1. The Trip
A.G.Wilson was a pioneer who had been a member of the Mormon Battalion during the Civil War. On orders from the Mormon church he had spent years building new towns in various places in Utah. In 1878 he was sent to the Moab area, which was to be his last home. This song takes place on the day that they reach the Moab valley.
Approaching from the north, they came through a canyon where state 191 now runs. At that time, right about where the entrance to Arches National Park is, the canyon was blocked by a high cliff called The Jumping Off Place. The Wilsons had to take their wagons apart and lower them down the cliff. At that point, it was only a half mile or so to the Colorado river. Across the river was the future site of Moab, and an old ruined fort where two of AG's sons were waiting.
The black man at the end of the song was Bill Granstaff, who ran cattle in the area. I wanted to get him in there somewhere, so I put him on the north side of the river to help out the Wilsons. He lived in the ruined fort.
There were a few men living in the Moab valley at that time. The Wilsons were the first white family to settle there.
2. Ervin Wilson's Wild Ride
Most of the Indians in the area were friendly, especially to the Mormon settlers, who believed they were the lost tribes of Israel. There was one large band of Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos, led by a chief named Polk, who were extremely angry about the white settlers and who were moving around the east Utah-west Colorado area getting into trouble.
In 1880 two of AG's sons, Ervin and Joe - who was 14 at the time - set out for the next town to the southeast, Coyote, later known as LaSal. They were either taking some cattle there, taking some horses there, or something else. Accounts differ. They rode up a large gully called Pack Creek and ran into a group of Polk's Indians, who immediately started shooting. Ervin got away, and rode all the way to LaSal, chased by an Indian. When he rode into LaSal a resident drove the Indian off by firing into the air. (Or not. Accounts differ.)
3. Left For Dead
Joe Wilson wasn't so lucky. He was shot in the arm and the foot. His horse was killed. While the Indians chased Ervin, he crawled around looking for a place to hide. Eventually the Indians came back and found him. They shot him in the head and left.
Apparently they spent that evening bragging about what they'd done, and word got around to other Indians in the area. Somebody sent two Indian women out to find Joe, and they eventually did. He was still alive. They picked him up and took him home, leaving him under a tree and making noise as they left so somebody would find him.
Joe was in very bad shape. The bullet had entered his left eye and exited his right cheek. He was not expected to live, but he did.
4. Pinhook
In 1881 Polk's Indians killed some people in the Dolores area of Colorado and moved back into Utah, killing some cowboys and stealing a lot of cattle as they went. A posse was formed in Colorado. The posse eventually caught up with the Indians at a place called Pinhook, in the foothills of the LaSal mountains, above Moab. There was a lengthy battle, and gunshots were heard in Spanish Valley. The Moab settlers formed a rescue party and went to help. The Indians fled northwards, having killed about half of the posse. This is said to be the last big Indian battle anywhere.
Unfortunately the Indians also killed two of Joe Wilson's brothers that day, Isadore and Alfred, who had been tending cattle on the mountain. The brothers are buried at the Pinhook monument along with most of the posse dead.
5. Cattle
In the late 1800's there was a fairly large Indian population in SE Utah. In the 1870's someone decided they had become a nuisance, and the US government started rounding them up and sending them to a barren reservation in Colorado. Many of them eventually left the reservation and settled in the Bluff area, near the Utah-Arizona border. This song is from Joe Wilson's point of view. I felt that the single most interesting fact of his story is that he was left for dead by one band of hostile Indians, and saved the next day by other Indians, who literally knew where he lived.
6. The River
Instrumental. No facts. No lyrics.
7. The Ox Driving Song
This song was written (or, really, collected) by Jimmy Driftwood, who also wrote Tennessee Stud and Battle of New Orleans.
Life in Moab eventually settled down. The Wilson family farmed a large area near the Colorado River, and some of them (including Joe) settled in the area between Moab and the town of Monticello. The only Wilson daughter married the local school teacher. Butch Cassidy's gang attempted to make the school teacher leave town and failed, so he must have had some nerve. He also made money by driving driving freight wagons in the area, which gave me the opportunity to use this great song.
8. Grandma Wilson
Jane Wilson. Her obituary confirmed what I had suspected for a while, that the two Wilsons who died at the Pinhook battle were Joe Wilson's brothers. The obit states that she was known as Grandma Wilson when she died. She had many descendants. I tried to get her in this song, and Tina Bailey did a great job being her. Thanks Tina! You rock.
9. How Is That Supposed To Make Me Feel
In 1915 the remnants of Polk's Indians were living in the Bluff-Blanding area, still making trouble. After a brief struggle in which several people were killed, the leaders were caught and sent to Salt lake to be tried. The first stop along the way was Moab. A very interesting series of photos exist that show these desperados having their pictures taken with the Moab townspeople, including women and children. It seems to be quite an occasion.
In 1915 Joe Wilson was a cripple. He had lost part of his foot and one eye. I doubt that he was ever free from the pain of having a bullet pass through his head. His brothers had been killed by the same Indians. And on this particular day they were relaxing with Joe's friends in downtown Moab. I wondered how he felt about that, so I put him there on that day. It's not that much of a stretch. Joe was living his ranch in Dry Valley, right on the route from Blanding the Indians and their captors took, so if he was at home or in town, he almost certainly know they were there that day.
10.The Dream
Some imaginary stuff I invented because I felt the story needed some drama at the end as well as at the beginning. Joe Wilson becomes reconciled to his condition and learns to love everything. All right! The first verse of this song actually came to me in a dream. Aha! Use it!
11. Prisoner Breaks Jail But His Liberty Is Brief
This was actually a headline in the Moab paper in the '30's sometime. A prisoner in the local jail busted out (it was notoriously easy to get out of the Moab jail - it was obvious, reading between the lines, that somebody just let him out) and he was caught a few days later at Joe Wilson's ranch in Dry Valley. So he must have met Joe! Well... not necessarily. For the purpose of my story, I put Joe there, but it is possible that his ranch was deserted and Joe was living in Moab in the old Wilson ranch house by that time.
12.Ghosts
On towards the end of this project, I was in serious trouble. I had done a lot of research, and I came to realize that whenever I had two or more accounts of the same incident, they would differ. And not just in minor details, either. Some accounts say that Ervin Wilson didn't ride to LaSal, that he just went home after he and Joe were attacked. (Which brings up the interesting thought of a band of hardy pioneers sitting down to breakfast the next morning after the 14-year-old son had disappeared during an encounter with Indians only a few miles away, and doing nothing about it.) It was plain that Joe Wilson had passed away at his Dry Valley ranch alone, was found by a passerby, and buried in the Monticello cemetary. Then I met Lloyd Holyoak, who told me that his family had bought the old Wilson farm in what had become downtown Moab on the condition that two of the brothers were allowed to stay there, and that he himself had seen Joe being carried out of the building after his death.
My mother remembers Ervin Wilson as an old man, living in a shack in Moab. Joe Wilson told me that in their later years Joe and Ervin Wilson hung around downtown Moab. I asked Joe Taylor if he knew what the truth was about Ervin's wild ride to LaSal, and he said he didn't know. He said that Joe Wilson would never talk about it, and Ervin wouldn't stop talking about it.
Joe Taylor told me that when he was a young boy, Joe Wilson had hugged him in the Moab grocery store, and scared him because he had one eye and hole in his cheek. Then we did the math, and found that that, based on Joe's birth date, that must have happened in the '40's - well after Joe's official death. So... did Joe Taylor imagine his meeting with Joe Wilson? Was Joe Wilson still alive in the '40's? Was it some drifter who was found dead at Joe's deserted farm in Dry Valley? Was there another character hanging out in Moab in the '40's with one eye and a hole in his cheek? What the hell is going on here?
At that point in my project, all I could do was write a disclaimer because I really had no idea if any of the "facts" I had were correct. This song is the disclaimer. As well as some kind of wrap up, and an attempt to say what these dry old dead people mean to me.
13. The Strawberry Roan. Hidden Track. Sung by Andrew Somerville
Andrew Somerville was a Moab area rancher. He owned a huge expanse of desert and must have known the Wilsons well. He was an amazing man who broke a hip and just kept on working his cattle. He was also my great-grandfather.
It was Joe Taylor that came up with the line "The stories change in the telling." Joe Taylor is gone now. Thanks, Joe, for all the stuff you told me! Once Joe told me "The Taylors know a lot about the Wilsons." I said well Joe, I don't really know any Taylors, except you. He laughed and reminded me that I'm descended from the Moab Taylors myself.
I already knew Moab fairly well, but I spent a few days there searching out the places I'd heard about during the research. At some place i wanted to see where the Wilson wagons had crossed over the river into the Moab valley, and found that it had to be on what is now the old uranium plant, now owned by the US government. So I went there and pulled into the parking lot. There - and only there - was a beautiful view across the river and right up the Moab valley. So i pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. It took about 30 seconds for an armed guard to appear. He pointed out the warning signs that I passed when I entered the parking lot. I knew I had to talk fast. So I started tell him about my big project, all about the Wilsons and their wagons, and the first family, and Joe, and they had to pass eight through here, etc., etc., and eventually he stopped me and said, "Yeah, I know. My wife is a Wilson."