigrants fired, killing Wanamuka the chief. After the death of two or three whites, Mayor Ormsby, of the militia at Carson Valley, took the field, was decoyed into a kanyon by Indian cunning, and perished with all his men.
To “Chokop’s” Pass. 8th October, 1860.
The morning was wasted in binding two loose tires upon their respective wheels; it was past noon before we were en route. We shook hands cordially with Uncle Billy, whose generosity—a virtue highly prized by those who, rarely practicing, expect it to be practiced upon them—has won for him the sobriquet of the “Big-hearted Father.” He had vainly, however, attempted to rescue my silver pen-holder, whose glitter was too much for Indian virtue. Our route lay over a long divide, cold but not unpicturesque, a scene of light-tinted mountain mahogany, black cedar, pure snowy hill, and pink sky. After ten miles we reached the place where the road forks; that to the right, passing through Pine Valley, falls into the gravelly ford of the Humboldt River, distant from this point eighty to eighty-five miles. After surmounting the water-shed we descended over bench-land into a raw and dreary plain, in which greasewood was more plentiful than sage-bush. “Huntingdon Valley” is traversed by Smith’s Fork, which flows northward to the Humboldt River; when we crossed it it was a mere rivulet. Our camping-ground was at the farther end of the plain, under a Pass called after the chief Chokop; the kanyon emitted a cold draught like the breathing caves of Kentucky. We alighted at a water near the entrance, and found bunch-grass, besides a little fuel. After two hours the wagon came up with the stock, which was now becoming weary, and we had the usual supper of dough, butter, and coffee. I should have slept comfortably enough upon a shovel and a layer of carpet-bags had not the furious south wind howled like the distant whooping of Indians.
To the Wilderness again. 9th October.
The frosty night was followed by a thaw in the morning. We hastened to ascend Chokop’s Pass by a bad, steep dugway: it lies south of “Railroad Kanyon,” which is said to be nearly flat-soled. A descent led into “Moonshine,” called by the Yutas Pahannap Valley, and we saw with pleasure the bench rising at the foot of the pass. The station is named Diamond Springs, from an eye of warm, but sweet and beautifully clear water bubbling up from the earth. A little below it drains off in a deep rushy ditch, with a gravel bottom, containing equal parts of comminuted shells: we found it an agreeable and opportune bath. Hard work had begun to tell upon the temper of the party. The judge, who ever preferred monologue to dialogue, aweary of the rolling prairies and barren plains, the bald and rocky ridges, the muddy flats, saleratus ponds, and sandy wastes, sighed monotonously for the woodland shades and the rustling of living leaves near his Pennsylvanian home. The marshal, with true Anglo-American impetuosity, could not endure Paddy Kennedy’s “slow and shyure” style of travel; and after a colloquy, in which the holiest of words were freely used as adjectives, participles, and exclamations, offered to fight him by way of quickening his pace. The boys—four or five in number—ate for breakfast a quarter of beef, as though they had been Kaffirs or Esquimaux, and were threatened with ration-cutting. The station folks were Mormons, but not particularly civil: they afterward had to fly before the savages, which, perhaps, they will be pleased to consider a “judgment” upon them.
Shortly after noon we left Diamond Springs, and carried on for a stretch of seven miles to our lunching-ground, a rushy water, black where it overlies mud, and bluish-green where light gravel and shells form the bottom: the taste is sulphury, and it abounds in confervæ and animalculæ like leeches and little tadpoles. After playing a tidy bowie-knife, we remounted, and passed over to the rough divide lying westward of Moonshine Valley. As night had closed in, we found some difficulty in choosing a camping-place: at length we pitched upon a prairillon under the lee of a hill, where we had bunch-grass and fuel, but no water. The wind blew sternly through the livelong night, and those who suffered from cramps in cold feet had little to do with the “sweet restorer, balmy sleep.”
To Sheawit Creek. 10th October.