Among The Shoshones

Wilson, Elijah Nicholas

History

Franklin Classics

The White Indian Boy: The Story of Uncle Nick Among The Shoshones

Driggs, Howard R. 1873-1963

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The White Indian Boy: The Story of Uncle Nick Among the Shoshones

At age 12 Elijah Nicholas Wilson ran away from his family. Fighting off the constraints of his Mormon upbringing he found a new home with a Shoshone Indian tribe. Under their guidance, particularly of the Great Chief Washakie, he learned how to live and survive in the wild lands of the far west. When Elijah turned fourteen, to prevent reprisals against his tribe for his 'abduction,' he returned to his white family. He then worked as a Pony Express rider, stagecoach driver, trapper, translator, hostler, Indian agent, and whatever else was required to support himself and his family.Elijah Wilson was known as 'Yagaiki' when among the Shoshones, and in his later years as Uncle Nick when entertaining young children with his adventurous exploits. The White Indian Boy is his story.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

lulu.com

First published in 1910, The White Indian Boy quickly became a western classic. Readers fascinated by real-life 'cowboys and Indians' thrilled to Nick Wilson’s frontier exploits, as he recounted running away to live with the Shoshone in his early teens, riding for the Pony Express, and helping settle Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The volume was so popular that Wilson’s son Charles was compelled to write a second book, The Return of the White Indian, which picks up in 1895 where the first memoir ends, telling the adventures of Nick Wilson’s later life. These books, published here as a single volume, are testaments to a unique time and place in American history. Because he had a heart for adventure and unusual proficiency with Native American languages, Wilson’s life became an historical canvas on which was painted both the exploration and the closing of a frontier, as he went from childhood among the Shoshone to work as an interpreter for the U.S. government on Indian reservations in Wyoming and Idaho in his later years. This volume includes new introductory material, a family tree, and a background of Indian-white relations in Jackson Hole. Packed with amazing details about life in the Old West, Wilson’s colorful escapades are once again available to a new generation of readers.

The White Indian Boy: and its sequel The Return of the White Indian Boy

Wilson, Charles A.

University of Utah Press

This is the true story of a pioneer boy who crossed the Great Plains by ox-team with his parents to a settlement in the Great Salt Lake basin. Unhappy with his circumstances, 11-year-old Nick Wilson ran away from home with an Indian who had befriended him. Nick spent the next two years with the Shoshone learning their language and culture and developing the skills of a hunter. He participated in buffalo hunts, fought off grizzly bears, witnessed Indian wars, and even survived being shot in the head with an arrow and left to die. Later, he became a trapper, Pony Express rider, stagecoach driver, army scout, and interpreter. He was often called to track down and negotiate peace with renegade Indians who had fled the reservation and threatened war. He found himself in danger numerous times and participated in many skirmishes with both Indians and outlaws. Growing up among the Shoshones taught him the skills he needed to survive the rough and wild west.

White Indian Boy: My Life Among The Shoshones

Community & Culture

Piccadilly Books, Ltd.

In the early days I too crossed the same route as Uncle Nick. While reading of the opposition encountered by the riders and agents of the Pony Express my memory recalls in retrospect every station and the scenes of every tragedy mentioned in The White Indian Boy. Later I explored the hunting and battle grounds occupied by the Indians with whom the White Indian Boy spent the first two years of his nomadic life, and the accuracy of illustrations of Indian camps and hunting scenes are remarkable. -- Wm. J. McConnell, former Governor of Idaho

The White Indian boy: The story of Uncle Nick among the Shoshones Revised edition by Wilson, Elijah Nicholas (1991) Hardcover

Regional U.S.

Paragon Press

Among the Shoshones

M & M Books

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