author
Elijah Nicholas Wilson
1842–1915
A frontier memoirist remembered as “Uncle Nick,” he turned a remarkable life among the Shoshones and on the American West’s early trails into stories that readers have kept discovering for generations. His work offers an unusual firsthand glimpse of 19th-century frontier life through adventure, survival, and cross-cultural experience.
1 Audiobook
The white Indian boy : The story of Uncle Nick among the Shoshones
by Elijah Nicholas Wilson
About the author
Born in 1842, Elijah Nicholas Wilson was an American pioneer and memoirist whose best-known writing grew out of his boyhood experiences in the West. He became widely associated with the Shoshones, among whom he was known as “Yagaiki,” and later in life he was affectionately called “Uncle Nick.”
Wilson is best known for The White Indian Boy and Among the Shoshones, books drawn from his own experiences and remembered for their vivid frontier storytelling. His life story has long interested readers because it connects personal adventure with a rare firsthand account of the American West and of time spent living close to Shoshone people.
He died in 1915. Wilson is still remembered as a colorful Western figure whose memoirs helped preserve a personal, dramatic version of frontier history.