militia, under Captain Edward P. Childs, numbered 13 men and was mustered in August 30 and mustered out November 12, 1864.
   In the summer of 1864 a company of Pawnee Indians was formed under Captain Joseph McFadden. This company was known as Company A, Pawnee Scouts. On January 13, 1865, the company was increased to 95, and mustered into the service of the United States under Captain Frank J. North. On May 3, 1865, a company of Omaha Indians known as Company A, Omaha Scouts, Captain Edward R. Nash, was mustered into the service of the United States and mustered out July 16, 1866.

GENERAL WILLIAM SELBY HARNEY

   It was estimated that during the ten years immediately preceding January 1, 1871, about 150 persons were killed, and stock and other property to the amount of more than $25,000 destroyed by hostile Indians.
   The counties of Platte, L'eau-qui-court, Jefferson, Cedar, Buffalo, Seward, and Butler, besides the unorganized territory to the west, were the worst sufferers from these depredations.
   Contemporaneous accounts of the troubles with the Indians in Nebraska which are preserved in the territorial newspapers and in local official publications supplement the reports of the federal war and Indian departments with additional facts and illustrative descriptions. In his message to the second general assembly, December 18, 1855, Governor Izard relates that on the 30th of the previous July he received an express from Fontenelle bringing the news that a party of citizens had been attacked about ten miles from the town in which men were murdered and scalped, and a woman wounded, marvelously escaping with her life. The governor had immediately ordered Brigadier-General Thayer to raise a volunteer force, and soon a company of forty men was mounted, armed, and equipped under command of Captain W. E. Moore and dispatched to Fontenelle -- all within fifteen hours from the receipt of the news of the outbreak. A post was established at Fontenelle, and small companies were stationed at Elkhorn City and one at Tekamah, which were kept there until the 9th of October, when it was ascertained that the Indians had retired into the interior.
   The Nebraska City News of July 10, 1858, reports that the Pawnee Indians -- "those miserable aborigines" -- are troublesome to trail's on the Utah route, and as General Denver, Indian commissioner, made a treaty with them the previous September for an annuity of $40,000, they ought to be paid in Nebraska City so that pledges for good behavior might be taken; and, July 2, 1859, the same journal reported that recently the Sioux made a descent on the Pawnee village, situated on the Platte river south of Fremont, and burnt it to the ground. The Pawnee warriors were absent on their annual hunt, but some of the old men and women were killed. The Pawnees acknowledged their inferiority to their implacable western foes by applying to the Poncas and Omahas for assistance. The same paper, July 30, 1859, notes the return to Omaha of the army that chased the Pawnees, and that according to the Nebraskian, the citizens gave them an enthusiastic welcome. "A more thievish, rascally set of scoundrels cannot be found . . . but this would have been,"

justification for cutting them to pieces when they threw away their arms and declared they wouldn't fight." They signed a treaty for indemnity for all depredations and acceded to all demands made upon them. The Dakota City Herald of September 10, 1859, says the Indians -- mainly the Brulés and Ogallala Sioux -- about the Niobrara river "are becoming too insolent and too bold for quiet to reign much longer in these parts." The Omaha Republican, January 4, 1860, learned from Clement Lambert of Decatur that the Brulé Sioux Indians had made a descent upon the Omaha village on December 21st, and carried off sixty-five horses. The Nebraskian of May 12, 1860, states that the Sioux on the Loup had recently attacked the Pawnees, killing five squaws, and some time before, eighteen of their horses.
   The Huntsman's Echo, September 6, 1860, published at Wood River Center by Joseph I,. Johnson, observes that "It seems that the demand of Major Gillis (Pawnee agent at Genoa) for troops to protect the Pawnees from the rapacity of the Sioux has been indorsed at headquarters, and already a detachment of horse and foot have gone over. The same paper reports a descent by thirty Cheyennes on the Pawnee village, and that six hundred Sioux and Cheyennes were at Fort Kearney "on their way to flax out their friends the Pawnees."
   The Dakota City Democrat of April 20, 1861, had just learned that "the inhabitants of Niobrarah, assembled in arms and boarded the steamer Omaha, when she landed at that point, and demanded that she should go no farther up the river, but should at once steam down stream. They also stated that they would allow no boat to pass up for the purpose of removing the Fort Randall troops, as they were all the protection the frontier had. A difficulty occurred when the citizens and the steamboat men commenced on each other. Four persons are known to have been killed, and several wounded. The Omaha was obliged to turn down stream." The Nebraska City News, May 2, 1861, insists that there is no danger from the Sioux and their allies if they are only let alone. Many people are afraid to travel up the valley, yet improvements are going on and stocks of goods laid in by those who are there, without fear of danger. The territorial press protested strongly against the removal of troops from the forts soon after the beginning of the Civil war.
   The Nebraska City News, July 13, 1861, complains bitterly that the Nebraska regiment is all kept at Omaha while the agent at the Otoe reservation had requested part of it to be sent there, as the Indians were unruly. The News quotes the Brownville Advertiser as saying that for two weeks "our people have been

GENERAL JOHN McCONIHE

Soldier and pioneer of Omaha

drawn upon extravagantly as to time, money, and rest in the exercise of such precautionary means as have been deemed indispensable for safety and quiet. The timid are becoming alarmed and are leaving. Several farmers have left prosperous farms and crops and gone back to the states." The News charges Acting Governor Paddock with sectional favortism (sic) in immediately asking the war department to send troops up the Platte valley on the report that the Sioux are making trouble there. The News of July 20, 1861, reports that several families have come in from the Nemahas and

Salt creek from fear of Indians, but thinks there is no good ground for alarm. It relates that "Monsieur Vifquain" [General Victor Vifquain, who lived on the Blue seventy-five miles west] reports that 4,000 Pawnees are camped near his ranch, but that they are peaceable and show no disposition to trouble the whites. They brought their squaws and pappooses to the settlement for protection while they were fighting the Sioux who were between them and the buffalo ranges where they wished to hunt. The News of the same date charges that Acting Governor Paddock had quietly sent United States troops from Fort Kearney up the Platte without any authority from the war department.

"Jim" LANE

Prominent in the early history of Kansas and Nebraska. A lieutenant of John Brown

   The Nebraskian, July 17, 1863, reports that Colonel Sapp, just from the Pawnee agency, predicts that there will be a fight on the Republican river between the Sioux, who number about 5,000, and the Pawnees and Omahas, who have 1,800 warriors. The same paper, June 3, 1864, refers to a letter from Grand Island dated May 24th which says: "It looks very much like war here; 2,500 Yankton Sioux are coming down the north side of the Platte and have killed ten soldiers; also 1,600 Arapahos and Cheyennes are on the south side of the river and have nearly disposed of a company of Colorado volunteers"; July 31, 1863, that, owing to the exposed condition of the Nebraska frontier to Indian depredations the administration at Washington has suspended all operations under the conscription act in Nebraska and Dakota; and again, July 8, 1864, gives an account of the murder of two men by the Pawnees which created great alarm and excitement. Patrick Murray and his brother-in-law, Adam Smith, with a number of hands, were cutting hay three miles from the Pawnee reserve on Looking-glass creek, and Mrs. Murray was there cooking for the party. A band of Pawnees appeared about seven o'clock in the evening, and after cutting the horses loose, shot an old man through the head, killing and scalping him, and wounded Smith with an arrow. They also wounded Mrs. Murray as she was extracting the arrow from Smith, and another man by the name of Grimes. Smith died afterward from his wound. The same paper, August 12, 1864, says that in the Platte valley "murder, rapine and plunder are the order of the day," and it charges that the governor is derelict in not furnishing soldiers. When Colonel Livingston offered the services of his veteran First regiment he could get no satisfaction. A large train had been destroyed by the Indians the day before, at Plum Creek; and it was reported that James E. Boyd's ranch, ten miles east of Fort Kearney, had been attacked. At Pawnee ranch William Wilder's train was corralled and fought the Indians from four o'clock until dark, two of the party being wounded. The same paper reports that S. G. Daily had sent a dispatch to the governor informing him that sixteen men were found on the Little Blue who had been killed by the Indians. August 17, 1864, this journal contains accounts by First Lieutenant Charles F. Porter, of the Nebraska veteran cavalry, of attacks on ranches and trains both east and west of Kearney, and he complains bitterly of the utter lack of proper means of defense, and insists on "war to the knife and no prisoners." The hostile Indians comprised Arapahos and Cheyennes, and there were perhaps Brulé Sioux and Comanches among them. A correspondent in the same paper charges the outbreaks to the dishonest practices of the government Indian agents, whose frauds were "of the most revolting character -- putting to blush the most hardened Indian trader." By October 28, 1864, the Nebraskian insists, in the interest of

trade if not of truth, that Indian troubles between Omaha and Denver have been suppressed and that refugees may safely return.
   The Omaha Republican of August 12, 1864, reports that, "the recent Indian murders in the Platte valley point clearly and unmistakably to a general uprising of the savage hordes who inhabit western Nebraska and Colorado, Idaho and Utah. Within forty-eight hours between twenty and thirty dead bodies have been found at different points west of us and we hear of numerous depredations upon stock and trains. Men have been murdered at Thirty-Two Mile Creek, Lone Tree Station and Plum Creek; the pickets at Fort Kearney have been fired upon, the train destroyed at Plum Creek was burned up and thirteen men murdered. The Indians are led on in their infernal barbarities by white men painted and disguised as savages." The Plum Creek massacre was perhaps the most atrocious of all the Indian barbarities in Nebraska. On the 9th of August Colonel Summers of the Seventh Iowa cavalry found that besides the thirteen men killed there were five men, three women, and several children missing. A hundred Indians attacked a wagon train, killing, sacking, and burning with characteristic savagery. On the 11th of August, 1864, Adjutant-General W. H. S. Hughes called for a regiment of six companies to be raised each side of the Platte, sixty-four men to a company; the North Platte companies to report to Brigadier-General 0. P. Hurford at Omaha, and the South Platte to report to Colonel Oliver P. Mason at Nebraska City. On the 22d the adjutant-general called on all able bodied men in the territory, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, to enroll themselves in the militia. The Republican of August 26, 1864, reports a condition of great excitement at Omaha, and states that the authorities have ordered business places closed and parties capable of bearing arms to report for duty. "We have learned enough within the last twenty-four hours to satisfy us that the City is in peril. It is not chiefly from Indians that this peril comes." The Republican professed to believe that there was danger of attack from bands of white guerrillas, who were roaming about the country and inciting and leading the Indians to attack. Two hundred head of cattle belonging to Edward Creighton had been driven off only twenty miles west of Omaha on the 22d of August and twenty families had just come in from the Elkhorn settlement. Major General Curtis had recently sent 300 of the First Nebraska veterans to Plum Creek.
   Ben Holladay filed an omnibus claim against the federal government for damages he had suffered by Indians while he was a transcontinental mail carrier. Among the affidavits which supported these claims is that of George H. Carlyle, one of the drivers on the line:

    On the 9th of August, 1864, I left Alkali Station for Fort Kearney. On reaching Cottonwood Springs I learned by telegraph that the Indians had attacked a train of eleven wagons at Plum Creek (now Lexington), killed eleven men, captured one woman, and run off the stock. I started down the road, and when a few hundred yards off Gillman's Station I saw the bodies of three men lying on the ground, fearfully mutilated and full of arrows. At Plum Creek I saw the bodies of the eleven other men whom the Indians had murdered, and I helped to bury them. I also saw the fragments of the wagons still burning and the dead body of another man who was killed by the Indians at Smith's ranch, and the ruins of the ranch which had been burned.
   The tenth general assembly adopted a memorial to Congress in January, 1865, which recited that in August, 1864, "portions of the Sioux, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Comanches, and Arapahos confederated together for the purpose of attacking the frontier settlements of Nebraska and the emigrant trains en route to Colorado and the gold mines." Without the slightest warning the Indians had attacked the settlements along the Little Blue river in Nebraska, "killing men, women, and children without mercy, save in a few instances where they carried the women away captives to undergo a fate more terrible than death itself." They had attacked emigrant trains along the route named from forty miles eastward of Port Kearney to the western border of the territory, killing settlers and emigrants, and driving off stock to the number of several thousand. Four companies of militia had promptly responded to the call of the governor

and marched to the frontier, furnishing their own horses and serving as mounted infantry. One of the companies served under Major General Curtis throughout the Indian campaign, while the others guarded emigrant trains and the "Great Overland Mail and Pacific Telegraph," and the frontier settlements. This militia was under the immediate command of the commandant of the United States troops in this department. Three of the companies served for four months and the other for sixty days. Two of them at this time had been mustered out by reason of the expiration of their term of enlistment and two were continued in the service. None of these soldiers had received any pay for their services or for the service or loss of their horses. As has already been recited, an appropriation of $45,000 was made by the national Congress to meet the expenses of the war of 1864, and claims to the amount of $28,000 were allowed. The same assembly adopted a joint resolution of thanks for the gallant services of these militia companies.

NATIONAL CEMETERY AT OLD FORT McPHERSON,
FIVE MILES SOUTH OF MAXWELL ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD

   Though the people had been very impatient, thus irritated by the constant menace and actual outrages of the savages during these many years, yet so long as the more important struggle for the Union lasted, public opinion was reasonable in its demands and public sentiment moderate in its expression. After the close of the war, however, complaint and denunciation were unbridled, and making due allowance for partisan bias on the part of Dr. Miller, his article in the Omaha Herald of November 10, 1865, is no doubt a fair expression of popular feeling, and a not overwrought presentment of the status of the Indian troubles at that time. The aggressive editor says that the Indian war had continued for three years, beginning in the horrible Minnesota outbreak caused by a long series of outrages committed by the whites. "This infamous imbecility [of Stantons] -- persistent, dogged, damnable disregard of the interests of the west -- amounts to high crime, and we call upon the press and the people of Nebraska and the west to unite in arraigning the pes-

tiferous, bull-headed potentate of the war office. . . Counseled by Sherman, Grant, Dodge and his subordinates to a certain military course he first assents to practice vigorous war against these Indians. The work of preparation is barely commenced when he countermands everything, cuts off supplies so as to starve a trusting soldiery, reduces the force necessary to conquering a speedy peace and at last recalls the army, thus leaving the whole overland line and thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children and millions of property exposed to the scalping knife and ravages of numerous bands who are again let loose to destroy the lives of our people and the commerce of the plains." The philippic proceeds to insist that the war had but just commenced, and that the white man's interests were worse off than they were a year ago, as the Indians were rallying again, believing that they could not be whipped.
   The Nebraskian of January 19, 1865, insists that Indian troubles are still rife notwithstanding that the governor's message had declared that they had "been brought to a successful termination." There is abundant evidence of a tendency at this time on the part of public officers and other promoters of emigration and trade for the territory to disregard the safety of settlers in their reports of the attitude of the Indians. In the fight at Julesburg on the 7th of January, 1865, between forty soldiers and some citizens and a large

Engraving from History of Wyoming by C. G. Coutant.

FORT LARAMIE IN 1836

body of Indians, fifteen soldiers and four citizens were killed according to the report. The Omaha Republican of February 3, 1865, gives this alarming account of conditions at that time:

    Not less than 3,000 Indians are on the line of the overland mail route committing every species of barbarity and atrocity which their fiendish imaginations can invent. They can capture Fort Kearney or Fort Laramie at any time they choose, and there is no power at the disposal of General Curtis or Colonel Livingston to prevent it. They burned Valley station on Saturday and drove off 650 head of stock and burned 100 tons of government hay which cost $5,000. Yesterday they burned all the ranches from Valley station east to Julesburg . . . The plains from Julesburg west for more than 100 miles are red with the blood of murdered men, women and children; ranches are in ashes; stock all driven off -- the country utterly desolate. The sober truth is a gigantic Indian war is upon us. It is as much as a man's life is worth to attempt to run the gauntlet between Omaha, Nebraska City, Atchison or Leavenworth and Denver City with a load of supplies for the mines of Colorado.
   The Nebraska City News, August 16, 1867, quotes the Omaha Herald's account of a battle between an escort of the Twenty-seventh regiment, infantry, commanded by Major Powell, and from 2,000 to 5,000 Indians, who attacked a train of thirty-six wagons, owned by James R. Porter of Plattsmouth, on the 2d of August, five miles from Fort Phil Kearney. The

soldiers fought within a corral of wagons and breastworks of wagon-beds and ox-yokes. After a fierce battle of three hours Major Smith with two companies of soldiers arrived, when the Indians gave up the fight. Sixty Indians and five soldiers besides Lieutenant Jenness were killed. The same paper, September 6, 1867, gives an account of a meeting of citizens of Saline and Seward counties at Camden, August 31, 1867, at which a company was organized for home protection with General Victor Vifquain as captain and A. J. Wallingford and John Blackburn, lieutenants. The meeting recommended that similar companies be raised on Turkey creek and on the North and West Blue with General Vifquain as commander of all the organizations. The resolutions adopted recite that for the last four years the Indians of the Plains had waged incessant warfare upon their neighbors, that it was the duty of every man to arm himself, and that no Indians be allowed to pass through their settlements.
   The Republican of January 18, 1867, notes that 8,000 troops have been ordered for service on the Plains and in the mountains, but doubts that these will suffice for a thorough chastisement of the Indians. In the massacre by the Indians near Fort Phil Kearney, in December, 1866, ninety-four soldiers and citizens were killed. The same paper, February 8, 1867, in noting that Captain Frank J. North of Columbus had been authorized by the war department to raise a battalion of Pawnees for service on the Plains, says that his Pawnee scouts in the last Indian troubles were known all over the Plains. The same paper, May 31, 1867, after reporting Indian disturbances around Fort Laramie, insists that "it can no longer be doubted that there is very great trouble out on the plains with the Indians, and that the season is to be one of bloody and general Indian war." On the 10th of July, 1867, the Republican says that information had been received at military headquarters of an attack by forty-five Sioux on twenty-five of General Custer's men -- Captain Hamilton, Seventh United States cavalry -- near the forks of the Republican. The Indians were driven off with a loss of two killed and several wounded, the loss of the defense being one horse wounded. On the 26th of June between 500 and 600 Sioux and Cheyennes attacked forty-eight of Custer's men under Lieutenants Robbins and Cooke, Seventh cavalry, but were driven off. Two of Robbins's men were slightly hurt. On the 24th of the same month the Sioux surrounded General Custer's camp, but were driven off with a loss of only one man wounded. The Republican of July 17, 1867, notes a successful skirmish between a detachment of Major North's Pawnee Scouts and hostile Indians on Coon Creek, Dakota territory, in which the training and skill of the white officer were successful.
   The Nebraska City News expresses the opinion that the new policy under which all hostile tribes of Indians were to be put upon reservations and cared for and fed would be less expensive and more satisfactory than the policy of the "inefficient half-waged war such as we have been cursed with." The News credits General Thayer with having much to do in bringing about this policy. The Republican of August 14, 1867, noting that the commission appointed under the recent act of Congress to treat with the hostile Indians of the Northwest will arrive in Omaha, insists that peace must be brought about, "or we shall have a war so gigantic in its proportions that peace or extermination will be the only alternative left to the Indians." Recounting some of the difficulties under which the Union Pacific railway was built this paper says: "Engineers surveying the work have been killed -- men at work upon the grade have been killed -- their stock has been stolen and driven off -- contractors to furnish ties have been compelled to abandon their work, and there are serious apprehensions that track laying will be temporarily suspended." Trade and commerce along the line had been curtailed fully one-half. "Omaha alone has suffered a greater loss from the Indian disturbances of the last three years than the aggregate of all the produce profits of the army contractors would produce should the war continue to the end of the present generation." It is stated that two bands of Sioux -- Brulés and Ogallalas, Red Cloud and his followers controlling the

latter -- are responsible for much of the trouble of the last year. The Brulés, under Spotted Tail and Standing Elk, have been peaceful and will remain so. But the Cheyennes, by far the most formidable, without the leadership of the Sioux, would be easily conciliated. The Sioux are adepts at thieving, but for bold and daring enterprise and hard fighting the Cheyennes are the most formidable. The Republican of the same date gives an account of the looting of a train of cars by the Indians. They had undermined a culvert six miles from Plum Creek, thus throwing the train off the track.
   In the United States Senate, July 17, 1867, in speaking on the bill to establish peace with certain tribes General Thayer disputed Senator Morrill's contention that the Union Pacific Co. had violated the treaty rights of the Indians by running through their lands. General Thayer said: "The Union Pacific Railway has been built over lands which have been ceded, over which the Indian title has ceased. They may have got now a little beyond the ceded territory. I do not know how the fact is; but for 300 miles in Nebraska the lands have been ceded I know, and so it is in Kansas, as my friend from Kansas (Mr. Ross) informs me." General Thayer argued that these Indians should not be sent to Indian territory, but should be kept north where they came from and in their present homes. He said that depredations had commenced from the very first on ceded lands. The Pawnees, Winnebagos, and even the Santee Sioux, a band which was engaged in the Minnesota massacre, were now located on reservations in northeast Nebraska and were all friendly. He did not object to the Sioux Indians being settled on the northern border of Nebraska, but insisted that the policy of moving them on was not practicable; they must be settled somewhere, and there should be complete separation. He said that the Indians were hostile to the building of the Union Pacific railway because it divided their buffalo range.
   The Republican of August 21, 1867, reports that Governor Butler is still in the vicinity of the recent outbreak, organizing a force to repel the invaders. Beatrice and Big Sandy seem to be the only parts yet menaced. The same paper contains a dispatch from Governor David Butler to his secretary, Charles H. Gere, Omaha, dated Big Sandy, August 11, 1867, as follows: "Send 100 stand arms, 50 rounds cartridges to each, to D. C. Jenkins, Brownville. Please send immediately. The Indians are on the war path." The same paper reports that three men were killed in the vicinity of Big Sandy on the 8th of August, thirty-five miles west of Beatrice. The Republican of September 25, 1867, contains a letter from North Platte, dated the 18th inst., saying that the peace commissioners, and the Indian chiefs, Standing Elk, Swift Bear, Pawnee Killer, Spotted Tail, Man that Walks Under the Ground, and Big Mouth are there for negotiations.