bulbs and peach pits, and as I cover up the ground again with snow, and as I sit in the snow bank by the side of my planting I involantarily lift up an audible prayer to my heavenly father to bless the planting--that fruit and flower may bloom together and gladen the hearts of household and friends--that God also will bless the planting of the new town and those who have planted it and that all together may be prospered in all their plannings and that God may be glorified and his Kingdom be built up here on this virgin soil. And as I prayed a little bird lit upon my shoulder and chirped about my head & again rested on my coat as it was spread out on the snow. I am not superstitious--do not believe much in signs and omens, but it did seem that here was a significant expression--a promise of good. The homeward journey was attended with even greater hardships than the outward trip: cold, storms, deep snows made traveling difficult and dangerous. On Sunday, the third of December, an unusually violent storm forced them to seek shelter for the day. At the risk of being tedious I shall quote once more from the diary:
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shiver as badly as in camp, and it is as hard to keep warm as any place we have been in. Mrs. M. gets supper consisting of fried bacon, corn griddle cakes, coffee, butter, potatoes. The latter we have not had before since we left home. We sit by the stove--our backs to the stove to eat and our fingers are so cold that we can hardly hold our knives and forks, but we eat a hearty meal and feel warmer. Our hostess is a young woman with bright eyes and curly hair with one child, a little boy 3 years old. At the end of the house is the horse shed--one horse is near dead and we hold a consultation and advise a rifle ball as cure and it is administered and the poor animal is out of her misery. Towards evening the sun comes out, wind goes down and sun sets clear, but 0, how cold! Our host has been out with his remaining horse and drawn up a stick of dry wood and we get warm. In the evening Mrs. M. brings out a straw bed, we lay it on the dirt floor before the stove and with our blankets make a very comfortable bed. A Mr. Marsh--brother-in-law of Morse a young man about 30 takes the other side of the stove in front of the bed and sleeps on the floor. It is the calculation to keep a fire all night.
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was disbanded. Several of the stockholders settled in that section, and one of the nine who was with this first party is still living in Red Willow county. In the spring of 1872 and later the people flocked thither, settling first along the streams, but finally spreading over the divides, and to-day you will find the shacks of the pioneers scattered even among the sand-hills of the extreme western part of southwest Nebraska. On the fifth day of August, 1873,
occurred the battle between the Sioux and the Pawnee
Indians, in what has since come to be known as Massacre
Cañon, a ravine about four miles north of the
subsequent site of Trenton, Hitchcock county. The
Pawnee--about two hundred and fifty men, one hundred women
and fifty children--were on a buffalo hunt. On the third day
of July they had left their reservation for the purpose of
hunting in the Republican valley with the consent of the
authorities and in charge of a special agent, a white man.
Their hunt had been successful, and they were about to
return to their reservation with the meat and skins of eight
hundred buffaloes. |
ccording to the report of the Indian agent,11 twenty men, thirty-nine women and ten children--or sixty-nine in all--were killed, and eleven women and children captured. The latter were restored to the tribe, and about a dozen wounded were also taken home and recovered. Those who lived in the vicinity at the time remember the frenzied flight of the Pawnee through the valley, and their pitiable condition. It seems that the military authorities knew of the proximity of the Sioux and of the danger to the Pawnee. Major Russell, of the army, with sixty privates and twenty scouts, was camped within a few miles of the scene of the massacre, and was, at the time of its occurrence, on his way up the valley to intercept the Sioux. He met the fleeing Pawnee about ten miles from the battle field. When the Sioux saw the soldiers they stopped the pursuit and retreated to the northwest. The bodies of several Sioux warriors were subsequently found, suspended in trees, near the Frenchman. Those who visited the scene of the conflict a few days after it occurred found indescribable carnage and disorder. In the late summer and fall of 1871 a few homesteaders settled in what is now Furnas county, but, with possibly a single exception, no white man lived in southwestern Nebraska west of the one hundredth meridian at that time. During the next three years settlers swarmed in until, by the fall of 1874, they numbered--men, women and children--not less than two thousand. Farming had been carried on with but indifferent success. The area under cultivation as early as 1872 was necessarily restricted. The following 11Report of William Burgess, agent of the Pawnee, Messages and Documents 1873-74, pt. 1, p. 562. See also the statement of Barclay White, superintendent of the northern superintendency, ibid., page 554, and an interesting story of the battle by William Z. Taylor, in volume 16 of the society's Collections, page 165.--ED. |
year drouth cut short the crops. In 1874 the grasshoppers came in clouds that darkened the sun and consumed every vestige of vegetation. The settlers in a new country are usually people of limited means, and under the most favorable circumstances the struggle for existence is severe. With the base of supplies a hundred miles away and wagons the only means of transportation, and nothing grown to eke out the scanty supplies a few dollars possessed by the settlers would buy, to avoid starvation, their alternative was to abandon the country or ask for aid. The destitution on the western prairies in the fall of 1874 was so appallingly universal as to attract the attention of the civilized world. Congress appropriated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the relief of the needy, and donations came from every corner of the nation. But for this charity, hundreds of people would have starved to death. The war department sent Colonel, afterwards General Dudley,12 to investigate conditions. He reported that in Red Willow county, out of a total estimated population of eight hundred, five hundred and forty-four would require aid before the winter was half over; that three hundred would need assistance within twenty days; and that at the time of his visit more than one hundred were either already out of food or would be in less than five days. Some of the families had one or two cows and others a yoke of oxen or a horse, but many of them had worn down their animals 12Nathan A. M. Dudley was made brevet colonel March 13, 1865. July 1, 1876, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the Ninth cavalry. He was brevetted brigadier general of volunteers January 19, 1865. According to the report of the adjutant general, October 9, 1874, he was Major of the Third cavalry and in command of three companies of that regiment at Fort McPherson. (Report of the Secretary of War, 1874-75, v. 1, p. 72.) The federal congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars in money and clothing worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be distributed among the people of the several states which had suffered from grasshoppers. The legislature of 1875 authorized the issue of bonds to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, their proceeds to be expended in providing seed for the sufferers.-ED. |
attempting to hunt buffalo and had no feed with which to recuperate them. The few hogs he saw were mere skeletons, having had no corn but had subsisted almost entirely on wild roots they found in the bottoms. Those who had property of this kind could not sell it if they would; for there were no buyers with money, and they would not have dared to sell, if there had been, for then they would have been without means to avail themselves of the assistance that was offered. Colonel Dudley reported, further, that only two hundred bushels of corn and less than one hundred bushels of potatoes, half-grown, had been raised during the preceding season in all the afflicted country. Little, or no wheat had been planted, as the settlers were too poor to buy seed. Such conditions afforded no gainful employment, and no money or commodity to pay for it. In the early fall buffalo meat had been obtainable, but at the time of Colonel Dudley's visit the buffalo had abandoned this part of the country, and gone beyond the reach of the sufferers. Their homes were mostly board shacks, which were scant shelter from the biting winds that sweep over the prairies in winter. Fortunate were they who occupied dugouts or sod houses. Not infrequently sickness added to the misery caused by hunger and cold, or death had removed the mainstay of wife and children, and families subsisted upon the carcasses of animals that had died from natural causes. Unable even to buy ammunition for the hunt, the settlers set traps along the streams for such wild creatures as would walk into them. By the sale of occasional pelts, or their exchange for the barest necessities, and by eating the flesh of such of the trapped animals as were fit for food, they managed to survive. It should be noted that this section was remote from any railroad and that all imported supplies were hauled in wagons weary miles across the almost trackless prairies. Far into the following year rations were issued to the needy, under the supervision of the federal authorities. |
At times as many as three-fourths of the inhabitants of this region obtained their entire subsistence at the hands of charity.
After the settlement of southwestern
Nebraska began, the people were singularly free from
molestation by the Indians. Although in the early years the
Indians ranged over the country west of the settlements, and
sometimes small parties of savages were seen by the
homesteaders, it was not until the early part of October,
1878, that a serious Indian scare occurred. A report that
the Cheyenne were on the warpath sent the occupants of the
outlying ranches scurrying to the towns, where preparations
were made to repulse the expected attacks. |
George Rowley, who kept a "cow camp" at Wauneta Falls, had been to Greeley, Colorado, for supplies. When he reached Ogalala on his return he learned the Cheyenne were on the warpath, and, alarmed for the safety of his family, he left his team and wagon and started for his home alone, on horseback. Two weeks after the passage of the Indians, his saddle, from which the leather had been cut, was found. This led to the discovery of his body, riddled with bullets, and hidden in a growth of sunflowers on the brink of a cañon. It is believed that the Indians, seeing him coming along the cattle trail, which was a well-marked highway between Texas and Montana, concealed themselves in a pocket, and shot him to death as he passed. Records are extant which disclose that on this raid the Indians stole horses, killed cattle and destroyed other personal property of the settlers. Probably the only reason that comparatively few of the pioneers were killed is that most of them had been warned of the danger and fled to safety. This raid of the Cheyenne was the last hostile appearance of the Indians in this part of the state.13 13For a further account of the return trip of this band of forcibly exiled northern Cheyenne to their old home--for that it really was--see my history of the Indian war on the Nebraska plains, ms. pages 192, 200, and 202. According to the report of the secretary of the interior, cited at page 192, there were about three hundred Indians in all, eighty-seven of them warriors. General Terry says (page 200) there were about sixty men with their families. The agent at the Cheyenne and Arapaho agency in his report dated September 20, 1878, (House Executive Documents 1878-79, V. 2, p. 49) says that this band of Northern Cheyenne were seceders from the agreement of the majority to unite with the Southern Cheyenne, Major J. K. Mizner, of the Fourth cavalry says (ibid. p. 48) that the band comprised eighty-nine men, one hundred and twelve women and one hundred and thirty-four children--about one-third of the entire Northern Cheyenne tribe. Major Mizner said they ran away on account of bad rations and the unhealthy condition of the country. General George Crook, commander of the Department of the Platte, in his report for 1879 (House Executive Documents 1879-80, v. 2, p. 77), with his characteristic courage and sense of justice, apologized for the flight of the fugitives, which he attributed to chills and fever and insufficient food. He chided the government for having forgotten the distinguished services of the exiles on its side in the campaigns |
It was customary for the old men of the Indian tribes unacquainted with the art of writing as we know it, to gather their clansmen around them for the purpose of relating to them the valorous deeds of their ancestors. From father to son the tales descended; and thus the chronicles of the tribes were perpetuated. In these days, when we have a press that records, daily, not only the happenings of our own people but of the whole world, we do not charge our memories with facts; and, anomalous as it may seem, we are better informed about what occurs in the antipodes, than about what transpires around us. Things that are of first importance to us are forgotten in the consideration we give to things that are of consequence to men who are naught to us. And yet with all our means for the preservation of facts, much of that which is of real significance is left unrecorded. No history is fuller of tragedy and sacrifice, of poetry and romance, of sorrow and mystery, than that of the people who first came to the region of which I write. The pioneers of southwestern Nebraska, after crossing the great river that forms the eastern boundary of our state, drove their white-covered wagons across the frontier, beyond the outposts of civilization and the help of men, into a land that was uncharted as the ocean. They found a prairie stretching, like the ocean, away to limits of vision, the surface tossed, as if by the wind, into mighty waves that were crested, not with foam, but with flowers. They found the land tenanted by wild animals and by savage men, the uplands teeming with buffaloes, the lowlands sheltering elks, deer, and antelopes. At night, out of the darkness that against the Sioux in 1876 and 1878. They surrendered to a detachment of soldiers under Major Carlton on the 23d of October, 1878, in the sand-hills, about forty miles southeast of Camp Sheridan. They were confined at Fort Robinson, and the undertaking to remove them again to Indian Territory on the 9th of January, 1879, was met with desperate and bloody resistance.--ED. |
rimmed their camp fires, they heard the wail of the coyote. From the branches of the trees beneath which they sought shelter, they saw the eyes of some great cat, glowing like living coals. When they reached their chosen land, they unhitched their horses or unyoked their cattle, and turned them loose to graze. The first desire of every white man, indeed his first need, is to have a home. They selected the site for the dwelling they meant to raise. They cut the trees that nature had furnished for their use along the streams and from them fashioned their habitation, or they turned the prairie sod, and from it built a shelter from the sun and wind and rain, using poles to support the roof and the untanned skins of deer or buffaloes for door and windows; or, like the wild creatures that had been in undisputed possession of the land since their first coming, they dug a cave in a canon's bank; or they traveled wearily back, across the trackless plain, to the nearest railway station, where they loaded their wagons with boards with which they constructed shacks to shield them from winter's blasts. There were no carpenters, no artisans--none to help them but their comrades. They learned the lesson of self-reliance, the first lesson of the pioneer, of which we of to-day know too little. In health, the life, though hard, had its compensations in the prairies, in the glorious sunshine, in the free, pure air of this Westland; but in sickness there was no doctor who might be summoned by telephone, no one to administer comfort, but some kindly neighbor-woman with her homely remedies. And all that could be done for the dead was to lay them in the earth, on some lonely hillside, sometimes in a rude pine box to save them from molestation by prowling wolves, but often merely wrapped in blankets to protect the closed eyes from the pressing clods. Tears and a prayer were awarded the departed, and outpouring of sympathy from all the countryside for the living. Even to the poor |
sick Indian who came to their door the white settlers extended the hand of charity. But all was not pain and sorrow. There were parties and social gatherings at the homestead houses. There were weddings and other joyous occasions. There were devotional services and times of thanksgiving, when the hearts of the pioneers were grateful for such blessings as they enjoyed. There were holiday seasons when, despite the poor harvest, the Christmas spirit prevailed. Carlyle said, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books." In the popular signification of the term, we have had no history. No armies have marched across our land; no decisive battles have been fought upon our soil; none of our people have done anything to achieve fame and honor. The writers of history find nothing in our homely annals worth recording; and yet our pioneers can chronicle events that have the profoundest human interest. The happenings of their daily life contribute to a story that is as thrilling and as tragic as any that is told. After all, who shall say they are too insignificant to warrant repetition? "All service ranks the same with God: ...........God's, puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first." The incidents that filled those early days did not constitute the sum of life. Aside from the human element that entered into the computation, the manifestations of nature cast spells that were felt but that cannot be defined. The expanse of prairie, the tree-bordered streams, the flooding sunlight, the cloud flecked sky, the chasing shadows, the slipping waters, the sifting snowflakes, the sparkling stars, the silent moonlight, the scent of the wild flowers, the sweep of the storm cloud, the flash of the lightning, the crash of the thunder, the hiss of the rattle snake--all inspired sentiments that make the memory of those days, to those who |
lived in them, pleasant to contemplate, and that will some day find expression in masterpieces of art and literature. The proudest distinction any of us can enjoy should be that of calling ourselves pioneers; but the honor should be reserved for those who endured the hardships and privations of frontier life; for those who prepared the way for things that, in a material sense, are better; for those who have made this country what it is. To the first settlers we, who find this land a fit place to abide, owe a debt of gratitude we cannot repay. |
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