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By ALBERT WATKINS If we do not wish to go so far with
skepticism or cynicism as to endorse the old apothegm,
"Might makes right", we may hit off a compromise by agreeing
that, at any rate, might secures right and then find a good
illustration of our maxim in our western frontier conditions
from the time of the treaty of 1783, which recognized the
independence of our colonies and the Mississippi river as
our western boundary line, until the Oregon question was
settled in 1846. For some time after the treaty of
independence England insolently kept up military
establishments on our western frontier; and France and
Spain, the other two great powers, continued to menace and
snub us. We won their respectful consideration only when our
growing military might could command it. Even after the war
of 1812-15, England continued to covet trade with our upper
Missouri Indians and to take unwarranted liberties in that
region. |
the land with reference to topography, animal and vegetable products, actual and prospective, and ascertain as certainly as practicable its northern boundary, the better to judge of and repress British encroachment; to impress the Indian occupants with white prowess by means of military demonstrations and the wonderful method of transportation by steamboats; and, under this spell, to make favorable treaties with the Indians and ascertain the most favorable points for establishing military posts. The enterprise was to be a second edition of the Lewis and Clark expedition but with the impressive adjunct of the pomp and circumstance of power. In this respect it proved disastrously top-heavy; in apter metaphor, perhaps, the tail so effectively wagged the dog as to effectually break the animal down long before the accomplishment of his ostentatious journey. This great conception for illuminating the magnificence of ends and means put the trans-Missouri country and, inclusively, the Nebraska section of it, in the public eye almost as conspicuously as the Kansas-Nebraska bill did a generation later. President Monroe, in his message to congress, November 16, 1818, said: "With a view to the security of our inland frontiers it has been thought expedient to establish strong posts at the mouth of the Yellow Stone River, and at the Mandan village on the Missouri. It can hardly be presumed, while such posts are maintained in the rear of the Indian tribes, that they will venture to attack our peaceable inhabitants."1 It was also contended that this movement would ultimately promote civilization of the Indians who would be unable to exist alongside of the civilized whites; to prevent their extinction they must be under dependent control of the United States .2 No mention is made of establishing a post at Council Bluffs, whose 1State Papers, 2d Sess., 15th Cong., 1818-19, v. 1, doc. 2, p. 10. 2Ibid. |
invention as a substitute for the original plan turned out to be the child of necessity. The president correctly forecasted the ultimate Indian policy; but he was mistaken in his forecast of its results, for the extermination he would have prevented, professedly, goes on inexorably, and no practicable policy could have avoided it. Nile's Register, v. 15, p. 117, quotes from the St. Louis Enquirer an interesting statement of the objects of the expedition. A battalion of the Rifle regiment, three hundred strong, embarked at Belle Fontaine September 4, 1818, to ascend the Missouri to the mouth of the Yellowstone to establish a post there. This advance force was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Talbot Chambers. The three captains were Martin, Merger and Riley. It was intended that the expedition should encamp for the winter at the mouth of the Kansas and continue its voyage in the spring. The officers were instructed to carry such seed grains as it was expected would thrive in that climate. Wheat, barley, rye and oats, it was believed, would do well there. "The Mandan corn will find itself in its own climate" there. A reason for this provision was "that the post may have within itself some resource against the failure of contractors ... Our fellow citizen, Manuel Lisa, so well known for his enterprise, will precede the expedition to prepare the Indians for its reception. He will quiet their apprehensions by showing the benevolent and humane intentions of the American government and will silence the British emissaries who shall represent the expedition as an act of war against the Indian nations. The establishment of this post will be an era in the history of the west. It will go to the source of the fatal British influence which has for so many years armed the Indian nations against our western frontiers. It carries the arms and power of the United States to the ground which has hitherto been exclusively occupied by the British North West and Hudson's Bay companies, and |
which has been the true seat of the British power over the Indian mind . . . The North West and Hudson's Bay companies will be shut out from the commerce of the Missouri and Mississippi Indians; the American traders will penetrate in safety the recesses of the rocky mountains in search of its rich fur; a commerce yielding a million per annum will descend the Missouri; and the Indians, finding their wants supplied by the American traders, their domestic wars restrained by American policy, will learn to respect the American name." The article then proceeds to describe the Yellowstone in glowing terms. The same volume of the Register (p. 160) copies from the Inquisitor a private letter, dated Belle Fontaine, September 4, 1818, saying the troops, three hundred and fifty strong, left there on the 30th ult.; their equipment was extensive, including six boats and a tender. They proceeded with ease. Captain (Brevet Major) Thomas Biddle, of the Rifle regiment, also a handy journalist-historian military attache of the expedition, at the request of Colonel Henry Atkinson, its commander, reported to that officer,3 from "Camp Missouri", October 29, 1819, results of his personal observations among the Osage, Kansas, Oto and Missouri, Iowa, Pawnee, and Omaha tribes of Indians and some account of the trade between whites and Indians. The history of the trade on the Missouri river under the Spanish and French colonial governments, "would be the recital of the expeditions of vagrant hunters and traders who never ventured up the river beyond a few miles of this place. The return of Captains Lewis and Clark, and the favorable account they brought with them of the rich furs to be obtained on the upper branches of the Missouri and the respectful reception which their admirable deportment towards the natives had 3 State Papers 1819-20, 1st Sess., 16th Cong., doc. 47, p. 2; American State Papers, v. 6--Indian Affairs, v. 2, p. 201. |
gained for them, encouraged Manuel Lisa, one of the most enterprising of these traders, to venture up the Missouri. with a small trading equipment, as far as the Yellow Stone river,"--in 1807. The party passed the winter of 1807-8 "at the mouth of the Yellow Stone and Big Horn Rivers." John Coulter was dispatched by Lisa to the forks of the Missouri "to find the Blackfeet nation and bring them to his establishment to trade"--the first of these Indians which had been met having been friendly; but Coulter fell in with the Crows, who were attacked by Blackfeet; and he helped his hosts and so incurred the enmity of their assailants. Afterward they attacked Coulter, killing his companion; and soon attacked the whites without parley. This was the origin of the hostility, "which has prevented American traders from penetrating the fur country of the Missouri." Lisa returned to St. Louis in 1808, and the Missouri Fur Company was organized in 1809; its object being "to monopolize the trade among the lower tribes of the Missouri" and to send a large party to the headwaters "capable of defending and trapping beaver themselves." The principal partners went up with a party of about one hundred and fifty and left small trading establishments at the Arikara, Mandan, and Gros Ventre villages. The main body wintered at Lisa's old trading post at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Bighorn. In the spring of 1810 they went to the Three Forks of the Missouri, erected a fort and began trapping with good prospects; but soon the Blackfeet attacked them and killed thirty of their number. Then the whole party crossed the mountains southwardly and wintered on the waters of the Columbia, suffering great privations. A part returned discouraged down the Missouri, but others went south to Spanish settlements via the Rio del Norte. The company languished through 1812, 1813, and 1814, and then expired. |
In 1808 another company of eighty men, headed by McClinnon [McClellan] and Crooks, soon after leaving Camp Missouri met the government boat which had returned home the Mandan chief taken to Washington by Lewis and Clark. The boat had been attacked by the Stricherons.4 This hostility discouraged the party but they followed the Missouri Fur Company's party up the river in 1809. The Sconi Sioux stopped them; but they escaped and, returning, wintered--1809-10--at the Oto village. They attributed the Indian hostility to the Missouri Fur Company. In 1811 these traders (apparently meaning "McClinnon" and Crooks) added Wilson P. Hunt to their association, "and appear to have acted under the direction of Mr. Astor of New York." They ascended again, "but they carried no goods nor made any attempts to trade or trap on the Missouri; whatever might have been their intentions, they were probably frustrated by the war of 1812."5 All these disasters extinguished enterprise on the Missouri. Two companies since formed had dissolved, unsuccessful, and a third was in operation, independent of several individual traders; but there were no attempts to carry on trade beyond the Arikara, and traders did not often venture beyond the upper band of the Sioux. Traders cheated one another and set a bad example to Indians. They made the Omaha, and particularly Chief Big Elk, drunk with whiskey to get their furs.6 4 Probably a misspelling of Starrahe, an early name of the Arikara. 5 It is asserted in historical documents and also by many local contemporaneous persons that this Astorian expedition established a post at Bellevue which turned out to be the first permanent settlement in the territory now included in Nebraska. This statement of Biddle's is cumulative evidence that there is no foundation for the allegations in question. For a critical discussion of this topic see Collections Nebraska State Historical Society, volume 16, page 68, footnote 3. 6 Augustus Choteau (State Papers 1815-16, 1st Sess., 14th Cong., v. 3, p. 104) says the Missouri river furs amounted in 1805 to $77,971, and now--1815--going no farther up than the Omahas and Poncas, and adding |
Though this famous adventure became commonly known as the Yellowstone Expedition, the war department appears to have called it "the expedition to the Mandan villages on the Missouri river". January 15, 1820, Thomas S. Jesup, quartermaster-general, reported to John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, the agreement with James Johnson of Kentucky. The contract, signed December 2, 1818, provided that Johnson should have two steamboats ready by March 1, 1819, "calculated to navigate the Mississippi and its waters", which should be "charged with the transportation of provisions and munitions of war, detachments and their baggage, or other articles, to the military posts on said waters, viz: the mouth of the St. Peters, near the Falls of St. Anthony; the mouth of the Yellow Stone on the Missouri, and Bellepoint on the Arkansaw; and all other points, whether intermediate or beyond those enumerated". If two boats were not sufficient, that of the St. Peters, Red, Crow's Wing, and "a great many more of the Mississippi", $150,000. William Clark, governor of Missouri Territory, said (ibid., p. 101) that Choteau had been familiar with Indians for fifty years, "a part of which time the greater part of the Indian trade of this country was conducted by him." Choteau contended that the reason why the United States factors could not compete with British traders' goods was that the former did not go to the Indians but they--the Indians--must go a long way to the factories and then got but limited credit, while the British traders followed them up and catered to their wants, especially in credit, without which they cannot go on their hunts. He thought that, with a store with a capital of $100,000 established at St. Louis by the government and conducted by thoroughly practical Indian traders, furs worth $200,000 could be brought annually from the Missouri river, between Cedar Island, above the Ponca, and headwaters. The Northwestern Company of Canada, he believed, was getting 200,000 pounds sterling from Indians in the neighborhood of the branches on the left side of the Missouri. The governor thought that such a company with a capital of six hundred thousand to a million dollars would "sweep the whole of the valuable fur trade of the Missouri and [upper] Mississippi rivers; expel all the petty, though now very powerful British traders, and bring into our markets immense quantities of the most valuable fur and peltries." (Ibid., p. 96.) Choteau thought the government ought to establish this company, and Clark that it should receive "liberal aid and encouragement from the government." |
on due and reasonable notice, Johnson was to provide one other or more boats, "as the case may require." If, "upon experiment", it should be found impracticable to do all the transportation with steamboats then Johnson should, "in a reasonable time, say thirty days, provide a sufficient number of keel boats" to supply the deficiency. It was agreed that two arbitrators, one to be chosen by each party and a third by the original two arbitrators in case they could not agree, should settle all differences about compensation "other than ordinary freight." Knox, Halderman & Co., of the town of St. Louis, agreed, July 1819, to furnish, from time to time and on ten days notice during the present year, such number of well rigged keel boats as might be required for the transportation of troops, provisions, and all other articles to the several military posts on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers." For the conveyance and safe delivery of such stores as may be delivered them for transportation to the Council Bluffs, the company was to be paid $5.50 per hundred pounds; to Martin Cantonment, $4 per hundred pounds. Whereas circumstances might render it necessary to send empty boats "some distance up the Missouri to take on board the troops, provisions, and other stores, now ascending," the company was to have $2,327.27 for every such boat of thirty tons and not over thirty-three tons thus freighted, if sent to Martin Cantonment, and $3,200 if sent to the Council Bluffs; for each boat over thirty-three tons and not over thirty-six tons, $2,700 to Martin Cantonment and $3,400 to Council Bluffs. In a contract signed at St. Louis, August 18, 1819, John Walls agreed to take a keel boat of at least thirty-five tons burden to the steamboat Jefferson, "now lying near the mouth of Petite Bonne Femme creek (about one hundred and fifty miles above the mouth of Missouri)", and there receive a full load of troops and provisions and other stores and proceed to |
Martin Cantonment or the. Council Bluffs, "as may be directed by the commanding officer of the expedition."7 The signatories of the Johnson contract were James Johnson, principal, and William Ward, John T. Johnson, Joel Johnson, and Henry Johnson, sureties. Richard M. Johnson held their power of attorney. Thomas S. Jesup, quartermaster-general, signed for the United States.8 These Johnsons were a notable Kentucky family, and their dauntless spirit (as manifested in this hazardous pioneer adventure) had already won national fame for two of them. Richard Mentor Johnson, the most conspicuous personage of the family, was a leader in the movement of 1802 to raise a force of Kentucky and Tennessee frontiersmen to descend the Mississippi and compel the Spaniards to grant them the right of navigation to its mouth and facilities for trade at New Orleans. He was a member of the Kentucky legislature; then of the national house of representatives, from 1807 to 1819; of the United States senate from 1819 to 1829; again of the house of representatives; vice president during Van Buren's presidency; and back to the state legislature again. But he won more fame in war than in politics. When the war of 1812 broke out he raised, and was colonel of, a regiment of Kentucky mounted riflemen; and the brilliant charge of his regiment brought victory at the battle of the Thames, in 1813. His successful hand-to-hand fight with an Indian chief, supposed to have been Tecumseh, the famous Shawnee chief, added additional glory to this exploit. There is an imposing monument of Colonel Johnson on the state house grounds at Frankfort, Kentucky; and it is related in Niles Register,9 that a magnificent sword, manufactured by order of congress, was presented to him 7 State Papers, 1st Session, 16th Congress, v. 3, doc. 50, pp. 5-10. 8 Ibid., 2d Sess., 16th Cong., v. 8, doc. 110, pp. 7, 8. 9 April 22, 1820, v. 18, p. 151. |
by the president of the United States. One side of the hilt bore the arms of the United States; on the other was this inscription: "Voted by act of Congress to Col. Richard M. Johnson, in testimony of the sense of his gallantry in the battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, October 5th, 1813." James Johnson was lieutenant colonel of the regiment; and while his brother was putting the Indian contingent of the enemy to rout he successfully charged the wing composed of British soldiers. After his remarkable campaign amidst the perils of steam-boating on the Missouri river, he, also, entered politics and became a member of the lower house of the 19th Congress--1825-6. Johnson county, Nebraska, was named for Richard M. Johnson, probably through the influence of early settlers from Indiana or Kentucky; and, on account of a like association, the county seat was named Tecumseh.10 The provision for 10 The first legislative assembly of Nebraska, by the act of March 2, 1855, defined the boundaries of Johnston county. The act designated John B. Robertson, Jesse Cowles and John A. Singleton as commissioners "to locate the seat of justice in said county", which "shall be called 'Frances'". Robertson was a member of the house from Burt county; and Singleton a member of the house from Richardson county. Cowles was a brother of James H. Cowles, member of the house from Pierce, afterward Otoe county. Contemporary and other early historians fatuously alleged that Frances was the name of Colonel Johnson's wife and that the intended capital of Johnson county was her namesake. The fact that this statement has been accepted without contradiction illustrates the easy fallibility of history. Reliable information just obtained by the editor, from Kentucky, establishes the fact that Colonel Johnson was never married; though he lived out of wedlock with a woman--a negress, strange to say--to whose children he left his considerable fortune. It is probable that the legislature intended to name the coming county seat after Francis Burt, the first governor of the territory. The discrepancy in the spelling of the name should not be permitted to weaken this theory because misspelling was so common in the public prints of those days that its occurrence in any given case might almost be presumed. For example: in the title of the act to establish the county and several times in its body the name of the county is spelled with a t, making it Johnston; while it is twice spelled without the t, making it Johnson, as it was doubtless intended to be. |
arbitration in the contract was doubtless due to recognition or anticipation of the great hazard and uncertainty of the undertaking; but, apparently, the Johnsons relied more upon their influence at Washington than upon judicial This first Johnston, or Johnson, county lay immediately west of Nemaha. By act of the second assembly it was absorbed by Nemaha and Clay. The third legislature--of 1857--re-established Johnson county with its present territory, taken from the west end of Nemaha and the north side of Pawnee. The same legislature added the northeast corner of Pawnee county to Nemaha, making its south boundary line continuous with that of Johnson. A county government was at least formally organized near the end of the year 1856; but it was ignored by the act of 1857. Johnson county was also placed in the second judicial district by an act of the same session. It was first included in the legislative apportionment by Governor Izard in his election proclamation of May 30, 1857 (see Nebraska Advertiser, June 11, 1857), Johnson and Nemaha comprising the representative district, and was represented for the first time in the fourth legislative assembly, which convened December 8, 1857. Albert J. Benedict, Samuel A. Chambers, and John S. Minick, all residents of Nemaha county, were the members of the house of representatives from the district. The county participated in a general election, for the first time, in 1857, when it cast 70 votes. (Nebraska Advertiser, August 13, 1857; Records of Nebraska Territory, p. 140) Councilmen were elected in the even numbered years; but Governor Richardson made no apportionment in his election proclamation of 1858; yet the clerk of Nemaha county designated Nemaha and Johnson counties as a councilmanic district in his election notice, though without legal authority. (Nebraska Advertiser, June 24, 1858) An act of the second legislative assembly, January 26, 1856, authorized the governor of the territory to apportion the membership of the council and the house of representatives on the basis of a census to be taken between August 1st and September 1st, 1856, and fixed the number of the members of the house for the next session at thirty-five. (Laws of 2d session, p. 181) This act was the basis of Governor Izard's apportionment for the 3d assembly, (Nebraska Advertiser, Sept. 20, 1856), which convened January 5th, 1857. The organic act provided that the governor should apportion the districts for the first session; "but, thereafter.... the apportioning the representation in the several counties or districts to the council and house of representatives . . . shall be prescribed by law, as well as the day of the commencement of the legislative assembly . . ." It is pretty clear that under this fundamental law the legislature could not deputize the governor to apportion the representation; and perhaps it was because Governor Richardson was a lawyer of ability that he did not undertake to make an apportionment in his election proclamation of 1858. In a newspaper clipping, pasted on the page of the Records of Nebraska Territory (p. 193) which contains a copy of the proclamation, it is said that, "We believe the former executive (Izard) issued proclamations for general elections, by |
adjustment; and so it seems as if they played a bold bluff from first to last. Items in the State Papers from time to time constitute an official account, in considerable detail, of the progress of the enterprise. State Papers, 1st session 16th Congress, v. 1, doc. 2, p. 11, the president's message, December 7, 1819, says: "The troops ordered to the mouth of the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, have ascended that river to the Council Bluff, where they will remain until the next spring, when they will proceed to the place of their destination." This measure, the president says, has been executed in amity with the Indian tribes and promises to produce all the advantages which were contemplated by it. The president's message, November 14, 1820, says: "Our military positions have been maintained at Belle Point, on the Arkansas, at Council Bluff, on the Missouri, at St. Peters on the Mississippi, and at Green Bay on the what authority we do not know. There is certainly nothing in the law requiring it. We speak by authority when we say that Governor Richardson understands the law and his duty better". The writer then says that it is the duty of county commissioners to issue election notices and urges them not to neglect it. The governor's proclamation in question gave notice that a territorial auditor would be elected on the day of the general election, to fill a vacancy. Nevertheless, Robert W. Furnas canvassed Johnson county in his campaign of 1858, as a candidate for councilman, and published the election returns from the two counties jointly for councilman and members of the house of representatives. (Nebraska Advertiser, July 22, and August 12, 1858.) In the Advertiser of July 29, Furnas says, with emphasis, that he will be a representative "of the entire people of Nemaha county"; which suggests that he knew, or thought, that he would represent Johnson county only informally. The act of the fifth general assembly, November 3, 1858, apportioned members of the house of representatives, but not of the council; and Johnson, Clay, and Gage counties were constituted a representative district. This status continued until the ninth assembly--act of January 28, 1864--apportioned members of the council and house of representatives, constituting Pawnee, Gage, Johnson, Clay, and Jones the eleventh council district and Johnson a representative district. This apportionment was incorporated in the revised statutes of 1866. |
Upper Lakes". Commodious barracks had been erected at most of them. No mention is made of the reason for the change to Council Bluffs. (Ibid., 2d Sess. 16th Congress v. 11, doc. 2, p. 8). First land on the Missouri river purchased for military purposes at Belle Fontaine--" tract on the Missouri"--April 20, 1806, five acres; tract of five hundred French acres at same place, July 29, 1806. Ibid., 2d Sess. 16th Cong., v. 8, doe. 110, page 4. Proposals from sixteen persons for transporting military stores from St. Louis to Council Bluffs ranged from $3.25 to $4 per 100 lbs.--among them one from Frederick Dent. P. 9. Thomas S. Jesup, quartermaster-general, proposed to allow Colonel James Johnson "thirty-three and one-third per cent in addition to the usual freight, for the stores and provisions transported to the Council Bluffs"; the usual freight to Martin Cantonment. Pp. 10, 11. Commodore John Rodgers and Gen. John Mason were agreed upon as referees with Walter Jones as umpire in place of William Wirt, attorney-general, who declined to act. Only charges for transportation on the Missouri to be referred. The claim for detention at the mouth of the Missouri of the Expedition, $13,333.33; and the Johnson, $7,200, was to be referred; the award to be final. Ibid., p. 5. |
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