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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY number of his warriors” on May 7.17 The interim agent, S. E. Marshall, took his sworn statement, which both the young man and his father signed, then turned the pair loose. Hashkéneinii Biye’ began his version of the events with his illness and his friends “singing over me all night to make me well.” Tired from the ceremony, he and his wife were returning that morning when they encountered the two Americans. Husband and wife received tobacco, offered to sell some mutton to the men, and then went home. The next morning, Hashkéneinii Biye’ traveled to the prospectors’ camp, watched them eat breakfast and then inhospitably give the leftovers to their dog, and waited for McNally to retrieve his horses. Hashkéneinii Biye’ told Slim Man to tell the white man where the animals were, but twice Slim Man refused. Walcott took out a pair of binoculars and let Hashkéneinii Biye’ look through them, but denied Slim Man the opportunity. Man with White Horses’s son went to look at the rifle on the ground; this angered the white man, so he chased after the boy with an ax but never caught him. Next, Walcott went after Slim Man, who sat by the fire. Fortunately, according to his account, Hashkéneinii Biye’ wrestled the ax out of the white man’s hand. The Navajo “hit him on the back of his head—not very hard, but just enough to knock him down. When the American fell I was very much frightened and threw the ax away.” Slim Man searched the prospector for things he might like, but as the victim gained consciousness, Slim Man took the ax and with three or four swings killed Walcott. At this point Little Mustache arrived, and in answer to his question of what happened, Slim Man pointed to Hashkéneinii Biye’ and said, “My brother. I would be dead now if it was not for this man—he saved my life. The American was just about to hit me with the ax when he stopped it.” Twice later, Slim Man begged Hashkéneinii Biye’ not to tell what he had done: “Dear brother [do] not give [me] away and tell that [I] killed the old American as he was not hurt badly when [I] took the ax and killed him.” Slim Man also purportedly attacked McNally, trying to fire his pistol three times without success; he later assisted the others in the multi-pronged attack against the barricaded miner. Slim Man did not finally kill McNally, according to Hashkéneinii Biye’, but he certainly joined the party that searched for the miner. Whether this reversed story had any impact on subsequent events remains unclear, but Hashkéneinii Biye’ was not arrested during his trip to Fort Defiance. Word of the incident eventually filtered back East, where friends and relatives of the murdered men demanded an investigation and some type of justice. Fred Fickey, an insurance adjuster and friend from Walcott’s hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote a number of letters to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Secretary of the Interior, and military 17 Hashkéneinii Biye’, Statement, May 7, 1884, Charles Kelly Papers, Utah State Historical Society (USHS), Salt Lake City, Utah. 258 |
