The White Indian Boy (1910)

This book has long been a favorite for excitement and early frontier life in the west. Elijah Nicholas Wilson, referred to throughout his Introduction as "Uncle Nick," was a boy living in Grantsville, Utah, when he left home in 1856 at the age of eleven to live with the Shoshone Indians. In his Preface the author writes: "I am one of the early settlers of the Rocky Mountains, and I have passed through some of the most heartrending experiences that have ever been described. "I have had many narrow escapes from being killed. I have had my friends shot down by my side, and I have been badly wounded twice. "I was one of the first pony express riders and stage drivers of the early days, and I have seen some terrible things committed by the low-down Gosiute Indians of Utah and Nevada. "Many a poor boy has been shot from his horse when carring the express. The stations have been burned and the hostlers killed and scalped. This kind of thing happened very often during a period of about two years. "The Humboldt Indians were considered the most cruel and bloodthirsty Indians of those days. Pocatello was the name of their chief, and in after years I got very well acquainted with him. His small band of about five hundred warriors would attack small trains of emigrants, capture the people, tie them down, and burn their eyes out with red hot irons, cut their ears off, and thus torture them until they died. I have not the language to describe these terrible and bloody crimes, but what I do say shall be the truth, and any of the old timers will bear me out in what I say." 247 pages