It's easy to get caught up in the daily grind and forget how cool history is. That's why, as we approach winter break, I want to share with you a few excerpts from a letter that eight-year-old Homer Thomas wrote on December 17, 1864, from the Gallatin Valley to his grandmother Isabella Thomas in Belleville, Illinois. Just for the sheer fun of it.
Here's Homer describing Virginia City:
It’s a very poor city—it is more than half as big as Belleville, and crowded with old ox wagons—You don’t see any nice horse teams & buggies like you see at home & most of the men are dressed in old dirty & ragged clothes; they do not look nice, like at home. I wish I was back to get some of your good things to eat, & so I could have some apples & cider—there is not any out here in this mountain country. Still I have had some nice antelope, deer and elk meet. I think elk is the best of all, and there is some big bears out here too, but we have not killed any, but some of the hunters kill them.
And here he writes about their new home and his new friend:
We did not stay very long at Virginia City. Father took a notion to go down into the Gallatin Valley and take up a ranch. That is what we used to call a farm at home. So we come down and father bought a nice place, and we built a good log cabbin, & father put a floor in it, too. I tell you we got a good cabbin. There are not any of them got floors but ours and Mr. Thorp’s, and he just put his in today. He lives right close to us, about a quarter of a mile below. and has got a little boy about my size, and we have fun now with our sleds, pulling them through the snow—
And then there's Christmas:
Well Grandmother it is pretty near Christmas time and I don’t expect to get many things this year, for it is not like home, because old Santa Claus do not come out here to give children things, because he thinks all the children too smart to come to this old place.
Well, I can do without any nice toys this year, but I want you to save me some nice things so I can have them when I come back home, I tell you Georgie has grown might fast, & is getting pretty big now. He can almost say everything. He says “I want to go GanMa’s & get some cake.” He don’t know anything about apples, or I bet he would want some of them, too. …
And more about their cabin--and his desire to move back to Illinois:
We built our house out of cottonwood logs. Well, Granma they build houses funny out here, they put poles or kind of rails on the top, then mix mud & put over them, then they put about three or four inches of dry dirt upon that & it makes a mighty warm roof, that is the way they build houses out in this country. I tell you a person learns a good many things by coming out in this country. I expect this will be a great country some day, but I don’t care for that, just as soon as I can get enough gold, I bet you I am coming back, for I think I have learned enough of this country to last me, for a while anyhow…
The letter is in the Montana Historical Society Archives SC837. If you want a PDF of it in its entirety, email me and I'll send the typescript. Happy solstice and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
P.S. And for something completely different, check out these puppets singing Christmas carols in Pikuni (Blackfeet), courtesy of Browning Public Schools.
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