This lad was stalking mountain sheep on a high ridge in the Panamints when he was startled by the appearance of three men with white skins and long beards. He had never before seen a white man and he was afraid of them so he hid behind boulders.
The three, scouts of the Jayhawker parties, staggered by. Just a few days before this they had burned their wagons to smoke the meat of their starving oxen. The Indian boy could have led them to water and safety, but he feared to do so. Many years later he was asked why he remained concealed. He always answered, "Why? to get shot?"
This Indian in later years became well known to the white people who came to Death Valley. Guiding a party under the leadership of a man named George, he became known as Panamint George. The last 50 years of his life were spent on the indian
Early surveyors, miners and geologists camped at Indian Ranch. Prospectors staggered in, crazed with heat and thirst. The isolated position of the Panamints and the relative inaccessibility of some of the canyons, made their oasis a natural refuge for army deserters, bandits and others desirous of evading the law. In places like Surprise Canyon, for instance, the law did not often penetrate.
Panamint George hinted that he was the first to find the famous silver ledge in Surprise Canyon, on which Panamint City later mushroomed. With characteristic Indian logic, he took out only as much as he had immediate need for. His claim of course had no weight against those of Senators Jones and Stewart who eventually sank two million dollars in the ledge. In 1875 Panamint City had so lawless a reputation that Wells Fargo, which served
I first heard about Panamint George in 1934, at a campfire in Wildrose Canyon on the evening before my first climb of Telescope Peak. Tyler Vandegrift had stopped at the Indian ranch and had visited with the old man, then nearly 100 years old. At Tyler's suggestion, we pooled our left-over food and one of the drivers volunteered to leave it at the ranch on the way out. I happened to be riding in that car.
A pack of barking dogs greeted us at the broken-down gate. A couple of shacks leaned crazily in the shade of tall cottonwoods. Chickens roosted on the seats of the old Panamint Stage Coach. This vehicle had somehow, after years of hauling some of the liveliest character who ever leeched themselves to a mining camp, come to rest by a clump of mesquite in the drowsy timelessness of the Indian Ranch.
The only story I've ever heard about an attempt to domesticate a bighorn sheep was told of Panamint George.
NOVMBER, 1953
7