The oldest relics of Wyoming printing are June and July 1863 issues
of the _Daily Telegraph_, published at Fort Bridger in what was then
the Territory of Utah. The printer and publisher of this newspaper was
Hiram Brundage, telegraph operator at the Fort, who had previously
been associated with the Fort Kearney _Herald_ in the Territory of
Nebraska.[135] No printing is known to have been performed in Wyoming
between 1863 and 1867, with the possible exception of a disputed
imprint dated 1866,[136] and the first permanent Wyoming press dates
from the founding of the _Cheyenne Leader_ in September 1867.
The earliest example of Wyoming printing in the Library of Congress
is a 24-page pamphlet printed at Green River by "Freeman & Bro.,
book and job printers" in 1868: _A Vocabulary of the Snake, or,
Sho-Sho-Nay Dialect by Joseph A. Gebow, Interpreter. Second Edition,
Revised and Improved, January 1st, 1864._ It was printed on the press
of the _Frontier Index_, a migratory newspaper which commenced when
the Freemans bought out the Fort Kearney _Herald_ in Nebraska. This
press moved westward from place to place as the Union Pacific Railroad
penetrated into southern Wyoming, and it stopped at Green River for
about two months in 1868.[137]
The first edition of Gebow's _Vocabulary_ was printed at Salt Lake
City in 1859, and the first printing of the second edition at Camp
Douglas, Utah, in 1864. The vocabulary proper is prefaced only by the
following statement:
Mr. Joseph A. Gebow, having been a resident in the
Mountains for nearly twenty years, has had ample
opportunity of acquiring the language of the several tribes
of Indians, and offers this sample of Indian Literature,
hoping it may beguile many a tedious hour to the trader,
the trapper, and to any one who feels an interest in the
language of the Aborigines of the Mountains.
Even for those unfamiliar with the native dialect, the words and
phrases in English can be beguiling. Among the phrases chosen for
translation are "Go slow, friend, don't get mad" and "You done wrong."
[Illustration: (_A Vocabulary of the Snake, or, Sho-Sho-Nay Dialect by
Joseph A. Gebow, Interpreter. Second Edition, Revised and Improved,
January 1st, 1864._)]
The present Library of Congress copy is inscribed to the Smithsonian
Institution, and to judge from a date stamp it was added to the
Smithsonian Library by May 1870. Later it was transferred to the
Library of Congress through the Smithsonian Deposit (see above,
p. 52). It is in an old library binding with the original printed
wrappers bound in.
[Footnote 135: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Early Printing in Wyoming
and the Black Hills_ (Hattiesburg, Miss., 1943), p. 9-10.]
[Footnote 136: Ibid., p. 10, note 1.]
[Footnote 137: Ibid., p. 39. On p. 48 McMurtrie argues that the
pamphlet was printed in the month of October.]