Interview with Roy Wilhelm, December 24, 1992

Roy, Well, no.   

'''Roy''':  The Indians run them out they never went back.  When they moved up there for the summer, this was summer and winter in Concho, why Uncle Haight, he was a big boy three years older than Pa.  Pa'd be at least ten by then if it took them a year to get settled in Concho, see.  Uncle Haight be about thirteen or fourteen, so he'd go punching cows with the old man, I know that because I left home when I was thirteen and I went punching cows with the old man.  So they went out one day gathering in the strays, they was keeping them from straying, they was cattle and they wanted to go back to Utah and they'd go anywhere to get away from where they were.  They had to locate 'em, they called it.  Just bringing 'em back all the time.  This Indian bunch come along and it was Grandma with all the little kids there about a 100 yards from the spring.  The Indians they kept a jabberin' and making motions over at the house and everything and finally they put their warpaint on, that's what they always did when they exterminated a bunch of ranchers, they'd get their warpaint on.  I don't know what part that had, it made it alright, I guess.  Well, Grandma knew they were in for a bad time but it was time for the kids to eat and they needed some water to drink and there wasn't any.  She knew if she went out there and the Indians grabbed her, which they most likely would, the kids wouldn't have any water and they wouldn't have any mother either.  So she had a long tom rifle (like an old Kentucky muzzle loader) there and she had it positioned there where she could put it out through the window or port hole.  She told Pa and Aunt Fan,  the sister just younger than him, to take the bucket and go to the spring.  The Indians was all around the spring, had possession of it, and get a bucket of water and no matter what they did stand right up to them, look them in the eye and tell them what they thought.  The Indians didn't know English but they'd understand anyhow if they told 'em.  So Pa was brave and he went and the Indians start messing with him and he just got all over 'em and they thought it was funny but they respected him see.  But Grandma was laying back there and what the Chief to that Indian bunch didn't know, she had a dead sight on him all the time. If they'd ever laid a hand on those kids, why she'd kill the chief first and according to Indian tradition if you killed the chief in a war party the rest of 'em'd run.  Without leadership they just didn't  know what to do.  Well, the kids they played it tough, filled their bucket.  And the Indians, they turned if off to kind of a jovial thing and bowed and scraped to 'em and let 'em go and bring the water on back.  They kept lookin' at the cabin and jabberin' and finally they decided it was bad medicine and they got on their horses and headed on.  Well it wasn't very long after that until a rider, perhaps the next day, the rider came by to tell them to get off the mountains that they . . . that the Indians had declared war on all white men.  And they was going to kill the best one first, that 'd be old man Cooley.  He'd married three or four Indian girls.