Anglo-Saxon neighbors, they were still men of polish. Indeed, in the years before the Herreras returned to New Mexico to engage once more in political agitation on behalf of their fellow Mexicans, the well-bred and well-educated Bassetts counted them as friends.
The wagons then passed the Hoy Meadows on their trip up the valley, although it is possible that Sam would not have bothered to stop here. There were five Hoys—four brothers and an uncle—holding choice meadow lands along the Green River. They claimed to be the first to set up a ranching operation in the Park (the Hoys would not have considered the Mexican Herreras “ranchers”) and had originally hoped to hold the Park as their private domain, attempting to shut out any competition from incoming homesteaders. This had proved to be impossible, but they still stayed more or less to themselves and were not intimate with their neighbors.
There were others in the Park whose names will appear from time to time in the Bassett story. There was the Spicer family, and there were the two Australians, Griff and Jack Edwards, and Jimmie Reed, who was living in a dugout at the lower end of the Park with his Indian wife and their children. There were Scotsman John Jarvie and his wife Nellie, who ran a trading post up at the far west end of the Park. Jarvie was later to build a storage house of stone, reputedly cut by an ex-convict destined to be hanged from the Bassetts’ corral gate.
Another neighbor in those early days was James Goodman, a member of Major Powell’s expedition down the Green who had come back to settle on this peaceful section of the wild and treacherous river he had helped explore. The Bassetts also soon met “Buffalo Jack” Rife, who was eventually joined by his brothers Ed and Bill. At this time Jack was a bachelor cowboy working up on Diamond Mountain for Jim Warren. He later gained the nickname “Buffalo Jack” by establishing a private sanctuary for the few remaining buffalo, paying the Indians in salt and other supplies to leave them unharmed. His boss, Jim Warren, was an ex-priest (presumably Catholic) and an ex-rustler who had turned rancher when he met and married a good and moral woman.
Soon to come to the Park was another man whose name will appear over and over in the Bassett story: Charley Crouse from Trap Hill, North Carolina. At the time the Bassetts arrived, Charley had a ranch on nearby Diamond Mountain but he moved down into the Park within a year or so. Charley Crouse was an uncouth, rough-talking, hard-drinking semiliterate who had run away from home at the age of nine. His ruling passion was good horseflesh, and he raised fine horses that he took as far away as Nebraska to race for large stakes. When his horses won, Charley was in the money; when they lost, he was not above appropriating a few loose cattle to mend his faded fortunes. Matt Warner, an outlaw who was in and out of Brown’s Park, referred to Charley in his memoirs as “that lovable old rustler.”
Charley was erratic and more than slightly dishonest, but he was a good businessman. He raised three good children, although the credit for this was given to his wife Mary, daughter of a Mormon convert from England. Mary was well thought of by everyone in the valley, for she was a fine woman who involved herself in all the acts of neighborliness that are so important in a frontier community. Genteel Mary Crouse may have suffered from living with a man whom Joe Haslem describes as “meaner than a bitch wolf in a rainstorm,” a man who called his own sons “the red-headed bastard” and “the black-eyed son of a bitch.” However, he provided a good living for her, and her own good reputation gained both of them an entree into Brown’s Park polite society. Although Charley participated in that polite society, he much preferred a bottle of whiskey and a game of cards with the men who lived in his bunkhouse.
These people considered themselves neighbors, even though their homes were spread out over an area of almost three hundred square miles. Elizabeth’s most important neighbors in those early days were the Yampatika Utes who camped on the banks of Willow Creek only a stone’s throw from Sam’s cabin. In times to come, Elizabeth was sustained by the Ute squaws and educated by them in wilderness ways, and Josie and young Sam played with the Ute children. The bonds of neighborliness were strong between the Bassetts and the Indians as long as the Utes were free to return to Brown’s Park.
When Elizabeth first saw Uncle Sam’s cabin she must have fallen silent until she remembered her manners. (Josie remembered it as “a funny little old log cabin with two rooms, no floors, no windows.”) Uncle Sam may also have been dismayed as he looked at his bachelor’s quarters and then at the two wagons full of belongings, the two extra adults, and the two lively little imps who undoubtedly started climbing on his bed, getting into his tobacco jar, and fingering his guns and hunting knives within five minutes of their arrival.
The plan had always been, of course, to erect a cabin for the new arrivals. Although surely it must have been begun, the cabin was not finished a month later, on May 12, 1878, when Elizabeth delivered the first white child to be born in Brown’s Park. The infant, Ann, was an active, intense little mite who pulled strongly at Elizabeth’s breast and screamed with rage when her hunger was not satisfied. Perhaps because of her spartan life, Elizabeth’s breasts did not fill and she had no milk for the baby. Potential disaster was averted, according to Ann’s memoirs, when Buffalo Jack Rife stopped by:
A troop of Ute Indians were camped about two hundred yards from the cabin, among these was an Indian mother, See-a-baka, who had a new-born papoose. Buffalo Jack Rife, good old “Buff”, spoke their language like a Ute, so after consultation with Dr. Parsons [this elderly doctor died the next year, to everyone’s sadness, since there never again was to be a medical man in residence] he held a pow-wow with Chief Marcisco and Medicine Man Mush-qua-gant, “Star.” After making considerable medicine and sign talk, it was decided to permit the squaw to become my wet nurse and me to become a foster twin to her papoose, a boy named Kab-a-weep, meaning Sunrise.
Indians do not coddle newborn infants by covering the head. I’ve been told it was storming when they carried me to the Indian wickiup, and I can imagine how I must have blinked and grimaced as the snow settled on my little face.
It was the custom of the Indians to move from the river bottoms where they wintered, to cooler summer camp grounds on the mountain tops. For that reason my Uncle Sam built the “double cabins” for mother at the head of Willow Creek, so she could be near my foster mother. To this cabin See-a-baka came at regular intervals to feed me. I nursed her for six months, until cow’s milk could be provided. It was Judge Conway who rounded up a milk cow and presented her to me, so I got into the cow business at a decidedly early age.
Uncle Sam had built the cabin up on Willow Creek by the time the milk cow arrived, but the location of the cabin satisfied neither Herb nor Elizabeth. This was the least of their problems, however; more depressing was the scanty and monotonous diet. Sam had helped select the food supplies they had brought to the Park—beans, flour, coffee, sugar, pork sideback. Sam lived on these staples and may have been satisfied, since they could always be supplemented by game he shot. To Herb and Elizabeth the menu was unappetizing, and for the little children it was a disaster. Judge Conway’s milk cow must have been a godsend to them all.
Elizabeth’s experience on an established farm in civilized Arkansas could not have prepared her for that first summer, with two small children, a newborn baby, and a sickly middle-aged husband whose muscles had yet to be hardened after years of sedentary life. Sam surely must have helped, but he was neither rancher nor farmer, and preferred prospecting in the mountains. It was late in the growing season by the time Herb cleared enough ground for a vegetable garden of sorts. Because their future was to be in raising cattle, they bought a few head and began the task of learning what to do with them. The cattle were too precious to be used for food, and if Elizabeth did not already know how to use a rifle she must have learned that summer so that she could shoot wild game. The Indians showed her how to make jerky from the deer she shot and told her which fruits and roots were edible among the wild things growing on the mountains.
Somehow they survived the winter, although old-timers have reminisced that the Bassetts were sometimes hungry. The Park women helped as they could; if someone were coming the Bassetts’ way, they would send along a few eggs or a loaf or two of bread, whatever they could spare. Such things were offered with tact, as gifts from one neighbor to another. With that same tact Elizabeth brought gifts in later years to other struggling newcomers.
The second summer was better. Herb’s health had improved and