Indian Queho.

Standing second from the left is Frank Waite, chief of police in Las Vegas for many years. Waite was a member of the posse that initially searched for Queho.

Subject: – – Mummified remains of an Indian renegade known as Queho. Many years previous to when this photo was taken in the early 1940s, Queho is said to have killed and robbed a number of individuals in the Searchlight, Nevada area. Unsuccessful efforts were made to apprehend Queho.

In the early 1940s, the men pictured here on the left and right were exploring an area along the Colorado River when they saw a cave in the cliffs above the river. they climbed up to the cave and Queho’s remains were found. Research had established that the remains were Queho’s because several of the artifacts he had stolen from people in Searchlight accompanied the remains.

Queho’s remains were turned over to the Palm Mortuary in Las Vegas when a question arose as to who would pay for the expenses of keeping Queho there and his burial. Roland Wiley, district attorney for Clark County, Nevada, at the time, suggested that the remains be turned over to the Elks Lodge, where for a number of years they were exhibited on the Heldorado grounds during Heldorado days in a glass display case with some of the stolen artifacts.

Queho’s remains were stolen from the Elks on 2 occasions, and each time they were recovered. Jim Cashman, head of the Las Vegas Elks at the time, grew tired of worrying about the theft of Queho’s remains so they were moved to a building belonging to Dobie Doc Caudil near the Tropicana Hotel.

Subject: A view of the suspension bridge and the statue of Christ at Cathedral Canyon, Pahrump Valley, Nevada, in the late 1980s. The statue, carved of rock, is a small replica of the Christ of the Andes installed in the Andes Mountains on the border between Argentina and Chile in the early part of the 20th century. The replica was made by an artist from Ajijic, a small town south of Guadalajara, Mexico. Wiley constructed the suspension bridge about 1973. In 1989, approximately 1,000 people a month visited Cathedral Canyon. Roland Wiley is seated in the picture; the man standing in the white shirt is unidentified.

Roland Wiley purchased Queho’s remains from Dobie Doc for $100 and buried them near Cathedral Canyon, located on Wiley’s ranch in Pahrump Valley overlooking his Hidden Hills airstrip, in concrete and steel so they could not be easily stolen again. Wiley believed the Indian deserved a decent burial and buried popcorn with the remains to accompany Queho on his journey.

The Renegade

On February 21, 1940, the banner headline in the Las Vegas Review-Journal— BODY OF INDIAN FOUND— recalled for many in the town memories of the first murder the dead Indian had committed, thirty years earlier at Timber Mountain, just a few miles from Searchlight in the McCullough Range. . . .

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