13–19 December 1862
The text of “The Pah-Utes,” reprinted from the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, survives in the Marysville (Calif.) Appeal for 21 December 1862. It recorded Clemens' fanciful greeting to the Pi-Utes, a newly formed organization of Nevada pioneers limited to those who had come before the mining rush of May 1860.1 The Appeal prefaced its extract as follows: “The old citizens of Nevada Territory are getting up a Pioneer Association, to be called the ‘Pah-Utes.’ The Carson correspondent of the Virginia City Enterprise, thus moralizes thereupon.” Clemens was the Enterprise correspondent in Carson City, where he was covering the sessions of the second Territorial Legislature of Nevada, which met from 11 November through 20 December 1862. His surviving Enterprise letters from that period through 1863 reveal his familiarity with the Pi-Utes.2 And in one letter, dated 12 December 1863 and signed “Mark Twain,” he echoed his final comment below by referring to himself as a relative newcomer: “only an ignorant half-breed” as compared to “a blooded Pi-Ute.”3
Ah, well—it is touching to see these knotty and rugged old pioneers—who have beheld Nevada in her infancy, and toiled through her virgin sands unmolested by toll-keepers; and prospected her unsmiling hills, and knocked at the doors of her sealed treasure vaults; and camped with her horned-toads, and tarantulas and lizards, under her inhospitable sage brushⒶtextual note Ⓐemendation; and smoked the same pipe; and imbibed lightning out of the same bottle; and eaten their regular bacon and beans from the same pot; and lain down to their rest under the same blanket—happy, and lousy and contented—yea, happier and lousier and more contented than they are this day, or may be in the days that are to come; it is touching, I say, to see these weather-beaten and blasted old patriarchs banding together like a decaying tribe, for the sake of the privations they have undergone, and the dangers they have met—to rehearse the deeds of the hoary past, and rescue its traditions from oblivion! The Pah-Ute Association will become a high and honorable order in the land—its certificate of membership a patent of nobility. I extend unto the fraternity the right hand of a poor but honest half-breed,Ⓐtextual note Ⓐemendation and say God speed your sacred enterprise.
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, sometime between 13 and 19 December 1862, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, the Marysville (Calif.) Appeal for 21 December 1862 (p. 2), which is copy-text. Copy: PH from Bancroft.