Friday, Aug. 9.—Sunrise. Across the desert, 45 miles, and at the commencement of the “little Desert.” 2 o’clock, across the little desert, 23 miles, [approx 20 miles between Simpson's Springs and Dugway] and 163 miles from Salt Lake, being 68 miles across the two deserts, with only a spring at Fish Creek Station to separate them. [Willow Creek on the western side] They are called deserts because there is no water in them. They are barren, but so is the balance of the route. (Orion)
The travelers arrived at Willow Springs Station at 2 p.m. on 9 August, having taken twenty-two hours to traverse some sixty-eight miles along the southern edge of the vast Great Salt Lake Desert (supplement A, item 1; Root and Connelley, 103).
See Burton To Willow Creek. 30th September. and To Deep Creek and halt. 1st and 2d of October, 1860.
Burton: En route again. 3D October.
Burton: To the Wilderness. 4Th October.
Saturday, Aug 10. Arrived in the forenoon at the entrance of “Rocky Canon,” 255 miles from Salt Lake City. [Egan's Canyon] (Orion)
[Possibly the most illuminating example of Samuel Clemens’ racism.]
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 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 take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa.
—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.
[An attempt to find humor in racism]
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.
Burton: To "Robber's Roost.” 5th October.
For an objective description of the "Goshoots" and other groups associated with Utes, see Burton's The Yutes.
The Yuta claim, like the Shoshonee, descent from an ancient people that immigrated into their present seats from the northwest. During the last thirty years they have considerably decreased according to the mountaineers, and have been demoralized mentally and physically by the emigrants: formerly they were friendly, now they are often at war with the intruders. As in Australia, arsenic and corrosive sublimate in springs and provisions have diminished their number. [Page 474]
Shortly after his arrival in the territory he wrote a long letter to his mother, describing the Washoes, Pi-Utes, and Shoshones living in the vicinity. “If you want a full and correct account of those lovely Indians,” he wrote, “not gleaned from Cooper's novels . . . but the result of personal observation . . . you will find that on that subject I am a fund of useful information . . .”1 While the letter is obviously intended to be humorous there is but little doubt that his observations are approximately accurate. He notes their childish ignorance and vanity, their personal filth, their unashamed begging, and love of gambling. Their poverty is implied but not raised into particular prominence. Nothing is said to indicate that they are treacherous or unusually depraved. They are presented chiefly as harmless savages, interesting as curiosities to the traveler.
So far as the writer knows, Mark Twain said nothing for publication about Indians during the entire period of his residence in the West. In 1872, however, after his return East in 1867, he offered in his novel "Roughing It" what purported to be serious appraisal of Indians, especially those he had encountered on his trip to Carson City in 1861, The Indians he presents are the Goshoots, a tribe related to the Utes.
In considering Mark Twain's appraisal of Indians in “Roughing It,” two things should be noted: (1) that the many characteristics which he ascribes to the Goshoots are generalized as true of all Indians; and (2) that he is reporting more about the Goshoots than he could possibly have observed of them while passing through their country in a stage-coach. In view of his harsh and sweeping condemnation of Indians on such passing acquaintance, it is fair to question his competence to judge. How well, at first hand, did he know Indians, and was he reporting the character and conditions of Nevada Indians in the decade of 1860-1870 or was he reflecting certain popular conceptions with regard to them that had sprung up in the early days of settlement of the territory?
Whatever the truth may have been about the extraordinary meanness and vileness of the Goshoots in the years preceding Mark Twain's arrival in Nevada Territory, later reports are distinctly more favorable and go into causes of the difficulties which Nevada Indians faced. In his annual report for 1863-1864 the Indian Agent for the Territory described the Goshoots as “peaceable and loyal, striving to obtain their living by tilling the soil and laboring for the whites whenever an opportunity presents, and, producing almost entirely their own living, receive comparatively little help from government appropriation - I am satisfied, also, that not half the depredations committed are the work of the Goshee Utes, although they have the name and blame.”
Lorch, Fred W. Mark Twain's Early Views on Western Indians, The Twainian April 1945 Volume 4 Number 7