On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we
arrived at the entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty
miles from Salt Lake. It was along in this wild country
somewhere, and far from any habitation of white men, except the
stage stations, that we came across the wretchedest type of
mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I refer to the
Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could learn,
they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger
Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our
continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to
the Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the
Kytches of Africa. Indeed, I have been obliged to look the bulky
volumes of Wood’s “Uncivilized Races of Men” clear through in
order to find a savage tribe degraded enough to take rank with
the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that shameful
verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Such of
the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the
stations, were small, lean, “scrawny” creatures; in complexion a
dull black like the ordinary American negro; their faces and
hands bearing dirt which they had been hoarding and accumulating
for months, years, and even generations, according to the age of
the proprietor; a silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race;
taking note of everything, covertly, like all the other “Noble
Red Men” that we (do not) read about, and betraying no sign in
their countenances; indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless,
like all other Indians; prideless beggars—for if the beggar
instinct were left out of an Indian he would not “go,” any more
than a clock without a pendulum; hungry, always hungry, and yet
never refusing anything that a hog would eat, though often eating
what a hog would decline; hunters, but having no higher ambition
than to kill and eat jack-ass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers,
and embezzle carrion from the buzzards and cayotes; savages who,
when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great
Spirit show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking
whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race of almost naked
black children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing at all,
and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictly
defined tribal communities—a people whose only shelter is a rag
cast on a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who
inhabit one of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our
country or any other can exhibit.
The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the
self-same gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever
animal—Adam the Darwinians trace them to.
One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots,
and yet they used to live off the offal and refuse of the
stations a few months and then come some dark night when no
mischief was expected, and burn down the buildings and kill the
men from ambush as they rushed out. And once, in the night, they
attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge, of Nevada
Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley of
arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains,
wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The
latter was full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the
driver’s call Judge Mott swung himself out, clambered to the box
and seized the reins of the team, and away they plunged, through
the racing mob of skeletons and under a hurtling storm of
missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the boot as soon
as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he would
manage to keep hold of them until relieved.
And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with
his head between Judge Mott’s feet, and tranquilly gave
directions about the road; he said he believed he could live till
the miscreants were outrun and left behind, and that if he
managed that, the main difficulty would be at an end, and then if
the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about bad places in
the road, and general course) he would reach the next station
without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last
rattled up to the station and knew that the night’s perils were
done; but there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with,
for the soldierly driver was dead.
Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the
Overland drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a
disciple of Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man—even of the
scholarly savages in the “Last of the Mohicans” who are fittingly
associated with backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two
equal parts: one part critically grammatical, refined and choice
of language, and the other part just such an attempt to talk like
a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk might make after
eating an edition of Emerson Bennett’s works and studying
frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks—I say that
the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set
me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been
over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow
moonshine of romance. The revelations that came were
disenchanting. It was curious to see how quickly the paint and
tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy and
repulsive—and how quickly the evidences accumulated that
wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots
more or less modified by circumstances and surroundings—but
Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they
can have mine—at this distance. Nearer by, they never get
anybody’s.
There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and
Washington Railroad Company and many of its employees are
Goshoots; but it is an error. There is only a plausible
resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to mislead the
ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both
tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong
to start the report referred to above; for however innocent the
motive may have been, the necessary effect was to injure the
reputation of a class who have a hard enough time of it in the
pitiless deserts of the Rocky Mountains, Heaven knows! If we
cannot find it in our hearts to give those poor naked creatures
our Christian sympathy and compassion, in God’s name let us at
least not throw mud at them.
