History books, novels, movies, TV programs, historical roadside markers, and more are filled with tales of Indian wars, Indian battles, Indian attacks on wagon trains, and massacres of American settlers by Indians. In reality, most of these reported battles never happened and attacks against wagon trains were extremely rare. However, nineteenth-century newspapers, like some of today’s “news” services, often created reports of wars and impending wars which appealed to their audience’s fears and racist views of the world. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these fantasy stories have sometimes been interpreted as reality. One example is the 1875 White Pine War, a war that existed only in the minds of non-Indians.
In 1875, newspapers in Utah reported that a large-scale Indian war was developing along the Utah-Nevada border. The impending war was called the White Pine War.
The reports of the impending war were started when Toby, a Gosiute Indian, killed a mining prospector near Mount Moriah in White Pine County, Nevada, near the Utah border. The prospector’s partner ignited the hysteria when he thought he heard noises and saw more Indians. In an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly, historian Steven Crum reports:
“He falsely concluded that the Indians were gathering to conduct a massive campaign against the whites and that the killing of his friend Toland was the beginning.”
In response to this hysteria, the Americans killed three Indians in three separate incidents.
At this point, we need to pause to talk about the Gosiute Indians (also spelled Goshute), a tribe that is little known outside of Nevada and Utah, and probably poorly known by non-Indians in the region. The Great Basin Culture Area, as it is called by anthropologists, has been inhabited by Indian people for thousands of years. In terms of language, all the Indian people of the Great Basin, with the exception of the Washo, spoke languages which belong to the Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
The traditional homeland of the Gosiute was south and west of Great Salt Lake. They lived in the Tooele, Rush, and Skull valleys. The Gosiute are linguistically and culturally closely related to the Shoshone.
While the common stereotype of American Indians envisions them as horse-mounted buffalo hunters, the Gosiute, like many other Great Basin tribes, lived in arid lands which were not hospitable to horses. These tribes tended to remain pedestrian.
The Great Basin is a harsh desert environment and the most common mammal in the region is the antelope, not the buffalo. To survive in this rather hostile environment, the people gathered a variety of wild plant foods. Among the Gosiute, at least 81 different plants were used, including 47 plants which were used for their seeds, 12 for berries, 8 for roots, and 12 for greens. They also hunted small game and birds, did some fishing, and consumed insects. In his book Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Carl Waldman reports:
“Because of their foraging practices, the hunter-gatherers of this region are sometimes referred to collectively as Digger Indians.”
The designation “Digger” is generally used as a derogatory comment on their pedestrian lifestyle and as a way of seeing them as less than human.
Among the Gosiute, winter campsites were selected for their accessibility to wood and water as well as stored seeds. In his chapter in A History of Utah’s American Indians, Dennis Defa reports:
“These conditions were most often fulfilled in the mouths of canyons or within the pinyon pine and juniper belt in the mountains, although sometimes broad valleys near fishing streams were chosen.”
The Gosiute, like other Great Basin tribes, lived in small bands which moved seasonally to obtain food sources. They had no warrior traditions, did not glorify war, nor did they ever form war parties.
The Great Basin area was among the last regions of North America which was invaded by Americans. For the Gosiutes, this invasion began in the 1850s. Driven by greed that was fueled by the lust for precious minerals (gold and silver) and the lust for land for ranching and farming, the invaders generally ignored the rights of the indigenous people who had lived in the area for many generations. In response to this invasion and to the destruction of their property, Indian people would defend their rights by killing one of the invaders.
Following the prospector’s hysteria about Indians on the warpath, the Americans in White Pine County requested military support, reporting that they were surrounded by 500 bloodthirsty Indians. According to historian Steven Crum:
“The Indians supposedly were encouraged to initiate this action by white Mormon Utahns who had been converting the natives along the Nevada-Utah border in recent times and who reportedly disliked the white gentiles of the region.”
This was a reflection of intolerance toward Mormons rather than an understanding of reality.
The Sub-Agent for the Western Shoshone, a man who spoke both Gosiute and Shoshone, arrived at White Pine and called a meeting of the Gosiute. More than a 100 Gosiutes came to the meeting and the American settlers in the area were convinced that they had gathered for war. They demanded that the Gosiutes be removed to a reservation and that Toby be turned over for punishment. Gosiute leader Antelope Jake decided that Toby had a record of bad behavior and that he should be turned over to the settlers.
Fearing military intervention, the Gosiutes captured Toby. He was turned over to the American ranchers who then hung him. None of the Americans who murdered the innocent Gosiute were brought to trial or punished.
In response to the reported White Pine War, the Indian Office (today known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs) decided to remove the Gosiute to a reservation where they could “be free of Mormon influence and where they would find other Indians with whom they could readily affiliate” Two possible reservations were suggested: Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah and the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. However, the Indian Office was unable to decide which reservation was best and as a result the Gosiute were not removed. In 1914, the Deep Creek Reservation was formed in White Pine County.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: The Lame Cow War
Indians 101: Fort Fizzle and the Nez Perce
Indians 101: The Battle of the Rosebud
Indians 201: The Puget Sound War
Indians 101: California's War on Indians, 1850 to 1851
Indians 101: The Lowry War
Indians 201: The Sheepeater Indian War
Indians 201: The Cayuse Indian War