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Show I THE HISTORYBLAZER I ,\ E1\ 5 OF mA H'S PAST FROAI TI! E Utah State IIistorical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake Civ: VT 84101 ( 801) 333- 8300 FAX ( 801) 533- 3503 " Uncle Nick" Wilson's Adventures Filled a Book! ELUANHI CHOLA" SU NCLE NICK" W ILSONL ED- A COLORFUL LIFE encompassing many of the major events and themes of western history. He helped to pioneer Utah, lived among the Shoshones as an adopted son, rode with the Pony Express, fought Indians, robbers, and rustlers, and founded a town in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His vivid stories enthralled his guests, SO he told of his life in a book first published in 1910. After his death a revised edition was published in New York- me Wite Indian Boy: Xhe Story of Uncle Nick Among the Shoshones. Nick Wilson wrote that he was born in Illinois in 1842 and migrated with his family to Grantsville, Utah, in 1850. Grantsville, Tooele County, was frequently troubled with raids by the local Gosiute Indians, and Wilson remembered having to seek shelter in the settlement's fort on many occasions. Wilson' s father, however, befriended the Gosiute elder Tabby whose friendship would help young Nick during his Pony Express tour. Nick learned to speak the Gosiute language during long hours spent guarding his family's sheep in company with an Indian boy named Pantsuk. After Pantsuk died, the lonely Nick was befriended by a group of Shoshones who promised the boy a fine pinto pony if he joined them. Nick was willing, so in August 1856 he rode off with the Shoshones. Nick spent roughly the next two years with the Indians, traveling with them in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as they made seasonal migrations to their hunting grounds. Nick was adopted by the Shoshone chief Washakie as his brother and was called Yugaik-" the cri-ern- because he could imitate Indian babies. The boy became devoted to his Indian mother and often helped her with her chores. This behavior, and indeed Nick's very presence in the tribe, caused some problems: He was taunted by Indian boys for doing " women's work," and the elders worried that the whites would attack the tribe to retrieve the lost boy. Eventually, the tribe decided that Nick must return to his family, despite his desire to remain with Washakie and his mother. Because of his expertise in riding and breaking horses, Nick was hired as a Pony Express rider in the fall of 1860. He experienced a number of close shaves during bad weather and with Indians and once received a nearly fatal arrow wound two inches above his left eye. In his book Nick differentiates between " good Indians," like Washakie and his mother, and those who were " a treacherous and revengeful people," like Pocatello and those who attacked the Pony Express. When the brief Pony Express era ended, Nick found work as an Overland Stage driver and a freighter in Utah and Nevada. In the 1860s he moved to Idaho, earning a living as a fur trapper, sometimes in partnership with Indians. He drove a wagon over treacherous Teton Pass in 1888, settling in the Jackson Hole area and founding the town of Wilson which still bears his name. ( more) " Uncle Nick" became a favorite local personality, and his boyhood friend Washakie often visited him. " Uncle Nickn died in Wilson on December 26, 1915. For more information see 7he White Indiart Boy: ? he Story of Uncle Nick among the Shoshones ( 19 19), revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs; and Kate B. Carter, Utah and the Pony Express ( 1960). THEH ISTORBYLA ZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more infomation about the Historical Society telephone 533- 3500. |
