Roughing It
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.
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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 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.
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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.
CHAPTER XX.
On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet
seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon
its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.
On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-
constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his Excellency
Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles).
On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert—forty
memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk
from six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across.
That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long
and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert
to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It
would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the
forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one
prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting
wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw
log-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to reach across any State
in the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of the
fearful suffering and privation the early emigrants to California
endured?
At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The “Sink” of the
Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred
miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost—sinks
mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun
again—for the lake has no outlet whatever.
There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious
fate. They end in various lakes or “sinks,” and that is the last of
them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all great
sheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing into
them; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain always
level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with their
surplus is only known to the Creator.
On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. It
consisted of one log house and is not set down on the map.
This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on the
Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:
“I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean
through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and
begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was
awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get
you there on time’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
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A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads,
and he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings.
He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the
affairs of Colorado. By and by he remarked:
“I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean
through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and
begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was
awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get
you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalry
sergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man
during the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and
well-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the
desolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with
everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior
rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened
to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of trans-
continental travel, and presently said:
“I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean
through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and
begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was
awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get
you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got
in with us at a way station—a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one
whom any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the