Show LEMES mw HOM hn OLD NOTEBOOK indian war veteran thomas W cropper tells of the past in millard ard county and of a bald raid throwing deseret into panic how ilow bloodshed IV 11 as averted indians twitted settlers you come on fight we fight you ow and andl nobody stirred aged man han talks interestingly of the fast past I 1 JUST PLAIN conversation NOT WRITING aau 13 thomas W cropper indian use of trilobites as luck charms we felt that our salvation lay in tall talking cing getting them to talk back baal 11 even it if we were worsted in the rep artee we were still alive which hl I 1 was something finally the levelled bevelled level led guns trained on us were one by one lowered and reluctantly urged by ion of pierce the indians agreed that two ot of their number should go back with us to the settlement to re ceide the gifts ve we promised we put one behind isaac pierce and one behind L R cropper we then started to ride away with them to the settlement of deseret but as soon as we started to ride away with those two findlins to our armed corn rades left way behind they thought they were entrapped and that it was all up with them their faces blanched and not one word would they utter sixteen men rode out and went tz to where the indians had set up for battle against Us but found the site deserted all the squaws and pap gooses were sent away the camp abandoned and every aspect was that the warriors were prepared tor for 0 and had intended to battle to the death we were lucky cropper said the seventy two of em pulled out where did they go uncle thorn thom as 7 I 1 eagerly asked to antelope springs what tor for I 1 shot to get trilobites to wear ear ae as magic to ward nard oft off the white man mans s bullets I 1 that answer was worth just nine teen million dollars I 1 had found trilobites among the chest bones of buried warriors and also round found them as relics on the ground around sites of teepees so I 1 was elated with this confirmatory news some day I 1 will publish my findings on that old timers wear em around neck as de tendencies ot of body not get the choking sickness and so forth says my indian informant but more of that by and by I 1 understood uncle thomas to say that he was among the number who rode out to the camp now abandon ed led which the indians left there he found their blankets hung up in the willows high through which some of the crowd of whites shot just tor for meanness or for tun fun as you wish to construe it and they rummaged in and around the camp pawing over everything but hid lying out in the river un der tiny clumps of what appeared to be weeds were some indians arms cached watching with sharp eyes taking in the whole performance the indians told this tact fact to un cle thomas several years after these two indiana indians t talk so they loaded em up with beet beef and flour and knick knacks and started em back I 1 guess they got over their scar ethe same as we did over ours said cropper I 1 asked cropper if it he had ever seen the indians wear trilobites petrified bugs aa as we com call them and he said no I 1 never saw them wear those things their pet ornament as I 1 remember it was a halt dollar poun ded cut out thin and strung around the neck what would hey have in their medicine vouch pouch the white man didn dian t get a chance d know that was secret and prec lous to the man who wore one his ills medicine those braves drawn up in battle form were all painted had red handkerchiefs around their necks beaded shirts spanish saddles A good deal ot of trading with mexicans lots of or beaver and mush rats those days I 1 said uncle thomas and they em tor for what they wanted he ile says this occurrence occur ence happened as ahls hist memory serves him along about 1862 and 3 the bald raid on scipio he related the raid on scipio they made a raid on scipio and drove oft off a bunch of the mormons cattle but some of the cows had calves at home tied up and these cows broke loose and came back they also took some of the horses of the mormons at the time cf of this raid the people of scipio sent an express rider to deseret asking tor for help cropper in his military post tion went it took the men only an hour and a halt half to get ready pace had done battle with the in deans at hocky rocky ford this group of militia cropper was with rode out didn dian t get in the mix up and came back to fillmore no action the walker 11 mar ar chief walker s name was not wal ker but pronounced wab wah kar 0 but pronounced by the whites as walker there were three broth ers es uncle thomas cropper says james ivie was living two miles north of Spring vile an indian woman brought three trout to the door to trade the white woman tor for some flour flour was very scarce and the white woman wished of course to make it bring just as rauch much in trade as she could possibly get when pe the indian woman held up the three fish the mormons wife dickered with her and bargained to give a cup of flour tor for each fish the indian woman held a sack into which the white woman poured the floor 0 the three cups of flour was a sor ry bit in the bottom of the sack the buck came up to the house lust just at this time put his gun by the side of 0 the door and stepped in to see what kind of a trade his woman had made seeing the tiny bit in the bottom of 0 the sack an almost negligible quantity be he was very much dissatisfied and grabbing the squaw by the hair threw her down and began to beat her the white woman ran out yelling the indian Is killing his squaw her own husband bearing hearing her screams and thinking it was she who was being killed ran rail to the house his wife had just quitted just at the moment the indian had gotten ap UP and both men met at the door when the indian grabbed the guri the white man grabbed it also both men fought furiously finah ly the gun was broken stock from barrel and the white man hit the squaw knocking her down ancon scions and then lambasted the in dian than man a lucky blow he drop ping over the prostrate form of his woman just at this juncture another in dian than came up saw the two alpar antly dead indians on the floor and fled giving the alarm the whites had ailed two in dhans the indians fled precipitately to the mountains and from rom that time until the war was ended it was fight FIGHT FIGHT t at utah lake they gathered and then fled to the mountains from which they sallied forth in delpreda tian after depredation harra harr saing assing the whites as history tells the indiana indians threw up a barricade above provo A friendly indian told the bishop about it forty whites says cropper rj were killed at pleas ant grove after that followed what is put in history as the Walker War this in the summer of 1858 that was just nicely before gunnison Gunn lson got here bishop anson V call says cropper told captain john W gun GUIX nison of that indian outbreak as well as of the trouble at corn creek with Mosho s father which latter event caused alion his wet sion of blat blaak k hum hawk k m war ar on april 12 1853 near manti mantl benwood a bad and mean indian got into an argument with a man by the name of lowry lowry grabbed benwood a bowstring and jerked the indian oft off his horse that was the start uncle thomas says of the black hawk war seventy whites were killed in that trouble cropper took no part in that as he was first lieutenant of the pah vant cavalry company A pah vant vaut district out of which occurred the operations ot of both the walker and the black hawk wars cropper diaks a pension penion of 50 a month this written in 1927 in ng of his pension he said those days we fought for our lives not for uncle sam we had no of getting money for it in millard county only two in stances of trouble other than the ganison massacre Maa sacre namely a raid on and a near skirmish at deseret most of the indian trouble was in san pete county and further north the use of the round balls 4 As to the round balls so often found in the indian a effects mr air Cropper says that they were used by the medicine men to cure the sick he ile has seen that use of them he says the medicine man would swallow the ball himself and maybe more moro than one then he would rock to and fro sidewise chanting solem ly then he would try to regurgitate the ball from his stomach breaking into hia his song with an effort to vom it maybe the Int interruption eruption would be successful and then THE PATIENT WOULD LIVE but it if the ball stay ed put in his inarda SNUFF OUT GOES THE PATIENT simple burb should cross a med man with a cow and then the cud end would be at will ewhen when the tee fee was paid up shed she d come but why bring that up upa uncle thomas went thru the per firmance for mance very realistically it was fine ailed he d gulp au and ds swallow wallow then sing and drone and hiccup and retch and then with hand to mouth heave er up and grip at me it was huge the old gentleman was at his best for my out of town readers let me say uncle thomas cropper when I 1 took these notes down in 1927 vas was nearly eighty five years old we had been gig gling and he was feeling good and t was a ready listener all ears and fixed in attention so that it aided him to outdo himself which he did the old story teller wap was couro in tine fine fettle and dittin on all this is mr cropper a story and I 1 im writing what he says just as he said it as I 1 made notes at the time the only liberty I 1 am taking I 1 is 19 to ginger it up a bit should any statement not be reco recorded faed history as text books print the facts kemem her here is an elderly gentleman right close to eighty five trusting to memory the mourning song uncle thomas tells me that he has often heard the wailing walling song or lam en tation of the indians on the death of one of their number he ile ren dered it for me a wal wall with rising voice very PItin pl tive and followed toll owed by a lamentation then words inter ejected in their tongue the words for a warrior would often be of his prowess one syllable designations but none the less characteristic of him much is it we should wall wail brave fearless valorous or similarly for a woman words of her life occupation how well she did it and extolling ext oling her virtues and la her departure they would cut their hair oft off for sorrow usually the teepee and all it contained would be burned and what extremely little did not meet that fate would be divided among the heirs at once the main passion of the indians is gambling he hug has seen them at it many many times did not under stand the tine fine points ot of the game much but noted that one of the games was with a peg but how the score was kept with the peg he did hot underhand under sand he hat hal to 10 seen the game of hand lat guessing ot of great excitement with bets ot of deer hides bridles a blanket and he in fers even the women a also lao so that an improvident mar man n might lose not only his fortunes by chase but his wife besides that was looked down upon and a man a sorry disgrace who did so but the ordinary bet tin ting of wearing apparel and horses was a passion none were above f he recites a little experience r aw n uncle thomas says pays be he afas was always a alund to the indians gave them whenever he ho could la in threshing they also often shocked his hl grain twenty indians helped him one year in his thre threshing hing j one winter in a siege of bitter cold he had a lot of hay near clear lake he was hauling it to filmore Fillmo rp to a man by the name of cavanaugh besides being very cold there ws a toot foot of snow on the aground ground mak ing progress slow he acme over near clear lake by the Pa livant butte and found the indians camped they were suffer ing twribly with the cold they had built their teepees as usual skins on poles but wainscoted up from the bottom so to speak with reeds and rushes piled against the sloping sides which in turn they had daub ed plentifully with mud 1 I have dobles with the imprint of the willow stems and bigger pieces on I 1 have found on david sander sons son s firm somewhere from seventy to more than a hundred years old this procedure gave the indians a semblance of a wall to their tee pee making tt it slightly warmer in this he found the indians huddled trying to keep warm no easy task he ile says among themselves they talked and talked about him discus sing him in their language from ev ery angle and of course being a lit tie familiar with their tongue he was getting lots of their meaning he waited and thought of wept to say and how to say it and then in with a remark in indian immediately they burst into merry laughter enjoying the good joke on themselves in unfeigned glee they invited him to the teepee to warm up from time to time the women would pass a willow woven platter with a quantity of dried seeds on it barted at times with pine nuts each person would take a pinch into his hand and munch at it cropper helped himself rather too modestly tor for immediately the squaw yelled mee pooch mee pooch which means too too little too little and plied him with a double por tion he ile ate it all with relish indians suffer in haid llin flinters I 1 asked him it if the indians of the long ago dressed well if they suf but in winter time I 1 he le said yes that they were poor the indians he had seen in oklahoma when a boy and in texas were much richer bet ter dressed and as those regions were milder the indians were con warmer throughout the winter no such inclemency as here these indians dressed in rabbit skin mantles or coverings of the rabbit fur torn into strips and then sewed into garments mostly this garment was like a huge cape with head and arm holes in it would squat on the ground and drape this cape or man tie he like a sibley tent around them he said the winters were aleys hard on them they used deer skins badger skins cat hides and rabbit for warmth in 1856 he says the were very poor indeed this agrees my notes say with escalante fremont bryant and other writers of the long time age ago iwho who visited and wrote of the indians of this and adjacent regions not as rich even as were the tim indians around provo see term digger indian croppers texas experience uncle thomas W cropper was born in texas his mother became a convert to mormonism he ile was among the choctaws Choc tows the chicka saws the seminoles the cherokees and the greets it carloss times see ing al of these varieties of indians many of them were quite civilized alid hd lived in log houses some had quite a respectable living he said he saw the haages the wild indians alex baron says cropper was the founder of deseret Crop cropper pelis s father died his mother married again twice in 1853 built what they called a putto posts all around a center this was 29 miles from houston texas march 9 1853 his ills brother six years old this halt half brother brothers s folks threatened to shoot up the whole train it they took this lad to utah whither crop per was bent on going with his moth er they stopped the train did this halt half brothers element grappled for the boy the women screamed and cried but the kidnappers it if so one may call them got the boy nd then rushed tor for a court order and got that to retain possession of him called cropper then a mere boy into court judge said the mother can have the boy if she wll wil not go to utah but on the contrary will remain in texas oth berwise the family shall have him this court action was in dallas when they met the train leaving texas the man jerked the boy out ot of the mother a arms saying I 1 it is la my decision that it you peo woo ow er may have the boy but it if she is determined to go to 0 o utah they must leave eave the boy they left the boy such was the hold on a IL convert to mormonism Mormon lam those days that for her faith a mother would separate from her son the mother married croft the indiana indians thereabouts were cher cherokees that fall the whites |