ns did when the gun cracked.
This convinced me that we were the first white men they had ever seen,
and this the first time they had heard the report of a gun. This
incident occurred in forty-eight, which was fifty-eight years ago. I
have seen more or less of these Indians from that time until now, and
these Indians as a tribe have made less progress than any other Indians
in the west. Even after the railroad was put through that part of the
country, they had to be forced to cover themselves with clothes.

After crossing the Colorado river we came into the Ute country, but we
traveled several days without seeing any of this tribe. About five
days after we crossed the Colorado river, we came on to a big band of
Sighewash Indians. The tribe was just coming together, after a winter's
trapping and hunting. At this time the Sigh washes were a powerful
tribe, but not hostile to the whites.

We camped near their village that night. After supper Carson and I went
over to this village, at the same time taking a lot of butcher knives
and cheap jewelry with us that he had brought along to trade with the
Indians. When we got into their camp, Carson inquired where the chief's
wigwam, was. The Indians could all speak Spanish; therefore we had no
trouble in finding the chief. When we went into the chief's wigwam,
after shaking hands with the old chief and his squaw, Carson pulled some
of the jewelry out of his pocket and told the chief that he wanted to
trade for furs. The old chief stepped to the entrance of the wigwam
and made a peculiar noise between a whistle and a hollo, and in a few
minutes there were hundreds of Indians there, both bucks and squaws.

The old chief made a little talk to them that I did not understand; he
then turned to Carson and said, "Indian heap like white man."

Carson then spoke out loud so they could all hear him, at the same time
holding up some jewelry in one hand and a butcher knife in the other,
telling them that he wanted to trade these things for their furs.

The Indians answered, it seemed to me by the hundreds, saying, "Iyah
oyah iyah," which means "All right." Carson then told them to bring
their furs over to his camp the next morning, and he would then trade
with them. He was speaking in Spanish all this time. On our way back to
our camp Carson said to me, "Now Willie, if I trade for those furs in
the morning I want you and the other two boys to take the furs and go
back to Taos; I know that