The Nebraska State Historical Society made its usual exhibit at the state fair this year. The walls of the booth were covered with photographs of Nebraska soldiers and other war workers. The pictures on the swinging frame attracted much attention. This frame carries numerous photographs of pioneer days as well as many others of historical interest selected from our collection. The traveling museum case, which contains some valuable and curious museum specimens mounted for use in schools and libraries, helped to make the display attractive.

field situated in Custer county about seventeen miles northeast of the town.
   The field was probably an intrenched camp, consisting of 108 rifle pits arranged in the form of an ellipse and enclosing five or six acres or ground. The ellipse is about 550 feet long north and south and somewhat less in breadth. It is situated upon a rise of ground in a branch of Clear Creek valley. The site was chosen for defense, commanding the Valley in every direction. The trenches vary from six feet to thirty feet in length and are now about three feet deep. The bottoms and sides are grassed over, and the earliest settlers in that region found them so when they came there about forty years ago. The trenches were well calculated for defense, being double at the salient angles, thereby giving a defending force better protection over their flanks.
   At least one hundred men, and probably two hundred, were in the company which constructed these defenses. A smaller number would not have made so extensive an enclosure. At the north end they overlook a ravine about thirty feet in depth which is a water course for heavy rains. It runs into what is said to be it permanent water hole about a quarter of a mile from the camp.
   On digging down into some of the rifle pits to a depth of six feet abundant charcoal was found at the bottom, showing that fires had been made there by the men building them. The butt of an old rifle lay on the slope of one trench. Apparently this fortification was made more than fifty years ago. Apparently also it was a temporary camp, since wood and water were to be found at a distance of three or four miles in the main Clear Creek valley, and if it had been intended to be permanent the camp would have been placed near them. During the period of hostilities between Indians and white intruders, some forty years, there were numerous military expeditions into the region of the Loups, but we have no report that any of them established a camp in Clear Creek valley. Diligent inquiry will perhaps discover some account of this one. Unless it is very old, which, in the circumstances is not probable, it could not have been of more than temporary importance. Otherwise there would he accounts of it in the records of the war department and in more popular forms.

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GRAVE OF A SETTLER ON THE OREGON TRAIL
   On August 30, this year, Thomas Moran wrote to the secretary of the state of Nebraska, from Oshkosh, to say that John Hollman, who died in 1853, was buried on a hillside above a sandy draw in section 9, township 16, range 44 west; that a recent heavy rain washed away the bank of the draw to a point within ten or twelve feet of the grave, and that the next flood would take it off. Mr. Moran properly urged that this old and interesting landmark should be protected from its imminent danger. The Historical Society hopes to gain the cooperation at residents in the vicinity of the grave in preserving and marking it.
   Oshkosh, the county sent of Garden county, is situated on the Union Pacific railroad about a mile north of the North Platte River. The Oregon Trail ran through section 9, which contains Mr. Hollman's grave. This section lies on the South side of the river and about four miles southwesterly from Oshkosh.

   The recent visit to the headquarters of the Historical Society of Mr. J. H. Sweet, editor of the Nebraska Daily Press, in company with Mr. George H. Heinke, also of Nebraska City, recalls incidents of the rough-house days of the later sixties and early seventies. Mr. Sweet is a grand-nephew of James Sweet, the second state treasurer of Nebraska. At the preliminary election held on June 2, 1866, were chosen the four executive officers which the constitution provided for, a representative in congress, members of the first state legislature, and three justices of the supreme court. Augustus Kountze, afterward a very prominent banker at Omaha, and New York, was the first treasurer. He was treasurer of the territory from January 1, 1862, until he became state treasurer when the territory was admitted into the union on March 1, 1867. James Sweet was elected treasurer at the regular election of 1868 and held the office from January 21, 1869, to January 11, 1871. At the election of October 11, 1859, he was a candidate on the republican ticket for the office of territorial treasurer and received 2,644 votes against 3,683 cast for William W. Wyman, his democratic opponent. He was a resident of Nebraska City, continuously, from May, 1857 to May, 1866.
   Throughout tile territorial period there was hostility between the two sections divided by the Platte River, but although there was a preponderance of population in the southern section, so long as the executive officers were appointed at Washington it could not get a governor friendly to its project of removing the capital front Omaha to some point South of the troublesome stream. At the first election of state officers, however, a governor of and for the South Platte was chosen, and under his aggressive leadership removal was at once accomplished. But the more difficult task was to keep the long coveted prize. The first requirement was to erect a capitol and other public buildings with the proceeds of the sale of lots in the projected capital city. James Sweet was one of a group of men from Nebraska City who undertook to buy enough lots to give the scheme a substantial start. Though the act of removal required that the proceeds of the sale of lots should be deposited in the state treasury, the astute managers of the adventure flouted the law rather than trust the precious funds to the custody of Treasurer Kountze, who was of and for Omaha. So they made Sweet the custodian. In furtherance of this safety first policy, Governor Butler procured the choice of Sweet for treasurer at the election next following the act of removal. The other three of the first state officers, being safe for the south side scheme, were reelected.
   But, though Sweet was true to his specific trust, he paid dear for his whistle. When he declined to become a candidate for the treasurership because he could not afford to hold it on the salary of four hundred dollars, Governor Butler advised him that such a meagre compensation was specified in the constitution with the understanding that the treasurers would make use of the balances for their personal profit and thus get adequate payment for their services. Presently the treasurer and the auditor - John Gillespie - proposed to invest $25,000 of the permanent school fund in territorial and state warrants, which was authorized by statute. "A short time after," as Mr. Sweet publicly recalled, "a gentleman from Omaha, some way connected with the Republican newspaper, appeared at the state treasurer's office and asked me not to advocate or urge the investment of the permanent School funds in general fund warrants. Said he had formed a syndicate of men at Omaha with plenty of money to buy up all the general fund, territorial, and state warrants, and after they had done so then Gillespie and I could change our minds and urge the investment of the school funds in the warrants. Told my interviewer, 'I am not a thief and will have nothing to do with any such conspiracy to rob the state'." Consequent-

ly, as Mr. Sweet asserted, a bill was passed requiring the, treasurer to keep on hand the identical funds deposited in the treasury, thus depriving him of the opportunity or using them to his own profit and continuing his compensation to the beggarly salary. Soon afterward the legislature changed the law so as to permit loaning the School funds to private persons on their own security. Consequently some twenty- five needy next friends of the administration procured loans, many or them on worthless or inadequate security, resulting in a great scandal and much loss to the state. One of these lame duck loans, $10,000, was to A. 0. Tichenor, nominal proprietor of the Tichenor House, in Lincoln, afterward called the Oriental Hotel, with only a third mortgage on the property for security. The state brought suit against Sweet for the face of the loan and interest, whereupon he agreed to pay the principal and part of the interest. He made the last payment in 1879.
   In 1871 Governor Butler was impeached on eleven articles, or causes of action, the first one charging that he had misappropriated to his personal use money belonging to the school fund, $16,881.26 in amount; and on this article he was convicted and removed from office. The defense turned on the contention that the governor deposited the money in the treasury and then borrowed it, and he tried to persuade Sweet to testify to the truth of this contention, which he stoutly refused to do on the ground that to comply would not only be perjury, but would make him and his bondsmen liable for the misapplied funds. So the plucky treasurer had the last word if not the last laugh touching the most notorious and perhaps the most tragic scandal in the history of the state.
   Sweet established the first bank at Lincoln, but his young nephew, Nelson C. Brock, conducted its business and also that of the State treasury. Sweet continued to live in Nebraska City and made only occational visits to Lincoln. He testified that he knew nothing about the loan of the school money to the governor, or his appropriation of it to his own use, until a year after the transaction occurred. The evidence showed that Brock, as banker, credited Butler's account with the money. Nine of the twelve Senators who constituted the jury of the court of impeachment and found him guilty of this charge, evidently decided that the money was not deposited in the treasury at all. Mr. Brock, one of the few surviving actors in this typical drama of our western frontiers, is still in active business in Lincoln. It appeared that the money was used by the governor to build his "mansion." which, much made over, is now the home of the Country Club of Lincoln.
   In compassing removal of the capital Nebraska City had the rather slim satisfaction of beating Omaha at her own game, but afterward had the chagrin of finding out that she, too, had paid dear, very dear, for her whistle. For by establishing Lincoln she destroyed her own certain prospect of being always one of the most important cities in the state, and the probability of remaining the second city. Moreover, it is at least doubtful that the loss of the capital injured her rival at all.
   Even J. Sterling Morton's wonted clear foresight was temporarily clouded at this critical juncture in the fortune or the town of which he had been almost from its beginning a tutelary patron, by the illusory scheme of hurting Omaha, a relative long distance rival, by starting anorther rival almost in the beneficiary's dooryard. So that his decrial of the misadventure when the pudding soon came to be proved in the eating lacked the full force of an I told you so.

   The territorial pioneers, some of whom had moved on many times before they settled permanently in Nebraska, are rapidly passing to their very last resting place. Nebraska History Magazine will record the deaths of these pioneers month by month, beginning with August 15. Territorial pioneers comprise those who settled in Nebraska within its territorial period - prior to March 1, 1867. The data of these records are accredited to the newspapers in which they are found.

Deaths Since August 15.
   John J. Baldwin, born in Jackson county, Iowa, April 24, 1840; died at his home in Plainview, August 15. he crossed the river at Omaha June 9, 1859, and homesteaded in the Missouri valley. Later he lived in Antelope county, and thirty-five years ago moved to Plainview. - (From the Plainview Republican, August 22.)
   John Michael Melcher, 97 years old, died August 22, at Benson. He was born June 1, 1821, at Brandenburg, Germany, came to America in 1848; settled first in Wisconsin; in 1865 moved to Nebraska, taking a homestead in Cuming county. It took him five and a half weeks to make the trip west. The boys drove the cattle and sheep and the older people rode in wagons drawn by oxen and horses. - (From the Cuming County Democrat, West Point, August 30.)
   Mrs. David Wittwer, of Humboldt, died September 18. She was born in Richardson county on December 3, 1860, and lived there all her

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life. - (From The Humboldt Leader. September 26.)
   James Allison Walker died at his home in Murray, September 20, aged eighty years. He came to Nebraska from Pennsylvania in 1861, settling first at Rock Bluffs - (From the Nehawka News, September 20.)
   W. H. Banning, eighty-one years old, who had lived near Union for the past sixty years, died September 25. - (From the Morning World-Herald, September 26.)
   Mary Ann Allen, of Overton. died September 19. She was born at Winterset, Iowa, October 9, 1864, and moved to Nebraska with her parents in the year of her birth. - (From the Ashland Gazette, September 26.)
   Albert E. Rickley, son of John Rickley one of the founders of Columbus, and who was born in that town November 7, 1858, died at Hobart, Oklahoma, September 26. - (From The Columbus Telegram, October 1.)
   Peder Pedersen, born in Denmark, but a resident of Omaha for the last fifty-four years, died September 27. He drove ox teams hauling freight wagons between Omaha and Virginia City, Montana, in 1864, and was afterward a carriage builder in Omaha. - (From The Omaha Daily Bee, September 28.)
   Mrs. Frederica Kleihauer, born in Germany. January 20, 1843, herself mother of twelve children, died at her home in Auburn, September 17. She settled on a farm near Johnson in 1865. - (From the Nemaha County Herald, September 20.)
   Susan Catherine Wharton died at the home of Mrs. Gilbert Blauser, near Diller, September 2. She was born in Effingham county, Illinois, July 30, 1838; married to Rev. L. B. Wharton, a Baptist preacher, near her home, April 3, 1856; the family removed from Illinois to Cuming county, Nebraska, in 1867, and again to Harbine, Jefferson county, where they have lived ever since. Mr. Wharton died December 14, 1897. - (From The Diller Record, September 6.)
   Captain William Harrison Corbin of Alliance died at Monticello, Illinois, September 11. He was born in Mercer county, Pennsylvania, September 14, 1838; served in the One hundredth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, throughout life civil war, rising to the rank of captain; returned to Monticello whence he came to Nebraska in 1867; at first was employed by the Union Pacific Railroad Company; afterward settled in Red Willow county, where he was county judge and county clerk; removed in 1887 to Box Butte county, where he conducted a ranch until 1900, when he became vice president of the Alliance National Bank, holding the office until his death. - (From The Alliance Semi-Weekly Times, September 13.)
   The military records show that Mr. Corbin enlisted on August 27, 1861, as a sergeant in Company E. One hundredth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers; was discharged December 28, 1863; reenlisted, and finally discharged March 14, 1865, with the rank of second lieutenant. This organization was distinguished as the Roundhead Regiment.
   Elijah Sorter, born at Mayfield, Ohio, November 7, 1845, died at his home, near Seward, September 2. At the age of seventeen he enlisted in the 150th Regiment, Ohio Volunteers, and served throughout the war. At its close he came west to Iowa; attended the state university at Iowa City for a time; then came to Nebraska, walking all the way; in 1870 took a homestead near Tamora; was married to Miss Elizabeth Pickrel, July 3, 1875, and seven children were born to them. He was a member of the G. A. R. post at Seward. - (From the Seward Independent-Democrat, September 12.)
   Mrs. Sarah Nichol of Auburn died September 10, aged eighty-nine years. She was born in Scotland, February 28, 1829; came to Illinois when she was sixteen years of age; was married there in 1854 to William Archibald; soon afterward the family came to Nebraska, taking a homestead in Nemaha county; not long after her husband died, and two years later she was married to Walter Nichol, in Illinois, but they came to Nemaha county and remained permanently. - (From the Nemaha County Herald. September 13.)
   Ben Johnston, aged sixty years, died at his home at Steinauer, August 31. He was known all over eastern Nebraska and Kansas as a trainer and driver of fast horses. His father, who was born at Sterling, Nebraska, November 23. 1857, was a pioneer preacher; the son lived at a number of towns in Nebraska and Kansas before moving to Steinauer. - (The Pawnee Chief, September 13.)
   Christian Bull died at his home in Millard on September 4, aged seventy-eight years. He came from Mecklenburg, Germany, in 1865; settled first in Pennsylvania and came to Nebraska two years later. He lived on his farm near Millard from 1876 to 1900 and since 1900, in Millard. - (From the Morning World-Herald, September 6.)
   Mrs. Mary Ottens died September 4, at Auburn, aged eighty

years. She was a native of Ireland: came to America at the age of sixteen years; a year later, 1855, married in Minnesota to Bernard J. Ottens; they came immediately to Nebraska and settled on a homestead in what is now known as the Hickory Grove neighborhood, in Nemaha county. - (From the Nemaha County Herald, September 6.)
   Eli Davis Shockey, born in Kentucky, May 25, 1824, died at his home in Hastings, August 7, aged ninety-four years, two months and fourteen days. He came to Richardson county, Nebraska, fifty-one years ago, where he resided to the time of his death. - (From the Locomotive, Lawrence, Nebr., September 6.)
   James Hanlon, Sr., died September 2, at Peru. He was born in Ohio, September 30, 1850; while he was a child the family moved to Kentucky; on account of political persecution near the beginning of the civil will, they came to Nebraska, where they have lived ever since. Mr. Hanlon was married to Miss Nettie Vance October 28, 1874. - (From The Peru Pointer, September 6.)
   George W. Richardson, born February 22, 1847, at Cleveland, Ohio; died August 24, near Oakland: served in Company K, Third Regiment, Ohio Volunteers, during nineteen months of the civil war; came to Omaha in 1867 and for several years drove a stage between Blair and Omaha, Calhoun and Omaha and Herman, Tekamah and Decatur. - (From the Oakland Independent, August 30.)
   Mrs. Elizabeth Reed Bell died August 26 at Palmyra. She was born in England, February 9, 1827; married to Thomas Bell, August 6, 1849; they came to Nebraska in 1867. Mrs. Bell was the mother of eleven children. - (From Palmyra items in the Nebraska Daily Press, Nebraska City, September 1.)
   Mrs. Jeannette Graham, widow or Thomas Graham, died at Omaha, August 29, aged eighty-one years. The Grahams settled on a homestead in Seward county in 1857; but Mrs. Graham moved to Omaha several years ago. - (From the Blue Valley Blade. Seward, September 4.)

The principal founders of St. Louis were an adventurous group of Frenchmen whos principal business was trading with the Indians of "the Nebraska Country", exchanging merchandise or money for furs and peltries. The profits of this trade were a very important factor in the growth of the city for more than half a century. Thus St. Louis and Nebraska mutually started each other. The names of these traders were applied to many settlements, towns and other geographical features in the valleys of the Missouri and the Platte - though not as numerously, I think, as they ought to have been.
   Consequently St. Louis is the principal depository of the early history of Nebraska, including newspapers beginning in the year 1808, and biographical sketches, business records and portraits of the pioneers adverted to. I have laboriously examined the larger part of these records, taking notes or copying data appertaining to Nebraska and the outlying Northwest. In April, 1917, I called on Mrs. Armand B. Peugnet at her home in St. Louis for the main purpose of obtaining information about her uncle, Peter A. Sarpy, who was the first permanent white settler in Nebraska. Mrs. Peugnet, whose maiden name was Virginia Sarpy, was born in St. Louis on July 4, 1827, daughter of John Baptiste Sarpy and Adele Cabanne Sarpy and niece of Peter A. Sarpy. She was anxious to learn from me, in turn, all that I knew about her uncle's life in Nebraska and presently called my attention to an oil portrait of him hanging in an adjacent room. Impressed by the fact disclosed in my information that his career here had been conspicuous and important, she promptly agreed that the portrait ought to be placed permanently with the Nebraska State Historical Society. Mrs. Peugnet died on August 11, 1917, at the age of ninety years and a month. In the following June, her daughter, who was present when her mother promised that she would leave the portrait to our Society, wrote me that it would be sent as soon as a copy of it for the family could be taken. Last July I again met Mrs. Berthold in St. Louis and we made final arrangements for shipping the picture. It is of somewhat more than life size, and it will be, perhaps. the most valuable of the Society's collection of portraits. A copy of it hangs in the gallery of the Missouri Historical Society.
   Last June Mrs. Berthold presented to the Society photographic copies of portraits of Madame Peugnet; John B. Sarpy, born to St. Louis, January 11, 1799; Sylvestre Labadie, born in St. Louis in July, 1779, maternal uncle of Peter A. and John B. Sarpy; Emilie Lauveur Labadie, sister of Sylvestre, born in St. Louis in 1781, and married in 1794 to Bernard Pratte, who was licensed in the eighteen-

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   An intelligent biographical sketch of Mr. Didier, written by Mr. L. C. Edwards, is printed in The Falls City News of October 4, 1918. Mr. Didier was born in France on Christmas day, 1827, and he died on September 27, 1918, at the residence of his daughter, in Barada precinct, Richardson county. He settled on a claim, now in Barada precinct, in 1854 and lived there continuously until his death. It is said that he was the first permanent settler in Richardson county, but claims of that kind are nearly always disputed, as this one is, and it is usually impossible to settle such disputes.
   Mr. Didier came from France to America in 1847, stopping in Cincinnati two years; went to St. Louis in 1849 where he was employed by Pierre Chouteau, Jr., & Company; in 1852 was sent to the company's trading post five miles below Fort Laramie: while he was in charge of the post, on August 19, 1854, the so-called Grattan massacre occurred at Sarpy's Point, on the Platte River about eight miles below the fort. Lieutenant John L. Grattan, a young and inexperienced officer, was detailed from the fort to arrest an Indian who had stolen at cow from a Mormon emigrant. On the refusal of the culprit to surrender the soldiers were ordered to fire upon the Indians indiscriminately, whereupon they were attacked by the entire body, more than a thousand in number. All of the command, comprising Lieutenant Grattan and twenty-nine men, were killed.
   The Indians, who comprised Oglala, Brule, and Miniconjou Sioux, were in camp waiting for an expected distribution of presents, which were at the house of the American Fur Company, of which the Choteau company was a branch. The enraged savages carried off or destroyed a large part of the company's goods.
   Lieutenant Grattan and Lieutenant H. B. Fleming, of the Sixth Infantry, commandant at Fort Laramie, were both condemned for incompetency and commended for their conduct in the contemporary accounts of the tragedy printed in the St. Louis newspapers. Mr. Didier believed that it was caused by the foolishness of the commanding officers. Immediately after this affair, he quit the service of the Chouteau company and then settled in Richardson county. He came from St. Louis to St. Joseph by steamboat and the rest of the way by land.
   About a year later - September 3, 1855 - an army under command of General William S. Harney punished the Indians at the Battle of

the Blue Water, in which eighty-six men, women and childreen were killed. This event was also commonly called a massacre. Dr. George L. Miller so denounced it in his newspaper, The Omaha Herald. While both catastrophes might have been avoided by due wisdom and justice on the part of the whiles, in the circumstances the punishment inflicted by General Harney was perhaps necessary.
   The Battle of the Blue Water - the name by which it was called in the official report - was fought in the valley of Blue Water Creek, between six and seven miles northwest of the month of Ash Hollow, the name by which the battle is commonly known. It came to be so called because Ash Hollow was an important and well known rendezvous or station on the Oregon Trail, so that its application to the battle-field most conveniently indicated its approximate location. This misleading name should now be abandoned in favor of the original and appropriate one.

twenties to trade with Indians at Bellevue, and was one of the most famous operators in the Northwest.
   The parents of these French founders of St. Louis came from France. Their descendants intermarried intricately. Mrs. Peugnet was a very handsome woman and in the forties the acknowledged belle of St. Louis. The original portrait of John D. Sarpy, in the gallery of the Missouri Historical Society, shows that lie was very distinguished in appearance, and the contemporary newspaper notices of him disclose that he was one of the most important men of the city.
   While in St. Louis last July, I obtained from the "Chouteau Papers", among the collections of the Missouri Society, copies of business documents written and signed by Peter A. Sarpy, as manager, of the American Fur Company at Bellevue, in 1844, 1847. and 1850, respectively; another written and signed by Peter A. Sarpy and signed also by John B. Sarpy and Frederick Berthold, in 1853: another by Peter A. Sarpy dated Point aux Poules - opposite Bellevue - afterward Traders Point, June 8, 1846; and another written and signed by the eccentric Stephen Decatur as Peter A. Sarpy's clerk, at Bellevue, August 13, 1852. Mr. Sarpy wrote a beautiful hand. The copies were taken by photostat.
   I also procured a typewritten copy of an order book in Peter A. Sarpy's handwriting, containing a long list of goods ordered for his store at St. Mary (not far below Bellevue on the Iowa side of the river) in 1855. This document is in interesting disclosure of the kinds of goods in demand at that time.
   Mrs. Nettie Harney Beauregard, archivist of the Missouri Historical Society, is related to those old French families through her mother. She is grand-daughter of General William S. Harney, a famous fighter of the Mexican war and against the Indians of the Nebraska plains, and daughter-in-law of the noted Confederate general, P. T. Beauregard. The Nebraska Stale Historical Society is greatly indebted to Mrs. Beauregard and Miss Stella M. Drumm, librarian of the Missouri Historical Society, for its acquisitions from St. Louis. - A. W.
   Following is a facsimile of an order, somewhat reduced in size, written by Peter A. Sarpy at Bellevue in 1844: