|
By ALBERT WATKINS On the 30th day of December, 1909, I
interviewed General Grenville M. Dodge at his home in
Council Bluffs, Iowa. Though seventy-nine years of age, he
was physically vigorous and his memory seemed to me to be
remarkably clear. For an account of his western Indian
campaigns in 1864 and 1865 he referred me to Reports of
Indian Wars of 1865, War of the Rebellion, vol. 48, pts. 1
and 2,--serial Nos. 101-102. General Dodge engaged actively
in the project of constructing a Pacific railroad for as
much as ten years before the passage of the act of 1862,
which provided for the building of the Union Pacific
railroad. He is intimately acquainted with the movements,
political or otherwise, toward that great purpose. He is
positively of the opinion that no well defined railroad
interest or organization, prospective or otherwise,
undertook to influence or encourage Stephen A. Douglas or
other political leaders in their struggle for procuring the
territorial organization of Nebraska. He says that there was
no such movement sufficiently well defined before the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill to warrant any effort
toward obtaining political influence of the kind in
question. This opinion of General Dodge corresponds with
that which I have always held. |
Dodge thinks that the peace policy of the federal government, which withdrew his army from the Indian campaign in 1865 at a time when there was a good prospect of soon subduing the Indians and in that way establishing lasting peace, was ill-advised and wrong, and that the great loss of property and life, culminating in the Custer massacre, was the legitimate fruit of that mistaken policy. According to the attitude of the local newspapers at the time, the peace policy was generally questioned or condemned by the people of the plains country. During this Indian campaign General Dodge named Fort Caspar, Wyoming, after Lieutenant Caspar Collins when he was killed by Indians, July 27, 1865.1 Fort Caspar was a stockade fortification at the Platte bridge, a low, floating structure, built by the soldiers of his army. It was situated at, or near, the point where the Mormons crossed the North Platte river on their way to Salt Lake City. In 1865 General Dodge and his brother, Nathan P. Dodge, who also resided at Council Bluffs, lived in a cabin on the Elkhorn river about six miles above the present town of Elkhorn, which is a station on the Union Pacific railroad. Their farm or ranch lay alongside the California trail. In 1853 General Dodge assisted Peter A. Dey in running the line of the Mississippi and Missouri--now called the Rock Island--railroad. In 1854 he threw his influence in favor of the Mosquito creek entrance to the valley of the Missouri river instead of the Pigeon creek route. The former route was favored by Cook and Sargent, capitalists, of Davenport, Iowa, who were backing the enterprise. They had interests at Florence, Nebraska, and afterward 1 Coutant's History of Wyoming, v. 1, P. 478, copies the order of Major General John Pope, dated November 21, 1865, naming "the military post situated at Platte river bridge, between Deer and Rock creeks," Fort Caspar. |
owned the "wild cat" bank at that place. They intended that the road should eventually cross the river there; but General Dodge's influence prevailed, and the road came into Council Bluffs,, and its trains now cross to Omaha as a result of his decision. General Dodge said that the claim, much exploited at the time, that the rock bottom of the river at Florence made a much easier and less expensive place for a railroad bridge was entirely without foundation in fact, because, as he ascertained, the alleged rock bottom was not stable enough to maintain the weight of a bridge with a current of water flowing under the stratum of rock. General Dodge also contends that there was no virtue in the same condition in favor of a crossing at Bellevue; that the only practical advantage of the rock bottom was to tend to prevent the shifting of the current at those places.2 General Dodge made the first reconnoissance (sic) for the discovery of a line for the Pacific railroad west of the Missouri river. At the instance of Henry Farnham, after whom Farnham street, Omaha, was named, General Dodge went up the Platte Valley in 1861 on the business in question. During his Indian campaign of 1865-66 he continued his investigations for the route for a Pacific railroad. In 1864 he discovered the west side of the pass through the Rocky mountains, which the Union Pacific subsequently followed, and in 1865 he found the pass on this side. The grade of this passage was much more favorable than that of Cheyenne pass, about twenty miles above, or of the South pass. He named the new passage way "Sherman Pass" and had it accurately surveyed in 1866. His discovery of that route was not made known until the year last named. 2 Professor Barbour, head geologist University of Nebraska, is very skeptical as to this statement that the rock bottom was not stable and that water flowed just below it. |
General Dodge says that at the time he and his brother lived on their ranch on the Elkhorn the Pawnee Loup had a regular village on the Beaver, near the place where the town of Genoa was afterward built. His brother, Nathan P. Dodge, had some doubt as to the accuracy of the general's memory upon this point. He himself supposed that the Pawnee were all settled at the village near Fremont. |
 |
 |
 |
 |