Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/150

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146
Life Among the Piutes.

teaching my people’s children, does more gambling than teaching. What you pay to your interpreter and mail-carrier, the two Johnsons win back again with the book that you brought here. So we are at a loss to know which of you are right: whether Sam Parrish told us lies or you, or our chieftain’s daughter, Sarah Winnemucca, about the land being ours; and you who talk with our Great Father in the Spirit-land three times a day, have come here and told us the land is not ours.’ This is what I said to the agent after you left us, and now you have come and found me almost starved.

“Now one and all of you, my men, give our mother what little money you have. Let her go and talk for us. Let her go right on to Washington, and have a talk with our Great Father in Washington.”

Then they all asked me if I would go if they would give me the money to go with. I told them I would only be too happy to do all I could in their behalf, if they wanted me to. So they went to work and got together and every one gave what they could, and all Egan got for me was twenty-nine dollars and twenty-five cents. This was got for me by Egan, the chief of the Snake River Piutes. This was indeed very little to start with. But as I had promised, I thought I would go to Elko, Nevada, with my horses and wagon and sell them there, and go to Washington and see what I could do for them. So our council ended on the 7th of June, 1878. And Mr. Morton asked me again if I would take him and his little daughter to Silver City, Idaho. I told him yes, if he would pay fifty dollars for the three of them, and pay one half of it down, which he did. So we started on the morning of the 8th of June. We journeyed on for three days, and heard nothing about an Indian war. But we saw houses standing all along the road without anybody living in them; and we talked about