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Show INIPICUT INDIAN THE CRAZY UTE White settlors in the Uintah a.sin in 1886 first dneided that there was a quirk in the mind of Inipicut, a young Indian boy, when he submitted to having his hair cut by the government school teacher at Whiterocks without the howling, screaming, and fighting wheih had become traditional for all Indian students first shorn. Inipicut Ini-picut only scowled and sulked. He went on sulking, both among his own people and the whites. By the time he reached his eighteenth birthday, he had become an iconoclast icono-clast of the first water, refusing to abide by either tribal or white customs and rules. Members of both races, intent on showing him the light of reason, rea-son, were met with a hail of rocks, clubs, or anything which happened to be at hand. He liked sleeping in the sun and eating; no one ever saw him do any work, or attempt anything other than filling hi belly. He stole food from white and Indian alike. Like the unsupported unsup-ported revolutionist In any civilization, civiliza-tion, he was deemed a menace to all society, and was at length expelled ex-pelled from the tribe, taking up a solitary abode in the hills. Relatives Rela-tives from the tribe attempted to supply him with clothes and a shelter, shel-ter, but he burned the blankets and the tepee, preferring to forage for himself. As the years rolled on, Inipicut developed an amozing resistance to the elements, often sleeping burrow-like in snowdrifts, or lying near naked on the frozen surface. It is reported that several times passing whites chopped his hair loose when it had become frozen to the ground. After a few years, Inipicut abandoned all clothing, refusing re-fusing to even wear a breach clout. The naked savage so upset the region re-gion that government agents attempted at-tempted to take him to the asylum at Provo. During the journey he escaped and out-ran their horses back to his former abode. For more than twenty - five years. Inipicut maintained his exile in the hills two miles north of Whiterocks, ranging over the countryside coun-tryside in search of food, and shunning shun-ning the society of his fellows. He died in 1917, and like so many rugged rug-ged individualists whose mental workings remain a mystery to the world, his life has passed into the limbo of legend, and many fantastic fantas-tic tales of his exploits circulate hither and yon through the Uintah region. It is reported that he could outrun out-run any human ever known, and many times distanced horses, even on short laps. Native whites in the region maintain that he had one time murdered a member of his tribe, and that his long exile was in expiation of his crime. The Indians In-dians of today carefully avoid the spot where Inipicut's ragged tepee stood for so many years, answering answer-ing all queries with "Heap bad spirit live there."- From the files of the Utah Writers' Project, W. P. A. |
