19. CHAPTER XIX.
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
manking 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 trival 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 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.