HISTORY AND STORIES 2FNEBRASKA SHELDON w (ii;ouGE CATLIN PAINTING AN INDIAN CHIEF HISTORY AND STORIES OF NEBRASKA BY ADDISON ERWIN SHELDON DIRECTOR NEBRASKA LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE BUREAU LECTURER QN NEBRASKA HISTORY AND INSTITUTIONS UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA WITH MAPS A\'D ILLUSTRATIONS CHICAGO AND LINCOLN THE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO. 1918 COPYRIGHT, 1913 THE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY All Rights Reserved (The R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO TO THREE CHILDREN, BORN ON THE NEBRASKA FRONTIER. ESTHER, PHILIP AND RUTH, WHO HAVE SO OFTEN COAXED FOR " REAL TRUE STORIES " OF THE PIONEER DAYS OF THE WEST. THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 1781441 PREFACE OTORIES are the harp strings of history, transforming ^ the past into melody and rhythm. The best stories live forever in the human mind. They greet us in the Latin, Teutonic, and Celtic tongues, surprise us in the ancient Greek, Arabic, and Hindoo literature, and astonish us in the rude folk tales of primitive peoples who have no written language. The demand for a good story is as wide, as unsatisfied as human longing, and the search for a new one as difficult and elusive as the discovery of a new element in nature. Stories are the inspiration of patriotism and of home virtues. No land is loved without its place tales, and no nation became great without the lift of noble examples and ideals in the stories of its common people. Every hill and mountain must find its hero, every vale and prairie its legend, ere it becomes invested with living human in- terest. With the flight of years the deeds of pioneers in a new land are transformed into the hero tales and place legends of the later generations. It is well that in the process what is brave, generous, and strong survives; what is common, mean, and trivial perishes. In Nebraska the pioneer period is just past. The pioneers are with us still. Men yet live who knew these prairies as a sea of grass wherein appeared no island of human habitation. We have yet with us those who hunted deer and buffalo on the sites of our cities, who followed the overland trails and faced hostile Indians where now extend fruitful fields of corn, wheat, and alfalfa. Children born in sod houses, dugouibs, and even in emigrant wagons now direct the affairs of our commonwealth. The pioneer days are past, but their witnesses are in our midst. vi PREFACE It is well for us to recount their deeds while they are still among us. The purpose of this little book is to present, in story form, the most important facts in Nebraska history in such language that a child able to read may get the story and a grown man or woman may find interest in both fact and story. It is seven years since the idea of this volume was con- ceived and the first story written. Of the hundreds of good and true stories of our history only a few could be chosen for the present volume. As the list of short stories grew and formed itself naturally into a series reaching from the Stone Age to the present time, there arose a call for a condensed narrative which should connect the different periods and form an historical thread upon which the short stories might be strung. The response to this call is the Story of Nebraska in a series of short connected sketches. Thus in its final form the book presents a brief history of our state and stories which seem significant and truly characteristic in her development. Grateful acknowledgment is due to the many persons who have entered into the spirit of this volume and aided in its progress. First among these, I am indebted to her whom I need not name, whose clear insight and creative criticism as a native daughter of Nebraska have been the largest element in securing its present form. From Pro- fessors Howard W. Caldwell, Clark E. Persinger, Lawrence Bruner, Erwin H. Barbour, and George E. Condra, of the University of Nebraska, have come valuable aids and sug- gestions. Important service in gathering material was rendered by the following persons : Mr. James Murie, Pawnee, Oklahoma; Mrs. Lucy Manville Sprague, Thedford, Nebraska; Hon. C. W. Beal, Broken Bow, Nebraska;' Supt. E. T. Ingle, Ft. McPherson Cemetery; Colonel James Hunton, Ft. Laramie, Wyoming; Hon. H. T. Clarke, Omaha, Nebraska; Hon. H. G. Taylor, PREFACE vii Central City, Nebraska; Mr. James F. Hanson, Fremont, Nebraska; Colonel C. W. Allen, Merriman, Nebraska; Colonel C. P. Jordan, Wood, South Dakota; Mrs. Daniel Freeman, Beatrice, Nebraska; Mr. E. A. Kilian (deceased), Manhattan, Kansas; Mr. Robert Harvey, Lincoln, Nebraska; Hon. Addison Wait, Lincoln, Nebraska; Hon. C. H. Aldrich, Lincoln, Nebraska; Mr. R. F. Gilder, Omaha, Nebraska; Hon. T. H. Tibbies, Omaha, Nebraska; Mr. S. D. Butcher, Kearney, Nebraska; Mr. Gerrit Fort, Union Pacific Rail- way, Omaha, Nebraska; Mr. U. G. Cornell, Lincoln, Nebraska; Miss Martha M. Turner, Lincoln, Nebraska; Morrill Geological Expeditions, Lincoln, Nebraska; Hon. S. C. Bassett, Gibbon, Nebraska; Rev. Michael A. Shine, Plattsmouth, Nebraska; Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska. For use of copyrighted illustrations acknowledgment is due to these: Hon. R. B. Brower, St. Cloud, Minnesota; Lathrop C. Harper, New York City; Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio; A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, Illinois; American Folk Lore Society. It is my hope that this little book may not only serve a present need, by presenting in brief form for busy people the story of our state, but may have a place in bringing together the best in the Nebraska life which has been, for the enjoyment and inspiration of the Nebraska that is to be. ADDISON E. SHELDON. CONTENTS PART I. STORIES OF NEBRASKA THE STORY OF CORONADO . 1 DON DIEGO DE PENALOSA 6 BARON LA HONTAN AND MATHIEU SAGEAN ... 9 THE SPANISH CARAVAN 12 THE MALLET BROTHERS 15 BLACKBIRD 18 LEWIS AND CLARK 24 How THE SPANISH FLAG CAME DOWN 29 JOHN COLTER'S ESCAPE 31 MANUEL LISA 34 THE RETURN OF THE ASTORIANS 41 MAJOR LONG'S EXPEDITION 45 OLD FORT ATKINSON 50 BELLEVUE 55 GEORGE CATLIN 59 PRINCE MAXIMILIAN 62 SCOTT'S BLUFF 68 THE FIRST NEBRASKA MISSIONARIES 70 FATHER DE&MET . 77 JOHN C. FREMONT 82 THE OVERLAND TRAILS 85 LONE TREE 92 LOGAN FONTANELLE 94 THE MORMON Cow 97 SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA . 100 THE SURVEYORS 103 THE FIRST HOMESTEAD 110 THE PAWNEES 114 COURT HOUSE ROCK 120 MAJOR FRANK NORTH AND THE PAWNEE SCOUTS . 122 ix x CONTENTS THE ROCK BLUFFS DINNER PARTY 129 THE BATTLE OF ARICKAREE FORK OR BEECHER ISLAND 131 THE FIRST RAILROAD 136 A STAGE COACH HERO OF THE LITTLE BLUE . . 139 THE PRAIRIE FIRE 142 THE ARROW THAT PINNED Two BOYS TOGETHER . 145 Two Sioux CHIEFS 146 GREAT STORMS 158 OLD FORT KEARNEY 165 FORT LARAMIE /..... 167 THE STORY OF THE PONCAS . . 169 BRIGHT EYES 175 THE HERD LAW . . . . ' 178 Two CROWS . . . . . . . . . . . . .181 THE GRASSHOPPERS 183 LOST IN THE SAND HILLS 187 AN OPEN WELL 192 FORT McPnERSON MILITARY CEMETERY . . . .198 A RAILROAD FIREMAN'S JUMP 201 NEBRASKA'S GREAT SEAL 202 NEBRASKA'S FLOWER 204 ARBOR DAY 206 PART II. A SHORT HISTORY OF NEBRASKA I. EARLIEST NEBRASKA 213 II. NEBRASKA UNDER THREE FLAGS .... 218 III. NEBRASKA INDIANS AS THE WHITE MEN FOUND THEM 226 IV. MAKING AND NAMING NEBRASKA . . . .231 V. NEBRASKA AS A TERRITORY 237 VI. NEBRASKA AS A STATE 260 GLOSSARY 297 INDEX . 299 (Approximately half of these illustrations are from original photographs taken by the author. The E. G. Clements' collection and S. D. Butcher collection of Nebraska photo- graphs are in the author's collection of Illustrated Nebraska.) PAGE. GEORGE CATLIN PAINTING AN INDIAN CHIEF . . . Frontispiece THE FIRST PRINTED PICTURE OF A BUFFALO 3 A QUIVIRA GRASS HUT 4 (Courtesy R. B, Brower, St. Cloud, Minn.) QUIVIRA TOMAHAWKS . 5 A SPANISH STIRRUP FOUND IN NEBRASKA 7 LA HONTAN'S MAP OF THE NEBRASKA REGION . . . . .10 A SPANISH SWORD AND A BASKET HILTED CAVALRY SABER FOUND IN NEBRASKA 13 THE PLATTE RIVER . 16 BLACKBIRD HILL 21 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) PICTURED ROCKS NEAR BLACKBIRD HILL .22 LEWIS AND CLARK 24 THE LEWIS AND CLARK MONUMENT AT FORT CALHOUN, NEBRASKA 26 THE CLARK MONUMENT AT ST. Louis 28 BLACKFOOT WARRIORS 31 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) MANUEL LISA 34 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) BRITISH FLAG ON NEBRASKA ROCKS, 1907 ...... 36 "AUNT MANUEL," FIRST KNOWN WHITE WOMAN IN NEBRASKA . 38 ROSALIE LISA ELY 39 MONUMENT TO THE ASTORIANS AT BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA ... 43 COUNCIL WITH OTOES BY MAJOR LONG'S EXPEDITION. 46 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) MAP OF THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT AS MADE BY MAJOR LONG, 1820 48 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) PLAN OF FORT ATKINSON, NEBRASKA, 1819-1827 50 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) FLINT LOCK AND CANNON BALL FROM FORT ATKINSON ... 53 A FORT ATKINSON GRAVESTONE 53 BELLEVUE IN 1833 56 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) BELLEVUE WOODS AS SEEN TO-DAY. TOP OF CHILD'S POINT, LOOK- ING EAST 57 THE STEAMER YELLOWSTONE (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland,, Ohio.) 60 MISSOURI, OTO AND PUNCAH INDIANS, 1833 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., 66 Cleveland, Ohio.) xi xii ILLUSTRATIONS SCOTT'S BLUFF 68 THE BUILDING OF AN EARTH LODGE 71 OLD OTOE MISSION . . ... 75 FATHER DE SMET 77 (From Chittenden & Richardson's "Life, Letters & Travels of Father De Smet." Francis P. Harper, N. Y.) INDIAN WELCOME TO FATHER DE SMET 80 (From Chittenden & Richardson's "Life, Letters & Travels of Father De Smet." Francis P. Harper, N. Y.) JOHN C. FREMONT 82 MAP OF OVERLAND TRAILS AND HISTORICAL PLACES IN NEBRASKA . 84 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) OLD FORT HALL ON THE OREGON TRAIL 86 EMIGRANT TRAIN CROSSING THE PLAINS 88 EZRA MEEKER AND HIS OREGON TRAIL WAGON 89 OREGON TRAIL MONUMENT AT KEARNEY 89 STONE MARKING OREGON TRAIL IN NEBRASKA 91 LONE TREE MONUMENT 92 LOGAN FONTANELLE 94 SITE OF FONTANELLE'S GRAVE NEAR BELLEVUE 95 ACT ABOLISHING SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA 101 (Photo from original in Slatehouse.) MAP SHOWING FIRST PLAN FOR NEBRASKA SURVEY, 1854 . . . 103 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) NEBRASKA-KANSAS MONUMENT, STARTING POINT OF NEBRASKA SUR- VEYS .... 105 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) MAP SHOWING PROGRESS OF SURVEYS IN EASTERN NEBRASKA, 1856 . 106 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) ROBERT HARVEY, AN EARLY SURVEYOR, AND OUTFIT .... 108 DANIEL FREEMAN, FIRST HOMESTEADER IN UNITED STATES . . Ill THE FIRST HOMESTEAD 112 PAWNEE EARTH LODGE 114 ANCIENT PAWNEE POTTERY ... 115 COURT HOUSE ROCK. AND JAIL ROCK . . . . . . .120 MAJOR FRANK NORTH 122 SURVIVING PAWNEE SCOUTS, 1911 124 ROCK BLUFFS HOUSE WHERE ELECTION WAS HELD IN 1866 . . 130 LIEUTENANT GEO. A. FORSYTE 131 ARICKAREE OR BEECHER ISLAND BATTLEFIELD, 1910 .... 134 UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD TRAIN CROSSING MISSOURI RIVER AT OMAHA, 1866 ... . ... .137 STAGE COACH 139 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) AN EARLY PRAIRIE FIRE 143 (From Catlin.) RED CLOUD 147 SPOTTED TAIL 151 RUINS OF OLD RED CLOUD AGENCY, 1911 152 FT. ROBINSON, Sioux COUNTY, NEBRASKA. SITE OF RED CLOUD AGENCY AND SCENE OF IMPORTANT INCIDENTS IN Sioux INDIAN WAR 154 RED CLOUD'S TENT AT PINE RIDGE, 1904 156 PIONEER SEEKING SHELTER .... 163 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii OLD FORT KEARNEY BLOCK HOUSE AT NEBRASKA CITY . . . 165 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) OLD EARTHWORKS AT FORT KEARNEY, 1907 165 FALLEN COTTONWOOD TREE ON SITE OF HEADQUARTERS, IST NEBRASKA REGIMENT AT FT. KEARNEY, 1864, AS SEEN IN 1907 . . . 166 FORT LARAMIE IN 1848 167 PONCA LAND AS PAINTED FOR MAXIMILIAN, 1833 169 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) STANDING BEAR AND FAMILY IN 1904 172 BRIGHT EYES (!NSTHA THEAMBA) MRS. T. H. TIBBLES .... 175 HERD LAW ACT OF 1870 179 (Photo from original in Statehouse.) Two CROWS (CAHAE NUMBA) 181 WAJEPA . 182 IN GRASSHOPPER DAYS 184 THE SAND HILLS 187 A TYPICAL FRONTIER WELL AND HOUSE 196 FORT McPnERSON MILITARY CEMETERY 200 NEBRASKA TERRITORIAL SEAL . 203 NEBRASKA STATE SEAL 203 THE GOLDENROD, NEBRASKA'S FLOWER 204 FIRST ARBOR DAY PROCLAMATION 207 (Photo from original in Statehouse.) J. STERLING MORTON AND ROBERT W. FURNAS 209 A NEBRASKA TREE 210 ANCIENT NEBRASKA TOOLS 215 (Courtesy R. F. Gilder, Omaha, Nebraska.) ANCIENT NEBRASKA HOUSE . 216 (Courtesy R. F. Gilder, Omaha, Nebraska.) SPANISH, FRENCH AND ENGLISH FLAGS 218 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) MAP SHOWING GRANTS BY THE ENGLISH KING AND THEIR RELATION TO NEBRASKA 222 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) AMERICAN FLAG 223 MAP SHOWING LAND CEDED BY INDIAN TRIBES IN NEBRASKA . . 225 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) MAP SHOWING COUNTRY KNOWN TO THE OMAHA 226 THE BUFFALO HUNT 227 (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels.'' Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) OMAHA MISSION BUILDING IN THURSTON COUNTY, BUILT 1856, . 228 AN OMAHA INDIAN VILLAGE IN 1860 229 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 233 NEBRASKA-KANSAS BILL 235 (From original at Washington, D. C.) MAP OF NEBRASKA TERRITORY, 1854 237 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) GOVERNOR FRANCIS BURT . 238 NEBRASKA FERRY ACROSS ELKHORN RIVER, 1854 239 ACTING GOVERNOR THOMAS B. CUMING 239 FIRST TERRITORIAL CAPITAL, 1855 240 FIRST CLAIM CABIN IN NEBRASKA 241 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS PETA LESHARU CHIEF OF THE PAWNEE NATION .... 242 MORMONS SETTING OUT FROM FLORENCE, NEBRASKA, TO CROSS THE PLAINS ' 244 FIRST COUNTY MAP OF NEBRASKA, 1854 245 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) COUNTY MAP OF NEBRASKA IN 1856 . 247 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) NEBRASKA WILDCAT CURRENCY 248 SECOND TERRITORIAL CAPITOL, AFTERWARD OMAHA HIGH SCHOOL . 250 GOVERNOR WM. A. RICHARDSON 251 GOVERNOR SAMUEL W. BLACK 253 PAWNEE COUNCIL ROCK 254 GOVERNOR ALVIN SAUNDERS 257 OUTLINE MAP OF NEBRASKA IN 1863 258 (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) FIRST STATE CAPITOL AT LINCOLN, 1869 260 THE THREE FOUNDERS OF LINCOLN . . 261 FIRST LOG HOUSE IN LINCOLN 261 A PIONEER DUGOUT 262 GOVERNOR DAVID BUTLER 262 GOVERNOR WILLIAM H. JAMES 263 GOVERNOR ROBERT W. FURNAS . . 264 GOVERNOR SILAS W. GARBER 265 CONSTITUTION OF 1875 WITH SIGNATURES 267 (Photo from original in Statehouse.) GOVERNOR ALBINUS NANCE 268 GOVERNOR JAMES W. DAWES 270 A WESTERN CATTLE RANGE 271 A FRONTIER NEBRASKA GRANGER 272 GOVERNOR JOHN M. THAYER . . . 272 NEBRASKA STATE CAPITOL IN 1889 . 273 A FARMERS' ALLIANCE CONVENTION 275 CONGRESSMAN O. M. KEM OF CUSTER COUNTY AT HOME (FIRST CON- GRESSMAN IN UNITED STATES ELECTED FROM A SOD HOUSE) . 276 GOVERNOR JAMES E. BOYD 277 GOVERNOR LORENZO CROUNSE ......... 278 GOVERNOR SILAS A. HOLCOMB 279 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN IN 1896 280 GOVERNOR WILLIAM A. POYNTER . . . . . . . .281 GOVERNOR CHAS. H. DIETRICH 282 GOVERNOR EZRA P. SAVAGE 282 GOVERNOR JOHN H. MICKEY 283 A NEBRASKA CORN CROP 284 THRESHING WINTER WHEAT 284 IN LINE FOR A HOMESTEAD 286 GOVERNOR GEORGE L. SHELDON 287 GOVERNOR A. C. SHALLENBERGER . ... . ... . . 287 GOVERNOR CHESTER H. ALDRICH . . . . . . . ' 288 GOVERNOR JOHN H. MOREHEAD ..... . . . 289 MAP OF NEBRASKA, 1911 facing p. 290 MONUMENT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON STATE HOUSE GROUNDS, LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, 1912 . 295 (Courtesy of Roy Hindmarsh, Lincoln, Nebraska.) INTRODUCTION IT gives me pleasure to write a word of welcome to this collection of stories of Nebraska history. First, for the sake of the author, whom I have known for so many winters and summers, in storm and in sunshine, and whom I have found faithful and devoted to the best ideals for Nebraska in public life and in private labor. Second, I am glad to have part in helping these stories of Nebraska to the place they deserve in the hearts and homes of the people, that all may better know and love their state because they better know its history. We are apt to value too highly the distant scenes and events and neglect those which are about us. More and more we have come to recognize that the surroundings during the early years of life fix the characters of men and women. Thus the people of our own locality are naturally the objects of our first interest and study. The stories of the men and women who explored and made Nebraska lack neither interest nor importance to any American, for Nebraska has had a large part in our national life and is destined to have a larger part in the centuries which lie before us. The incidents recorded in this book take us back to the beginnings of organic life on this part of our planet; they picture for us the days when another race made its home on our prairies and give us glimpses of its life and wander- ings; they trace the experiences of the early explorers as they became acquainted with the people and natural re- sources found here and made them known to the larger world without; they set before us the time, still in the memory of living men, when the buffalo and coyote roamed our fertile acres then untouched by the plow; they tell us XV xvi INTRODUCTION of the risks and toils and hardships of the men and women who have made Nebraska a great and beautiful state, and set before us examples of industry, patience, and heroism worthy our emulation. For the children of Nebraska these stories have a value and interest surpassing other literature. They give to their imaginations a local habitation and invest the names and annals of their own state with a sympathetic value which is destined to be of more worth to them in future years than are our crops of golden grain. There has long been need of such a book as this in the schools and homes of Nebraska. I bid it welcome and wish for it a generous reception in this state and in the Western world. HOWARD W. CALDWELL, Professor of American History, University of Nebraska. PART I Stories of Nebraska History THE STORY OF CORONADO FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO and his soldiers were the first white men to visit the Nebraska-Kansas plains. Coronado was a Spanish general who came to Mexico to seek his fortune in the New World. While there wonderful stories were brought by Fray Marcos, a monk, who had traveled a thousand miles north, into the country now called Arizona. In that land it was said were the Seven Cities of Cibola, with houses built of stone many stories high, and great abundance of gold and silver, turquoises, cloth, sheep, cows, and tame partridges. All the Spaniards in Mexico were eager to take possession of such a wonderful land and to seize its riches. Coronado was the lucky man who was made general of the army which was sent out to conquer these famous seven cities. Three hundred Spaniards on horseback and a thousand Indians, with a long train of horses and cattle carrying food and ammunition, started in February, 1540, on this fine errand. After a long and hard journey across the desert the army arrived at the towns of the Zuni and Hopi Indians in Arizona. They found there what one finds to-day a desert with houses made of sun-baked mud, the homes of poor and peaceful Indians who make pottery and weave a little cloth and raise corn and beans and fowls. The riches and splendor of the wonderful Seven Cities of Cibola were a dream of the desert. Like many other things in l life, the farther off, the more wonderful the nearer, the more common. The Spaniards were very much disappointed. They had come so far to conquer a people who were hardly worth conquering. It would never do to go back to Mexico with nothing to show for their long journey. So Coronado marched eastward across New Mexico into the valley of the Rio Grande. Stretched along this valley for many miles were villages of the Pueblo Indians. They also were poor and peaceful, irrigating little patches of the valley in order to raise corn and beans, making cloth and pottery, and living in sun-baked mud houses. These Pueblo Indians treated the Spaniards kindly and furnished them food. The army camped there for the winter. Quarrels arose between the soldiers and the Indians. The soldiers stormed the villages, killed many of the Indians, and burned some whom they took prisoners. The Spaniards then tried to conciliate the Indians so that they would go on raising food for them, but up and down the fair valley of the Rio Grande there were fear and hatred of the white men. At this time Coronado heard for the first time the story of the land of Quivira, far to the northeast. An Indian slave whom the Spaniards called the Turk, because they said he looked like a Turk, told the story. His home was far out on the plains, but he had been captured by the Pueblo Indians and held as a slave. It is supposed that he was a Pawnee Indian, for the Pawnees wore their hair in a peculiar way so that they resembled Turks. The story of Quivira told by the Indian slave was of a wonder- ful land far across the plains. There was a river six miles wide, and in it were fishes as big as horses, and upon it floated many great canoes with twenty rowers on a side. Some of these canoes carried sails, and the lords sat under awnings upon them, while the prows bore golden eagles. The king of Quivira, Tatarrax, slept under a great tree with golden bells on the branches. These bells swung to THE STORY OF CORONADO THE FIRST PRINTED PICTURE OF A BUFFALO and fro in the winds which always blew, and their music lulled the king to sleep. The common people in Quivira had dishes of plated ware and the jugs and bowls were of gold. The king of Quivira worshiped a cross of gold and an image of a woman, the goddess of heaven. Stories like these filled the hearts of the Spaniards with longing to reach the land of Quivira and to help the people there to take care of its riches. On the 23d of April, 1541, Coro- nado and his army marched away from the Rio Grande valley, guid- ed by the Turk and by another Indian from the same region, whom they called Isopete. For thirty-five days they traveled out upon the high plains. These were so nearly level they could look as far as the eye would pierce and see no hill. They found great herds of buffalo, or " humpbacked cows" as they called them, on these plains, and Indians who traveled around among these cows, killing them for their flesh and skins eating the flesh raw and making the skins into tents and clothing. The Indians had dogs to pull their tents from place to place, and had never seen horses until the Spaniards came. The Spanish army saw for the first time the American buffalo. None of these Indians who hunted the cows had ever heard of the rich land of Quivira with its gold and silver, its great canoes, and its king. Here the two guides began to tell dif- ferent stories, and confessed that the houses in Quivira were not quite so large as they had said, and the people not so rich. Coronado and his army had eaten all the corn they had brought with them for food. The land of Quivira was still said to be far to the north. A council was held and it was determined to send the army back to the Rio Grande, while Coronado with thirty horsemen and two guides pushed on STORIES OF NEBRASKA to find Quivira. So the army went back, and Coronado with his thirty men traveled on, eating nothing but raw buffalo meat. After crossing a great river, supposed to be the Arkansas, they came to the country of Quivira, forty-two days after parting from the army, or seventy- seven days after leaving the Rio Grande. Coronado says in his letter to the King of Spain, " Where I reached Quivira it was in the fortieth degree (of latitude)." The fortieth degree forms the state line between Nebraska and Kansas. This would make Quivira in the Republican valley. Coronado found no gold, no silver, no bells tinkling from the trees, no fishes big as horses, and no boats with golden prows. He found Indians living in grass huts, grow- ing corn and beans and melons, eating raw buffalo meat and cutting it with stone knives. There were twenty-five of these grass hut villages, and the only metal seen in them was a piece of copper worn by a chief around his neck. Coronado went on for seventy-five miles through the vil- lages of Quivira and came to the country called Harahey. The chief of Harahey met them with two hundred men, all naked, with bows and arrows and "some sort of things on their heads," which probably means the way they put up their b > ^nd suggests that they were Pawnees. Here the Turk confessed he had lied to the Spaniards about the riches of Quivira in order to lead the army off on the trackless plains where it would perish. "We strangled him that night so that he never waked up," is the way one of the Spaniards tells the story of what happened to the Turk. , ' -*.* ^ ' A QUIVIRA GRASS HUT. (Courtesy R. B. Brower, St. Cloud, Minn.) THE STORY OF CORONADO Coronado spent a month in Quivira and Harahey. He wrote that the country was the best he had seen since leaving Spain, for the land was very fat and black, and well watered with rivulets and springs and rivers. He found nuts and plums and very good sweet grapes and mulberries to eat, and plenty of grass and wild flax and sumach. The Spaniards held a council and resolved to go back to Mexico, for they feared trying to winter in the country so far from the rest of the army. So Coronado raised a great cross, and at the foot of it he made some letters with a chisel, which said that Fran- cisco Vasquez de Coro- nado, general of the army, had arrived there. The Spaniards then marched away,in the month of August, 1541, almost four hun- dred years ago, and left the land of Quivira, with its fat, black soil, its beautiful rivulets and springs and rivers, its great prairies of grass and its nuts, plums, good sweet grapes and mulberries, its queer cows with humped backs and its Indians living in grass huts and eating raw buffalo meat. And no one has yet found the great cross the Spaniards raised with the name of Coronado upon it. Nor has any one yet found the tree covered with golden bells under which Tatarrax, the great king of Quivira, sleeps, lulled by the music of the bells. QUESTIONS 1. Are you sorry that Coronado and his army did not find the seven cities of Cibola, as Fray Marcos had described them? Why? 2. Are the people whom you know as ready to believe big stories as were Coronado and his army? Account for any difference. 3. Do you know any person who has seen the buffalo roaming over our Nebraska plains? If so, tell what you have heard him say about them. 4. What are the chief differences between the land of Quivira as described by Coronado and the part of Nebraska in which you live? QUIVIRA TOMAHAWKS. (From photograph by A.E. Sheldon.) DON DIEGO DE PENALOSA OUT of the musty old Spanish documents of two hundred years ago comes to us the strange story of Don Diego de Penalosa and his wonderful expedition across the plains to the kingdom of Quivira. It was in the year 1660, so runs the tale, that Don Diego came to Santa Fe to be governor and captain general of New Mexico. He drove back the fierce Apaches who raided the peaceful Pueblos along the Rio Grande, but his heart was restless and unsatisfied. He longed to make a great name for himself as did Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. It was a hundred and twenty years since Coronado marched to Quivira and found there nothing but straw houses and naked savages. Still the old story of a kingdom full of gold and silver beyond the great plains persisted. Still the mystery of the great unknown region in the north stirred the Spanish love of conquest. It was on March 6, 1662, that Don Diego de Penalosa left the province of New Mexico to find and conquer this fabled land of riches. With him there marched eighty Spanish knights and a thousand Indian allies, while six cannon, eight hundred horses, three hundred mules and thirty-six wagons bore their baggage. Like Coronado, Penalosa marched north two hundred leagues, nearly seven hundred miles. On his way he found the great Indian nation of the Escanzaques with 3,000 warriors starting for war with the people of Quivira. These joined the Spaniards. Together they traveled northeast un- til they came to a broad river flowing east. They followed its southern bank for a day, when the river made a great bend and flowed from the north. Signal fires blazed from the hills telling that their approach was seen. They kept on until they saw another fine river of clear water flowing from 6 DON DIEGO DE PENALOSA the north to join the one along whose banks they marched. Westward of this was a great city in a vast level plain. There were thousands of houses, some two, some three, some four stories high, well built of hard wood resembling walnut. The city extended for leagues westward along the plain to where another clear flowing stream came from the north to join the broad river along which they marched. Seventy chiefs came from this city to greet Penalosa, bringing rich presents of fur robes, pumpkins, corn and beans and fresh fish for food. A great council was held and peace proposed. That night the warriors of the Escanzaque tribe stole away from the Spanish camp and raided the city of Quivira, kill- ing, plundering, and burning. In the morning it was in ashes and thousands of its peaceful people dead or dying. Among its blackened ruins the Spanish commander sought in vain for chiefs who met him in friendly council the day be- fore. The great city was destroyed never to be rebuilt and its few survivors scattered never to return. On June 11, 1662, Don Diego de Penalosa with his great train marched sadly back to the Rio Grande there to relate the destruction of the great city of Quivira. A Nebraska author, Judge Savage, of Oma- ha, has traced the route of Penalosa upon the map, has measured the miles marched from Santa Fe and found that Penalosa reached the Platte near Louisville. He believes that Penalosa marched one day west to the site of Ashland where the Platte makes a bend and flows from the north, that the Elkhorn was the first river A SPANISH STIRRUP FOUND IN NEBRASKA. (From photograph collection of A. E. Sheldon.) 8 STORIES OF NEBRASKA flowing from the north to join the Platte and the Loup the second river, and that between the Loup and the Elkhorn rivers not far from the present town of Columbus was the city of Quivira destroyed by the Escanzaques, who were the Kanzas tribe. The numerous sites between the Loup and Elkhorn rivers where fragments of pottery and other Indian relics are found to-day are remains of the great city of Quivira destroyed two hundred and fifty years ago. The legend of Penalosa is too wonderful to be true. It is now known to be a fiction. There was a Governor Don Diego de Penalosa of New Mexico but no such army as re- lated was led by him across the plains and there certainly was no great city of Quivira with houses three and four stories high covering the plain between the Loup and Elkhorn rivers. We must part with Penalosa 's expedition as an historical event, but bid it welcome and give it place in the realm of romance with other wonder stories of the time when people knew but very little of the land where we now live and used their imagination instead of their eyes in describing it. QUESTIONS 1. Why were wonderful stories about this country so long believed which have since been found to be untrue? 2. Can you tell how to write an untrue story so that all the people shall always believe it? BARON LA HONTAN AND MATHIEU SAGEAN XTEBRASKA remained an unknown land to white men * for many years after Coronado marched back to the valley of the Rio Grande. The earliest Frenchmen who explored the Mississippi Valley did not reach this country. They heard of it from afar by report of the Indians living near the mouth of the Missouri. Far to the north and west stretched the land and the rivers and tribes, they said. No one knew how far. This unknown land where Nebraska now is became a fine field for romantic writers. Two of them, Baron La Hon- tan and Mathieu Sagean, deserve mention for their books were for many years taken as true narratives of travels in this region. Baron La Hontan was a soldier who came from France to Canada. In his book, printed at The Hague in 1704, he tells of a long journey made with companions in a canoe west of the Mississippi. He tells of a tribe which he calls Essanapes, who worshiped the sun, the moon, and the stars. Beyond the Essanapes lived the Gnascitares, who lived on the shore of a great lake. Upon this lake were canoes rowed by 200 oarsmen. They had buildings three stories high and fought battles with the Spaniards in New Mexico. The great king of this country lived in a royal palace waited upon by hun- dreds of servants. To make this romantic story seem true La Hontan 's book has a map of the region where are now Nebraska and South Dakota. He gives pictures of the Indians who lived there and many words from their lan- guages. None of these had any existence except in his imagination. Mathieu Sagean 's story was written by another man. It tells that Sagean was born in the isle of Montreal in Canada, 9 10 STORIES OF NEBRASKA that his father and mother were faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church, that he could read a little but not write, and that twenty years before he told his story he left Montreal in a bark canoe for the lakes and rivers of the great West. With a party of eleven Frenchmen and several Indians he journeyed west of the Mississippi until he came to the country of the Acaanibas, a great nation occupying a region six hundred miles long. There he found cities with forts and a king who claimed to be a descendant of Monte- zuma who went clothed every day in a beautiful robe of ,,r^;ri.:Txx.,rrs, ..,,,,,,,,.;. ^ I -*."?' l \ i LA HONTAN'S MAP OF THE NEBRASKA REGION ermine. In front of the king 's palace were great idols many feet high. Every morning the king and his people wor- shiped before these idols, chanting songs from daybreak to the rising of the sun. The king's palace was three stories high and built of blocks of solid gold. He had 100,000 soldiers, three -fourths of them horsemen, who camped around the city. The women were as white and beautiful as those of Europe. The people carried on commerce with another people so far to the west that a journey there required six months of travel. Sagean saw a caravan of three thousand cattle loaded with gold and rich furs start on its journey. These stories of La Hontan and Sagean are not history. BARON LA HONTAN AND MATHIEU SAGEAN 11 They are wonder stories of imaginary countries supposed to have been located in the Nebraska region. They show how little was really known of our country at the time these stories were printed and believed. QUESTIONS 1 . What things in these stories seem now to be true? 2. What things seem untrue? 3. When a story is partly truth and partly falsehood, how can you separate one from the other? THE SPANISH CARAVAN ONE of the oldest stories of white men on the Nebraska- Kansas plains is that known as the story of the Spanish Caravan. This story has always been wrapped in mystery. The early French writers on the Missouri country tell it in different forms. It has been handed down in various tribes of Missouri and Nebraska Indians. The Spanish histories of New Mexico do not mention it, but the great American- Spanish scholar, Adolf T. Bandelier, says he found record of it in the archives of the Franciscan monks and retells it in his book "The Gilded Man." There is great variation in the versions of the Spanish Caravan story, but they agree in the main features, which are these: In the year 1720, a Spanish army marched out of Santa Fe to conquer the Missouri valley country. There were several hundred armed men besides women, children, a Franciscan monk and a great number of horses and cattle. Comanche Indians went along as guides and allies. Their plan was to conquer the Missourias, the Otoes, the Pawnees, and other Indians living near the Missouri River and to col- onize the country for Spain. Somewhere in the region of the Republican or Kansas River the Spanish Caravan was attacked by the united nations whom they came to destroy. All of the Spaniards were killed except the Franciscan monk who was captured and held prisoner. He afterward escaped to the French forts near St. Louis where he told the story of his comrades' fate. Some of the stories of the Caravan say that the Spanish commander intended to get the help of theOsage tribe, which was at war with the Missourias and Otoes. By mistake he reached first a village of the Missourias, whom he thought to be Osages. He told them of his plan to conquer the Mis- 12 THE SPANISH CARAVAN 13 souria tribe, to make their women and children slaves and to settle in their country. The Missouria chief understood the mistake. He thanked the Spaniards and told them he would join the war. Great feasts followed. The Missouria chief sent messengers to all the friends of the Missouria tribe. Over two thousand warriors came. After a night of feasting the Indians fell upon the Spaniards just at daybreak and in a few minutes killed all except the monk. All the Spanish horses were captured. As the Indians did not then know how to use horses, they made the Franciscan mount every day and show them how to ride. While the Indians were trying to imitate him, he mounted the best horse and rode away into the wilderness, finally reaching the French forts. Afterwards, says one of the French chroniclers, the Missouri River Indians came to the French forts with the sacred vestments and chalices of the church which they had taken from the friar. Other accounts tell about the plunder of the Spanish camp, the rich garments, the books, and a map which was seen in the camps of the Ne- braska Indians in the years that followed. Charlevoix, a noted Jesuit father who trav- eled in this region and wrote an account of it, tells the story of the Spanish Caravan and says that he bought the spurs which the Spanish monk wore when he escaped from the Indians to the French. At a great council held by the French commander Bourgmont with the Indians of this region in 1724 one of the chiefs boasted how the Missourias, Otoes and Pawnees had entirely destroyed the great Spanish army which had come to con- quer the Missouri River country. These are some of the stories of the Spanish Caravan, wrapped partly in mystery and dispute, but with a core of A SPANISH SWORD AND A BASKET HILTED CAVALRY SABER FOUND IN NEBRASKA. (From photograph collec- tion of A. E. Shel- don.) 14 STORIES OF NEBRASKA agreement and truth. The truth is that an attempt was made by the Spaniards at Santa Fe to conquer and settle the rich land of Nebraska and Kansas, which had been discov- ered by Coronado nearly two centuries before ; and that their expedition was defeated by the Nebraska Indians. We know that the Indians of the Nebraska country kept the Spanish settlements in New Mexico in fear for many years. And in the year 1824, a hundred years after the time of the Spanish Caravan, the city of Santa Fe sent an em- bassy to Fort Atkinson, in our state, to make peace with the Pawnees and bring to an end the raiding of the Rio Grande valley by their war parties. QUESTIONS 1. What reasons are there for thinking this story of the Spanish Caravan not wholly a myth? 2. Is a tale apt to grow larger or smaller when retold a number of times? Why? THE MALLET BROTHERS IT was almost two hundred years after Coronado and his thirty Spanish horsemen rode away from the valley of the Rio Gra"nde to the kingdom of Quivira, and then rode back again, before we have a sure record of any other white men in this region. This time Frenchmen came. They crossed the entire state of Nebraska, from northeast to southwest, and wrote the story of their travels in French. This story, which has only recently been translated into English, is the first certain account we have of the land that is now Nebraska. The men who made this journey were Pierre Mallet and Paul Mallet, brothers, and with them were six other French- men. All of these except one were from Canada. They started from the French settlements in Illinois, not far from where St. Louis now is. In their story they say that they found it was 100 leagues up the Missouri River to the villages of the Missouri Indians. From there it was 80 leagues to the Kanzes Indians who lived not far from where Kansas City now is. From the Kanzes Indians to the Octotatoes or Otoes, who lived at the mouth of the Platte, was 100 leagues. From the Otoe village to the river of the Panimahas, where they found the Indian tribe of that name, it was 60 leagues farther up the Missouri. The earliest explorers called the Skidi Pawnees, Panimahas. This fact together with the distance given from the mouth of the Platte to the Pani- maha River makes it probable that these first explorers of Nebraska found the Panimaha Indians in what is now Dakota County. From this place the Mallet brothers and their company set out on May 29, 1739, for the city of Santa Fe. They had 15 16 STORIES OF NEBRASKA THE PLATTE RIVER. (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) with them a band of horses laden with goods to trade with the Spaniards and Indians of the Rio Grande region. In the two hundred years since Coronado had crossed the plains the Spanish had settled in New Mexico and built cities, chief among them Santa Fe. So little was then known about the great plains country that all the other Frenchmen who had tried to reach Santa Fe had gone up the Missouri River into the Dakotas. The Mallet brothers, up- on the advice of some Indians, took a different direction and set out southwest from the Pan- imaha Indian villages. June 2d they reached a river which they named the Platte, and, seeing that it took a direction not much different from the one they had in mind, they followed it, going up its left bank seventy leagues. Here they found that it made a fork with the river of the Padoucas. On June 13th they crossed to the right bank of the river they were following, and, traveling over a tongue of land, they camped on the 14th on the south bank of the river of the hills which here falls into the Platte. From this point they traveled south three days across high plains, during which time they found no wood, not even for fire. These high plains they said extended as far as the mountains near Santa Fe. After crossing sev- eral smaller streams they reached the Arkansas River on June 20th and lost seven horses loaded with goods in getting over the river. On July 22d they arrived at Santa Fe, having traveled 962 leagues from the Panimaha villages. We have only a very short story of their travels, but it is full of first things. They named the Platte River. They THE MALLET BROTHERS 17 were no doubt the first white men to see the forks of the Platte. They were the first white men to travel over the entire length of Nebraska and the first traders to bring the MiGsouri valley and the mountains together. QUESTIONS 1. Trace on a map of Nebraska the route these men traveled. 2. Did they take the shortest route from St. Louis to Santa Fe? 3. Is any river or town or county in Nebraska called Mallet? Has any monument been erected to .these men? How do you account for this? BLACKBIRD (Wazhinga-sah-ba) THE first Nebraska Indian whose name we know is Blackbird. He was head chief of the Omaha tribe and lived more than one hundred years ago in the Omaha coun- try, which then extended on both sides of the Missouri River from Bow River in Cedar County to Papillion Creek in Sarpy County. Blackbird died about the year 1800, before there were any white settlements in Nebraska. He left behind him a fame so fierce and cruel among the Indians that it endures to this day. During Blackbird 's life Nebraska belonged to France and Spain and French and Spanish traders came up the river to deal with the Indians for furs. Blackbird was one of the first Indian chiefs on the Missouri to do business with the white traders. He was very shrewd in his dealing. When a trader came to his village he had him bring all his goods into the chief 's lodge and spread them out. Blackbird then selected the things he wished, blankets, tobacco, whisky, powder, bullets, beads and red paint, and laid them to one side, not offering any pay for them. Then, calling his herald, he ordered him to climb to the top of the lodge and summon all the tribe to bring in their furs and trade with the white man. In a few minutes the lodge would be crowded with Indians bearing beaver, buffalo, otter and other skins. No one was allowed to dispute the prices fixed by the white trader, who was careful to put them high enough to pay five times over for all the goods taken by the chief. Thus Blackbird and the traders grew rich together, but his people grew poor and began to complain. A wicked trader noticed this and gave Blackbird a secret by which he 18 BLACKBIRD 19 could maintain his power. He taught him the use of arsenic and gave him a large supply of that deadly poison. After that the terror of Blackbird and his mysterious power grew in the tribe. He became a prophet as well as a chief. When anyone opposed him Blackbird foretold his death within a certain time and within that time a sudden and violent dis- ease carried the victim off in great agony. Before long all his rivals disappeared and the people agreed to everything Blackbird wished. Blackbird was also a great warrior. When a boy he was captured by the Sioux, but escaped and fought them after- ward until they feared his name. He led his warriors against the Pawnees and burned one of their large towns. He took scalps from the Otoes and from the Kanzas tribes. To his ability as a fighter he added the mysterious art of "making medicine" which would overcome his enemies. Once when following the trail of a hostile war party across the prairies he fired his rifle often into the hoofprints of their horses, telling his band it would cripple them so that they would be over- taken. He did overtake and kill them all and his tribe looked upon the fact as proof of the wonderful effect of his "medicine." The Ponca Indians lived at the mouth of the Niobrara River, in what is now Boyd and Knox counties, and were neighbors of the Omahas. The two tribes were related and spoke languages much alike. A party of Ponca young men made a raid on the Omahas and stole a number of horses and women. Blackbird gathered all his fighting men and started to "eat up the Poncas." He drove them into a rude fort made by throwing up a wall of dirt. The Omahas greatly outnumbered the Poncas and were about to kill them all. The Poncas sent a herald carrying a peace pipe. Blackbird shot him down. Another herald was treated in the same way. Then the head chief of the Poncas sent his daughter, a young girl, in her finest Indian suit of white buckskin, with the peace pipe. Blackbird relented, took the pipe from the 20 STORIES OF NEBRASKA girl's hand, smoked it and there was peace between the tribes. The Ponca maiden became the favorite wife of Blackbird. She had great influence over him, but in one of his violent fits of anger he drew a knife and struck her dead. When he knew what he had done his rage ended in violent grief. He covered his head with a buffalo robe and sat down by the dead body, refusing to eat or sleep. He answered no one. The tribe feared that he would starve to death. One of them brought a child and, laying it on the ground, put Blackbird 's foot upon its neck. This touched the chief's heart. He threw off his buffalo robe, forgot his deep sorrow and resumed his duties. At last an enemy came against the Omahas which not even Blackbird with all his medicine and mystery could withstand. This was the smallpox, the white man 's disease which the Indians had never known. It came among them like a curse. They could not understand how it traveled from lodge to lodge and from village to village. The fever and the fearful blotches drove them wild. Some of them left their villages and rushed out on the prairies to die alone. Others set fire to their houses and killed their wives and children. Two thirds of the Omaha tribe perished and it never after recovered its old strength and power. Blackbird, the great chief, was finally stricken. His friends gathered about his dying bed to hear his last word. He ordered them to bury him on the top of the great hill which rose several hundred feet above the Missouri and from which one could see up and down the river for thirty miles. Here the Indians watched for the coming of the white traders, and the latter as they toiled against the current saw its summit with joy, for they knew great springs of cold water gushed from the sandstone rock at the foot of the hill and there were rest and food and friendship for the white man in the lodges of the Omaha village. On the top of this hill Blackbird desired to be buried, seated on his favorite horse BLACKBIRD 21 so that his spirit might overlook the entire Omaha country and first see the boats of the white men as they came up the river. The dying chief's command was carried out. The horse was led to the summit of the hill with the dead chief firmly fastened upon his back. Then the sod and dirt were piled about them in a great mound until both were buried from sight. A pole was set in the mound and upon it were hung BLACKBIRD HILL. (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) scalps Blackbird had taken in battle. From time to time food for the spirit of the dead was placed upon the mound by the few Omahas who survived the smallpox scourge of 1800. When Lewis and Clark came up the river in 1804 the mound and pole were yet there. All the other early writers mention the mound. It was the great landmark of the Nebraska shore. In 1832 George Catlin, the painter and traveler who spent years among the western Indians paint- ing their pictures and learning their life, came down the 22 STORIES OF NEBRASKA PICTURED ROCKS NEAR BLACKBIRD HILL. (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) Missouri and climbed up on Blackbird Hill. There was a gopher hole in the side of the mound. He dug into it and a skull dropped down. He quickly wrapped it in a blanket and carried it to Wash- ington where it was placed in the Smithson- ian Museum. These are some of the stories told about Black- bird by the old Indians and early white men; told around the camp- fires in the long cold winter nights or in the circle of story tellers which sits on hot July days beneath the shade of a great tree in the Omaha country. Stories told in this way are often changed in the telling. We cannot say how far they are changed, but whether much or little, they are all we are ever likely to know of the life of the first noted Nebraska Indian. Blackbird Hill stands close by the side of the great river to-day as it did a hundred years ago. Great springs gush from the sandstone cliffs at its base. Upon the walls of these cliffs are deeply cut pictures of wild animals and strange Indian signs mingled with the names of early explorers. The mound seen by Lewis and Clark has long since gone. The spirit of Blackbird looks in vain to-day for the boats of the fur traders beating up the river. But the living eye sees from the summit a most wonderful Nebraska landscape, thirty miles of river shining in sunlight; the whole range of lesser Blackbird hills buried in a beauty of grass and flowers and foliage; great fields of grain; the homes of a hundred Omahas living in the land of their forefathers in white men 's houses, and far below in the valley a thin thread of smoke BLACKBIRD 23 where, faster than elk or buffalo, dashes the Omaha evening mail headed for the city of the Sioux. QUESTIONS 1. Was Blackbird a good chief? Why? 2. Why was the smallpox more deadly to the Indians than to white men? 3. Do you think the Omaha Indians obeyed Blackbird's dying request? 4. Which would you prefer, the landscape Blackbird saw or the one now seen from Blackbird Hill? Why? LEWIS AND CLARK i N the year 1803, Nebraska was sold by Napoleon Bona- parte, Emperor of France, to Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States. It was sold as part of the great coun- try between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, I LEWIS AND CLARK all of which was then called Louisiana and owned by France. The price paid was $15,000,000, which was about three cents an acre. As soon as the United States had bought this country, President Jefferson sent Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark with forty-five other men to explore it. They were to go up the Missouri River as far as they could, then cross the Rocky Mountains and reach the Pacific Ocean. They were to make maps, bring back reports of the 24 LEWIS AND CLARK 25 land and make friends with the tribes with which they came in contact. It was a wild land of which white men knew very little. Indians and wild animals had their homes there. No one knew the way across the mountains to the Pacific. Lewis and Clark started from the mouth of the Missouri on May 14, 1804. They had one large boat with a sail and twenty oars, and two smaller boats with oars only. They had powder, lead, tools and trinketsto trade with the Indians. They had two horses for their hunters to ride in order to help them to carry the game which they killed for the party. The Lewis and Clark party made about twenty miles a day up the Missouri River. Part of the time they used the sail and part of the time the oars and a great part of the time they pulled the boats with long ropes which the men held while they walked along the shore. It was two months be- fore they reached Nebraska, at the mouth of the Nemaha River, not far from the village of Rulo, in Richardson County. Here they found Indians, wild plums, cherries and grapes. On July 15th they were at the mouth of the little Nemaha River and on July 20th they were at the mouth of the Weep- ing Water in Cass County, where they killed a large yellow wolf. The next day they reached the mouth of the Platte River and camped a little way above it. They sent out runners to the village of the Otoes near the place where the Elkhorn flows into the Platte. After resting and repairing their boats they went on past the site of Omaha and on July 30th reached a high bluff near the present town of Fort Calhoun in Washington County. Here they camped. The hunters brought in deer, wild turkeys and geese. Catfish were caught in the river and the men tamed a beaver. Here on August 3d they held the first council ever held by the United States with the Nebraska Indians. Fourteen Otoe and Missouri Indians came to the council. The principal chiefs were Little Thief, Big Horse and White Horse. They promised to keep peace with the United States and were given medals and presents of paint, 26 STORIES OF NEBRASKA powder and cloth. They gave the white men presents of watermelons. The place where this council was held was named Council-bluff and is now a part of the town of Fort Calhoun. A hundred years after this a large rock was placed on the schoolhouse grounds in memory of this first council held with the Indians west of the Mississippi River. On August llth the party reached Blackbird Hill in Thurston County, where it found the grave of the great THE LEWIS AND CLARK MONUMENT AT FORT CALHOUN, NEBRASKA. (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) Omaha chief who died of smallpox about four years before. On August 16th the party was at the mouth of Omaha Creek in Dakota County. Here the men made a net of wil- lows and with it pulled out over eleven hundred fish from a beaver pond in the creek. Sergeant Charles Floyd, a member of the party, died on August 20th and was buried on a high bluff on the Iowa side of the river near Sioux City. This is called Floyd's Bluff LEWIS AND CLARK 27 to this day. It is a landmark which may be seen for many miles across the Missouri valley in Nebraska. On the 28th of August they camped at Calumet Bluff in Cedar County, where they held a great council with the Sioux Indians under a large oak tree. First the pipe of peace was smoked. Then Chief Shake Hand said: "I see before me my father's two sons. You see me and the rest of our chiefs. We are very poor. We have no powder nor ball nor knives and our women and children at the village have no clothes. I went formerly to the English and they gave me a medal and some clothes. When I went to the Spanish they gave me a medal, but nothing to keep it from my skin ; but now you give me a medal and clothes. Still we are poor and I wish, brothers, you would give us something for our squaws." Then White Crane and Struck-by-the-Pawnee spoke, approving what the old chief had said, and asked for some of the great father's milk, which was their name for whisky. Presents were given these Sioux and peace was made between them and the United States. On September 4th Lewis and Clark camped just above the mouth of the Niobrara River. Here for the first time they met the Ponca Indians, who had long made their home in this part of Nebraska. A little beyond, they saw great herds of buffalo and also elk, deer and villages of prairie dogs. Soon after they crossed the Nebraska line into South Dakota. Two years later, in September, 1806, Lewis and Clark came back from the Pacific Ocean to Nebraska. They had suffered great hardships on the journey. Many times they had nearly lost their lives from hunger and thirst, from war- like Indians and wild animals, from rocks in the rivers and from pathless woods and mountains. But they had lived through them all and carried the flag of the United States for the first time across the mountains and plains to the great ocean on the other side. And now they came back with honor and glory for they had found a way to the Pacific Ocean and they had written the story of their travels in a book 28 STORIES OF NEBRASKA which they kept every day, telling all about the tribes of Indians they had seen and the rivers and mountains and the land they had crossed. They made a path for white men into the great West and after them came hunters, trappers, traders and em- igrants until the West was explored and settled. Captain Clark for many years lived at St. Louis and was governor of the great West which he explored. He was tall, very strongly built, with piercing gray eyes and red hair. His appearance made a deep impression on the Indians, who had never before seen a red-haired man. The Omaha Indians to this day call St. Louis the town of red-haired men. Here the Indians came to hold councils with him. Here he met the traders, trappers and early emigrants, and here he died in September, 1838, beloved by all who knew him. Captain Lewis lived only three years after the return of the expedition, dying in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1809. The names of Lewis and Clark are forever linked together in the history of the West. THE CLARK MONUMENT AT ST. Louis, (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) QUESTIONS 1. With what tribes of Nebraska Indians did Lewis and Clark meet? 2. Show on the map the location of each place mentioned in this story. 3. Why did Chief Shake Hand say his people were very poor? 4. Which did more for Nebraska, the Mallet Brothers or Lewis and Clark? 5. How much of Nebraska did Lewis and Clark explore? 6. What do the pictures of these two men tell you of their characters? HOW THE SPANISH FLAG CAME DOWN ON July 15, 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike with twenty-one men left St. Louis on an expedition to explore the plains and find a road to Santa Fe. After a long march across Missouri and Kansas he arrived, September 25th, in the Republican valley near the border of Nebraska. Here he found the great village of the Pawnee republic num- bering nearly two thousand people. He also found that a party of three hundred Spanish cavalry from Santa Fe had visited the village three or four weeks before. The Spanish commander had given the Pawnees presents, had promised to open a road for trade and had left with them a Spanish flag, which was flying from a pole in front of the Pawnee chief 's lodge. Lieutenant Pike held a grand council with the Pawnees on September 29th, and told them that they must haul down the Spanish flag and in its place raise the Stars and Stripes, for their land no longer belonged to Spain but was a part of the United States. The chiefs were silent, for the Spaniards had come with a great force on horseback bringing many presents, while the American lieutenant had only twenty-one men on foot. All around were hundreds of Pawnee warriors ready for battle. The young American lieutenant, pointing at the Spanish flag, said that the Pawnee nation could not have two fathers, they must either be the children of the Spanish king or acknowledge their American father. After a long silence an old Indian rose, went to the door of the lodge, took down the Spanish flag, brought it to Lieu- tenant Pike and laid it at his feet. He then took the Ameri- can flag and raised it on the staff where the Spanish flag had floated. It is believed by some that the place where this took place 29 30 STORIES OF NEBRASKA is about eight miles southeast of Hardy, Nebraska, just across the Nebraska line in Kansas. Here is the site of a large Pawnee village, stretching for several miles along the banks of the Republican River, and here in September, 1906, the state of Kansas raised a flag and erected a monument to mark the spot where, one hundred years before, the Spanish flag came down and the Stars and Stripes were raised. There are others who believe that the Spanish flag came down in what is now Nebraska, and that the site of an ancient Pawnee village some miles farther up the Republican river is the place where Lieutenant Pike and his little com- pany of soldiers saw the American flag raised over the Pawnee nation. Whether the spot where the Spanish flag came down is in Kansas or in Nebraska is not important. The Spanish flag came down forever and in its place rose the Stars and Stripes. This brave deed of the young lieutenant and his men deserves to be honored in history. QUESTIONS ;ripes become the : in Lieutenant Pi! 3. Why might not the Spanish flag continue to wave over the Pawnee village? 1. When did the Stars and Stripes become the flag of this nation? 2. What was especially brave in Lieutenant Pike's action here? JOHN COLTER'S ESCAPE ATEBRASKA, when first made on the map, included all the * country from the present Nebraska-Kansas line north to Canada. In this first Nebraska of the early days, in the part that is now Montana, there occurred the remarkable escape of John Colter. John Colter was a trapper who crossed the continent to the Pacific Ocean with Lewis and Clark. Oh their way back, in 1806, Colter saw so many signs of beaver on the head- waters of the Missouri that he got leave of Captain Lewis to stay there and trap. This was in the heart of the country of the terrible Blackfoot Indians. Captain Lewis had killed a Blackfoot warrior who was trying to steal horses and from that time the tribe hated white men and killed them without mercy. Colter knew all this, but he loved to trap and with another hunter named Potts he plunged into the wilds of the best beaver streams of the Blackfoot hunting grounds. The two men knew the great risk they ran and they knew also the ways of the Indians. They set their traps at night, took them up early in the morning, and hid during the day. BLACKFOOT WARRIORS. (From Thwailes's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) Early one morning they were softly pad- dling up a small creek in their canoe to take in some traps when they heard a trampling on the bank. Colter said, " Indians," and wanted 31 32 STORIES OF NEBRASKA to go back. Potts said, "Buffalo," and kept on. A few more strokes of the paddle and they were surrounded on both shores by hundreds of Blackfoot warriors who made signs to the trappers to come to them. Since they could not escape Colter turned the canoe toward shore. As they came to land an Indian seized Potts' rifle, but Colter, who was a very strong man, wrested it from him and handed it to Potts. The latter killed an Indian with it, but was himself shot full of arrows. The Indians now took Colter, stripped him, and began to talk about how they would kill him. At first they were go- ing to put him up as a mark to be shot at, but the chief, desiring to have greater sport, asked Colter if he could run fast. Colter understood enough of their language to tell him that he was a very poor runner, although he was one of the swiftest runners among the hunters. Then the chief took him out on the prairie a few hundred yards and turned him loose to run for his life. The Indians gave their war-whoop and started after him. Colter ran straight across an open plain toward the Jefferson River six miles away. The plain was covered with cactus, and at every jump the bare feet of the naked man were filled with cactus thorns. On Colter ran swifter than he had ever before run in his life with those hun- dreds of Blackfoot warriors after him. He ran nearly half way across the plain before he dared to look back over his shoulder. He saw that he had far outrun all the Indians except one who carried a spear and was not more than a hun- dred yards behind him. A faint hope now rose in Colter 's heart, but he had run so hard that blood gushed from his nose and covered his body. He ran on until within a mile of the river, when he heard the steps of the Indian with the spear close behind him and, turning his head, saw he was not more than twenty yards away. Colter stopped suddenly, turned around and spread out his arms. The Indian, surprised, tried to stop also, but was so exhausted that he fell to the ground and broke his JOHN COLTER'S ESCAPE 33 spear. Colter at once picked up the point of the spear and with it pinned the Indian to the earth. He then ran on while the other Indians came up to their dead comrade and yelled horribly over his body. Colter, using every moment, soon gained the shelter of the trees on the bank and plunged into the river. A little below was an island, at the upper end of which was a great raft of driftwood in the water. Colter dived under this raft and after some trouble got his head above the water between large logs which screened him from view. He had hardly done this when the Indians came down the river bank yelling like fiends. They hunted the shores, walked out on the raft of driftwood over Colter's head, pulling the logs and peering among them for hours. Once Colter thought they were about to set the raft on fire. Not until after dark, when the Indians were no longer heard, did Colter dare to venture from his hiding place. He swam down the river a long distance, then came out on the bank. He was alone in the wilderness, naked, without a weapon and with his feet torn to pieces by the sharp cactus thorns. He was hundreds of miles from the nearest trading post on the Yellowstone, in a country of hostile savages. But he was alive and fear- less and strong. A week later he reached the trading post, sunburnt and starving, but saved. QUESTIONS 1. What knowledge of Indian ways did John Colter show? 2. Describe the man who would be a successful trapper. 3. What is the most striking incident of this story? MANUEL LISA MANUEL LISA was the founder of Old Nebraska. Old Nebraska was the Nebraska of one hundred years ago. It was, first of all, a narrow strip of country along the Missouri River where the white men came to trade with the Indians and where they built log cabins in which to live and store their goods. Back of this narrow strip were the great plains and valleys of Nebraska with herds of buf- falo, elk, deer and antelope, whose skins the Indians brought in from their summer and winter hunting trips. In the streams and lakes were plenty of beaver, mink and otter and their pelts were taken by the Indians and eagerly bought by the trader. All the traders in Old Nebraska came up the river from St. Louis in open boats. Some- times these boats were canoes hollowed out of a great tree and sometimes they were made out of plank. These boats had oars and sometimes a mast and small sail. It was easy to go down the river hi them, but to come up against the swift current was very hard and slow. Each boat was pulled up the river by a long rope called a cordelle, the men walking along the bank or splashing across the sand bars and shallows with the rope over their shoul- 34 MANUKL LISA. (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) MANUEL LISA 35 ders. It took them fifty days to drag a boat from St. Louis to the mouth of the Platte. The trip down was made in ten days. The men who pulled these boats and those who traded with the Nebraska Indians in those days were nearly all Frenchmen, but the greatest leader among them was Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard. He was born in New Orleans, came to St. Louis when a very young man and at once began trading with Indians. When the exploring party of Lewis and Clark came back in 1806 from its two years' trip to the Pacific Ocean with news of the rich fur country it had seen, Manuel Lisa was the first man to act. Early in 1807 he went far up the Missouri River and established trading posts. The next year he came down to St. Louis. Every year for the next twelve years he made long journeys with his men and boats up and down the river. He carried the white man 's goods to Indian tribes which had never dealt with traders before. He made friends everywhere and gathered great cargoes of fur which he sent down to St. Louis every summer. All the hardships and dangers of the frontier were nothing to him, helping his men to pull the boats, sleeping on the ground, going without food. In the twelve years he traveled over twenty-five thousand miles and spent three solid years on the Missouri River. In all Nebraska and far up the river ' ' Man- uel" was most widely known as the great white man and leader. Trouble was brewing between the United States and Great Britain. The Hudson 's Bay Company wished to get all the furs from the Missouri River. It sent agents from its posts to all the tribes on the Missouri and the Mississippi stirring them up to attack the American settlers and making them presents of rifles and powder and lead. Tecumseh, the great Indian war chief of the west, was going from tribe to tribe urging all the Indians to forget their quarrels with each other and before it was too late to join in driving the white men from the country. Most of the tribes on the Mississippi 36 STORIES OF NEBRASKA River joined the league of Tecumseh and fought with the British against the United States. The tribes beyond the Missouri were four tunes as numerous as those on the Missis- sippi. If they had joined the British and poured their thousands of warriors against the white settlements it is likely that St. Louis would have been taken and the frontier driven back five hundred miles. But though every effort BRITISH FLAG ON NEBRASKA ROCKS, 1906. (From -photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) was made to have them do so the Indians beyond the Mis- souri remained true to the United States. On the cliffs of Blackbird Hill deeply cut in the rock is a British flag. It was covered with moss when found and photographed in 1906. It was probably cut there a hundred years ago and may have marked a council held between the British and the Omaha Indians, whose village was close by. It is the only place in Nebraska where the British flag is displayed. MANUEL LISA 37 Manuel Lisa was given chief credit for holding the Indians of the west at peace with our country. He was made sub- agent of the United States for all the tribes above the mouth of the Kansas River. He built Fort Lisa on the Missouri River ten miles above where Omaha now stands. Under his care all the great tribes of the plains, the Pawnee, Sioux, Omaha, Otoe, Ponca, Cheyenne, Mandan, Crow and Arikara, kept faith with the United States. Not only did they remain friends, but the Nebraska Indians crossed the Missouri River and attacked the loways, who were helping the British. Fort Lisa was the great trading post for all the plains region. Its influence was felt as far away as the moun- tains. When the war ended Lisa had made a league of forty chiefs and was preparing to lead them the next year against the British and their Indian allies on the upper Mississippi. Manuel Lisa was the first white farmer in Nebraska. He had a hundred men in his employ and around each of his posts he had a small farm with cabins for the helpers. He had hundreds of horses, cattle, hogs and fowls. He brought to Nebraska the seed of the great squash, the lima bean, the potato and the turnip and gave them to the Indian tribes. Ever since that time these vegetables have been grown by the Nebraska Indians, and the great field squash, which Lisa said he had seen weighing 160 pounds, grown from the seed he brought here, has always been a favorite in the Indian gardens. There is a story of romance and sorrow connected with Lisa's family. When he first came to Nebraska he had a white wife in St. Louis. After a while he married an Omaha Indian girl, telling her people he had another wife down the river. Among the Indians it was common for a man to have more than one wife and the early Indian traders very often married a wife in each tribe where they traded in order to make friends and help their business. While Lisa was gone to St. Louis a daughter was born to him in Nebraska. The Indian mother was very proud of her little girl, and when the 38 STORIES OF NEBRASKA time came for Lisa to return she took her baby every day down to the river and watched all day long for her husband ^s boat in order to be the first to meet him and show him their child. When he came the baby was named Rosalie. The next year a son was born to Lisa and his Indian wife. He was named Raymond. When Rosalie was two years old her father wished to take her with him to St. Louis to be brought up and to go to school among the white people. The mother was very un- willing to let her go and was wild w fth grief when the boat with the little girl and her father passed out graph collection of A. E. o f sight down the river. This was in the summer of 1817. That fall Lisa's first wife died, and on August 5, 1818, he was married in St. Louis to Mary Hempstead Keeney. She was a charm- ing woman, very much loved by all who knew her. At this time the United States was about to send an exploring party with soldiers up the Missouri on the first steamboats ever used on that river. The soldiers were to winter in Nebraska. When Lisa knew this he planned to have his white wife go up the river and spend the winter at Fort Lisa, helping to entertain the officers and making friends to secure trade, for Lisa was always thinking of more trade. She did so and was the first white woman to come into Nebraska, with the possible exception of Madam Lajoie in 1770. Lisa sent word to Fort Lisa to have his Indian wife given presents and told to keep away from the fort while his white wife was there. Mitain, as the Indian wife was called, did so for a time, but at last came in with her little boy Raymond. During Lisa's long stay in St. Louis the Indian mother was working one day, with other squaws, in a garden near the fort. The Sioux came suddenly upon them. The other MANUEL LISA 39 women ran at once. Little Raymond was strapped to his cradle board resting against a tree. His mother rushed through the Sioux, seized her baby and ran for the fort. The Sioux were close upon her when near the fort, so she threw baby, board and all, over the wall, receiving a wound and risking her own life to save her child. When Lisa heard her story he praised the mother, petted the boy and gave them both presents, telling the mother to go back to her people. The next year, 1820, Lisa prepared to go down the river to St. Louis. He sent for Mitain and told her that Raymond, who was then four years old, must go with him to be educated. The mother quickly seized her boy, ran to the river, sprang in a boat and rowed to the other side. She stayed out in the woods that night. In the morning she came back and gave the child to his father, saying that she knew it was better for him to learn the white man 's way. She begged Lisa to take her with him. She would live in any little corner that he would provide for her and make no trouble if only she might see her children now and then. Lisa would not agree to this, but offered her many presents if she would return to her tribe. The poor Indian mother broke into tears, saying that their marriage was for life, that she could not marry now among her own people and that Lisa was about to ruin her life and break her heart by taking both her children from her. Her tears and appeals did not move Lisa. He did not seem to know that an Indian mother loves her children even as does a white mother and that no presents can pay her for the loss of them. He prepared to take Ray- mond, when the United States officers interfered and made him give the child to its mother. Lisa went on his way down the river with his white wife. ROSALIE LISA ELY. (From photograph collection of A. E. Sheldon.) 40 STORIES OF NEBRASKA He never saw Nebraska again, for he died, August 12, 1820, at St. Louis. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery there, and by his side lies his wife who lived nearly fifty years after his death. She was a friend of the fur traders and of the Indians all her life and was called by everyone " Aunt Man- uel." It is the name cut on her tombstone. In his will Lisa left money for the education of his two Indian children and two thousand dollars for- each of them when they should be of age. Raymond died while yet a young man. Rosalie grew to womanhood, and was well educated, married and lived happily with Mr. Madison Ely, a white man. She died at Trenton, Illinois, December 21, 1904, leaving several children who are still living. The mother of Rosalie and Raymond was seen at Bellevue by Prince Maximilian in 1833. She wore a deep scar where the Sioux struck her when she saved the life of her boy. Her story was told to all the travelers who came up the river. When she died and where she is buried no one knows. Some- where an unmarked mound of Nebraska soil holds the dust of the Nebraska Indian woman who proved her mother love by sacrifice and sorrow. QUESTIONS 1. What products were shipped from Nebraska in Manuel Lisa's time? 2. What good things did Manuel Lisa do? 3. What things did he do that you do not like? 4. What kind of a man did the early fur trader need to be? 5. What do you think of the first known white woman in Nebraska as judged by her picture? 6. What do you imagine Rosalie and Raymond did for a good time in those early Nebraska days? THE RETURN OF THE ASTORIANS IN the last week of March of the year 1813 seven men might have been seen leading an old horse down the val- ley of the North Platte. They were white men who had come all the way from the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon and had walked all the way from the Snake River in Idaho where the Crow Indians had robbed them of their horses. Their one poor old horse they had got from the Snake Indians, trading them a pistol, a knife and an ax for him. The names of these men were Robert Stuart, Ramsay Crooks, Robert McLellan, Ben Jones, Andri Vallee, Francis LeClerc and Joseph Miller. Two years before, on March 12, 1811, they had left St. Louis with a party under Wilson Price Hunt intending to cross the mountains and build a fort for the American Fur Company in Oregon. On their way up the Missouri River the Hunt party had the most remark- able keel boat race in history. This was with Manuel Lisa, who left St. Louis nineteen days later and wished to overtake them. The race was a thousand miles long and lasted sixty days. It was won by Lisa who overtook Hunt before he arrived at Fort Pierre, South Dakota. Here Hunt left his boats, traded for horses with the Arikara Indians and set out to find a shorter way to Oregon than the one taken by Lewis and Clark. Their new route took them over very rough country in the Black Hills and Big Horn mountains. After great losses and hardships they reached the mouth of the Columbia River, where they built a fort which they named Astoria, after John Jacob Astor, of New York, the president of the fur company. From Astoria, on the 29th of June, 1812, the little party of seven men set out to return to the United States in order to 41 42 STORIES OF NEBRASKA carry word to Mr. Astor in New York. All the summer and fall they had marched across the deserts and mountains. To avoid the fierce Blackfoot Indians they kept to the south of the route by which they went out. By so doing they met a party of Crows who stole all of their horses. The seven men were thus left afoot in a wild country without roads and more than a thousand miles from any white settlement. They burned their baggage to keep the Indians from getting any of it, and with their rifles and such things as they could carry on their backs began their long tramp toward the Missouri River. One of their number became sick and they were obliged to carry him for several days and then to camp and give him "Indian sweat" until he got well. Soon after they began to climb the Rocky Mountains and game became so scarce that they nearly starved. They fished in a mountain stream but caught no fish. For three days they went hungry. One of them, crazed for want of food, said that they must draw lots and one of them be killed to feed the rest. The others took away his gun, and the next day they killed an old buffalo, which saved their lives. A few days later they found a camp of Snake Indians and traded with them for an old horse. With this old horse to carry their things they kept on through the mountains until they found a way to the eastern slope, not far from where the South Pass was later found. They were the first white men to cross the mountains at this point and find their way to the valley eastward which afterward became the route for the Oregon and California trail. On October 26th they reached the upper waters of the Platte River. They did not know what stream it was or where it would lead them, but they followed it until the 2nd of November, when they made a winter camp where there was timber and game, and not far from where Casper, Wyoming, is now. . In three days they killed forty-seven buffalo. They built a log cabin, used the buffalo skins to cover it, dried the buffalo meat and had made themselves comfortable for the winter when a band of THE RETURN OF THE ASTORIANS 43 twenty-three Arapahoes on the warpath against the Crows came to their cabin nearly starved. The Astorians fed them all night with dried buffalo meat. The next day as soon as the Arapahoes had left in pursuit of the Crows the Astorians packed their faithful old horse with what he could carry and hurried away from their snug cabin in the mountains, leav- ing all the rest to the Indians. It was the 13th of December when the Astorians left their winter quarters. The snow was two feet deep in the moun- tains. Their feet became sore from breaking through the hard crust. Their old horse had nothing to eat but willow twigs and cottonwood bark, but they struggled on for four- teen days in which time they made about 330 miles. The country began to change. The mountains gave place to hills and the hills to plains. There was no wood and the snow lay deep on the ground. They feared they would freeze to death so they went back three days' march (about seventy-seven miles) and on December 30th made camp again where there was wood and buffalo. This camp was in Nebraska not far from where Bridgeport is now. Here they stayed until March and made two large canoes to travel with on the river, but the North Platte (for it was that stream) was so shallow that they were obliged to leave their canoes after all their hard work in making them and start again on foot accompanied by their faithful old horse. So it was that on March 20, 1813, they left their last camp and journeyed down the North Platte valley. They saw a herd of sixty-five wild horses and longed to be mounted on MONUMENT TO THE ASTORIANS AT BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA. (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon.) 44 STORIES OF NEBRASKA them as they galloped away. Day after day they marched along leading their old horse with his burden. On either side of the wide North Platte valley the great prairie stretched away covered with buffalo, but no human being was in sight. They passed great swamps where they saw thousands of wild swan, geese and ducks. They were probably in what is now Garden County. There were no trees and they made their only fires with dry refuse on the prairies. In the early days of April they reached a great island, about seventy miles long, in the Platte River. When they saw this island, now called Grand Island, they were for the first time sure that they were in the Platte River valley, for hunters had already brought word of this island in the Platte. Three days later they met an Otoe Indian who took them to his village. Here they met two white traders from St. Louis to whom they traded their old horse for a canoe, and on the 18th of April they floated into the Missouri River and down to St. Louis. To these seven men and their old horse belongs the honor of first exploring the North Platte valley and first finding a central route through the Rocky Mountains. They were real path-finders of the great West. QUESTIONS 1 . How did the Astorian party find its way across the deserts and mountains with no road and no guide? 2. Where did the wild horses come from which they saw in the North Platte valley? 3. What part of Nebraska did this party explore? MAJOR LONG'S EXPEDITION IN 1819, the United States government sent an expedition under Major Stephen H. Long to explore the Platte River and the mountain region beyond. This expedition is famous because it brought the first steamboat to the Nebraska shores and placed the great American Desert on the map. The steamboat was named the Western Engineer, and left Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 5, 1819, for the long journey down the Ohio, then up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence up the Missouri River to the old Council Bluff of Lewis and Clark. The Western Engineer was well calculated to strike terror into the hearts of the western Indians who had never seen a steamboat. The bow of the boat rose in the form of a huge, black, scaly serpent with open mouth, from which poured smoke and steam when the boat was under way. The Indians who saw this boat said, ' ' White man, bad man, keep Great Spirit chained, build fire under him to make him paddle the boat." This serpent steamboat arrived at Fort Lisa, ten miles above the present site of Omaha, on September 17th. The party under Major Long at once began to prepare cabins for winter quarters. The spot they chose, with plenty of wood and stone near at hand for building and for fuel, may still be found between the high bluff and the Missouri River. There were twenty people in Major Long's party, some of them engineers, some scientists in botany, geology and zoology, and one artist. The fall and winter were spent in study of the animals, plants and rocks, in holding councils with the Indians, learning their language and customs, and in keeping record of the weather. There were many meetings with the Indians, and many very interesting speeches made. On October 4th one hun- 45 46 STORIES OF NEBRASKA dred Otoes, seventy Missourias and sixty loways gave a dance. On October 9th seventy Pawnees did the same. On October 14th four hundred Omahas assembled and a great speech was made by their chief, Big Elk, who said, among other things : "Here I am, my Father; all these young people you see around here are yours; although they are poor and little, yet they are your children. All my nation loves the whites and always have loved them. Some think, my Father, that you COUNCIL WITH OTOES BY MAJOR LONG'S EXPEDITION. (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) have brought all these soldiers here to take our land from us but I do not believe it. For although I am a poor simple Indian, I know that this land will not suit your farmers. If I even thought your hearts bad enough to take this land, I would not fear it, as I know there is not wood enough on it for the use of the whites." White Cow, another Omaha chief, said: "Look at me, my Father, look at my hands. I am a wild man born on the prairie. Look at me and see if there is any blood of your people upon me. Some whose hands are red with blood, try to wash it off, but it still remains." In the council with the Pawnees, speeches were made by 47 Long Hair, Knife Chief, Fool-Robes-Son, Petalesharu. This last one was father of the famous chief of the same name. He spoke thus: " Father, I am not afraid of these people, these Pawnees you see here. I have seen people travel in blood, I have traveled in blood myself, but it was the blood of redskins, no others. Father I have no longer a desire for war, I desire to eat in peace. I am glad to see you write down all that has been said. When a man dies his actions are forgotten; but when they are written down it is not so. When I have seen a person poor and I had a horse to spare, or a blanket, I have given it to them. From this time I undergo a change. I am now an American and you shall hear that this is true." On June 6, 1820, Major Long with twenty-one men mounted on horses left the winter quarters on the banks of the Missouri for the head of the Platte River. They followed the Indian trail across the prairie to Papillion Creek, where they made their first camp. Keeping on the north side of the Platte, the party crossed the Elkhorn River, Shell Creek, and Beaver Creek, arriving on June llth at the Pawnee villages on the Loup. The villages stretched along the Loup for a distance of ten miles and held about six thousand Pawnees. Eight thousand Indian ponies fed on the grass of the Loup valley about the villages. The Pawnees tried to persuade Major Long to go no farther, telling him that the fierce tribes of the upper Platte would eat up his little band. Major Long se- cured as guides two French trappers who were living with the Pawnees, and pushed on. June 21st the Long expedition arrived at the junction of the North Platte and South Platte. Crossing both streams the party continued for several days up the south bank of the South Platte, making its last stop in what is now Nebraska on the 26th of June near the corner of Deuel and Keith counties. The expedition marched to where the South Platte issues from its canyon in the Rocky Mountains, then 48 STORIES OF NEBRASKA turned south and returned to the Mississippi River by way of the Arkansas. There were two principal results from Major Long's expedition. The first was a very accurate description of Indian customs and Indian life as they existed among the MAP OF THK GREAT AMERICAN DESERT AS MADE BY MAJOR LONG, 1820. (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) Omahas, Otoes, and Pawnees a hundred years ago. This series of stories of Indian life covers several hundred pages of his report. They were obtained through Indian traders and interpreters who had spent their lives with these tribes, and are to-day one of the best sources of information upon them. The other result of Major Long's expedition was that all the country west of the Missouri River got a bad name, which stuck to it for fifty years. Upon the map prepared for Ma- jor Long appears the words "Great Desert" stretching from the Platte valley to the Red River in Texas. In his report MAJOR LONG'S EXPEDITION 49 upon the country, Major Long said: "It is almost wholly unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable for people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence." QUESTIONS 1. Was Big Elk's reasoning correct in regard to the white men and the Indian land? 2. What dp you think of Petalesharu's character from his speech? 3. What did Major Long's expedition do for Nebraska? OLD FORT ATKINSON ON the site of the Council Bluff where Lewis and Clark first held council with the Indians, once stood Old Fort Atkinson, built in the year 1819, the first United States fort in Nebraska. The Rifle regiment and the Sixth Infantry were here. It was a large, strong fort with fifteen cannon and several hundred soldiers. Besides the soldiers there were teamsters, laborers, traders, hunters, trappers and PLAN OF FORT ATKINSON, NEBRASKA, 1819-1827. (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) Indians, making a town of nearly a thousand people. They had a brick yard and a lime kiln. Rock was quarried from the ledges along the river. A saw mill and a grist mill were kept busy. Hundreds of acres of rich Nebraska land were farmed and thousands of bushels of grain raised. Roads ran in all directions from this fort on the Council Bluff. Indians came to it from all parts of the West for it was the most western army post in the United States. From far-off 50 OLD FORT ATKINSON 51 Santa Fe Mexicans came here to meet the Pawnee Indians and make peace with them. White women were here. There were marriages and births. Children played about the bluff and probably the first school in Nebraska was taught here. Fort Atkinson was the largest town of early Nebraska and the only town in Nebraska at that time. To this fort in the summer of 1823 came the news that a party of American trappers had been fired upon by the Arikara Indians and about twenty of them killed. The Arikaras were related to the Pawnees. They lived on the Missouri river, in what is now South Dakota, five hundred miles above Fort Atkinson. They were different from the wild Indians on the plains for they lived in villages sur- rounded with walls of dirt and fenced with timbers set on end in the ground. An Arikara had stolen horses from the trappers. He was horsewhipped by them. This led to the attack on the trappers. There were very busy times in the old fort on the Council Bluff when the news came. The bugles rang out calling the soldiers to their colors. Cannon and powder and shot were loaded into keel boats. The hunters and trappers at the fort seized their rifles. General Leavenworth started with over two hundred soldiers. He was joined by four hundred Sioux warriors, who were enemies of the Arikaras, and by several parties of hunters and rivermen. It was a month's march along the shores of the Missouri to reach the Arikara villages. The keel boats with the cannon, powder and food were pulled up the river with ropes. Never before had such an army been seen on the North Nebraska prairies. On August 8th they arrived at the Arikara villages. The can- non were placed on a hill and their heavy balls fired into the village while the Sioux under their chief White Bear fought with the Arikara warriors outside the walls. Gray Eyes, chief of the Arikaras, and about forty of his people were killed. The tribe sued for peace and a treaty was made while the white soldiers and the Sioux feasted on roasting 52 STORIES OF NEBRASKA ears from the Arikara cornfields. No white soldiers were killed and the army returned to Fort Atkinson. This is called the Arikara war of 1823 and is the first war on the Nebraska frontier. There was quiet for a long time at Fort Atkinson. We know that in the summer the fur traders came up the river and keel boats from St. Louis brought stores and news from the world below. In the winter sleds traveled across the snow to other posts. Hunting parties from the fort went out to kill game for the soldiers. So many elk and deer were killed in this way that the Omaha tribe could find no food on their old hunting grounds. Big Elk, chief of the tribe, came to the fort for help, saying that his people were starving while the soldiers killed and drove away the game. In 1827 Fort Atkinson was abandoned by the United States. All the soldiers were sent down the Missouri River. They drove away a great herd of cattle which supplied them with beef. They left the plowed fields to grow up with grass and weeds. All that was of use and could be carried was taken away. The buildings were left. The traders and hunters went to Bellevue and other posts down the river. It was said that the Indians burned the buildings after the soldiers were gone. Six years later Maximilian, the great German traveler, found the fort in ruins. The great stone chimneys were standing and a brick storehouse was still under roof. Rat- tlesnakes made the place their home. When the early settlers came to this part of Nebraska in 1854 and 1855, they were glad to find that the United States had provided them with such a supply of brick and stone ready to use for their chimneys and cellars. They tore down the ruins and carried them away to their farms. To-day the little village of Fort Calhoun, sixteen miles north of Omaha, adjoins the site of Old Fort Atkinson. On the summit of the Council Bluff may still be traced the parade ground, the place where the flagstaff stood, the rows OLD FORT ATKINSON 53 of cellars where once were the officers' quarters and the bar- racks where the soldiers lived. The ashes and broken brick where the great fireplaces were may still be found, as also the powder vault and the road running down Hook's Hollow to the boat landing on the river. Every spring when the people make gardens they plow up bullets and buttons with the name "Rifles" or the figure "6" 'for the Sixth In- F , f i p 11 FLINT LOCK AND CANNON BALL FROM FOKT iry, O m. IjOI ATKINSON. (From photograph collection and silver coins are also of A. E. Sheldon.) found. Most of them are Spanish coins with far away dates upon them, telling of the time when Spain ruled the greater part of America and her coins were in commerce everywhere. Such is the story of the Council Bluff and Old Fort Atkin- son, the scene of the first council with Nebraska Indians, the site of the first fort, and the first impor- tant town in the state. It was the center of busy life one hundred years ago. To-day the Missouri River is three miles away from the old landing A FORT ATKINSON GRAVESTONE (From pho- beneath the bluff. tograph collection of A. E. Sheldon.) mt . r i The fort and its soldiers are gone. The Indian trader and hunter come no more. The Mexican no longer crosses the plains to make peace with the Pawnee. The very name of the old fort is forgotten. Yet here is one of the historic spots of early 54 STORIES OF NEBRASKA Nebraska whose memories should be cherished and whose story deserves to be told. QUESTIONS 1. Why did not white settlers come into Nebraska and farm as soon as the soldiers at Fort Atkinson found that fine crops could be grown on its rich land? 2. Why should the Omaha Indians be in danger of starving in such a rich land as Nebraska? 3. What does Fort Atkinson stand for in the "first things" of Nebraska? 4. What should be done with the site of old Fort Atkinson? BELLEVUE NO one living knows just when the first white men settled at Bellevue. The story has many times been told how Manuel Lisa climbed the sloping hills from the riverside where his boat lay moored and as his eye swept that wonder- ful panorama of forest, hill and river he exclaimed in French, "Bellevue;" that he then staked out his fur trader's cabin in the valley below and thus began the first white settlement in our state. This was in the year 1810, so the story goes. Manuel Lisa himself left no writing to prove it and we know that Fort Lisa, his chief fur trading post, was twenty miles farther up the Missouri River. The old fur traders died long ago and the trees and hills about Bellevue which looked down upon their boats in the river tell no tales of these early "voyageurs." The Astorians who passed up the river in 1811 made no mention of the trading post of Bellevue and the soldiers who built Fort Atkinson in 1819 on the Council Bluff twenty-five miles above are equally silent in regard to it. The fur trading records first tell of Bellevue in 1823. There was then a fur trading post and an Indian agency, called the Council Bluffs Indian Agency, at Bellevue. The Omahas, Otoes and Pawnees came there to trade. It was easier for the fur traders and Indians to meet at Bellevue than at any other post on the river. The smooth valley of the Platte made a natural pathway ; the rock foundation of the hills sloping to the riverside made a natural landing place for boats ; wood and water were at hand ; and the beautiful view down the valley where the Platte and Missouri mingle their waters among forested islands added to the other attractions. When the soldiers abandoned Fort Atkinson in 1827 and marched away, Bellevue became the chief post and the oldest 55 56 STORIES OF NEBRASKA town in fact as well as in story of the Nebraska country. The first of these honors she retained through all the fur trading years and the second remains hers to-day. Bellevue was the stopping place of the early adventurers, trappers, travelers, missionaries and soldiers who came to this region. The early names in our annals cluster about Bellevue. Peter A. Sarpy, Henry Fontenelle, Prince Maxi- milian, George Catlin, John C. Fremont, Professor Hayden, J. Sterling Morton, Brigham Young, each halted at this BELLEVUE IN 1833. (From Thwailes's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) hospitable lodge in the wilderness. The Indians of the Platte valley brought hither their furs. Missionaries made here their first attempt to civilize and Christianize Nebraska. When steamboats began to make regular trips up the Missouri, Bellevue was one of the principal landing places. In 1846 the Presbyterian Church fixed on Bellevue as the site of its principal mission to the western Indians and in BELLEVUE 57 1848 the old mission building standing to-day was built. Here came the first governor to the Nebraska territory in 1854 and here the first newspaper, the Nebraska Palladium, was printed. All the signs then pointed to Bellevue as a future great metropolis of the Platte valley. Then came disaster after disaster to Bellevue 's fond hopes BELLEVUE WOODS AS SEEN TO-DAY. TOP OF CHILD'S POINT, LOOKING EAST. (From photo collection of A. E. Sheldon.) and aspirations. The capital was located at Omaha. The Pacific Railroad left a natural crossing at Bellevue and a natural roadway up the valley of the Platte to find a more difficult crossing and longer route through Omaha. Sarpy county was created with Bellevue as the county seat, but even this distinction was carried off by the new town of Papillion in 1875. 58 STORIES OF NEBRASKA Bellevue still stands by the riverside, the oldest town in Nebraska. Her early ambitions have been blighted but a wonderful compensation for their loss is hers. Hers is still the most beautiful site upon the river. No noise of factories or warehouses, no crowding of jealous poverty and sordid wealth within her borders, no ugly skyscrapers blot out her landscape. No clamor and rivalry of the market place dis- turb her visions. She is still Old Bellevue, with all the glory and romance and early dreams of old Nebraska gathered within her borders. She is now and forever will remain the center of interest for all those who love the story of Nebras- ka 's early days, and the keeper of Nebraska 's earliest mem- ories and traditions for all time. QUESTIONS 1. What reasons can you give why Bellevue did not become the largest city in Nebraska? 2. What reasons for believing that Bellevue was not founded in 1810? 3. In what sense is Bellevue Nebraska's oldest town? 4. What has determined the location of Nebraska towns and cities, judging from those you know? 5. Of what use to the state are historic places and old towns? GEORGE CATLIN GEORGE CATLIN was the first painter of Nebraska scenery and Nebraska Indians. Before him Thomas Seymour, one of the members of Major Long's expedition, made a few sketches, but the real first honors belong to Catlin. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1796, educated to be a lawyer, but became a portrait painter instead. A dele- gation of Indians from the far West came to Philadelphia where he had his art studio. He resolved to become the painter of Indians and Indian life. He forsook the studio, came to St. Louis and took passage on the steamer Yellow- stone on her first voyage to the upper waters of the Missouri River. This was in the year 1832. He stayed that winter with the Mandan Indians and came down the Missouri the next year, visiting all the tribes and painting pictures at every stopping place. Along Nebraska shores Catlin painted pictures of Black- bird Hill, of Bellevue, of the junction of the Platte and Missouri rivers, of prairie fires, buffalo hunting, Indian weapons, games, customs and portraits of prominent Indians. There were no cameras in those days and Catlin 's oil paint- ings make our first picture gallery. Catlin saw the fertility as well as the beauty of Nebraska. This description written by him of the country near Black- bird Hill is true to-day as it was then: " There is no more beautiful prairie country in the world than that which is to be seen here. In looking back from this bluff toward the west there is one of the most beautiful scenes imaginable. The surface of the country is gracefully and slightly undulating, like the swells of the ocean after a heavy storm, and everywhere covered with a beautiful green turf and with occasional patches and clusters of trees. The 59 60 STORIES OF NEBRASKA soil in this region is also rich and capable of making one of the most beautiful and productive countries in the world. From this enchanting spot there is nothing to arrest the eye from ranging over the waters of the Missouri for the distance of twenty or thirty miles, where it quietly glides between^its barriers formed of thousands of green and gracefully sloping THE STEAMEK YELLOWSTONE. (From Thwaites's ''Early Western Travels." Arthur H, Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio.) hills, with its rich alluvial meadows and woodlands and its hundred islands covered with stately cottonwood." Catlin was the first white man to visit and describe the great Red Pipestone quarry on the border of South Dakota and Minnesota from which come the smoking pipes used by Indians far and near. In his honor this rock is called cat- linite. As related elsewhere, Catlin carried away from Ne- braska the skull from the burial mound of the Omaha chief Blackbird. GEORGE . CATLIN 61 In 1840 Catlin visited Europe with a company of Ameri- can Indians and gave entertainments in the principal coun- tries. In 1857 he published his book on North American Indians with over 400 illustrations made from his oil paint- ings. He died in New Jersey in 1872, having visited forty- eight Indian tribes and made over five hundred paintings among them. These paintings are now in the National Museum at Washington, forming what is known as "Catlin 's North American Indian Gallery." QUESTIONS 1. In what respects was Catlin's work different from that of the other early explorers? 2. Wherein is his work of special interest and value? 3. What other artists have made pictures and statues of the American Indian? 4. Why has the Indian been so interesting to writers and artists? PRINCE MAXIMILIAN PRINCE MAXIMILIAN was born in Germany in 1782. His full title was Maximilian, Prince von Wied. He was born with a fortune as well as a noble title and might have wasted his life in idleness and luxury like many other princes. But Prince Maximilian from childhood loved study. More than anything else he loved the study of nature. The new world across the ocean, with its unex- plored wilderness, drew him to its wilds. He spent two years in the forests of Brazil and wrote several volumes upon that then unknown region. In 1833, Prince Maximilian made his famous journey up the Missouri River on the second voyage of the steamer Yel- lowstone. With him were skilled artists and scientists from Europe who gathered specimens and painted pictures of the country through which they traveled. The next year Prince Maximilian returned to Europe and four years later published at Coblentz, Germany, a story of his travels in North America in three volumes, one of which is an art portfolio filled with sketches and pictures of western life. Nebraska owes a great deal to Prince Maximilian. He made our country and its people known in Europe. Of all the writers on early Nebraska he seems the most charming. He had the trained eye of the German scientist and the imagination of a poet. Reading his stories and looking at his pictures the Nebraska of 1833 rises before us. The steamer Yellowstone comes again from St. Louis, beating its way up the Missouri River against the swift yellow current in late April and early May. The leaf buds break, the birds salute the silences, the flowers bloom, all the way along the Nebraska coast. He names each of them in both the Ger- man and Latin tongues with loving attention and praise. 62 PRINCE MAXIMILIAN 63 He saw and felt the spirit of the West. The eagle's nest above the river, the ruined cabin in a dark valley, the angry wind storm, the moonlight on the Missouri, the faces and manners of the Indians and fur traders, the rich soil, the flowing streams, the forests where the steamer stopped to cut wood for its furnace, are all fresh and real in his stories and in his pictures. Some of the things which he saw in Nebras- ka are best given in his own words: " In a dark valley of the forest we saw a long Indian cabin which reached nearly across the vale and must have been built for a large number of men. The location was wild and beautiful. The bald-headed eagles nest everywhere in the top of the high trees along the shore. One of them was shot with a rifle. In places smoke rose out of the depths of the forest, in others the wood and the ground were black from fires. Sometimes the Indians start these fires in order to destroy their trail when followed by enemies, at other times they arise from campfires of fur traders on the river banks. ***** We saw wild geese with their downy young goslings. The old birds would not desert their children even when our people shot among them. In a beautiful wild region we reached the mouth of the great Nemaha River. The hunting huts of the Indians stood in the forest, but nowhere was man to be seen. One travels hundreds of miles on this river without seeing one human being. ***** In the evening the sun, as it sank below the treetops, gave the region a glow of parting light. We enjoyed a view of the violet, red and purple tinted hills while the wide mirror of the Missouri and surrounding forests glowed as though on fire. Quiet reigned in this remote scene of nature for the 64 STORIES OF NEBRASKA wind had lulled and only the puffing and rushing of the steamboat broke the sublime silence. * * * At night we lay by near Morgan's Island. The whip- poor-wills, one of the birds we had not met before, here rilled all the forests with their voices. On the left bank where the wide prairie clasped a wood in its embrace the little Nemaha River broke through. At its mouth the Missouri is very shallow. A great wind blew our steamer upon the sand. One of our smoke stacks was blown down. Crows flew over us screaming and a sand- piper with dark red legs ran about on the sandbar near the ship. We saw the different kinds of grackle (blackbirds) flying together, the beautiful yellow-headed ones, the red- shouldered ones, and the bronze variety. Toward night a great flight of more than 100 pelicans went over us in a northerly direction. Their formation was wedge shaped, at times a half circle. We could clearly see the black wing feathers, the pouch of the throat and the long slanting bills. Our hunters killed some wild turkeys in the twilight. A beautiful flower (phlox) colors great fields with blue and the blue-birds' quiet little song was heard. * * Our hunters brought on board a raccoon, a rattlesnake and black snake, and found a wild goose nest with three eggs. Near by we saw trails of Indians, great wolf tracks in the sand, and on the trees the places where the stags had rubbed their growing antlers. A hunter broke off a poison vine. His hands and face are badly swollen to-day. PRINCE MAXIMILIAN 65 We reached the mouth of Weeping Water creek. In the bushes above us the birds sang a little soft song or twittering. The fox-colored thrush (brown thrasher) trilled in the tops of the cottonwoods where he loves to sit. Here were many plants such as columbine, maiden-hair fern, red mulberry, blue-eyed grass, puccoon and purple vetch. At two o'clock in the afternoon of May 3rd "we reached Mr. Fontenelle's house at Bellevue. The land is here very fruitful and a poorly cultivated acre yields one hundred bushels of Indian corn. It would return much more if care- fully worked. Cattle also succeed here splendidly, give much milk but require salt from time to time. Mr. Fonte- nelle thought he would have five thousand head of swine in a few years if the Indians did not steal too many from him. We lay by for the night a few miles above Bellevue (prob- ably near where Omaha now is). Ducks and shore birds covered the banks about us. Stillness reigned in the wide wilderness. Only the whip-poor-will's voice was heard while the moon mirrored itself in the river where some of our young people were bathing. In the morning our ship, like a smoke-vomiting monster, frightened all living creatures. Geese and ducks flew in all directions. We landed at Mr. Cabanne's trading post (ten miles above Omaha) and to our joy we saw a crowd of Otoe and Omaha Indians. Many of them were marked with small- pox, some had only one eye or a film over the other eye. Their faces were striped with red. Their hair was hanging disorderly down to the neck. A small brook with steep banks flows down to the river from a pleasant little side val- ley in which are the corn plantations. Mr. Cabanne had 66 STORIES OF NEBRASKA planted here fifteen acres of maize which produces yearly two thousand bushels of this grain, for the yield is very great. MISSOURI, OTO AND PUNCAH INDIANS, 1833. (From Thwaites's "Early Western Travels." Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleve- land, Ohio.) Sitting upon the balcony of Mr. Cabanne 's house we en- joyed a wonderful evening. The proud Missouri glistened with splendor in the glory of the full moon. Quiet reigned about us, only the frogs croaked and the whip- poor-wills called contin- ually in the forest near by. Twenty Omahas appeared before us. The chief dancer, a large tall man, wore on his head a high feather helmet, made of the long tail and wing feathers of owls and eagles. In his hand he carried a bow and ar- rows. The upper half of his body was naked except for a white skin which hung over his right shoulder and was decorated with tufts of feathers. He was painted with white spots and stripes and looked wild and warlike. Another younger man with him bore in his hand a war club with white stripes and a skunk skin at the handle. They formed a line while in front of them a drum was beaten with rapid stroke. Several men beat time with war clubs and all of them sang "Hei, hei, hei," or else "Heh, heh, heh," be- tween times shouting loud yells. The dance was like this: springing with both feet, a short leap into the air, with the body bent forward while the drum was struck a sharp blow and their weapons were lifted and shaken. In this manner they jumped about with great force for over an hour, the sweat flowing from their bodies. A clear moonlight lit up the wide still wilderness; the savage tumult of the Indian PRINCE MAXIMILIAN 07 bands and the call of the night birds made this a scene to be long remembered." ***** Prince Maximilian died at New Wied, Germany, Febru- ary 3, 1867, less than a month before this part of the wilder- ness he so well described became a state. He left a great museum to his home city. To the world he left the record of a busy life well spent and to Nebraska the best stories and the best pictures of her early days. His name deserves to be better known in our state where now live nearly one hundred thousand Germans, rejoicing in the speech and traditions of their fatherland and rejoicing no less in their homes and freedom found in the West whose great fortune Prince Maximilian foretold. QUESTIONS 1. Make a list of the birds which Prince Maximilian found here. Make a list of the flowers. On each list place a check (X) after those which you know. 2. Just why was it that Prince Maximilian saw so much here which other explorers did not notice? 3. John Burroughs says that we cannot see a bird on the bush unless we have a bird in our heart. What does he mean? 4. Did Prince Maximilian love nature? What tells? 5. Which sees life most truly, the scientist or the poet? 6. What tells that Prince Maximilian was both scientist and poet? 7. Are you glad that this German prince came to Nebraska? Why? Should you like to have him as a neighbor? SCOTT'S BLUFF IN the early fur trading days, about the year 1830, a party of trappers came down the North Platte River in canoes. A little way above where Laramie River joins the Platte their canoes were upset in the rapids and their supply of powder and food was lost. One of their number named Scott was taken sick and could not travel. At the same time his com- rades found the fresh trail of another party of trappers. SCOTT'S BLUFF. (From photo collection of A. E. Sheldon). They left Scott alone at the mouth of the Laramie River, promising to return for him as soon as they had secured supplies from the other trappers. Instead of returning they reported that he had died on the Laramie River and continued their journey down the North Platte. The next year trappers on their way to the moun- tains found the skeleton of Scott near a spring by the great bluff which now bears his name. Sick and starving he had 68 SCOTT'S BLUFF 69 dragged himself before dying forty miles down the river from the point where his comrades had deserted him. His name survives in the great headland which rises eight hundred feet above the river, the most prominent landmark in the North Platte valley, while the names of his treacherous companions are lost. QUESTIONS 1. Why did Scott's companions desert him? 2. How was their story proven untrue? 3. Which would you rather have been, Scott or one of his companions? THE FIRST NEBRASKA MISSIONARIES AFTER the explorer and the fur trader the missionary came to Nebraska. Rev. Moses Merrill and his wife, Eliza Wilcox, were the first to come. They were sent out in 1833 to the Otoe Indians by the Baptist Missionary Union. At that time the Otoe tribe lived along the Platte as far west as the mouth of the Elkhorn. Their largest village was in Saunders County about ten miles north of the place where Ashland now is. They hunted south and west along Salt Creek, Weeping Water and the Nemaha. Mr. Merrill and his wife drove an ox team from Missouri to Belle vue. Here was an Indian trading post where the Otoe, Omaha and Pawnee Indians came to trade furs and skins for white man 's goods. At first very few Indians attended the missionary meet- ings and those who came begged for corn, potatoes and whisky. Mr. Merrill began to study the Otoe language in order that he might talk to the Indians without an interpre- ter and translate the Bible and hymns into their tongue. In this way he spent the first winter. The next spring Mr. Merrill rode on horseback, fording two rivers, to the Otoe village on the south bank of the Platte near Ashland. He was received by Itan, the great chief of the Otoes, in one of his lodges which was made by setting large trunks of trees in the ground, laying poles on them and covering the whole with grass and dirt. This lodge of Itan was circular in form and measured a hundred and twenty feet in circumference. Itan gave Mr. Merrill a feast of boiled buffalo meat served in a wooden bowl. It was to be eaten with the fingers, the guest eating first. All the rest waited until he had finished. Itan was a great chief. He had five wives and four houses 70 THE FIRST NEBRASKA MISSIONARIES 71 for them to live in. The town of Yutan in Saunders County is named for him. It is only three miles from where his lodge stood. On Sunday, the next day, Mr. Merrill was invited out to eat four times before noon. He went, and after eating, read to the Indians part of his translation of the Bible. He showed the children some pictures and began to teach them to sing the scale. The children were deeply interested and tried hard to sound the notes as the white man did. At the end of a week two of the children could sing the scale correctly and knew twenty- two letters of the alphabet. One day Mr. Merrill learned that fifty Otoes had gone to the white trading post with fifty bea- ver skins, worth five hundred dol- lars, to trade for whisky. Chief Itan spoke in strong words to the missionary against the curse of the white man's strong water. On the very next day he and another Otoe chief were drunk and talked very loud against whisky, saying that it was bad, the Indians did not make it, the white man was to blame. Mr. Merrill kept on trying to teach them better, reading verses from the Bible and praying for them. One Indian was sick and the Otoe medicine men came to cure him. The sick man was stretched out naked in his lodge. The medicine men beat their drums, shook their rat- tles and danced around him, each stopping to take a mouthful of water from time to time and to spurt it on the sick man 's head. It is to be hoped that he survived this treatment. THE BUILDING OF AN EARTH LODGE 72 STORIES OF NEBRASKA Then the Otoes went away for their summer hunt. When they came back in the fall they brought skins and began to trade them for whisky. Mr. Merrill wrote from a trading post where whisky was sold as follows: "This is not the house of God, nor the gate of heaven. It is rather the house of Satan and the gate of hell. Two kegs of whisky were carried from the house this morning by Indians. They will trade their horses, their guns and even their blankets for this poisonous drink." It was against the law then, as now, to sell liquor to Indians, but Nebraska was far out on the frontier and the white traders could make greater profit by selling whisky than in any other way. In September, 1835, Mr. Merrill moved his family to the Otoe Mission on the Platte River, about eight miles west of Belle vue. Here the government built a log cabin and a schoolhouse which enabled him to carry on his mission work away from the evils of the trading post. It was a beautiful site with an open prairie sloping to the Platte with rich meadow for stock and gardening and a large body of timber close by. Half of the Otoe tribe moved there and made their village at the mission. The Otoes were very poor these years and became poorer. They hunted deer, elk and buffalo in the summer of 1836 and brought home very little meat. Their appetite for whisky was greater than before and the more bad luck they had the more whisky they wanted. Many were sick with fever this summer and Mr. Merrill gave them food and medicine, cared for them and tried hard to have them give up liquor and look after their crops and families. He urged them to keep away from the places where whisky was sold and this stirred up the traders against him, as the whisky trade was their best busi- ness. For a single tin cup full of whisky the trader would often get ten dollars' worth of furs. When the people became sick and began to die the traders told them that God was angry with the Otoes for having the THE FIRST NEBRASKA MISSIONARIES 73 missionaries among them. Two pupils in Mr. Merrill's school died in the fall and the traders said that they were killed for learning to read. As the whisky habit grew in the tribe the men became miserable and quarrelsome. The United States had sent a farmer and a blacksmith to teach the Indians how to farm and to make tools for them. These men and their families lived near the Mission. Drunken Otoes shot at the farmer and both he and the blacksmith moved their families back to Bellevue, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Merrill alone among the Indians at the village. Two of Itan 's wives ran away with two Otoe young men. Itan was in a very great rage and said that he would kill the young men when they came back. News was brought that these braves were in the village and Itan took his gun and pistol to kill them. When he passed the mission house Mr. and Mrs. Merrill went out and begged him not to begin a bloody fight. He was wild for revenge and went on. The two young men came out to meet Chief Itan singing their war song. The chief fired his musket at one of the young men and missed him. Then one of the chief's friends fired at the same young man and he fell. He rose, however, and shot the chief through the body. A brother of this young man then shot Itan the second time. One of Itan 's friends shot the brother. A third young man shot Itan again and was at once shot himself. The three young men and Chief Itan died that evening. Two of them were Mr. Merrill's pupils. This happened on April 28, 1837. The whole Otoe tribe was torn into factions by this tragedy. Some wanted to kill the friends of the young men, others to avenge their death. The bloody feud over the fight lasted for many years. After Itan 's death Melhunca, the second chief in the tribe, came to take breakfast with Mr. Merrill. He wanted pres- ents and said that the traders told him it was bad for the teacher to live near him and never give the Indians presents or fine clothes, and sugar and coffee as the traders did. Mr. and Mrs. Merrill tried to show him that they were poor and 74 STORIES OF NEBRASKA had no means of making great profits, as the traders had selling whisky. They urged him to keep away from liquor. He soon became angry and said he was going at once to the trading post to trade horses for whisky. On the next day the school children who were given bread for lunch every day they came to read began to complain loudly and said that they would not read any more unless they were given a full dinner every day. In August, 1837, a band of fifty loway Indians came over from the Weeping Water to trade with the Otoes. They brought fifteen kegs of whisky. Mr. Merrill held a great temperance meeting that day. The next day the whole Otoe village was drinking whisky. One Otoe had his ears cut off and another was stabbed and died. The loways left, taking with them six Otoe ponies, paid for in whisky. In 1838 Mr. Merrill went with the Otoes on their buffalo hunt. By this time he had learned to speak their language and had translated portions of the Bible and several hymns into Otoe. The Otoe hymns had been printed in a book with the name : Wdtwhtl Wdwdklha Eva Wdhonetl and was the first Nebraska book ever made. In spite of all Mr. Merrill could do the Otoe men cared more for whisky and less for good things every year. They no longer loved their old time games and exercises. They longed for the white man's fire-water and the visions that danced before their brains when they drank it more than for all the gospel messages and Christian hymns brought by the missionary. All they could get was spent for liquor and food was begged from the mission. The young men became impudent and pretended to be Sioux in order to frighten the missionary family. It was six years since Mr. Merrill and his wife came to give their lives in teaching and saving one tribe of Nebraska Indians. A baby boy, Samuel Pearce, had been born to them in 1835. He became a Baptist minister and is to-day THE FIRST NEBRASKA MISSIONARIES 75 the second oldest living white person born in Nebraska, the oldest being Major William Clark Kennerly, of St. Louis, Mo., who was born at Ft. Atkinson, Nov. 2, 1824. Mr. Merrill lives at Squirrel Island, Maine. They had built a large log mis- sion house with a great stone chimney which could be seen for many miles. In this they held school on week days for the Otoe chil- dren and here they held their Sunday services. A new and deadly enemy to the mission appeared. Mr. Merrill became the victim of consumption. Exposure, overwork and grief has- OLD OTOE MISSION. (From photograph tened its ravages. He was deeply discouraged and wrote in his diary at this time : " Formerly Mrs. Merrill felt perfectly safe day or night, but it is not so now. The Otoes trample upon my property and rights unreproved. They occupy my pasture with their cattle and horses when it suits their convenience, often leaving the fence thrown down. They steal my potatoes, pumpkins and corn by night. As we are alone it would not be prudent to resist these thefts. How long we shall be able to live quietly in our own habitation is uncertain. Indeed we are disturbed often now. My family fear these vagrant Otoes. These Indians do not feel friendly toward white people. They are ungrateful for favors received." Mr. Merrill grew worse rapidly. He died on February 6, 1840, and was buried on the east bank of the Missouri River opposite Bellevue. The Otoes called him "The-One- Who-Always-Speaks-The-Truth." On a Nebraska farm in Sarpy County sloping gently to the Platte River is a grove of giant cottonwoods over eighty years old. In their midst stands an old building with a great 76 STORIES OF NEBRASKA stone chimney. This is the monument and witness to-day of the life and labors of the first missionaries to Nebraska. QUESTIONS 1. What two rivers did Moses Merrill ford in going from Bellevue to the Otoe village? 2. Why did the Nebraska Indians build their lodges out of earth? 3. Why did the Indians wait until Mr. Merrill finished before they ate? 4. Could Indians sing before Mr. Merrill taught them the scale? Why? 5. Who was to blame for the ruin caused by whisky, the white man or the Indian? 6. What do you know of Itan's character from this story? 7. Explain the action of the Otoe school children in demanding a full dinner and tell what you think of it. 8. Was Mr. Merrill's mission to the Otoes a success? Why? FATHER DE SMET ONE of the most honored names in Nebraska annals is that of Father Pierre Jean De Smet, first Catholic mis- sionary to the Indians of the Platte and upper Missouri region. He was born in Belgium January 30, 1801, came to St. Louis in 1823, and in 1838 reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, as missionary to the Pottawatomie In- dians who had just removed from their old home in Illinois to the borders of Nebraska. For the next thirty years Father De Smet was the most active mis- sionary in the western world. He explored the plains and mountains, crossed the continent several times to the Pacific Ocean, founded mis- sions wherever he went and gained the confidence of the Indians every- where. He also made many visits to Europe to secure funds for mission work. Only a small part of Father De Smet's active life was spent in the region which is now Nebraska, but he was known and loved by all the tribes of Nebraska Indians and probably had more influence over them than had any other man at any time. Four times he crossed Nebraska over the Oregon Trail, and seventeen times on steamboat, skiff or canoe he followed the waters of the Missouri River past the Nebraska shores. The beauty of early Nebraska Father De Smet was quick to see and appreciate. No better picture of our own Platte River has ever been given than this by him in 1840: 77 FATHER DE SMET. (From Chittenden & Richardson's "Life, Letters & Travels of Father De Smet." Francis P. Harper, N. Y.) 78 STORIES OF NEBRASKA "I was often struck with admiration at the sight of the picturesque scenes which we enjoyed all the way up the Platte. Think of the big ponds that you have seen in the parks of European noblemen, dotted with little wooded islands. The Platte offers you these by thousands and of all shapes. I have seen groups of islands that one might easily take, from a distance, for fleets under sail, garlanded with verdure and festooned with flowers; and the rapid flow of the river past them made them seem to be flying over the water." The future of this region was clearly foreseen by this great missionary. The vacant plains stirred within him mem- ories of the crowded peoples of Europe when he wrote: "In my visits to the Indian tribes I have several times traversed the immense plains of the West. Every time I have found myself amid a painful void. Europe 's thousands of poor who cry for bread and wander without shelter or hope often occur to my thoughts. 'Unhappy poor,' I often cry, 'why are ye not here? Your industry and toil would end your sorrows. Here you might rear a smiling home and reap in plenty the fruit of your toil.' The sound of the axe and hammer will echo in this wilderness; broad farms with or- chard and vineyard, alive with domestic animals and poultry, will cover these desert plains to provide for thick-coming cities which will rise as if by enchantment with dome and tower, church and college, school and house, hospital and asylums." Father De Smet was present and took an active part in the first Fort Laramie council of 1851, which resulted in the treaty of that year. He wrote the best account of this great event in Indian history. Although called ''The Fort Lara- mie Treaty" the council was held and the treaty made forty miles east of Fort Laramie in what is now Scotts Bluff Coun- ty, Nebraska. Here, on a vast plain where the waters of Horse Creek unite with those of the Platte, the tribes of the plains and the mountains met and for the first time made a FATHER DESMET 79 treaty with the United States, peace with each other and a division of the land among the tribes. This council lasted for eighteen days and was attended by over 10,000 Indians. Here Father De Smet was greeted by thousands whose homes he had visited; his advice was eagerly sought on the great questions before them and the rite of baptism was adminis- tered by him to 1586 Indians. The Sioux were always near the heart of Father De Smet. He admired their courage and independence. He sought to abate their cruelty. In a great speech to them he told how the Indians at the head of the Missouri had buried the hatchet and forsaken the white man 's firewater. He asked them to do the same. The head chief replied: ''Black-robe, I speak in the name of the chiefs and braves. The words you bring from the Master of Life are fair. We love them. We hear them to-day for the first time. " Black-robe, you are only passing by our land. To- morrow we will hear your voice no more. We shall be, as we have been, like the Wishtonwish (prairie dogs) who have their lodges in the ground and know nothing. "Black-robe, come and set up your lodge with us. We have bad hearts, but those who bring the good word have never got as far as to us. Come and we will listen and our young men will learn to have sense." Father De Smet's greatest service to Nebraska and the West occurred in 1868. For several years a bloody war had raged along the Sioux border. A peace commission had been sent from Washington to Fort Laramie with General Sher- man at its head. Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and other hostile chiefs had gone with several thousand followers into the wild region northwest of the Black Hills. At the request of the United States Father De Smet left his home at St. Louis and journeyed by steamboat up the Missouri River to Fort Rice near the mouth of Cannonball River in North Dakota. From here he set out alone with an interpreter and escort of Indi- 80 STORIES OF NEBRASKA INDIAN WELCOME TO FATHER DE SMET. (From Chittenden & Richardson's "Life, Letters & Travels of Father De Smet." Francis P. Harper, N. Y.) ans for the camp of the hostiles. He found these near the junction of the Powder and Yellowstone rivers. He was received joyfully by them and here on June 21st he held a great council with 5,000 hostile Sioux. Father De Smet was given a seat in the center near the two head chiefs Four Horns and Black Moon. His large white banner of peace was placed beside him. His own account says: "The council was opened with songs and dances, noisy, joyful and very wild, in which the warriors alone took part. Then Four Horns lighted his calumet of peace ; he presented it first solemnly to the Great Spirit, imploring his light and favor, and then offered it to the four cardinal points, to the sun and the earth, as wit- nesses to the action of the council. Then he himself passed the calumet from mouth to mouth. I was the first to receive it, with my interpreter, and every chief was placed according to the rank that he held in the tribe. Each one took a few puffs. When the ceremony of the calumet was finished, the head chief addressed me, saying, ' Speak, Black- robe, my ears are open to hear your words." The white haired missionary was then sixty-seven years old, with a face calm, mild and peaceful, which all loved to look upon. He spoke to the fierce Indians as to children, told them the terms of peace he brought them and pointed out the danger and folly of fighting the white man. At the close of his speech Chief Black Moon said: "We understand the words the Black-robe has spoken. They are good and full of truth. This land is ours. Here FATHER DsSMET 81 our fathers were born and are buried. We wish, like them, to live and to be buried here. We have been forced to hate the whites. Let them treat us like brothers and the war will cease. Let them stay at home. We will never go to trouble them. Thou, Messenger of Peace, hast given us a glimpse of a better future. Let us throw a veil over the past and let it be forgotten. Some of our warriors will go with you to Fort Rice to hear the words of the Great Father's commis- sioners. If they are acceptable peace shall be made." The other chiefs spoke in the same spirit and the second great treaty of Fort Laramie, that of 1868, was concluded. Father De Smet died May 23, 1873, at St. Louis. In his death the West lost a great missionary and explorer, and the Indians lost their best friend. QUESTIONS 1. How far has Father De Smet's prophecy, regarding Europe's poor, become true in Nebraska? 2. Explain why Father De Smet had so much influence over the Indians. 3. Did Chief Black Moon tell the truth in his speech? JOHN C. FREMONT ONE of the most noted names in the story of the West is that of John C. Fremont. He was sometimes called "The Pathfinder." Many years of his life were spent in exploring the plains and the mountains. He first became famous as leader of an exploring expedition which crossed Nebraska in 1842. Starting June 10th from the mouth of the Kansas River, he followed the Oregon Trail to the forks of the Platte. Here his party divided, one party going by way of the North Platte, the other by way of the South Platte, both meeting at Fort Laramie. From there Fremont fol- lowed the Oregon Trail to the South Pass and on August 15th climbed to the top of what has since been called Fremont 's Peak at the sum- mit of the Rocky Mountains. Coming down the Platte river in boats, Fremont 's party was wrecked in the great canyon of the Platte near where Cas- per, Wyoming, is located. Saving what they could they followed the Platte valley and reached the trading post of Peter A. Sarpy at Bellevue on October 1st. The next year on May 29th Fremont left the mouth of the Kansas River and took a more southerly route through north- ern Kansas, and on June 25th crossed into Nebraska in what is now Hitchcock County. After following the Republican valley for some days, he crossed to the South Platte and thence over the mountains to Salt Lake and California. Fremont saw the great future of the West more clearly than other explorers. He saw in Nebraska the rich soil, the 82 JOHN C. FREMONT JOHN C. FREMONT 83 abundant grass and the beautiful wild flowers. To his eyes this region looked like a garden, instead of a desert, as it had been represented by many. Nebraska probably owes its name to Fremont. In his report to the secretary of war, he calls our great central river by its Indian name Nebraska, or Flat Water, and the secre- tary of war afterwards suggested Nebraska as a good name for the new territory. Fremont believed in the future Pacific Railroad and tried to find an easy, natural route on which it might be built. He became senator from the new state of California in 1850, and candidate for President in 1856. He died July 13, 1890, hav- ing lived to see the western wilderness which he had explored filled with millions of people, great cities built on the plains and in the mountains and several Pacific railroads where he had dreamed of one. One of the most thriving cities of Nebraska proudly bears Fremont 's name. The great United States dam at the can- yon of the Platte River where Fremont and his party were wrecked in 1842 is called "The Pathfinder, " and great canals from its mighty reservoir carry the waters from the Rocky Mountains far out on the plains of western Nebraska, making them blossom everywhere in memory of this great explorer who had confidence in the development of the West. QUESTIONS 1. What did Fremont do for Nebraska? 2. Why did he see the future of this region more truly than other explorers? 3. Can you show that what we see in things reveals what we ourselves are? 4. Are you glad that our State was named Nebraska? Why? THE OVERLAND TRAILS EACH of the old overland trails which crosses Nebraska from the Missouri River to the mountains has a story. It is a story written deep in the lives of men and women, and in the record of the westward march of the American people. The story of these overland trails was also written in broad deep furrows across our prairies. Along these trails journeyed thousands of men, women and children with ox teams, carts, wheelbarrows, and on foot, to settle the great country be- yond. Over them marched the soldiers who built forts to protect the settlers. Then the long freighting trains loaded with food, tools and clothing passed that way. So there came to be great beaten thoroughfares one or two hundred feet wide, deeply cut in the earth by the wheels of wagons and the feet of pilgrims. The Oregon Trail was the first and most famous of these in Nebraska. It started from the Missouri River at Independ- ence, Missouri, ran across the northeast corner of Kansas and entered Nebraska near the point where Gage and Jeffer- son counties meet on the Nebraska-Kansas line. It followed the course of the Little Blue River across Jefferson, Thayer, Nuckolls, Clay and Adams counties, then across the divide to the Platte near the head of Grand Island in Hall County, then along the south side of the Platte through Kearney, Phelps, Gosper, and Dawson, to a point in Keith county about seven miles east of Big Springs, where it crossed the South Platte and continued up the south side of the North Platte through Keith, Garden, Morrill and Scotts Bluff counties, where it passed out of Nebraska into Wyoming. The beginnings of the Oregon Trail in Nebraska were made in 1813 by the little band of returning Astorians as they, leading their one poor horse, tramped their weary way 85 86 STORIES OF NEBRASKA down the Platte valley to the Otoe village where they took canoes for their journey down the river. These first Oregon Trailers left no track deep enough to be followed. They simply made known the way. After them fur traders on horseback and afoot followed nearly the same route. On April 10, 1830, Milton Sublette with ten wagons and one milch cow left St. Louis, and arrived at the Wind River Mountains on July 16th. They returned to St. Louis the same summer, bringing back ten wagons loaded with furs and the faithful cow which furnished milk all the way. Theirs were the first wagon wheels on the Oregon Trail across Ne- braska. The track they made from the mouth of the Kansas river up the valley of the Little Blue and up the south side of the Platte and North Platte was followed by others, and thus became the historic trail. Their famous cow, and the old horse which seventeen years before carried the burdens for the Astorians are entitled to a high place among the pioneers of the West. In 1832, Captain Bonneville, whose story is told by Wash- ington Irving, followed over Subletted trail from the Mis- souri River to the mountains. In the same year Nathaniel J. Wyeth following the same trail pushed through the South Pass in the mountains and on to Oregon, thus mak- ing an open road from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. With slight changes, this road remained the Oregon Trail through the years of overland travel. Every spring in May the long emigrant wagon trains left the Missouri River and arrived on the Pacific coast in November. It was a won- derful trip. Every day the train moved fifteen or twenty miles. Every night it camped. Every day there were new OLD FORT HALL ON THE OREGON TRAIL THE OVERLAND TRAILS 87 scenes and events. New friends were found among the travelers. Children were born on the way. There were weddings and funerals. It was a great traveling city mov- ing two thousand miles, from the river to the ocean. There are five periods in the story of the Oregon Trail. The first was the period of finding the way and breaking the trail and extends from the return of the Astorians in 1813 to the Wyeth wagons in 1832. The second period was that of the early Oregon migration and extends from 1832 to the discovery of gold in California in 1849. The third period was that of the rush for gold and extends from 1849 to 1860. During this period the Oregon Trail became the greatest traveled highway in the world, wider and more beaten than a city street and hundreds of thousands passed over it. The fourth period is that of the decline of the Oregon Trail and extends from 1860 to 1869. The fifth period, from 1869 to the present day, is witnessing its gradual effacement. The best brief description of the Oregon Trail is that of Father De Smet, who knew it well and tells of its appearance when first seen by him and his party of Indians from the Upper Missouri in 1851 : "Our Indian companions, who had never seen but the narrow hunting paths by which they transport themselves and their lodges, were filled with admiration on seeing this noble highway, which is as smooth as a barn floor swept by the winds, and not a blade of grass can shoot up on it on account of the continual passing. They conceived a high idea of the countless white nations. They fancied that all had gone over that road and that an immense void must exist in the land of the rising sun. They styled the route the 'Great Medicine Road of the Whites.' " In another place Father De Smet tells of the great govern- ment wagon trains he met on the Oregon Trail in 1858: "Each train consisted of twenty-six wagons, each wagon drawn by six yoke of oxen. The trains made a line fifty miles long. Each wagon is marked with a name as in the 88 STORIES OF NEBRASKA case of ships, and these names served to furnish amusement to the passers-by. Such names as The Constitution, The President, The Great Republic, The King of Bavaria, Louis Napoleon, Dan O'Connell, Old Kentuck, were daubed in great letters on each side of the carriage. On the plains the wagoner assumes the style of Captain, being placed in com- mand of his wagon and twelve oxen. The master wagoner is admiral of this little land fleet of 26 captains and 312 oxen. At a distance the white awnings of the wagons have the effect of a fleet of vessels with all canvas spread." The second important trail across Nebraska is the one EMIGRANT TRAIN CROSSING THE PLAINS which started from the banks of the Missouri River near Bellevue and Florence, followed up the north side of the Platte and North Platte to Fort Laramie, where it joined the older Oregon Trail. This was the route across Nebraska of the returning Astorians in 1813 and some of the early fur traders. The Mormons made this a wagon road in 1847 when their great company which wintered at Florence and Bellevue took this way to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. It was often called the Mormon Trail. Some of the immi- grants to Oregon and California went over this route and hence it is sometimes called the Oregon Trail or California Trail. There was less travel on this trail than on the one THE OVERLAND TRAILS 89 south of the Platte because there was more sand here. This north side trail ran through the counties of Douglas, Sarpy, Dodge, Colfax, Platte, Merrick, Hall, Buffalo, Dawson, Lincoln, Garden, Morrill and Scotts Bluff. The third celebrated trail across Nebraska was from the Missouri River to Denver and was called the Denver Trail. It had many branches between the Missouri River and Fort EZRA TRAIL Kearney. Near this point they united and followed up the south bank of the Platte to Denver. The route from Omaha to Denver was up the north bank of the Platte to Shinn 's ferry in Butler County where it crossed to the south side and continued up the river to Fort Kearney. There was also a road from Nebraska City up the south bank of the Platte, which was joined by the Omaha road after it crossed the river. It was called the Fort Kearney and Nebraska City Road. A new and more direct road was laid out in 1862 from Ne- braska City west through the counties of Otoe, Lancaster, Seward, York, Hall and Kearney. This was the shortest and best road to Denver. It was called the Nebraska City Cut-off. It became very popular and during the years from 1862 to 1869 was trav- eled by thousands of immigrants and freighters. Over the OREGON TRAIL MONUMENT AT KEARNEY 90 STORIES OF NEBRASKA Denver Trail went the Pike's Peak immigrants and the supplies and machinery for opening the mines in Colorado. After a few years the mail and stage coach and pony ex- press followed the immigrant and freight wagons along the Overland Trails. In 1850 the first monthly mail coaches began running from the Missouri River to Salt Lake and California. The hard winter of 1856-57 blocked this route for several months. The California mail coach was then placed on a southern route through Arizona but with the breaking out of the Civil War it was brought north again and in 1861 the first daily overland mail began running from the Missouri River to California. This mail at first started from St. Joseph. After a few months it ran from Atchison, join- ing the Oregon Trail a few miles south of the Nebraska state line and following it as far as the crossing of the South Platte near Julesburg, where it diverged making a new road, called the Central Route, through the mountains to Salt Lake City. This was said to be the greatest stage line in the world. From 1861 to 1866 daily coaches ran both ways except for a few months during the Indian war in 1864. Over this line also ran the pony express beginning April 3, 1860, and con- tinuing for eighteen months until the completion of the tele- graph line to San Francisco. The pony express was a man on horseback carrying a mail bag and riding as fast as the horse could run. As the horse and man, covered with dust and foam, dashed into a station another man on horseback snatched the bag and raced to the next station. So the bag of letters and dis- patches rushed day and night across the plains and moun- tains from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. The quickest time ever made by the pony express was in March, 1861, when President Lincoln's inaugural address was car- ried from St. Joseph to Sacramento, 1980 miles, in seven days and seventeen hours. The old overland trails fell out of use with the comple- tion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869. Short stretches THE OVERLAND TRAILS 91 from one settlement to another were used as roads but they were no longer the great highways of travel. The sunflower and tumble weed settled in their furrows and for many years these trails could be traced across Nebraska prairies by a wide ribbon. With passing years the break- ing plow ran its furrows across the furrows of the wagon wheels and the harrow and cultivator smoothed away their wrinkles until over a large part of our state the old overland trails can be traced only by the records of the early surveyors and the recollec- tions of the few old-timers. In the far western part of Nebraska, and especially along the course of "Mie Ore- gon Trail on the south side of the North Platte, the old wagon tracks still remain and the long ribbons of sunflowers still trace the routes of the old trails across our country. STONE MARKING OREGON TRAIL IN NEBRASKA. (From photograph by Roy Hindmarsh.) QUESTIONS 1. How is the best route for a road in a new country found? Will it keep near the streams or on the high land? 2. What differences in crossing from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean in the days of the Oregon trail and now? 3. Do the lines of railroad follow the overland trails in Nebraska? Why? 4. Can you find any traces of the early roads in your county? LONE TREE LONE TREE was a solitary cottonwood standing on the north side of , the Platte river about three miles south- west from where Central City now is. Its massive trunk, ten or twelve feet in circumference at the base, rose like a column fifty feet in the air and was crowned with spreading branches which in summer cast a grateful shade. It was a landmark which could be seen for twenty miles across the level Platte valley, and the early traveler, viewing it afar off, hastened to enjoy its protection and shade. The Indians knew the tree and named it long before the white men came. The legend is that their chiefs held coun- cil within its shade. The first white traveler up the Platte must have noticed it. The overland trail on the north side of the Platte ran within a few yards of the tree. The great emigrant trains made a camping ground near it and hundreds of those who passed that way carved their names in its tough bark, climb- ing higher each year to find room for new names and initials, until its rug- ged trunk was covered to the height of thirty feet with these inscrip- tions. Lone Tree ranch was established in 1858 LONE TREE MONUMENT. (From photo- at a little distance from graph by A. E. Sheldon.) the tree. Later the post office there and the Union Pacific station three miles away each bore its name. In 1865 a great storm laid the old landmark low, its strength having been sapped by 92 LONE TREE 93 the hundreds of sharp knives which carved its bark. Part of its trunk was taken to Lone Tree station, now called Central City. Here it stood on the depot platform until it was nearly all carried away in fragments by tourists. Thousands of travelers from the East and the West who crossed the plains in the early days keep the old tree in their memories, and the early pioneers in the Platte valley remem- ber it as a rare old friend. Though the old tree decayed un- til even its stump is gone, it still remains in the minds and hearts of the people who were gladdened by it as it stood, solitary and majestic, by the long, hard, lonely trail in those far away days. In the year 1911 the people of Merrick County, through their county board, voted the money to place a stone monu- ment made in the likeness of a cottonwood stump in the place where the Lone Tree once stood. There it stands to-day in perpetual witness to the worth of a tree. QUESTIONS 1. Do you know any lone tree? Are you fond of it? Why? 2. What makes us like especially well the lone tree of this story? 3. Were those who cut names in its bark kind to this splendid tree? Why? LOGAN FONTANELLE WHEN the white men first came to Nebraska to live, a hundred years ago, they found Indians everywhere. The Omaha Indians lived a little way from where the city of Omaha is located. One of the white men named Lucien Fontanelle, who came up the river from St. Louis to hunt and trade with the Indians for furs, built a log cabin on the bank of the Missouri River near the Omaha Indian village. He hunted and traded many years. He visited with the Omaha Indians very often and after a time he took an Omaha girl for his wife. They lived for many years more in the log cabin near the river bank. They had four children, who grew up tall and strong and spoke two languages one the Indian language which their mother knew and the other the French language, for their father was a Frenchman. They played all the summer long under the shade of the great trees which grew on the bank of the big river. Sometimes they went with their mother 's Indian people away across the prairies to hunt buffalo. Such sport as they had on these hunts ! In the fall they always came back to their home in the log cabin by the big river. One of the boys was named Logan by his father. He grew to be a very brave and handsome boy. He learned to speak English besides French and Omaha. When one of the old chiefs died, Logan, who was then a very young man, 94 LOGAN FONTANELLE LOGAN FONTANELLE 95 was made chief in his place. He was the first Indian chief in our state who could talk with the white men just as well as a white man and with the Indians just as well as an Indian. In 1854 when more white men began to come across the big river and wanted to buy part of the Indian land, Logan went to Washington with the other Indian chiefs, who were not able to talk in the white man 's tongue, and helped them to get as much for their land as they could. The Omaha Indians and the white men were always at peace, but there was war between the Sioux and the Omahas. In the summer of 1855 the Omaha Indians left their vil- lage by the big river to go out west to hunt buffalo. They went along the Elkhorn River for two or three days and then crossed the prairie toward the Platte. They were in what is now Boone County when the Sioux Indians suddenly came over the hills to fight. Then the Omaha women and children ran back to the camp as fast as they could, while Logan and several other Omaha Indians went out to fight the Sioux. Logan had a fine, new double-barreled rifle of which he was very proud. It would shoot a great deal farther than any other gun in the Omaha tribe. The Sioux had not seen a rifle that shot twice without loading and so were much sur- prised when they found . what Logan 's gun would do. Perhaps this is what cost Logan his life. He rode boldly out to- ward the Sioux and when they charged him he did not retreat but kept on shooting. Five or six of them mounted on their ponies made a rush at him. He killed three but the others came on and shot and scalped him. Then there was great sorrow in the camp of the Omahas. SITE OF FONTANELLE'S GRAVE NEAR BELLE- VUE . (From photograph by A. E. Sheldon . ) 96 STORIES OF NEBRASKA They gave up their buffalo hunt and sewed the body of Lo- gan in an elk skin and brought it on two ponies all the way back to the Missouri River. On the top of a little hill be- tween Omaha and Bellevue, from which one can look a long way up and down the river, they dug a grave and buried him. All the white men came to the funeral and were sad. All the Indians cried and mourned for many days. His grave is near the little tree which you can see in the picture. QUESTIONS 1. Can you find any part of Logan Fontanelle's name on the map of Nebraska? 2. Do you think Logan Fontanelle was more white man than Indian? Why? 3. Should the grave of Logan Fontanelle have a monument? THE MORMON COW IN the early days the Sioux Indians of the plains were firm friends of the white people. The first traders among them were welcomed as brothers. They left their goods piled in the open air in Sioux villages and found them safe on their return. The white men who made the first trails across Nebraska often found food and shelter .with the Sioux. The early emigrant trail wound for four hundred miles through the heart of the Sioux country. Over it went white men, singly and in companies, with ox-wagons, on foot, and 1 pushing wheelbarrows and no harm came to them from the Sioux. All this was changed in a single day. The Sioux became the fierce and bloody foes of the white men. War with the Sioux nation lasted thirty years. It cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars. The cause of this bloody war was a lame Mormon cow. On the 17th of August, 1854, a party of Mormon emi- grants on their way to Great Salt Lake were toiling along the Oregon Trail in the valley of the North Platte. They were in what was then Nebraska Territory, but is now about forty miles beyond the Nebraska state line and eight miles east of Fort Laramie, Wyoming. A great camp of thousands of Indians stretched for miles along the overland trail. They were the Brule, Oglala and Minneconjou bands the whole Sioux nation on the plains and were gathered to receive the goods which the United States had promised to pay them for the road through their land. Behind the train of Mormon wagons lagged a lame cow driven by a man. When near the Brule Sioux camp some- thing scared the cow. She left the road and ran directly into the Sioux camp. The man ran after her, but stopped 97 98 STORIES OF NEBRASKA after a few steps, fearing to follow her alone into a camp of so many Indians. He turned back to the overland trail and followed after the wagons, leaving the lame cow to visit the Sioux. In the Brule camp was a young Sioux from the Minnecon- jou, or Shooters-in-the-Mist, band. These were wilder than the other Sioux. The young Minneconjou killed the lame cow and his friends helped to eat her. The next day the Mormon emigrants stopped at Fort Laramie and complained to the commander there that they had lost their cow. On the morning of August 19th, Lieu- tenant Grattan and twenty-nine men with two cannon were sent from the fort to the Brule camp after the young Indian who had killed the cow. Lieutenant Grattan was a young man from Vermont, barely twenty-one years old, who had no experience with Indians. The great chief among the Sioux at that time was named The Bear. He had a talk with the lieutenant and said he would try to get the young Minneconjou to give himself up. It was a great disgrace for a free Indian of the plains to be taken to prison and the friends of the cow-killer would not let him go. The Bear then tried to have Lieutenant Grattan go back to the fort and let him bring in the young Minnecon- jou later. The lieutenant ordered his soldiers to run the two cannon to the top of a little mound, to point them on the Brule camp and told The Bear that he would open fire if the cow-killer was not given up at once. Pointing to the thou- sands of Indians, men, women and children, who were spread over the valley as far as eye could see, The Bear said, " These are all my people. Young man you must be crazy," and walked toward his lodge, while his warriors began to get their guns and bows. A moment later the two cannon and a volley of muskets were fired at the Sioux camp. The Bear was killed. A storm of Sioux bullets and arrows cut down Lieutenant Grattan and his men before they had time to reload their guns. THE MORMON COW 99 The Sioux camp went wild. The death of The Bear, the taste of white man 's blood set them crazy. Warriors mount- ed their ponies and rode about the field. The squaws tore down the tepees and packed them for flight. Some one called out to the Indians to take their goods which were in a storehouse near a trader 's post waiting for the United States officer who was coming to distribute them. The Sioux burst into the storehouse, tumbled the goods from the shelves, piled them on their ponies. There were two traders near by who were married to Indian women. Their friends hurried them out of sight to keep them from being killed by the furious warriors. Before sundown the Indians were rid- ing over the northern ridges by thousands, carrying away their plunder. They buried The Bear wrapped in richest buffalo robes in a high pine tree near the Niobrara River. From this burial the bands scattered over Nebraska, Wyo- ming and Dakota, urging Indians everywhere to kill the white men and to drive them from the country. Thus the Sioux war began. QUESTIONS 1. Ought the Indians to have given up the cow-killer? 2. What should Lieutenant Grattan have done? 3. Were the Indians or the white men to blame for bringing on the Sioux war? SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA THE South and North fell out over slavery in the new land of the West. The people of the South wanted the right to go west and take their slaves with them. The people of the North wanted none but free people in the West. In 1820 the North and South agreed that Missouri might be a slave state, but that there should be no slaves in what is now Nebraska and Kansas. This was called the Missouri Compromise. No one then lived in Nebraska but Indians and a few traders, trappers and soldiers. When it was time for Nebraska to be settled and to have a government there was another fierce falling out between the South and the North over slavery. This time a law was passed to the effect that the new land should be slave or free as the settlers voted. In Nebraska the people never voted for slavery, but people coming here from the South brought slaves with them. In 1855 there were thirteen slaves in Nebraska and in 1860 there were ten. Most of these were held at Nebraska City. Across the Missouri River at Tabor, Iowa, was a settle- ment of people called abolitionists, because they wished to abolish slavery. The " Underground Railroad" was the name given to the road taken by slaves from the South on their way through the North to Canada, where they were free. One branch of this road ran from Missouri through the cor- ner of Nebraska by way of Falls City, Little Nemaha, Camp Creek and Nebraska City to Tabor. The runaway slaves traveled at night along this road and were fed and hidden during the day by friends. At Falls City they were kept in a barn. John Brown came through this corner of Nebraska very often with slaves from Missouri whom he was helping to set free. He is the man of whom we sing 100 SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA 101 "John Brown's body lies a-mould 'ring in the grave, His soul is marching on!" In November, 1858, Eliza, a slave girl owned by Mr. S. F. Nuckolls at Nebraska City, ran away, and with her another slave girl. Mr. Nuckolls (after whom Nuckolls County was ACT ABOLISHING SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA. (Photo from original in Statehotise.) named) was very angry and offered $200 reward. With the aid of the United States marshal he began a search of the houses at Tabor for his slaves. The girls were not there, but one man whose house was being searched was struck on the head by an officer and badly wounded. For this Mr. Nuckolls had to pay $10,000 damages. Eliza escaped to 102 STORIES OF NEBRASKA Chicago, where she was arrested the next year and was about to be returned to her master when a mob rescued her and she was hurried over to Canada. Mr. Nuckolls sued sixteen Iowa people for helping Eliza to escape, but the war soon came on and he did not win his suit. The few slaves in Nebraska were hard to hold. On June 30, 1860, six slaves owned by Alexander Majors at Nebraska City ran away and never came back. On December 5, 1860, the sheriff of Otoe County sold at auction in the streets of Nebraska City one negro man and one negro woman, known as Hercules and Martha. This was the last of slavery in Nebraska, for in January, 1861, the legislature passed an act abolishing slavery in the territory. QUESTIONS 1. If the land in Nebraska belonged equally to all the United States which was right regarding its use, the South or the North? 2. Was it right for the northern people to help slaves to run away from their masters? 3. Would Nebraska to-day be a slave state if the southern people had been freely allowed to bring slaves here? TERRITORY THE first settlers in Nebraska found no corners nor lines marking the limits of their land. The early Indian traders, like Manuel Lisa and Henry Fontanelle, built their cabins and put in their crops wherever it pleased them, for all land lay open to their use. The early territorial pioneer of 1854 and 1855 staked out his own land, claiming what suited him best, and put up signs telling all who came that way what he claimed. The first Nebraska surveyor was Rev. Isaac McCoy, a Baptist mis- sionary who, in 1837, surveyed a line across the southeast corner of the state from the Little Nemaha River to the Great Nemaha River in what is now Richardson County. The land be- tween this line and the Missouri River was called the Half Breed Strip. It was to be the home of those who were part white and part In- dian. In later years there were many disputes over the location of this first Nebraska survey. Surveyors were needed as soon as Nebraska became a territory to divide the land into blocks marked with perma- 103 MAP SHOWING FIRST PLAN FOR NEBRASKA SURVEY 1854. (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) 104 STORIES OF NEBRASKA nent corners, so that each settler might know just where his land lay and the whole country might be made easy to map and easy to describe. The regular permanent survey of Nebraska into square blocks of land for people's homes be- gan in November, 1854. First a base line was measured west from the Missouri River 108 miles, with corner posts marking each mile. This line was ordered to be exactly on the 40th degree of latitude north from the equator, the divid- ing line between Nebraska and Kansas, but the first surveyor did not know his business and the line was crooked, some- times on one side of the 40th degree and sometimes on the other. So the next year this base line had to be re-surveyed, the first corners torn out and new ones put in. This new survey was made by Mr. Charles A. Manners. With the help of Captain Thomas J. Lee of the United States Army and the best instruments obtainable, very careful observations were made of the sun and the stars in order to find where the 40th degree of latitude fell on the west bank of the Missouri River. On this spot, on May 8, 1855, the surveyors put up a tall iron monument with the word "Nebraska" on one side and "Kansas" on the opposite side. This monument stands to- day on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri valley and is the starting point of all the Nebraska surveys. From this iron monument the base line was surveyed due west 108 miles. At this point another monument was put up. The line surveyed due north from here is called the sixth principal meridian of the United States surveys and is the "naming line" of all the land in Nebraska, for all deeds and patents to Nebraska land mention it. This line forms the western boundary of Jefferson, Saline, Seward, Butler, Colfax, Stanton and Wayne counties and extends through Cedar County to the northern boundary of the state. The orders for the survey of Nebraska called for a division of the land into blocks six miles square called townships. Each township was divided into blocks one mile square called sections. All the townships in Nebraska are numbered, be- THE SURVEYORS 105 ginning with number one at the base line and ending with number thirty-five at the northern boundary. Each row of townships stretching across the state from south to north is called a range. The ranges are counted from the sixth principal meridian, the first range of townships east being called range one east, the first range west being called range one west and so on. There are nine- teen ranges east and fifty-nine ranges west in Nebraska. At distances forty-eight miles east and west from the sixth principal meridian guide meridians were laid off. This was necessary because the surface of the earth is curved in- stead of flat. If you will take a ball and lay off its surface into square blocks of uniform size, as the survey- ors laid off the surface of the earth, you will see why these guide merid- ians were needed. In a similar way standard parallels were run at each interval of twenty-four miles north from the base line. The surveyors made the survey by running a line due north from the base line twenty-four miles, then due east forty- eight miles to the meridian. The block of land thus laid off was subdivided into townships and sections by marking the corners of each township and each section with stakes or stones set in a mound of earth and four holes dug so as to form a square figure with the mound in the center. In pioneer times, the gray wolf or the coyote sitting upon one of these mounds would howl through the long hours of the night. On the section line half-way between the section corners was placed what is called a " Quarter Stake." Beginning thus in the southeast corner of the state, the NEBRASKA-KANSAS MONU- MENT, STARTING POINT OF NEBRASKA SURVEYS. (Drawing by Miss Martha Turner.) K't Standard Parallel Ml I .301 I 291 K fan