Several years ago, the granddaughter of an outdoor writer from the late 1890s and early-to-mid 1900s provided me with a list of articles he wrote for the newspaper in Blackfoot and possibly other newspapers.
He wrote under the pen name of Salmon River Sam, and each of his articles were always written under the title of “Bed Time Story, by Salmon River Sam.”
My folks were from Blackfoot, and I knew Salmon River Sam personally from the many trips that my parents made to Blackfoot to see our relatives. However, I never realized until after his death that he had written about life in Idaho during the 1800s.
Salmon River Sam was born in August 1879 and lived until January 1966. During his lifetime, he traveled extensively throughout most of Idaho, studying the state’s history and talking to cowboys, gamblers, storeowners, politicians, educators, hunters, trappers and anyone else who would talk to him.
The articles he wrote were not usually true stories of actual people or events, but they reflected life as it was lived during that time with a little humor thrown in.
Unfortunately, he passed away during the time I left home from 1964 to 1966.
His style of writing was very distinctive. He wrote how the people he was writing about talked. His words and expressions reminded me of Festus Hagen, the character that Ken Curtis played on the “Gunsmoke” television series.
He wrote about the wildlife of the central Idaho mountains (primarily the Sawtooth Mountains) and the struggle to tame the land and raise families in Idaho. The struggles of his own family traveling West by covered wagon and handcarts gave him a unique understanding of life in Idaho in the 1800s through the first half of the 1900s.
When he wrote about most of the wildlife in Idaho, he called them by the names we still recognize today.
But he also talked about some animals I don’t recognize by the names he called them. He talks about a Berryhusset that lived on berries on the slope of Vanity Peak. Berryhussets evidently like to crawl in their hole and pull the hole in after them to keep from being followed.
Another animal he talks about is a Soggerwuzzit, which evidently is of considerable size and is pretty vicious with long yellow teeth.
Then there is the Noodleduzzer, which apparently is the “cussedest animule,” to roam the Sawtooth Mountains.
Lastly, there was the Wulflope, which was about 10 feet tall.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that Sam just made these creatures up to have some fun telling his bedtime stories. It made for interesting and fun reading since it was all written as though Festus Hagen were telling the stories “his own self,” as he would say.
Like I said earlier, I knew Salmon River Sam and had a lot of interesting conversations with him at his home in Blackfoot about hunting, Idaho history and large doses of his political philosophy.
He didn’t talk like Festus when he wasn’t writing his series of Bed Time Stories. He was extremely well-educated and articulate. I’m not sure why he chose to write under a pen name. I first learned of his writings when his granddaughter sent me a biography of his life that she had put together, along with some of the articles he wrote for the newspaper.
As I was growing up, whenever my parents took us to Blackfoot I always found a way to sit down and talk to him. Later, when I had a driver’s license, I would always visit him when I was in Blackfoot.
Salmon River Sam was always one of my favorite characters. I still miss talking to him.
Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.
