[begin page 126]
CHAPTER 19
On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the
entrance of Rocky CañonⒶ, 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
[begin page 127] 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 jackass 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
whisky
Ⓐ 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, whichever 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 [begin page 128] 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 [begin page 129] 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 employés 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.
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 19
Ⓔ Rocky Cañon, two
hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake] Mark Twain’s source for this identification
was undoubtedly Orion’s
journal entry of 10 August, but the forbidding canyon located at this point of the
overland route was actually named Egan Canyon.
Situated between “steep high rugged mountains,” Egan Canyon had been the site of more
than one attack by Goshute Indians (
Mason, 51–53, 60–62;
supplement A, item 1;
Burton, 617; see
supplement B, map 1C).
Ⓔ the wretchedest type of
mankind I have ever seen, . . . the Goshoot Indians] This small tribe—whose name is
now more commonly
spelled “Goshute” (from the Indian word for “parched or dry earth” plus the suffix
“ute”)—were members of the Shoshoni family. They inhabited northwestern Utah and eastern
Nevada, numbering fewer
than five hundred by the 1870s (
Hodge, 1:496–97; see also the note at
128.19–129.12).
Ⓔ the despised Digger Indians of
California] The name “Digger” was originally applied to one Paiute tribe, which alone
among the Paiutes practiced
agriculture.
In time it came to refer instead to numerous root-eating Paiute tribes inhabiting
several western states, including California, Nevada, and Utah; “as the root-eaters
were supposed to represent a low type of
Indian, the term speedily became one of opprob
rium” (
Hodge,
1:390).
Ⓔ Wood’s
“Uncivilized Races of Men” . . . Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa] In the fall
of 1870, when
beginning work on
Roughing It, Mark Twain asked Elisha Bliss to send him a copy of John George Wood’s
two-volume work,
The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man,
first
published in London in 1868–70 and reissued by the American Publishing Company in
1870 (SLC to Bliss, 29 Oct 70,
Daley). Mark Twain’s own copy of the book, presumably the one Bliss sent him, survives
with his marginalia sprinkled throughout (
NvU); it contains no holograph comments,
however, about the tribes he lists here. Wood, an “armchair” naturalist who compiled
his book without leaving England,
included articles—often contemptuously critical—on the Fuegians, Hottentots, Kytch,
and Bushmen (as well as many
others), but did not mention the Goshutes or Diggers in his brief article on the Indians
of North America. Wood’s conclusions
were somewhat at
[begin page 606] variance with Mark Twain’s: he seems to have found the Fuegians and the Kytch
even more “degraded” than the Bushmen (
John George Wood, 1:269, 485, 2:514,
515).
Ⓔ
like all the other
“Noble Red Men” . . . thinking whisky is referred to] The concept of the “Noble Red
Man” has been traced at least as far back as the work of John Dryden, who wrote of
“the noble savage” uncorrupted
by “the base laws of servitude” (The Conquest of Granada [1670], act 1, scene 1);
Mark Twain was most familiar with its embodiment in James Fenimore Cooper’s Indian
heroes
(see the note at 128.19–129.12). In describing the Goshutes he may have recalled a
passage in Beyond the
Mississippi in which Richardson expressed similar sentiments:
Near a little
road-side grocery, supported by a post and flanked by an empty cask, stood a Noble
Red Man. Indifferent to his tattered clothing,
which afforded no protection from the sharp, wintry nights—with his long black locks
flying in the wind—his whole soul
was wrapped in a whisky bottle. He regarded it with a fixed stare, in which satisfaction
at the quality of its contents and pensive
regret at their diminishing quantity were ludicrously blended. Mr. Cooper died too
early. I think one glimpse of this Aboriginal would have saved his pen much labor, and early American literature many
Indian heroes. (Richardson, 512)
Ⓔ whichever animal-Adam
the Darwinians trace them to] Mark Twain was no doubt referring to Charles Darwin’s
most recent work,
The Descent of Man, volume 1 of which was published in the United States in mid-February 1871, and volume
2 in late March (D.
Appleton and Co.).
Clemens purchased and read at least the first volume (his copy is in
CU-MARK)—probably by early April, when he evidently revised this chapter, and certainly
no later than 2 July, when he wrote to Jim Gillis (see the note at 412.1–3), “Say,
old philosopher, would you like to
read Darwin? If you would, let me know, & I will get the books & forward them to you”
(SLC to Gillis,
PH in
CU-MARK, courtesy of
CCamarSJ; New York
Tribune: “New Publications,” 10 Feb
71, 6, and “Books of the Week,” 25 Mar 71, 6).
Ⓔ they attacked the
stage-coach . . . the soldierly driver was dead] This is an essentially accurate account
of the start of the
Goshute War of 1863, which began on 22 March of that year and concluded in October
when the Indians sued for peace.
(Mark Twain’s version differs from contemporary newspaper reports only in its failure
to mention three other
passengers—an old man, who was wounded and recovered, and his two little sons.) The
attack occurred near Eight Mile Station,
which in 1863 was in western Utah but is now in eastern Nevada (
Angel, 180–83;
“More Indian Difficulties,” Salt Lake City
Deseret News, 25 Mar 63, 312; “The Attack on
the Overland Stage,” Sacramento
Union, 31 Mar 63, 3, reprinting the Virginia City
Union of 28 March).
Ⓔ
[begin page 607] Judge Mott] Gordon Newell Mott (1812–87) was born in Ohio and practiced law in California
before moving to Nevada
Territory in 1861.
From 1861 to 1863 he served as judge of the district comprising Lake, Storey,
and Washoe counties, and as associate justice of the territorial supreme court. In
1863–64 he was a territorial representative
to the United States Congress (
BDUSC
, 1544;
Kelly 1862, 10;
Kelly 1863, 9).
Ⓔ a disciple of
Cooper . . . over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine
of romance] Mark
Twain’s disdain for the idealized image of the American Indian—especially as found
in James Fenimore Cooper’s
Leather-Stocking Tales
(of which
The Last of the Mohicans
[1826] was the second)—is evident as early as 25 June 1862 in a letter published in
the Keokuk
Gate City (
SLC 1862b) and as late as 1884 in the unfinished tale “Huck Finn
and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” (
SLC 1884b). See, for example, his remarks in an
1867 letter to the San Francisco
Alta California (
SLC 1867j); in
“A Day at Niagara,” an August 1869 Buffalo
Express contribution (
SLC 1869e); and in “The Noble Red Man,” a piece in the September 1870
Galaxy
(
SLC 1870j). For analyses of Mark Twain’s treatment of this subject see
Denton,
Harris,
Lorch 1945, and
McNutt.
Ⓔ Emerson Bennett’s
works] Bennett (1822–1905) wrote melodramatic adventure fiction, much of it set on
the frontier. Two such novels of his,
both published in 1849, sold a hundred thousand copies each:
The Prairie Flower and its sequel,
Leni-Leoti.
Ⓔ studying frontier life
at the Bowery Theatre] Since its construction in 1826 on the west side of the Bowery
just below Canal Street, this theater had
been quite popular for productions of all types; it specialized, however, in melodramas
and thrillers, some of which were dramatized
versions of dime novels by authors like Bennett (
King, 578;
Odell, 7:224–27).
Ⓔ the Baltimore and
Washington Railroad Company . . . are Goshoots] The specific reason for Mark Twain’s
grievance against
this railroad, the Washington branch line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, is not
now known.
