History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 13

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120

USA > Nebraska > Gage County > History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time > Part 13

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HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

days, before starting on the war-path, the time being taken up with efforts to win the favour of Wa-con-da by chanting and drumming, is of great antiquity. On this occasion Wa-con-da failed to render protection, for the agent wrathfully descended on the band with his police and ordered their dispersal threatening imprisonment of their leader if he attempted to leave the reservation. The chiefs at once asked for a council and informed the agent that when a war-party had gone so far with the preliminaries they could not back out with- out disgrace, and that in order to look their friends in the face without shame it would be necessary to give them at least six ponies, and suggested that if the agent would give one they would make up the required number. This the agent refused to do, and the chiefs silently departed, but sent a messenger to inform the agent that they had bought the war-party off with ponies.

The medicine-bag, a bundle about two feet in length, containing a mysterious assortment of relics and charms, held an important place in what might be termed the religious psychol- ogy of the Otoes. In some mysterious way it was supposed to invite the presence or favour of Wa-con-da. There was usually one of these mysterious bundles suspended in every large lodge and all were supposed to be of great antiquity, having been handed down from generation to generation. Some of them were decorated with the scalps of enemies slain in battles fought so long ago that even tradition failed to recall their story. There was no tincture of idolatry connected with these objects; they were venerated very much as shrines have been venerated by Christians and were carried by war parties in a belief that Wa-con-da, the Great Medicine (Mystery), would favour them with his protecting pres- ence.

The Otoes and Missouris believed in a uni- versal immortality that included not only hu- man souls but also spirits of all animals. They believed that a pony, strangled by the side of its owner's grave at the time of his burial, ac- companied him as a spirit steed to the land of the immortals, and that a dog strangled be-

side the grave of a little child afforded it com- pany and protection. It was not until 1870- 1871 that Agent Green succeeded in abolishing the practice of strangling ponies, but the strangling of dogs was permitted to continue during the Indians' sojourn in the county. It was not an uncommon sight to see the body of a dog, dried to a mummy, standing in an up- right position with its back to a stake, to which it was tightly bound by a raw-hide thong passed around its throat.

The Otoes used no coffins, but placed their dead in a sitting posture in graves that were only about four feet in depth with an opening at the top only large enough to admit the body, - the cavity being from three to four feet in width at the bottom. The relatives, having taken a final farewell of the dead, all joined in loud wailing, while the old women, whose province it was to dig graves and conduct burials, placed a layer of heavy sticks and a buffalo robe or blanket over the mouth of the grave and piled the excavated earth upon it. If a pony was to be strangled, a saddle and bridle was usually put beside its owner in the grave, and the chosen animal, having been decorated with hand-marks of vermillion, was led to the grave-side with a lariat looped around its neck in a manner easily to produce strangulation when a squaw at each end pulled with all her strength. The pony having fallen beside the grave was allowed to remain there until dogs and wild animals had consumed its flesh ; the skull was then placed as a decoration on the top of the mound, and its tail or a por- tion of the mane attached to a pole planted at the side of the grave. A well authenticated instance of the burial alive of an old man, with the body of his grandchild, occurred a few years prior to 1869. The story, as related by Battiste Deroin, was a very sad and pathetic one. It appears that the old man was greatly attached to the child and when it died was in- consolable; his feeble condition indicated that his own departure was not far distant, and it was in accordance with his own desire that he was placed in the grave with the little one in his embrace, that he might be its caretaker and companion through the wilderness that all

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

must cross in order to reach the land of eternal rest. Food was placed beside him and the wailing sounded afar, as his kinsmen bade him farewell and the heavy earth was mounded above his head.

The Otoes did not always bury their dead, especially when the ground was deeply frozen. One of the strangest sights to be seen upon the reservation consisted of two ancient oaks, standing within a few feet of each other, the

nited and with their gruesome burden com- pletely destroyed. What was probably the last instance of such disposal of the dead oc- curred during the winter of 1870, when the writer discovered the recently placed body of a child securely wrapped and tied far out on the limb of a very tall tree that stood on the bank of the Blue at a point about a mile south of the present town of Wymore.

The first mercantile establishment in the

Old Burial Place

With and Funeral Trees

the Otoe

OLD BURIAL PLACE AND FUNERAL, TREES OF THE OTOES

limbs and forks of which were laden with the mummified remains of men women and chil- dren, each wrapped in skins, old blankets, bark, etc., and bound with raw hide thongs so se- curely that the most violent storms had never been able to dislodge them. The trees stood at the foot of a low bluff near the principal Indian burial ground, and at a point nearly midway between the present town of Barnes- ton and Plum creek. During the fall of 1872 a great prairie fire swept the river bottom and there being much tall grass and dry trash be- neath the partly decayed oaks, they were ig-

county was on Plum creek, at a point about a mile west of the present town of Liberty, where, in a log cabin, one Gideon Bennett, an Indian trader, sold beads, calico and other In- dian goods, taking in exchange furs and buf- falo robes, as well as crediting the heads of families against the forthcoming annuity pay- ments. The business afterward passed into the hands of Macdonald, of St. Joseph, who, in 1869, engaged Mrs. David Palmer to con- duct the store. She understood and talked the Indian language and dealt fairly with the Indians. Mrs. Palmer and her husband were

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among the first settlers of the county and were typical pioneers. David was a stalwart moun- tainer, inured to hardships; the advantages of an education had been denied him, but the book of nature was ever open to his under- standing. Mrs. Palmer was in many respects a remarkable woman, energetic and trust- worthy in conducting Macdonald's business and quick to acquire a knowledge of the Otoe language that enabled her to transact business without an interpreter. As illustrating the versatility of her talents, the writer has in his possession a pair of heavy, gauntleted driving gloves made from a beaver skin that he ob- tained from an Otoe, - the palms and fingers being of deer skin, the cutting, fitting, and stitching all being the work of her hands and equal to any that are offered for sale. The vicinity of the store was settled by families from Tennessee, some of whom tried raising cotton, but soon discovered that the climate was not very well adapted to it ; some of them did their own spinning and weaving of a sort of cloth, having brought the necessary appa- ratus with them from Tennessee. The writer remembers to have seen men's clothing made from this homespun cloth.

It was during the time that Bennett con- ducted the store on Plum creek that a band of Pawnees made a raid upon it. They had spent a part of the night watching for an op- portunity to seize Otoe ponies, but finding them too securely corralled and guarded, had broken into the store instead. Naturally Ben- nett supposed that a party of Otoes must have been guilty of the affair, but investigation at the agency proved that such was not the case. The Otoes were greatly excited. and their po- lice were not long in discovering the trail of the robber band which they followed swiftly, overtaking them on the Little Blue, some rniles above the present site of Fairbury. In the fall of 1869 the writer, while accompanying the Otoes on a hunt, encamped for a night near the spot where this encounter took place, at which time fragments of skulls and bones were found among the briars and underbrush that covered the spot where the Pawnees were overtaken. The Otoes claimed to have killed the entire party.

We have already referred to the hereditary hostility that existed between these Indians and the Osages, - a hostility that is known to have existed as far back as 1720, if the writ- ings of Spanish friars can be depended upon, and which appears to have been kept alive through all the intervening years, resulting it! frequent ventures upon the war-path, re- prisals for ponies stolen and sometimes in bloodshed. The last raid made by Osage warriors upon the Indians of Gage county oc- curred in the fall of 1868; it resulted in the killing of a number of Otoe women who were at work at some distance from the village, all of whom were scalped and otherwise mu- tilated. The Osages were a powerful tribe as compared with the Otoes, but a party of Otoe braves at once prepared to take the war-path against them, determined either to inflict retri- bution or exact reparation. Having invoked the favour of Wa-con-da by chanting, drum- ming, and wailing, in a tepee apart from the village, the party set out on their perilous un- dertaking. They had been gone many days and great suspense and anxiety was felt in regard to them when a messenger, announcing their approach with a great herd of ponies, arrived at the village. The greatest excitement and rejoicing ensued ; heralds cried the news from one end of the village to the other, and the women and children stationed themselves on the tops of the lodges in order to get a view of the returning war party as it approached in the distance. Soon, with beating drum and loud war whoops, they filed into the village. with a string of eighty ponies following in- their train. Of these eighty ponies, it ap- pears that forty had been given by the Osages on presentation of the peace-pipe at a parley held at the Osage village, the other forty had been stolen from the Osages the following night. A great war dance followed ; the story of bravery and daring was loudly shouted by the heralds; feasting and rejoicing continued far into the night, but through it all a sense of hovering danger disquieted the old men of the tribe who were too well acquainted with the- ways of the Osages to doubt for a moment that their painted warriors would lose little time in exacting reparation. Measures were-

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HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

at once taken to guard against a surprise raid. All ponies were securely corralled within the village every night and kept under watch both night and day.

It was during this period of fear and sus- pense, which extended into the summer of 1869, that the Pottawattamies turned a rather neat trick on the Otoes. A war-party of Pottawattamies had made a raid upon the Omahas and with thirty head of stolen ponies were on their homeward way, when, in order to mislead the Omahas and throw suspicion upon the Otoes, should the Omahas follow their trail, they made a detour through the Otoe reservation, passing in the night as near the village as possible without discovery by the Otoes. The war-party of thirty Omaha braves who a few days later, following their trail, naturally concluded that their ponies had been stolen by the Otoes and that the right thing to do would be to recoup themselves from the Otoe herds. Cautiously reconnoit- ering during the small hours of the night, they were greatly astonished at the unusual pre- cautions that the Otoes had taken to protect their ponies from theft, not being aware of their recent trouble with the Osages. The ponies belonging to each family were enclosed in pens of heavy wickerwork close to the lodge entrance and from sunset until day- break a watchman was on guard.

The Omaha braves, secreted in the tall sun- flowers and wild hemp that formed a rank growth in the vicinity of the lodges and cor- ralls, received no attention from the Indian dogs, though if a white man had so hidden they would have announced his presence in the noisiest manner. Slowly the hours passed until, with the first streaks of dawn, the watchmen retired and then with swift move- ments the silent forms of thirty nearly naked men cut the withes of bark that held the wickerwork and poles of the corralls in place, each seized a choice animal, mounted it, and all rode swiftly away. The noise of clattering hoof-beats awakened the drowsy Otoes who came swarming from their lodges, sure that the feared and hated Osages had visited them at last. It was soon found that thirty head

of the very best ponies were missing. In a very short time the women and children of the village were standing on the lodges gazing afar off on the prairie where a long line of Otoe horsemen were swiftly following the trail of the stolen ponies. By noon the thieves had been overtaken and found to be Omahas instead of Osages. The entire party were taken prisoners and brought to the agency ; all were in war paint and heavily armed, each man having, besides a bow and quiver of ar- rows, a heavy revolver of the type used by cavalrymen during the Civil war. The leader carried a war-drum which the writer still re- tains as a memento of the occasion. Having disarmed them as they entered the council room in charge of the Indian police, all were seated on the floor while their leader and other principal men of the party were called upon to state the circumstances of their visit. The Otoes had been furiously angry at first, but on learning all the facts connected with the affair were rather inclined to view it as a "comedy of errors" and, on advice of the agent, smoked the pipe of peace with the cap- tured men and invited them to partake of food, as they were nearly starved. They had traveled from their village one hundred and fifty miles away, afoot, expecting to return on horseback, but the fortunes of war compelled them to return as they came. The only blood shed upon their war-path was that of a hog belonging to Elijah Filley, whose farm lay in their course. Elijah brought the bloody ar- row to the agency as evidence of what he sup- posed to have been an Otoe depredation.

The success of the Omaha raiders in taking ponies from the corralls did not lessen the feeling of uneasiness and dread that was felt in the direction of the Osages. In fact the expectation of an Osage attack kept the Otoes on the anxious seat until the spring of 1870, when Agent Green called a council and an- nounced to the chiefs his intention of making an everlasting peace between the tribes. He informed them that he should at once invite the Osages to send representatives to a settle- ment of all differences; that forty head of ponies should be delivered to them, that being

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HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

the number stolen ; and that the war-path be- tween the Otoes and the Osages should be for- ever ended. In due course of time a band of Osage chiefs and braves, gorgeously painted and befeathered, arrived at the agency; a council was held and many speeches in both the Otoe and Osage language were made; the great red-stone peace pipe was smoked by all as it passed from hand to hand. The agent, whom the Indian chiefs always addressed as "Un-koe" (my father) when they were as- sembled in council, then emphasized the im- portance of at once forever ending a custom that civilization would no longer tolerate. All agreed that the words of the father were good, - a great feast followed the adjournment of the council, and the Osage warriors departed, leaving behind them a sense of peaceful se- curity that the Otoes had not known for many long years.

After the destruction of the old mission building some years elapsed before any at- tempt was again made to educate the Indian children. During the fall and winter of 1869 cottonwood and walnut logs were cut and the saw mill was kept busy preparing lumber for a school house and other needed buildings. A large one-story school building was completed in 1870 and all Indian children of school age were required to attend, attendance being made compulsory. Commencing with the fall of 1869 clothing of all kinds for children was abundantly furnished by the Indian Aid As- sociation of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, consequently the school children were all well clothed for the first time in their lives. The school was supplied with com- petent teachers from the start, - women whose faithful services entitle their names to landatory mention in any historical account of our county's Indian population. Miss Maria VanDorn and Mrs. Nannie Armstrong were Virginians, while Mrs. Sallie Ely and Miss Elizabeth Walton were from Philadelphia. All were faithful and efficient workers in educational lines as well as in attending to the needs of the sick and aged, in distributing clothing, and in advising the Indian women in regard to sanitary living. Miss Phebe Oliver,

a graduate of the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, came to the agency as resident physician in 1870. She was very successful in the treatment of diseases of children, the prevalence of which diseases had caused many deaths previous to her arrival. Up to this time the Otoes had relied wholly on their own methods of treatment, the basic principle of which was the prevention of interference by evil spirits. Every case of. sickness was supposed to result in accordance with the will of an evil spirit or influence that, unless frightened away, will interfere with the action of medicine and render a cure impossible. The course usually adopted in the case of desper- ate wounds or severe injuries was to shake rattles and to dance around the patient for six days and nights, fresh dancers taking the place of others from time to time. In the case of a sick or wounded horse a different method was pursued. At each administration of medicine or treatment of a wound a different colored blanket was placed upon the animal, the sup- position being that this would confuse or de- ceive the bad spirit that interfered with the curative process, so that it would be likely to pass without recognizing the animal.

As illustrative of Otoe methods in the suc- cessful treatment of a case that the agent and his employes all considered hopeless, that of Roc-co a young brave whose skull had been split by an axe so that a portion of the brain exuded, deserves recording in these pages. It seems that Roc-co was sitting on the ground close to where his wife was cutting down a tree, when her axe slipped or glanced and cut deeply into the top of his head. The horrified woman, believing that she had killed him and knowing that his blood relatives would lose no time in taking her life for his, at once fled and secreted herself in some far-off fastness. The unconscious Roc-co was found in due time and! borne to the agency. It was the opinion of all the white employes that he could survive but a short time and that he would never re- gain consciousness. Dr. Oliver not yet having arrived upon the reservation, the Otoe doctors begged for permission to try their skill upon him, which the agent granted. He was then.

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HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

taken to his own lodge and laid upon the ground with his head near a fire, beside which an Otoe drum was continuously beaten and around which a circle of Indians danced, each shaking a gourd rattle, the noise of which, to- gether with the monotonous chanting of the relays of dancers, was kept up for six days and nights. At intervals one of the dancers stepped from the circle and taking a mouthful of a dark liquid sprayed it upon the wound. Whether it was the alternate moistening of the wound with the liquid and drying by the warmth of the fire, or the incessant noise, acting curatively in awakening dormant faith, no one can tell, but the fact remains that after six days the tribe assembled to see him led forth, pale as a ghost, tottering and leaning on a staff. His complete recovery was a mat- ter of only a few weeks.

In the meantime diligent search had been made for Roc-co's wife, and she was very liable to perish from cold and hunger, the nights being cold and she very thinly clad. It was many days before a trace of her could be found and when at last, emaciated and worn out with anguish and physical suffering, she was found in some far off ravine, the news of her husband's survival and possible recov- ery came to her as a message of great joy. She had carefully evaded and eluded all searching parties, supposing their intention was to put her to death.

Among the Otoes the doctors were usually women, whose duty it was to dig the grave and bury a patient whom they failed to cure, such termination of a case entitling them to act as administrators of the personal estate of the deceased, most of which became their perquisites. Bleeding and blistering were re- sorted to for many pains and aches. The bleeding was done by scarifying the spot in which the pain centered and then using a sort of a suction cup made from the horn of a young buffalo, the small end of which had been perforated. The blistering was a cruel infliction usually applied on the breasts of chil- dren by inserting a piece of dry pitch in a small cut and igniting it. As several such torches were scattered over a child's breast and burned

down until large blisters were produced, one can imagine the agony the little patients had to endure.

An ancient Indian custom, that survived until 1871-1872, was pony-giving and pipe- dancing. The Iowas, Omahas, and Otoes had always been on visiting terms, and always owed each other visits, in order to get back as many ponies as had been given or more. It was nothing unusual for the Otoes to give from twenty-five to fifty head of ponies to a visiting band. A man's reputation for courage and his standing in the tribe was largely de- pendant on the number of ponies he had given away during his lifetime. In almost every lodge there was conspicuously displayed a bundle of small painted sticks, each of which represented a pony that the owner of the lodge had given away on the occasion of a pipe- dance. The larger the bundle the greater the honor due its possessor. The daughter of a man whose display of painted sticks indicated his having given away many ponies was en- titled to bear the "Kra-kah" mark, -a blue spot tattooed midway between the eye brows. The possession of such a beauty-spot was evi- dence that she was the daughter of a very brave and honorable personage. Agent Green found that pipe-dancing and tribal visits with pony giving were very detrimental to the tribe's advancement toward a more civilized condition. They were customs that had been in vogue for untold centuries and were among the strongest ties binding the tribes to a past age of barbarism. At a conference of United States Indian agents, held in Omaha in 1870- 1871, he advocated a concerted action on the part of all the agents in the superintendancy, in putting a stop to tribal visiting, pipe-danc- ing and pony-giving. Each agent present agreed no longer to permit his Indians either to go on a pipe-dance visit, or to receive a visiting band from another tribe. It required. some time for the tribes to reconcile them- selves to this abandonment of what for cen- turies had been one of their chief sources of pleasure and excitement, and it was not until after a few visiting bands had been sent to their homes pony-less that the custom was re-

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HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

luctantly abandoned. The conclusion of a permanent peace with the Osages and the dis- continuance of frequent tribal visits with their attendant excitement rendered it less difficult to induce the Indians to live in the small frame houses that the agent was building for them, and to cultivate the land.

Gradually the men were induced to wear the clothing furnished by the Indian Aid Asso- ciation, though many of the older men could never be persuaded to wear trousers and often mutilated or destroyed a new pair of trousers in order to use the legs as leggings; they ob- jected to the rest of the garment for the rea- son that it made the lower part of the body too warm. Efforts were made by the ladies of the agency to introduce the use of soap and towels into the domestic economy of the Otoe lodges, and considerable quantities of these were sup- plied by the Indian Aid Association, all of which the Indians gladly received and at once established a lively commerce with their white neighbors, supplying them with soap and tow- els in exchange for fresh pork, chickens, but- ter, and other edibles. On one occasion the Indian Aid Association sent a very large box containing enough gay creations of the millin- er's art to supply every woman in the tribe witlı a flower or feather bedecked headpiece, either a hat or a bonnet. The next day the young braves of the tribe had bedecked themselves with the whole of this supply of gay milli- nery ; the women had no use for it.

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History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 13

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849- Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company Number of Pages: 1120

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120