OCR Text |
Show i fI - ,1 I fc ' I . . 4 " rt s. . . - an-itiner- Go-sha-ut- Utah-Nevad- COOP The Bakers live in a renovated chicken coop; that is the chickens have been removed and a bedroom added, for the children. Scattered about in the yard is a variety of engine parts and old tires and cars, specifically one 1950 Ford sedan, one 64 Chevrolet Malibu, a 58 Chevy and a '58 Ford, one 1959 Rambler station wagon, a 1961 Chevy wagon, a 1963 Chevrolet four-dooone pickup truck, and still another Chevrolet, circa 1959. As we drove into the yard an elderly Indian, Mr. Rogers, was busy at work on the right front wheel of the Chevrolet wagon. r, Many of the vehicles were missing vital parts and others appeared hopelessly stalled; doors were flung open and hoods and trunk lids raised in a gesture of defeat. One rusting hulk was propped up treacherously on a f I I Moving from the. allegorical trash heap of life, we talked about Bakers former status on the Goshute reservation, where he once served on the tribal council, until dispossessed by band of Shoshoni thieves- - known as the Steal Brothers. Finding the hundred square miles on the Nevada border to their liking, the wandering Steal Brothers decided to settle down. Charging the council chiefs with embezzlement a charge of which he was later deared-rthemanaged to oust Earl from office. That was in 1964, at which time Earl, with his friend Buster McCurty, set off in a pickup truck for Washington to address their great white father a quixotic adventure to rival easy riders and midnight cowboys everywhere. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY RICHARD MENZIES RENOVATED 1 1A "Go shoot In the year 1858 Jacob Forney, then superintendent of Indian affairs for Utah, reported that he had visited a small tribe called the living on a border. They the he wrote, without exare, ception, .the most miserable looking set of human beings I ever beheld. Not long thereafter Mark Twain, stagecoach-boun- d for Virginia City, recorded a similar impression: 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 wretched est type of mankind I have ever seen. I refer to the Goshoot Indians. ' Most observers of the past century, in fact, differed only in their spelling when they came to write of this little tribe of the Rocky Mountain desert, although Twains spelling perhaps best characterizes government and white policies in general regarding the Goshutes. These days the Goshute Indians, asserted by some authors to be a mixture of Shoshoni and Ute, number hardly more than two dozen. Situated about forty miles southwest of Wendover and somewhat east of Eden, the Goshute reservation is so out of the way that even the National Tribal Council has managed to overlook it. No highways or roads recognizable as such pass that way, and since the Goshutes lack the compatibility with Kodachrome of their native brothers, tourist trade is almost unheard of. Standard costume for Goshute warriors is brown work shirt and Levis, and most Goshutes travel by pickup truck. Curious as to the present condition of this remote and little-know-n people, this reporter visited recently with Earl Baker, whose name indicates only that at some time past a forefather worked for a rancher named. Baker and assumed the surname of his employer. Earl grew up on the Goshute reservation and now divides his time between there and his home in Newcastle, Utah, where he has lived with his Paiute wife and three childrer for the past six years. . y STEAL BROTHERS REMAIN Needless to mention, the pair missed the Preisdent, or he them, bumper jack, like a deadfall waiting to trap the unwary passerby. Taken altogether, the tiny green tarpapered shack, surrounded on every side by automobiles, gave the impression of a drive-i- n theater-in-the-roun- d. Indians, it would seem, collect artifacts of modern civilization as avidly as white men collect arrowheads. My companion and I picked our way through the parking lot, and, stepping over the corpse of a Honda 50, entered. Mrs. Baker, an amiable, woman, sat at a table sewing. Her husband was reading over a lunch of bread and beans a newspaper called Hie Warpath. On the cardboard walls was a variety of exhibits: a poem by Robert Frost, a souvenir Yellowstone plate, Earls honorable discharge, suitably framed, a plume of eagle feathers. The dominant impression, however, was of two things flies and television. The flies were everywhere; they crawled up and down the walls, across the ceiling over the dishes and into the food. Meknwhile, the television the new opiate of the masses broadcast the promise of America. The program was Lets Make A Deal, with lovely well-round- Carol Merrill posed ed gracefully beside a new refrigerator. Id like a new refrigerator! exclaimed Mrs. Baker. DIFFERENCE IS MONEY The only difference between the Indian and white man, interjected Earl, who talks like Indians are supposed to talk, is that white man have money. But Indian, he no have money. Then if you had money, I asked, you would be just like the white man? We never be like white man. White man, he crazy. What do you mean, crazy?" Just crazy. He fight all the time. Always there be a white mans war, said Earl, who served with the Signal Corps in Korea and still bears a tatoo from that action. White man tell Indian to lay down his arms. Then he tell us to pick them up again. He give us rifles. And now I see white men hunting deer with bow and arrow. Thats crazy. Mrs. Baker ladled some beans and flies onto my plate and passed me a hunk of bread and and the Steal Brothers remain, in firm control of things. The working day over, we returned to the lome shack, where Mr. Rogers had moved from the Chevrolets front wheel to the radio, and Mrs. Baker was watching The Dating Game. The children were at home, and it fell our lot to tend them that night while their parents drove into Cedar City for a drink of dean water. The Baker children, I should horseman. Not only is the Indian an outcast in America note, are like children everybut, thanks to Hollywood, he is where. They want to stay up often miscast, too. late, watch Nightmare Theater, I wondered if Mongolians got ignore their homework, and to use bows and arrows. harass the baby sitter. The girls No . . . spears, Earl replied, are deathly afraid of creepy as the truck faltered in a furrow lizards, just as their brother, and a hail of chopped corn stalks Mike, admires the things. came in through the window. That night as my companion The taciturn cowboy in the and I sat half asleep by the tractor cab caught Franklin stove, the feeling of . a glass of water. The water bore a powerful odor. It will make you very sick, she said, reading my mind. I skipped the beverage but found the beans and bread downright edible, and I was grateful for a slice of watermelon for dessert. When we had finished, Mrs. Baker gathered up the rinds and fed them to a half dozen ravenous chickens in the backyard. The chickens will devour anything and work as a sort, of primitive garbage disposal system. Occasionally Mr. Baker returns from the coop gripping one of them by the neck, thus completing the ecological cycle. That afternoon I spent with Earl at a nearby cattle ranch, where he drives a truck for a an hour. At exactly one oclock in the afternoon we pulled into a field behind a machine that, was grinding up rows of corn stalks and spewing silage into the air. If ever Earl were to show up a fraction of a second late, the fodder would fall onto the ground, because the tractor driver, in his enclosed cab, never looks back. He has air conditioner and radio in there, said Earl, as we bounced wildly on the plywood I should be paid ' more seat. money for sitting on this board. dollar-fift- y MOVIE SUPERNUMERARY Through the trucks purblind window I detected the outline of a mountain range across the valley. It was somehow familiar, and I asked Earl if they ever made movies there. I learned he had twice acted as a supernumerary in films. In They Came To Cordura he played a Mexican bandit; in The Conqueror he was a Mongolian us in his. rear view mirror and motioned us forward with a gloved hand. When Earl is not working in the fields he makes a few dollars rebuilding engines in his back-- , yard and salvaging junk. Again he commented upon the foibles of white civilization. You know, I see white man in the junk yard, and he be digging way down deep. Me, I just pick up things on top; I 'no have to dig down. That the difference tween white man and Indian. be- being in an utterly foreign environment began to slip away. The flies had turned in for the night, the kids were asleep, and in the glow of the television the cardboard walls were a reasonable approximation of the prosperity beige one finds in nine out of ten American homes. Outside, the moonlight reflected off bumpers and beamed from myriad headlights. Secure as Easter Islanders surrounded by their totems we dozed, dreamed, and waited for another day. - |