POCATELLO, THE CHIEF

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The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger.

––Milton.

Fort Hall Reservation, until 1902, embraced a large territory of which Pocatello was the center. These Idaho red people are the remnants of the once powerful tribes of the Bannocks and Shoshones, which ranged from the Blue Mountains in Oregon to the backbone of the Rocky Mountains. The compressing processes used by the aggressive white people have encircled, curtailed, and squeezed their borders so that now they are centered at Fort Hall, half way between Pocatello and Blackfoot. Here the government has a school for them, and the Protestant Episcopal Church a mission.

Pocatello is named for a wily old chief of that name, who became an outlaw to be reckoned with. He once led a cavalcade of his sanguinary followers against the 68 newly made non-Mormon town of Corinne, Utah; but a Mormon who had been notified of the proposed massacre, by a coreligionist, likewise told a friend among the Gentiles, and a precautionary counter plan was formulated. Nothing more came of it than an evening visit from Brigham Young and his staff, who, as reported, pronounced and prophesied an awful and exterminating curse upon the town and people. However, because of the warning, his curses went elsewhere.

Until recently there lived in the region of the city of Pocatello an old squaw-man (white man with an Indian wife). His home was within the borders of the reservation, and he had been there since before the time when the boundary line between the United States and England (Canada) was settled. The old man was called “Doc,” and once when visiting him I said, “Tell me about old Pocatello, Doc, and what became of him.”

The old man, half reclining on the pile of household debris in one corner of his shanty, permitted me to sit by the door––for there were no chairs in the place. The 69 four corners were occupied as follows: in one were his saddle and accouterments for range work; in another the accumulation of rags and blankets on which he slept (for he lived alone now, the wife being dead); in another was his little stove, and the last held the door where I sat. The air was fresher there, I thought. The veteran of eighty or more years, bronzed by the winds and roughened by the sweeping sands of the desert, lighted his pipe and said: “It war in the days o’ them freighters who operated ’tween Corinne an’ Virginny City when Alder Gulch was a-goin’ chock full o’ business. The Forwardin’ Company hed a mighty big lot o’ rollin’ stock an’ hosses to keep the traffic up. The hull kentry was Injun from put-ni’ Corinne to that there Montanny town. The Bear Rivers an’ the Fort Hall tribes, the Bannocks an’ the Blackfeet uste to make life anything but a Fourth-o’-July picnic fer them fellers an’ their drivers. Right h’yur was the natterelest campin’ place fer the Company, or, ruther, a natterel spot fer the stage-station, where they could git the stock fresh an’ new an’ go on, as they hed 70 to do, night an’ day, so’s to keep business a-movin’, ye see. Fer ’twas a mighty long rout fer passengers.

“Now, Pocatello an’ his bunch o’ red devils got into the habit o’ runnin’ off the stock, an’ sometimes the Company’d haf to wait half a day to git enough teams to go on north; or to wait till the fagged ones’d git a little rest an’ then push on wi’ the same ones. Mr. Salisbury, of Salt Lake, was the head o’ the Forwardin’ Company, an’ he an’ his people got mighty all-fired tired o’ that sort o’ business. Hosses was dear them days, but Injuns was cheap; so he told a lot o’ us’ns he’d like tarnation well if this sort o’ thing’d stop kind o’ sudden like; an’ we planned it might be done jist that way too.

“We kind o’ laid low, an’ nothin’ happened fer quite a while; but one night a fine bunch o’ hosses was run off jist when they’s a big lot o’ treasure goin’ over the line, an’ the management was sure mad. They told us ’uns agin somethin’ had to be done, an’ despert quick this time. So we got busy. We begun to round ol’ Pocatello up, an’ he seemed to smell a rat or somethin’ 71 wuss, an’ started up Pocatello Crick yander, that there caÑon, see? He went almighty fast too when he got started; so did we, now I tell you, an’ we jist kep’ a-foller’n’, an’ foller’n’, an’ foller’n’, we did––a hull lot ov us––an’––an’––an’ Pocatello never come back.”

Then the old squaw-man tapped the ashes from his pipe, and rising said, “Well, I guess I’ll cinch up the cayuse an’ ride some this a’ternoon.”


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