AFFIDAVIT OF WILLIAM ARNOLD ROSE

State of Utah                )

                                    (ss.

County of Salt Lake    )

            On the second day of August, 1924 at Salt Lake City, Utah personally appeared before me, A. W. Duvall, Notary Public for the State of Utah and residing at Salt Lake City, Utah, one, William A. Rose, of Eureka, Utah who made the following statement of facts in connection with the finding and rescuing of a Bannock Indian girl baby. 

            My name is William A. Rose.  I was born in Lee County, Iowa 1839.  I came to what is now Cottonwood, near Salt Lake City, Utah in 1850 when I was eleven years old.  Ten years after coming to Salt Lake City, Utah, in the year of 1850 I moved to Ogden, Utah where I was married Xmas (Christmas) day in the year of 1860.  I am now in my 85^th year.  I live at Eureka, Utah and enjoy very good health considering my age.  My memory is good for a man of my age.  I remember best the things that happened in my boyhood and early manhood, maybe because they were more exciting. 

            In the year of 1863 I started freighting between what is now Ogden, Utah to points near the border line of what is now Idaho and Montana, mainly Meeks Ferry just this side of the Montana border and to the Placer mining country not far beyond the Montana border, to what was then a Placer mining camp called Virginia.  Virginia was fairly near to what is now Bannock, Montana.  I freighted from Ogden to this country for several years after I started in 1863. 

            The first freighting trip I made was in the late spring or early summer of 1863 when I took a load of flour from Ogden, Utah to Meeks Ferry on the Snake River in Idaho, near the Montana border, maybe fifty miles from the border.  Jake Meeks with his wife, a Bannock lady squaw ran the ferry.  I stopped here about a month this time and helped Jake Meeks lay a nine hundred foot cable across the river.  There was a lot of Bannock Indians there with Jake Meeks and I sold a good many sacks of flour to the Bannock Indians there.  After we got the cables across and the boats in they wouldn’t carry anything across but wagons.  When I was there this time there was a Utah fellow by the name of Hunt.  Me and him used to hold horses behind the skiffs and make them swim the river. 

            The next trip, in the late summer of 1863, I went from Ogden, Utah to what was then Virginia Montana, a Placer mining camp.  I freighted a load of supplies to Babner and Sledy (not sure of spelling names right but sure that is the way they are pronounced) who were merchants at this place Virginia.  After I had unloaded and started back, on my second day out I fell in company with a man by the name of Boyd.  He had a saddle horse and a pack horse and we heard there had been a battle fought between the Indians and the United States troops and we knew we had to pass the place where the battle had been fought and we made it a point to stop, look and see, what we could see after the battle had been fought.  This was my second day out, a few hours after meeting Boyd.  It was the next forenoon after the battle had been fought and by looking over the battle ground we found several dead Bannocks and one was a Bannock squaw with a baby laying on it’s dead mother’s arm and we found out that the mother was killed by a stray bullet.  The baby had a piece of blanket over it and we was quite sure that this blanket had been put over it by some soldier after the fight.  I judge the baby was but several months old.  We did not stay long there as it was a bad place to stay.  We took the baby and put it in my wagon.  This place where we found the baby was the second day out from Virginia Montana, what was then a Placer mining camp.  I would estimate the place where we found the baby to be about thirty miles from Virginia, Montana or about fifty miles from what is now Lemhi, Idaho.  We took the baby from where we found it and put it in my wagon and got away soon for it was a bad place to stay.  The next day after we found the baby we was traveling and saw a big dust and not knowing but what we was in a wild country alone but when they came close enough we saw that it was United States soldiers and they came to a halt and wanted to know where we was going and we told them and they hollered “bully boy”, you calculated to give us a game if we had been Indians.  We said we sure did and the captain said, you, and you would have given us a good one from down under that bank and after they told us they were going to reinforce the soldiers who were ahead we told them of the battle ground and we told them we found a dead Bannock squaw and a baby lying on it’s mother’s arm.  Some of them looked at the baby and they gave us good advice saying boys be careful you are in danger, good-bye.  They were cavalry troops.  They said they were General Conner’s troops.  I freighted for three or four years after that through the same country.  We killed rabbits (the small kind) and made soup from them for the baby until we got to the south end of what is now Cache Valley, Utah near what is now Wellsville, Utah and there we got milk from the Utah folks and told them that we wanted it for our baby and they wanted to know what we would do with the baby and we told them and they all wanted to see it and brought us some clothes for it and finally we got home at Ogden and we kept the baby for about a week, my wife letting it nurse her.  This man Boyd wanted us to keep the baby but I told him, no, we had two small ones.  I found he was acquainted with Leonard Rice of Farmington, Utah and I gave him my consent to take it to Leonard Rice at Farmington, Utah.  This he did.  I know Leonard Rice’s father who lived at North Ogden, Utah and saw him many times after this for a number of years and during this time I often talked with him about the Indian baby girl that I had sent to his son’s home, with Boyd. 

            I knew the Bannock Indians well.  I met with them and sold flour to them on my first freighting trip to Meeks Ferry, which is on the Snake River.  I would say about forty or fifty miles from what is now the Montana-Idaho border line.  I was with them about a month and have seen lots of Bannocks since then, both in Idaho and in Montana and later on the reservation.  One time when I was freighting to Montana a Bannock chief came back with me.  He could talk fairly good English and he used to tell me about the Bannocks, where the country was that belonged to the Bannocks and since then I have been on the Bannock reservation a number of times.  I personally knew two Bannock chiefs.  I met them at Meeks Ferry on Snake River Idaho.  Their names was Chief Snag and Chief Mybo (not sure of spelling last name but sure of pronunciation).  I know this baby was a Bannock because it was in a Bannock country where I had seen and dealt with the Bannocks.  I am sure the dead squaw was Bannock because she looked like one.  I had seen and dealt with many Bannock Indians before I saw her and seen and dealt with many for years afterward and have always been sure the dead squaw was a Bannock.  There were no other Indians there in that day but the Bannocks and the Bannocks wouldn’t allow other Indians to come on their land.  I know beyond a doubt that this baby we found and brought home was of the Bannock tribe. 

                                                                        (signed)  William A Rose

Subscribed and sworn to before me this second day of August A.D. 1924 at Salt Lake City, Utah.                           

                                    (signed)  A W Duvall

(seal)                                         Notary Public, Salt Lake County, Utah.