Fear and respect of the Shoshone people, Julius Brenchley and Jules Remy’s perceptions of
Native Americans and some of their influences during their journey to Salt Lake City, by
Grant Twist
In 1855, Julius Brenchley diverted back to the US from the Sandwich Islands with his new travelling companion Jules Remy.
1 The two travelled to San Francisco for “science and pleasure”, to investigate the development of Salt Lake City.
2 “Founded in 1847 by a group of
Mormon pioneers”, 3 the two explorers were intrigued by phenomenal growth of
Mormonism, and so set to gain a first-hand experience to discover and judge its authenticity.
4 Outwardly it could be assumed that the travellers thought little of the
Shoshone, as they were at times referred to as “digger Indians”, a derogatory name that reflected their method of gathering as primitive.
5 The journey though reveals the fear of, and respect for, the Shoshone people as well arguably the bigger threat, the frontiersman.
Fear of raids from Indian or greedy whites their adventure reveals the thrills and dangers of the ‘wild-west’. Trekking through what they were told was an Indian war zone they disguised themselves, out-ran an Indian ambush and emptied their packs of artefacts and flora samples for fear of attack. Interestingly their servant George, an Indian himself, was the antithesis of the stereotypical Noble-Savage. The experiences that the pair arguably intended on finding showed their intent on seeing the idyllic old west in which the Indian
1 Sam Hitchmough, Julius brechley: Exploring the Explorer, (2014), p.2 [web] www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/brenchley/academic-essays 6 Jan 2014
2 Kent Archives, U1823/8 01,02 108/5/3, Passport from Hawaii to San Francisco and other foreign passports,
4 th June 1855 (1855)
3 Sam Hitchmough, Julius brechley: Exploring the Explorer, (2014), p.2 [web] www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/brenchley/academic-essays 6 Jan 2014
4 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861) pp. x, xii https://archive.org/stream/ajourneytogreat00brengoog#page/n8/mode/2up 10 Nov 2013
5 Interactions with the people of Native North America, http://www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2013/06/A-Journey.pdf
1

was a part of before its extinction, a popular belief during the age of new ideas in natural science and biological racism.
Whilst it is important to have an awareness of their purpose in travelling to Salt Lake City; to understand how Mormonism was established and received by not only an immigrant nation, but also how it was broadcasted across that Atlantic, the purpose of this essay focuses on the explorers’ “pleasure.
6 The pair discovered that on the frontier “the enemy is every one you meet”.
7 In fact some Indians in the South west had declared war against the whites because of “resentment”.
8 To “avoid attracting the attention of evil-doers” the pair dressed as miners, and armed themselves with “a double barrelled rifle and five six-shot revolvers”; with a sense of smugness the pair believed that these technologically superior weapons were enough to face a foe “far superior in number”.
9 Although they were warned against
Indian ambushes, Remy and Brenchley decided to pair wished to trek to the ‘New
Jerusalem’ on foot. The threat of an ambush was clearly not enough to deter the duo from witnessing the old west in its natural state before it was complete overtaken by the frontier.
This did not mean to say the duo did not fear the possibility of an Indian ambush. Brenchley and Remy disguised themselves as miners, and when they stumbled upon a cabin that looked as though its occupants had been massacred by Indians, they refused to rest in it.
10
In addition, to maintain as quick a pace as possible, they sacrificed “about one hundred a fift
6 Kent Archives, U1823/8 01,02 108/5/3, Passport from Hawaii to San Francisco and other foreign passports
(1855)
7 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861) p. 28
8 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861) p. 5
9 Ibid
10 Ibid pp. 5, 27
2

pounds in weight” of goods and artefacts.
11 Despite these measures the two did unfortunately experience an ambush by the Shoshone. They narrowly escaped, but
Brenchley suffered an arrow to his neck, 12 an item which he kept for his collection. This however was arguably an isolated incident; it was likely that the men were mistaken for cavalry men who the Shoshone were at war with under Captain Jones and Lieutenant
Mackay.
13 Fear of Indian raids was rife even with Indian neighbours. A Mormon called Peter
Haws, who lived near and traded with neighbouring Shoshones fled in fear of Indian retaliation after his son in law Carlos had murdered a number of Shoshones.
14
For the most part, the amount of fear outweighed the amount of danger that actually occurred. Most of the Indians they came across, such as the ‘Diggers’ and Sokopitz’s
Shoshones, were pacifists or acted under the peace terms of Treaty.
15 Official treaties with the Shoshone did not occur until 1863, in which land was surrendered to safeguard the passage for frontiersmen for annuities of money, cattle for twenty years.
16 The agreements that Remy referred to were those conducted between the Shoshone chiefs and Indian Agent
Dr. Hunt, who hoped to establish peace by creating farms to encourage agriculture as a means of subsistence, and the sedentary settlement of the Shoshone on reservations.
17
These measures of cooperation gave less cause for violence by the Shoshone along
Brenchley and Remy’s journey. However, land had not yet been formally surrendered; Euro-
American travellers could easily be mistaken for encroaching frontiersmen.
11 Ibid p. 85
12 Ibid p. 99
13 Ibid p. 92
14 Ibid pp.136-137
15 Ibid pp.14, 27, 124, 125
16 See The Kappler Project (Oklahoma State University) Charles Kappler, ed. “Shoshone”, Indian Affairs: Laws
and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904) http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Kappler/Vol2/toc.htm#S
17 Laura Lauren son Byrne, MA Thesis. “Reservations”, The Federal Indian Policy in Utah, 1848-1865 (California:
Bancroft Library, 1919) pp. 89-95
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In fact Haws had generally good relations with the neighbouring Shoshone. He “spoke favourably of them”, stated they were “honest and trustworthy” and their women
“exceedingly virtuous”.
18 If the Indians of the South West were as dangerous as the
Americans were preaching, Brenchley and Remy would have been victims of a racialist massacre. That they were generally well respected by the bands in which they encountered suggests that there was a deeper complexity to Indian violence that was reactive, not proactive.
The fear of Indian massacres was a theme that had developed throughout the history of the
Frontier; it was a fear every emigrant had implanted into their hearts even when the Indian was largely outnumbered. Though there were incidents of Indians attacking Frontier settlements, they were largely small in size and isolated in nature. De Creavcour creates psychological trauma and paranoia in the fear of an Indian ambush. This was based on the belief that all Indians were “determined to destroy the whole chain of frontiers”.
19 Since
Indians, De Crevecoeur claimed, hid in the “wilderness”, emerging “in the dead of night”, there was nothing more fearful than stories of Indian attacks on Frontier settlements.
20 This created an image of the Indian as wild demonic agents, the antithesis of Christian civilisation. As the southwest was the farthest point of the frontier, it was more isolated from Anglo-American civilization and therefore more vulnerable. This, it would appear, was the dominant discourse in the Frontier world. Regardless how cooperative Indian Nations were, immigrants would always suffer from agitation and suspicion.
18 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861),p. 123
19 Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, Letters of an American Farmer, 1782 (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1962), p.200
20 Ibid p.201
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Though they dressed as miners to “avoid attack in the American West”, 21 the greater enemy was arguably the frontiersman. Hostile Shoshones were acting within the terms of their treaty with the United States that encouraged them to “punish those emigrants who should commit any offence against the natives”.
22 In light of this, the Shoshone were not at war with the whites but upholding their Treaty obligation. As can be seen by Remy’s account, not even the explorers, who had obtained a considerable amount of anthropological information on aboriginal peoples, including the Shoshones, did not understand the tradition of Native American warfare. The traditional belief was that uncivilised nomadic communities such as the Shoshone lived by violence.
23 In fact, warfare amongst Native
American Tribes was inter-linked with the spiritual and ceremonial spheres of tribal life.
Unlike the total war of Europeans, Native American warfare was much less aggressive, and was usually only an act of vengeance of equal destruction. Dressing as miners would not free Brenchley and Remy from Indian harassment regardless of Indian warfare code. More specifically, Indians would not have been interested in attacking those who had done them no harm. By dressing like frontiersmen, Brenchley and Remy arguably attracted the ambush party they encountered as they disguised themselves as those who may have caused harm to the Shoshone way of life. They discovered they were being followed when after firing a shot at some cross, Indians hiding in a nearby bush “took flight”, most likely fearing that
21 Sam Hitchmough, Julius brechley: Exploring the Explorer, (2014), p.1 [web] www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/brenchley/academic-essays 6 Jan 2014
22 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861), p. 124
23 Nicholas Blomley, “Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid”,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol.93 No.1 (Oxford: Blackwell Publisin, 2003), p. 125
[web] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8306.93109
10 Jan 2014
5

they were being fired upon.
24 Dressed as miners, firing at harmless birds, Brenchley and
Remy systemically took the form of white encroachers; it was not wonder they were ambushed.
From this perspective, it was more likely that the duo were disguising their identity as tourists from thieving frontiersmen. Remy stated that everyone, “even the white man” was an enemy out on the plains.
25 It was more likely that Brenchley and Remy had wanted to hide their identity as explorers from whites who may have seen them as an easy target with plenty of valuable objects in their possession. The land hungry and the gold hunters who arrived on the West Coast were driven by the prospect of fortunes of land.
26 Between 1850 and 1860 the population on the West coast had soared from 92 000 to 380 000 whites that combined with a “lethal” attitude saw every person, especially an Indian who was reduced to a “marginal existence”, as an obstacle to achieving prosperity.
27 Despite this so long as the Indian practiced their traditions they were deemed a threat to security. Although
Brenchley and Remy hid their identities as tourists from whites, it was likely that they were more frightened of Indian harassment.
If it were not for Indian stereotypes then it was likely that the pair would not have feared the Indian quite as much. Stereotypical Indian images were widely portrayed in the public consciousness through art, literature, and extravagant performances like Buffalo Bill’s Wild
West Show. Image makers such as George Catlin, Paul Kane, Frederick Verner, Edmund
Morris, Emily Carr, and James Cooper produced art that reduced the Indian of North
24 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861), p. 96
25 Ibid p. 28
26 Dee Brown, The American West (London: Pocket Books, 2004), p. 29
27 James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep (London: Picador, 1998), pp.228-229, 239
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America to a part of a landscape that was vanishing under the frontier. Kane, a believer in the vanishing Indian, argued that “his footsteps are fast being obliterated”.
28 It was likely that Kane wanted to capture the traditions of the Indians of North America, their
“costumes…manner and customs, and to represent the scenery of an almost unknown country” because it would be replaced by settlement. Catlin travelled from his home state of Wyoming across the western plains in an attempt to capture the essence of the Indians before their “rapid declension” to extinction.
29 The context of production was undoubtedly an influence on the travelling pair, who wished to experience and collect evidence of the old west before it was extinguished also. It would explain why despite the fear of the Indian permeated through stereotyping such as art, literature, and accounts, men such as
Brenchley and Remy were still willing expose themselves to the old west.
The belief in the vanishing Indian permeated through popular culture in the nineteenth century. Art was used to capture the Indian in his natural state before the effects of encroachment could be fully felt.
30 The Indian was pictured as sub-human, or like a wild creature, yet to or incapable of being tamed or civilized. Catlin’s “Buffalo Hunt” 31 and
“Warrior of the Crow Tribe” portrayed the Indian as the ‘Noble Savage’; a race of primitive people with savage yet majestic qualities.
32 They used handmade weapons such as lances and bows rather than more modern guns that sensationalized ferocious violence. Marks of authority such as war paint in portraits of Buffalo Bull and Little wolf and portraits of
28 Paul Kane, Wanderings of an Artist, in J. Russel Harper, ed., Paul Kane’s Frontier (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1971), p.51
29 George Catlin, North American Indians, Peter Mattiessen ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1989) p. 3
30 Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992), pp16-17
31 “Buffalo Hunt”, George Catlin, The Complete Works, (2014), www.georgecatlin.org/Buffalo-Hunt.html
32 “Warrior of the Crow Tribe”, George Catlin, The Complete works (2014), www.georgecatlin.org/Warrior-ofthe-Crow-Tribe.html
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ceremonies like the “scalp dance” romanticised the paganism of Indian culture.
33 The Indian of the old west was thus portrayed as a war like heathen, an irrational creature that had not been tamed in the arts of civilized life. While a threat of attack was very real, it was certainly sensationalized by the image makers of the day.
Yet despite these perceptions of Indians as dangerous folk alive in popular culture during the nineteenth century, holding qualities of primitiveness that include pagan religious practices, war-like aggressiveness, and other savage qualities such as their nomadic lifestyle, it was perhaps Brenchley and Remy’s companion George that illustrated the travellers’ opinions of the Indian most clearly. The pair despised George. In Brenchley’s photograph notes, he called George “a hideous little (?)”.
34 Even though the term he used was lost in translation, it certainly would not have been a positive term.
On the trail George was a liability. He could not “saddle his mule”, and “constantly” fell to the rear of the pack.
35 He lost a pipe that was a gift from “a king and queen” of Hawaii, and although Remy considered it a “small” mishap it arguably consolidated George’s irresponsibility.
36 He was more of a hindrance than help. He was not used to “a life of labour and endurance”, and became exhausted more quickly than the two more experienced travellers 37 . On one night fell asleep preparing the trio’s supper, and one day trekking, Remy recalled he fell asleep on his mule even after “twenty hours sleep”.
38 In
33 “Scalp Dance”, George Catlin, The complete Works (2014)www.georgecatlin.org/Scalp-Dance,-Sioux.html
34 Kent Archives, MD/CZ. 4/23 70/5/6, Photographs (Taken by Julius Brenchley) with their descriptions
35 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861), pp. 101-102
36 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861), p. 18
37 Ibid, p. 24
38 Ibid, pp. 24, 28-29, 57
8

addition, George hid among the “baggage-mules” when Brenchley and Remy were ambushed rather than help defend their lives; Brenchley believed he even fallen asleep.
39
George showed inexperience in nomadic habits, and the lack of bravery during the attempted Indian raid made him a liability more than anything else. He was the antithesis of the stereotypical Indian. He lacked bravery and the wandering habits of the nomad, slowing
Brenchley and Remy putting them at more risk.
Brenchley and Remy’s perception of the Indian was largely fuelled by the popular opinion of the time. Quite simply they judged the Indians as “primitive” people with “strange customs” 40 . More deeply they were filled with admiration and fear for their Indian brethren.
Even those such as Peter Haws who had established and developed friendly relations with the Shoshone were powerless to the stereotype of the vengeful savage. Brenchley and
Remy got mixed up in a foreign war, and were mistakenly targeted as encroachers breaking treaty promise
39 Ibid, pp.100-102
40 Jules Remy, A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the
History, Religion, and Customs of the Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United
States, Vol. I, 1861 (London, 1861) p. 126
9

Cited works
Primary Sources
Kent Archives: Brenchley Documents: U1823/8 01, 02 108/5/3 and MD/CZ. 4/23
70/5/6
Remy, Jules. And Brenchley, Julius. A Journal to Great Salt Lake City by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, M.A.; with a sketch of the History, Religion, and Customs of the
Mormons, and an introduction on the Religious Movement in the United States, Vol.
I, 1861. London. 1861. https://archive.org/stream/ajourneytogreat00brengoog#page/n8/mode/2up
(accessed Nov 10 2013)
Online Archives
Kappler Project. The Kappler Project. Oklahoma State University. Kappler, Charles. ed. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2. Washington: Government Printing
Office. 1904. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Kappler/Vol2/toc.htm#S (accessed 10
Jan 2014)
For George Catlin’s works see: Geogre Catlin, The Complete Works. 2014. www.georgecatlin.org/Buffalo-Hunt.html
(accessed Feb 2 2014)
Secondary Sources
Blomley, Nicholas. “Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the
Survey, and the Grid”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol.93
No.1 Oxford: Blackwell Publising. 2003 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8306.93109
(accessed Jan 10
2014)
10

Brown, Dee. The American West. London: Pocket Books. 2004
Catlin, George. North American Indians, Peter Mattiessen ed. London: Penguin
Books. 1989
De Crevecoeur, Hector St. John. Letters of an American Farmer, 1782. London: J.M.
Dent & Sons. 1962
Hitchmough, Sam. Julius Brenchley: Exploring the Explorer. 2014. www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/brenchley/academic-essays (accessed Jan 6 2014)
Kane, Paul. “Wanderings of an Artist”. Harper, J. Russel ed., Paul Kane’s Frontier.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1971
Lauren son Byrne, Laura. MA Thesis. The Federal Indian Policy in Utah, 1848-1865.
California: Bancroft Library. 1919 https://archive.org/stream/federalindianpol00byrnrich/federalindianpol00byrnrich_ djvu.txt
(accessed 12 Jan 2014)
Wilson, James. The Earth Shall Weep. London: Picador. 1998
Interactions with the people of Native North America http://www.brenchleycollection.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/A-Journey.pdf
(accessed Jan 5 2014)
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