Tough Trip:Andrew Garcia and In-Who-Lise

Andrew Garcia

About one year after the Nez Perce Jones incident, the miners in McKay Gulch were subject to another fright. Unknown to the miners was the fact that a mountain man and his Nez Perce wife had camped near Beaver Creek after a harrowing trip along the Sapphire Mountain ridges from the Big Hole Battlefield. Andrew Garcia and In-who-lise had made a water proof camp and settled in before a strong thunder storm came and lasted the better part of the night. 

In the morning Garcia realized that all his horses had pulled their pickets and taken off during the night. In Garcia’s words 

After breakfast, taking my carbine along and a lariat, I struck out for the ridge where I ran the bunch last night. Not a hoof sight of them could I find…After going about a quarter of a mile I ran on their trail, fresh after the rain. Following their trail a short ways down along the ridge I ran into a kind of wagon road…I though I might as well follow it to the top of the ridge…Soon gaining the top of the ridge I was looking down from the wagon trail into a narrow valley or large gulch, and I could see two cabins about a quarter of a mile away down in this gulch… forgetting about the horses, I thought this is good, just what I want. I will go down and see if anyone lives there. I wanted to find out if there was a trail back across the mountains to the Bitterroot valley.

 After surveying the cabin Garcia determined that no one was inside and spotted fresh tracks of two people going from the cabin down into a mining dig. 

I seen two white men about a hundred feet away in the bottom of the cut. They were placer mining. I could see now up and down this gulch the worked over bars of wash or tailings and knew that this was a placer mining camp…Like all bonafide squaw men of that time, I usually wore buckskin clothes from toes to chin. But after this heavy rain, to keep my pants from getting wet in the long grass and brush, I had wrapped an Injun blanket of rainbow colors around me, fastening it at the waist with my cartridge belt. Silently crawling on the bank of the cut, I lay there like a savage with deadly hatred gleaming in my eyes, as I look at these two white men. Now like the bad Injun bucks and old squaws in the buffalo camps did whenever they see a white man, I hissed to myself ‘Souie-app-e A-O (whitemen yes)’. In-who-lise says they are all bad. She hates them. There is only one good white man and that is I, all the rest are evil and bad. Coming to my senses I remember it was not long ago when I was a white man myself. Then I yearn to hear the voices of them men, to talk with them…But first I would fool them. Like the fool I was, just to show off, I stepped out on the edge of the bank above them, where they could see me well and not fifty feet away from them. I raised the Injun blanket up over my shoulders, and up over the lower part of my face. Assuming a dramatic pose, straight as a ramrod with my broad brimmed hat pulled down so they could not see the rest of my face, I stood as erect as a statue, gazing sternly down at them, with my rifle resting in the hollow of my arm. The one who was washing the pan of wash on his knees at the spring now stands up to show the other the prospect he had in his gold pan. Now he gets a good sight of me. He stands looking at me for an instant or two, as though petrified, letting the gold pan drop out of his hands as it came rattling down at his feet. Now he finds his voice and yells to the other “Get Bill, Injuns, Injuns”. His partner fairly leaped. Both were off across the old tailings and across the gulch like startled deer. At first I could not help but roar with laughter, seeing them legging it for their lives in their heavy gum boots. It was not long when I saw what a cussed fool I had been…I was not aware that some of White Bird’s people had come through here on their way from Canada..and killed three miners.” Nez Perce Jones was mining that same day only a few yards away.

 This narrative was excerpted from “Tough Trip Through Paradise.” 

After frightening the placer miners in McKay Gulch, Garcia rounds up his horses and the book “Tough Trip Through Paradise” details in a historical fiction style the story of Nez Perce Jones that had occurred one year earlier. 

Garcia returns to the camp where In-who-Lise questions him about his activities as she had ventured out and saw white men on horseback. Garcia admits to seeing miners but denies talking to them and fails to mention his foolish prank. He then decided 

…I would change my Injun rig and innocently, as though I had never been there before, ride over the ridge and ask them about the trail. But this was not to be. Hearing snarling and howling commotion among our dogs, I sprung to my feet. Susie was already peeping out under the teepee and whispers to me, ‘Yaw, E-S white Souie-app-o. What deviltry have you done to them that they now come here with their guns in their hands?

Then the flap was thrown violently back, and I was surprised to find myself looking into the rifle muzzles of several half-drunken white men. They say ‘Come out of there, you and them buck Injuns, and be sure you don’t try any monkey work.

 With considerable conversation Garcia was able to convince the miners that he was alone with his wife, as Red Jim had told Bill Uquhart he had seen twenty Injuns hiding when Garcia frightened the two of them. In the group of miners was Art Hays (brother of the John Hays killed the year before), Porter, Sim Shively and Jack McDonald. Determining that Garcia was involved in the Jones incident and had returned to find the dead miners gold, there were many angry words and a fight between Porter and Hays ensued. Finally, the group decided they were going to tie Garcia and In-Who-Lise up and put them in a cabin until they could go for the sheriff in Deer Lodge. 

 About this time, Garcia recognized Sim and Jack. 

I said, ‘Mr. Shively, don’t you remember me, the one the troopers at Fort Ellis called the Kid, when you and that man there with several prospectors had in 1876 went overland to the Black hills excitement, and were returning from there in 1877, when you went into camp at Benson’s Landing on the Yellowstone River, and the Crow Injuns stole every saddle horse and pack mules you fellows had, and set you afoot. And when you fellows came to the fort for help to get back your stock, it was then Lieutenant Doane sent a corporal with five troopers and I along with them to track your stock. After finding this stock cached on Boulder Creek and bringing them back to you fellows, when you and that man said to me, when you and the others were leaving Ellis, that your name was Sim Shively and that man said his name was Jack McDonald from Philipsburg and for me to remember, if I ever came around them diggings, to hunt you fellows up, and you would be glad to see me and make this right. Well you guys have a good chance now to make it good, without costing you any money.

Sam Shively said, “You that kid, well I’ll be damned. You have changed a lot since then. I suppose that having that Injun woman with you is why I failed to recognize you. Why did you not tell me this in the first place? It would have saved you and your woman all this bad trouble.

I said, ‘How could I do that, when I only recognized you a few minutes ago, and had plenty bother the way it was to get you to remember me?’ Sim Shively said to the crowd. ‘Boys, this fellar is all right. Jack and I know him. He could not have had anything to do with them killings around here last summer.

 Hays was not happy letting the two go as In-Who-Lise had hit him hard in the middle of the confrontation, but the other men said 

…not to feel sore at them. After the way them Injuns had murdered their friends they could not be blamed for coming over here like they did.

 Garcia asked if there was a way to get into the Bitterroot Valley. 

They told me yes, down the creek from here, about a mile and a half you will come to the Salish buffalo trail, that this trail crossed Rock Creek near the mouth of Ross’s Fork. After it left Rock Creek, it followed the West Fork to the divide, then crossed over to the Skalkaho and followed down this creek into the main Bitterroot Valley. 

 On January 3, 1943 Andrew Garcia died at his home near Fish Creek, Montana. The story was that when he died there were “hundreds if not thousands” of pages of his memoirs wrapped in wax paper used to protect blasting powder and stored in dynamite boxes. Critics and educators have discussed the possibility of these papers still being in a readable format when they were “found” by Ben Stein who edited then published them in 1967 as “Tough Trip Through Paradise.” 

William Bevis in 1990 discussed Garcia and other Montana tales in his book “Ten Tough Trips.” 

What a wonderful and crazy book. Imagine Andrew Garcia sitting in his ranch house near Alberton, on a benchland above the Clark Fork gorge west of Missoula, writing his memoirs in type, in ink, in charcoal, and stuffing the thousands of pages into dynamite packing crates. He started writing in 1923, when he was seventy years old, and kept writing until 1943, when he was ninety.

 Bevis then discusses Garcia’s style and the varied voices he used from young man to an old man reminiscing with verb changes frequently in the middle of the sentence. Bevis had spoken to Stein about the photographs of the Indian women on the book cover and was told that these were the pictures carried by Garcia and shown to people as his three Native American wives. Diane Smith, in “Montana The Magazine of Western History”, Winter 2008, Tough Trip to Publication ( pp. 3-21) discussed the issues these pictures created: first the dates when he married his wives were before the photography used in the pictures were available: second at least two of the pictures are probably professionally done by Carl Moon. The photograph of In-who-Lise first became known when Garcia mailed a copy to Nez Perce historian L.V. McWhorter shortly after attending a Society of Montana Pioneer’s convention for the first time (1931). According to Garcia this photograph was taken by a government photographer in Fort Benton two weeks before her death. 

Said by Garcia to be In-Who-Lise

Through the years, as I have read the critics and comments, I have never doubted that Garcia made a trip through Ross’ Fork. As long as I can remember my Dad, Harry Bentz and T.R. “Bus” Hess recounted the story and meeting a man introduced as Garcia, when they were about eight and nine. Documents in the Big Hole battlefield notes state Garcia revisited the Battlefield Memorial in 1931. It is possible that this was the same time he and a Forest Service employee posted a sign where Garcia believed he had camped at the base of Mt. Amerine. The story goes that both Bus and Dad were elbowed and given a stern look by the elders accompanying the Ranger and Garcia when they tried to correct the site chosen. The boys had been told by their elders the site was in a different spot. To my recollection the sign ended up being posted near Stephen’s Reservoir. This sign was reported to still be hanging in a rancher’s bunkhouse as late as the turn of this century. 

The mystery of the original manuscript was answered in the recent past when the Rock Foundation donated their collection of historical documents to the Montana Historical Society. Catalogued as Archives West: Ben Stein Research Collection, 1908-2003, the documents are in four subgroups: Andrew Garcia, Ben Stein, David Stein and Barbara Stein. The Andrew Garcia documents contain general correspondence (1926-1942); financial records (1908-1941); writings (ca 1930’s) that include autobiographical manuscripts as well as biographical items written for fellow Montana Pioneers; miscellany including historical accounts, transcriptions and interviews given by Garcia; and clippings (ca 1930’s) of articles on historical topics, Andrew Garcia, and Society of Montana Pioneers. 

In the Ben Stein subgroup are agreements concerning royalties for the book Tough Trip Through Paradise and writings consisting of edited copies of Garcia’s manuscripts as well as complete drafts by Stein. 

After ten hours researching these files I have many questions. Because the subject matter was not well know by the intern cataloging the collection there may be items in files that I have not read. Many more hours will be spent reading all of the files before I make a final comment. What I do know is Garcia did leave manuscripts that his four children were aware of. His son Andrew wrote to Ben Stein telling him that the documents were in his possession and wanted money up front and gave Stein possession of the papers for $2,000.00. The other son’s received small royalty payments after publication. Ben’s grandson David was contacted by Robert Redford and reviewed the manuscript for a movie script The final decision was the documents were to confusing to write a script from.