When I was a boy I spent most of my free time hunting around our homestead and this old cabin was a favorite spot for finding rabbits. One day I asked my Papa about the cabin and he got very sad and told me the story of why it was abandoned.
It was in the late 1800’s when this land was open to homesteading and many people moved west to get land and start a life but they were encroaching on land that had always been hunting grounds of the Native Americans and this cabin sits right on hunting grounds used by several bands of Ute and Navajo Indians.
The Indians generally got along with homesteaders and would trade meat and horses for sugar and flour but if times were hard they were not above taking a sheep or cow to keep from starving. The Homesteaders just accepted this and didn’t try to stop them because they understood they needed to get along or there would be trouble.
The cabin was built by a young homesteader and his wife and toddler and he was raising sheep and in a bad winter a hunting party of Indians came in and stole a couple of his sheep. The young homesteader flew angry and he got some of his buddies and they tracked the sheep back to the hunting parties camp and a fight broke out and the homesteaders shot and killed a couple of the Indians. They buried the bodies in shallow graves which is taboo for the Indians that have certain ways they handle their dead and it would mean their spirits would not go to the after life.
They thought that would scare them off and it did but a few days after the homesteader and his family didn’t show up to church so some of the men that had heard about about the fight went to the cabin and nothing was touched in the cabin and the sheep were still grazing in the field but they found the homesteader and his family all killed and laid in the root cellar.
Those were different times and homesteading had a lot of risks and hardships we hopefully never have to experience.
solar-cabin says
When I was a boy I spent most of my free time hunting around our homestead and this old cabin was a favorite spot for finding rabbits. One day I asked my Papa about the cabin and he got very sad and told me the story of why it was abandoned.
It was in the late 1800’s when this land was open to homesteading and many people moved west to get land and start a life but they were encroaching on land that had always been hunting grounds of the Native Americans and this cabin sits right on hunting grounds used by several bands of Ute and Navajo Indians.
The Indians generally got along with homesteaders and would trade meat and horses for sugar and flour but if times were hard they were not above taking a sheep or cow to keep from starving. The Homesteaders just accepted this and didn’t try to stop them because they understood they needed to get along or there would be trouble.
The cabin was built by a young homesteader and his wife and toddler and he was raising sheep and in a bad winter a hunting party of Indians came in and stole a couple of his sheep. The young homesteader flew angry and he got some of his buddies and they tracked the sheep back to the hunting parties camp and a fight broke out and the homesteaders shot and killed a couple of the Indians. They buried the bodies in shallow graves which is taboo for the Indians that have certain ways they handle their dead and it would mean their spirits would not go to the after life.
They thought that would scare them off and it did but a few days after the homesteader and his family didn’t show up to church so some of the men that had heard about about the fight went to the cabin and nothing was touched in the cabin and the sheep were still grazing in the field but they found the homesteader and his family all killed and laid in the root cellar.
Those were different times and homesteading had a lot of risks and hardships we hopefully never have to experience.