The White Indian Boy

This is a rambling true tale of adventure, trials and tribulations in the new frontier of the West in the mid 1800’s. The first half of this true story is an engaging and colorful true tale of a 12 year old white boy who willingly left to live with the Shoshone tribe. Recaptured memories of a nomadic life happily surviving on nature's bounty and the trials and tribulations that occur when an outsider lives amongst a tribe that has its own quarrels within itself and many battles with the opposing Crow tribe. The second half, the now teenage boy returns to his birth family in Utah and helps them until he first goes to live with a rancher where he breaks mustangs, and then is recruited by the pony express (for those that don't know that was the original postal service). As a stagecoach driver he was assailed by both Indians and stagecoach robbers. The trials and tribulations were many and hardships are retold in simplistic detail. His account at the end of the story regarding what the whites would call taming of the West was sad. In being an interpreter for the government, he seemed to have betrayed the people he had once loved.

This book shows the real Wild West by telling the story of Elijah Nicholas Wilson. A young boy left home to live with the Shoshone Indians. The author tells his adventures with honesty and great detail. Not just action fills the pages. You also learn about life back then, with its violence and important lessons. Pictures fit in well, giving a clear look at history. Do you like stories about Native Americans and cowboys? Then you’ll probably really enjoy this book.

I love a good western, and this truly did the job. Well written and very entertaining. I wish I could read it all over again.

If you're a history buff with any interest in the 'wild west', Cowboy & Indian stories, this will be a great read. It is, in reality, the autobiography of a man named Nick Wilson. The story told in his own words begins when he was about 12 years of age and ran away from home to live among a tribe of Shoshone Indians who lured him away from his home with the gift of a pinto pony that caught his fancy. The story is told in the vernacular and vocabulary of the late 19th and early 20th Century. This edition is a reprint of the original story, which was first published in about 1919. I could highly recommend this book especially to the age group of 10 / 14 year youngsters. The prose are simple. The sentence structure unsophisticated. This should be an easy, educational read for youngsters interested in the wild west. Reading this book gave me visions of the movie "Dances With Wolves". It gets bloody in places and the racism of the period is evident, but it is honest, not contrived and in that sense educational. Highly recommended.