Washakie

“ The Indians were uneasy. They felt sure that the Crows would follow and attack us any minute, so we kept a strong guard out all the time. Washakie thought it best to get a little farther from the border line and in a more open country where they could watch the horses [53] better. The Indians did not appear to value their own lives so much as they did their horses. ”

“ I replied, “are good Indians. I have heard the chief say many times that he was a friend to the people of Utah, that he had seen their big chief, who was a very good ‘tibo.’”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Oh, I forgot I was talking to white men,” I said; “‘tibo’ means friend.”
I told them that he had no need to fear Washakie’s tribe, but that old Pocatello had drawn away some of Washakie’s Indians, and that they were bad Indians, who were doing everything against the whites they could. Washakie had told me they were killing the emigrants and stealing their horses and burning their wagons. ”

“ And Washakie, himself, was born into the Flathead tribe. Washakie's Flathead father was killed by the Blackfoot, and his mother sought refuge with the Lemhi River Shoshone of Idaho. He eventually gained renown in the Green and Bear River country as a warrior and attained his final position as a successful mediator with the whites. ”

“ I asked Washakie if he thought that there was any real danger of the Crows coming to attack us. He said that he did not think they would come to fight us in this place, but that they might try to steal our horses, or even attack small bands of our Indians if they ran on to them away from camp.
Every once in a while after that we would have a Crow scare. If the Indians saw a cloud of dust, they thought the Crows were after them. They acted like a band of sheep that had been run by coyotes. Every little thing would scare them. ”

“ Lander recognized the affinity between the areas, although he distinguished Washakie's Eastern Shoshone from the Utah residents on the basis of their respective relations with the whites (Lander, 1860, pp. 122-123) :
The Salt Lake Diggers intermarry with the Eastern Snakes and are on good terms with them.
Among these Indians [the "Salt Lake Diggers"] are some of the worst in the mountains. Washakie will not permit a horse thief or vagabond to remain in his band, but many of the Mormon Indians go about the country with minor chiefs calling themselves Eastern Snakes. ”

“ Much of his strength derived from recognition by the whites, and the government officials made every effort to bolster Washakie's prestige actively. Lander, for example, urged: "Any steps which could be taken to augment the power of Washakee, who is perfectly safe in his attachment to the Americans and northern mountaineers, would also prove beneficial" (Lander, 1860, p. 123) . Also, Agent Mann reported in 1868 the deviation of many Shoshone from Washakie's leadership in the following terms (1869, p. 618) :
This diminution of his strength is not satisfactory to Washakie ”

“ This situation grew worse shortly after the treaty. Mann reported in 1869 (1870, p. 716) : "A strong party is now separated from Washakie, and under the leadership of a half-breed, who has always sustained a good character, but who is, nevertheless, crafty and somewhat ambitious." Mann's successor. Captain J. H. Patterson, said in the same year. (Patterson, 1870, p. 717) :
Washakie, the head chief, is rapidly losing his influence in the tribe, though he has yet the larger band under his immediate command ”

“ Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small pony, or a squaw and pappoose—a bundle of parti-colored rags. ”

“ Six or eight Indians kept riding back and forth along our line to keep the squaws and pack horses from getting scattered.
Pretty soon we stopped again and the War Chief ordered us to camp there for the night. “We know now,” he said, “that we must fight or go back, and we have gone back so much that the Crows begin to think we are afraid of them. I feel that we ought to give them a lesson this time that they will not forget soon.”
“That is the way I look at it,” said Washakie. “Now is the time to show them that we will fight for our rights.” ”

“ We had twenty pack horses for our own family, loaded with buffalo robes, elk and deer skins, and our camp outfit. Washakie had a fine big tepee of elk hides made so it would shed rain. It could be divided in two parts. Sometimes if we were going to stop just one night, we would put up only half of it; but if we made a longer camp, we would set up the whole wigwam. ”

“ Washakie said that the Crows had gone into the thick timber from which he could not get them out, but that there were not many of them left anyhow. Our men brought in a very large band of Crows’ horses and saddles and when they were unpacked I never before saw such a pile of buffalo robes, blankets, bows and [95] arrows, and guns. The next morning we all started out for the battle ground to bury our dead and oh, what a sight! There were Indians scattered everywhere all over the battle field. The squaws and papooses wailed pitifully when they saw their dead Indians lying around. ”

“ About two hundred and fifty horses were captured from the Crows. Thirty-one Indians on our side had been killed and about one hundred wounded. Eighteen of these afterwards died from their wounds, making forty-nine in all we lost in that terrible fight. The Crows had suffered far worse than we did. The men sent out [96] by Washakie to count the killed came back and reported that they had found one hundred and three dead Crows. Washakie thought this number would be increased greatly by those that died from their wounds. ”

“ At that instant the war-bonneted Indians, superbly mounted, delivered an overwhelming onslaught on the left flank of the line. The men, deprived of their leader, for a time gave back. The Indians actually galloped over the prostrate figure of the brave soldier. Fortunately, he was not struck by the hoofs of any of the horses. A determined stand by Chief Washakie, of the friendly Shoshones, our Indian allies in that battle, who with two or three of his braves fought desperately over Henry’s body, prevented him from being scalped and killed. ”

“ THE morning after the council, Chief Washakie asked us where we were going to from his camp. We said we wished to go to White Man's Child's camp of Shoshones. Said he, "Maybe that is good, maybe not. I don't know. I hear there are bad men over there. I don't know." As there was no trail leading to that camp, we asked him to send a guide with us. He replied, "Maybe one go." Our horses having been brought up, we saddled them, and after a good friendly shake of the hand of the chief and of some of his council, we started to the southeast, with a young brave on the lead. ”

“ I said, “my people do not want to fight the Indians; and besides, if my father had been coming [116] after me he would have come long before this. I don’t believe one word of it.”
Washakie was of the same opinion as I was.
Then one of Pocatello’s Indians said he had just come from Salt Lake City and many people there had asked him whether he knew anything about the boy that had been stolen from the whites. He said that all through the white men’s towns they were getting ready to fight, and he knew that they were coming to get me. ”

“ The Indians, however, gathered up all their horses and stayed around them all night. Mother, Hanabi, and I went down to the river about a mile away to hide among the willows and trees with seven or eight hundred other squaws and papooses. They made such a racket with their excited talking and crying that no one could sleep. All of them expected to be killed before morning.
But morning came and no Crows. The Indians were mad as hornets, or at least they acted that way. Washakie sent out some men to where the guard said he saw the Crows. ”

“ Washakie had disposed of his robes and skins at a good price, and he had sold the two horses, so he came back pretty well outfitted for the winter. He had twenty-four blankets, a lot of calico, some red flannel for the tongues of moccasins, some underclothing for me, and about a peck of beads of all colors and sizes. The beads were to swap for tanned buckskin, and the blankets for buffalo robes. He brought me a butcher knife, a new bridle, two pounds of candy, and a lot of fishhooks. I felt “heap rich” and very happy. ”

“ The sick Indians had a hard time while we were on the move, but I stood the trip very well. After staying in our new camp for four days, we packed up again and started for the place where we were to meet Washakie. That was five days’ travel away. We could not travel very fast on account of the sick Indians and we could not get a very early start because of having so many horses to pack, so it seemed a very long journey. ”

“ In the grave with my dear old mother they placed the beaded and tasseled quiver she had made of the skin of the antelope I had killed, the auger I had sent to Salt Lake for, and other things of mine she had kept after I went away. There are those who think an Indian has no heart. This dear old woman certainly had one that was tender and true. Her soul was good and pure. Peace to her memory.
[196]
Washakie’s wife Hanabi was another good woman. She, too, had died before I returned to the Indians. Her little girl papoose, the baby when I was with them, grew up, I have been told, and married. ”

“ Where thousands of the Indians once roamed free, only a scattered few remain. The old friends of my boyhood days with Washakie have almost entirely passed away. Only once in a great while do I find one who remembers Yagaki, the little boy who once lived with their old chief’s mother. But when I do happen to meet one—as I did last year when I found Hans, a wealthy Indian, who lives now on his ranch at the Big Bend in Portneuf Canyon—then we have a good time, I tell you, recalling the days of long ago when Uncle Nick was among the Shoshones. ”

“ She said she had fifteen head of horses of her own. When she died she wanted Washakie and me to divide them between us. She also wanted me, when she died, to bury her as the white folks bury their dead, as she thought that way was the best.
She certainly was good to me, watching me night and day and doing everything she could for my comfort, and I tried to be good and kind to her in return, but sometimes, boylike, I forgot. One night I was playing with the Indian boys. Our game was killing white men. With [43] our bows and arrows, we would slip up to the bunches of brush and shoot at them. ”

“ This reputation was well deserved, for the wagon route through southwestern Wyoming was made quite safe for the emigrants through his efforts. Furthermore, hostile, predatory bands never developed among the Eastern Shoshone as they did among the Shoshone and Paiute to the west. In a report dated February, 1860, Lander observed (1860, p. 121) : "No instance is on record of the Eastern Snakes having committed outrages upon the whites." We obtain a fuller description of Washakie in the same report (p. 122) .
Wash-ikeek, the principal Chief of the tribe, is half Flathead. ”

“ He was a hard worker. I had never done much work and it went rather hard with me. Riding horses, I thought, was more fun than slaving on the farm, so I decided to go to Mr. Faust’s ranch and help him break his bronchos. After that I intended to go back to live with Washakie.
Mr. Faust lived at the south end of Rush Valley, about sixty miles southwest of Salt Lake. When I got to his ranch he was very glad to see me.
“We will have that old outlaw of a horse brought to [136] time now,” he said to his other riders. “Here is the boy that can ride him.” ”

“ I thought something was up, because small bands of Indians kept joining us, until we had gathered about seven hundred warriors. We sent all of our surplus horses down the Snake River with Indians to guard them until we came back. Washakie and mother kept fifteen head for pack horses, and I kept two horses to ride. After the extra horses and packs had gone, we started for the disputed hunting grounds.
The men all went out ahead, followed by the pack horses, with the women and children and old men in the rear. ”

“ I have seen other fights between the whites and the Indians, but I never have seen greater bravery displayed than was shown by our Indians in this fierce battle with the Crows.
We had to stay in this place about three weeks to give our wounded warriors a chance to get well. When we could move them, it was too late to go the grounds that Washakie had planned, so we began to get ready for winter. Our camp was moved over on the Angitapa (Rock Creek) , and the hunters began to kill buffaloes while the squaws dried the meat. There were a good many widows and orphans now to take care of. ”

“ With that she grabbed me by the collar and jerked me toward the tepee. I begged and promised, but she kept me going till she got me inside; then she flung me down on a pile of blankets.
“Washakie,” she said, “you must do something with this boy. He won’t mind me.” With that she left the tent and I heard her crying outside.
The chief looked at me a minute, then he said quietly: “What is the trouble between you and mother?”
“Well, she won’t let me play,” I said; “she makes me come in every night before dark. The other boys stay out; I don’t see why I can’t.”
“Mother knows why,” he said. ”