Some of you may be aware of my attempts at recording readings of Mark
Twain and producing videos. I have more than 300 of them on YouTube at
this time. Lately I've been reworking my videos for the Roughing It
chapters. I became annoyed with chapter 19 and decided not to enhance my
video for it. In my mind this chapter presents Twain at his worst. It
presents Twain as prejudiced and a bigot in regards to the Indians of
the Great Basin, the “Goshoots”. The one moment of humor is a sarcasm,
that the “Goshoots” are not quite as bad as the employees of the
Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company. Chapter 20 is also a
relatively inferior production, merely repetitions of an anecdote of an
event that never occurred, Horace Greely and the stagecoach driver Hank
Monk. The chapter is saved, however, by poignant description of his
penultimate day on the road. These two chapters leave this portion of
the country without adequate description.


Rather than produce new videos for these two chapters (my original
videos remain on YouTube) I have created a video based on a Google Earth
Tour of the Overland Stage/Pony Express trail through the Nevada
Territory. I have included in the narration what bits exist of his
description of this territory along with material describing the
stations and something of their history. This left some rather large
gaps of dead air which I have attempted to fill with material related to
the Paiute/Pyramid Lake War of 1860. This conflict and the circumstances
that created the conflict were largely responsible for what Twain
encountered between Utah and Carson City. Bottom line is Twain was
grossly unfair in his portrayal of the Paiutes, or “Goshoot” Indians and
he was entirely ignorant of the cause for their apparent impoverishment,
the destruction of much of their food source and the monopolization of
the water supply and grazing lands. Perhaps he can be excused a bit for
likely being ignorant of the original cause of the Paiute war, the
kidnap and rape of two Pauite girls by some men from the Williams
Station, a stagecoach stop, saloon and general store on the Carson
River.


The video is approximately 52 minutes long and includes some very nice
banjo music from the Heftone Banjo Orchestra (made available through the
Creative Commons ShareALike license).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpqWwNWdD0