In late November 1911 the Pocatello Tribune told its readers about four children who had just been brought to Ross Fork, the headquarters of the Fort Hall Reservation, and placed in the Fort Hall school. Their father had died that February in a fight with the Nevada state police. In Nevada he was called Indian Mike, but the reservation's superintendent had learned that he had once farmed on Bannock Creek, the stream that runs north out of Arbon Valley, past Pauline and on through the reservation.
The story came from Evan W. Estep, the superintendent at Fort Hall. He had taken a party of students to the Indian school at Riverside, California, and on the way home he stopped at the Carson Indian school at Stewart, Nevada, to collect the children.
Jim Taggert, On-den-gar-tar
The part of the story that belongs to Bannock Creek is short, and the Tribune gave it in a few sentences:
The father of these children was known in Nevada as Indian Mike. On Bannock creek he was known as Jim Taggert and also by his native name of On-den-gar-tar. At one time he had quite a farm there, but had some trouble and the agent took his farm away from him and gave it to another. He then left the reservation in disguest and lived on Goose creek for a time ...
The paper did not say when he farmed there, where on the creek the farm lay, what the trouble was, which agent took the land or who received it. It did not say which Goose Creek he moved to either.
The fight in Nevada
The rest of the article is the Nevada story as Estep told it. He was accused of living mostly by stealing horses. About a year before, his band had been charged with horse stealing and with the murder of a boy the paper called Frank Doorp. For a time, the Tribune said, the government thought the whole band had been killed by white horse thieves who had then blamed the killing on them, until "later information cleared up the matter." The band crossed Nevada toward Death Valley, turned back for lack of water, went west, perhaps as far as the Sacramento River, recrossed the Sierra Nevada, and was heading for northeastern Nevada when the state police caught up with it at Kelley's creek near Golconda. The paper dated the fight February 26, 1911.
By the Tribune's count, eight of the twelve people in the band were killed: Mike, his wife, his two sons and their wives, and two others. The police lost one man. The paper also said the band had killed a Chinese man and three sheepherders on its march. These were the paper's statements; it named none of those victims and none of the officers.
The children
Four children survived. They were held in the Reno jail for some weeks before Major Asbury, superintendent of the Carson school, took them in. When Estep learned that their father had once lived on Bannock Creek, he put the matter to the Indian council at Fort Hall, which voted to enroll the children with the Fort Hall tribe. The Secretary of the Interior then directed Estep to bring them home and see that they received allotments of land. The paper did not say where the allotments were to be. At the time the reservation's land on lower Bannock Creek was being divided into allotments, as told in When the Bannock Creek lands were allotted.
The Tribune named the children as Louise, about sixteen; Cleveland, about seven; Hattie, four; and Josephine, about twenty months. Josephine had become a favorite at both schools, and Estep said he had not been sure at first that the Carson school would let her go. The younger three, the paper said, had nearly forgotten the march and the fight. Louise had not. For more than three weeks in the Reno jail she had expected to be taken out and executed, and she was still slow to trust anyone. Estep, the paper reported, did not believe in "hereditary criminality" and meant to give the children the best the school could offer.
What is not known
The headline speaks of three orphans, while the article names four children. The Tribune's account is the only one found for this post. No other report of Jim Taggert's farm, the children's allotments or what became of the four turned up in the papers searched. The article tells the Nevada events only as the superintendent reported them, in the language of a 1911 newspaper.
The superintendent's surname is also a valley name. No source read here connects Evan W. Estep with the Estep family who came from Kentucky to Pauline a few years later.
On this site: Pauline and West Fork; The reservation next door: the 1898 cession and a borrowed wagon; and Pasakwa Huude and other names on Bannock Creek.
The article as printed
Pocatello Tribune, November 25, 1911, page 8. Transcribed from the page scan.
Awful Experience of Three Indian Orphans
Indian Mike's Children, Survivors of Pitched Battle Between Outlaw Redskin Band and Nevada State Police, Now at Ross Fork—Agency Superintendent Estep Tells Thrilling Tale of Former Resident of Fort Hall.
Superintendent Evan W. Estep, of the Fort Hall Indian reservation, returned to his headquarters at Ross Fork last week from a trip to the Indian school at Riverside, California, where he escorted a party of Indian students. On the return trip he came by way of the Carson Indian school, at Stewart, Nevada, where he took charge of four Indian children who are the sole survivors of a pitched battle between Indian Mike's band and a company of the Nevada state police, fought on the 26th of last February at Kelley's creek, near Golconda, Nevada. In this fight Indian Mike, his wife, his two sons and their wives and two other Indians were killed. The four children who survived were taken to Reno and thrown into jail where they were held for some weeks. After some delay Major Asbury, superintendent of the Carson Indian school, took charge of them and placed then in his school and gave them the first real care and consideration they had ever received.
Superintendent Estep then took the matter up and learned that the father, Indian Mike, had at one time been a resident of the Bannock creek district of the Fort Hall reservation in this county. He then brought the facts to the attention of the Indian council, which voted in favor of the enrollment of the children with the Fort Hall tribe and the secretary of the interior so ordered and directed Major Estep to proceed to the Carson school and bring the children home with him and see that they were given allotments of land. There are three girls and one boy, Louise about sixteen, Cleveland about seven, Hattie four and little Josephine about twenty months old, the latter being an unusually bright and cunning child who has won the hearts of every one connected with the institution in the few days she has been in the Fort Hall school. She was a general favorite at the Carson school also and Major Estep told a Tribune man that he did not know at first whether they were going to let him take her away.
The father of these children was known in Nevada as Indian Mike. On Bannock creek he was known as Jim Taggert and also by his native name of On-den-gar-tar. At one time he had quite a farm there, but had some trouble and the agent took his farm away from him and gave it to another. He then left the reservation in disguest and lived on Goose creek for a time, and then led sort of a gypsy life and was accused of making his living mostly by horse stealing. About a year ago the band was charged with both horse stealing and with the murder of a boy named Frank Doorp. For a time the government thought that the entire band had been killed by white horse thieves who had also killed Doorp and then laid the charge aginst Mike's band, but later information cleared up the matter. After this murder the band disappeared from its old haunts and was not really located until overtaken at Kelly's creek on the fatal day, though they were reported as having been seen at different points in both Nevada and California. After the killing of the boy Doorp the band took the trail and crossed Nevada towards the southwest until they were driven back by lack of water on the desert in the vicinty of Death Valley. They trailed north and struck for the west and reached the Sacramento river, in all probably, as the girl, Louis, said they went to "water they could not cross" and then turned back and again crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains and were working towards northeastern Nevada, when they were overtaken by the state police, surprised, and eight of the twelve in the band were killed, the officers loosing one white man. While on this long march the band killed and buried a Chinaman and killed and robbed three sheepherders.
The condition of the children when brought into Reno was said to have been pitiful in the extreme, as they were half starved, half clothed and very dirty, and all suffering from privation and the experience through which they had just passed. Fortunately the three younger children were so young that they have about forgotten the awful experience of the long march and the battle, but the older girl is still suffering from the nervous shock. For more than three weeks after she was taken to the Reno jail she expected each day to be taken out and executed. She is yet very reserved, talks but little of her experience and makes friends slowly even with her own people, and appears to doubt the sincerity of the friendship of every one, which perhaps is not to be wondered at.
Major Estep is not a believer in hereditary criminality and while the family of these children was undoubtedly a criminal band he intends to give the children the best that the school affords and has no reason to believe that they will grow up to be anything but the best of citizens.