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 2

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 2

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this tremendous activity and of these vague longings and dreams of national aggrandize- ment, came Columbus home from the voyage into the unknown, with almost incredible tales of golden islands beyond the furthest rim of the western sea. The vast evolution which was rapidly bringing freedom to mankind throughout western Europe had already pre- pared maritime nations to a large extent for the discovery of a new world, and, as if by the intervention of Providence itself, this great event was made to serve as an outlet for their highest ambitions.

It is foreign to the aim and purpose of this history to narrate in detail the great work of discovery, exploration, and coloni- zation of America which followed its dis- covery by Columbus. We know that for years Spain led the other nations in the num- ber, extent, and value of her enterprises. In less than forty years after the death of the great Admiral, she had established her hold on the West Indies by right of discovery, and had grasped by the bloody hand of conquest Mexico, Central America, the isthmus of Panama, the isthmus of Darien, and the con- tinent of South America - a domain which in natural resources rivalled continental Europe, and which for unbroken centuries poured a golden stream into her national treasury. In addition to all this, she claimed Florida by right of its discovery, on Easter Day, 1512, by the aged cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, sailing in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, and she laid claim also to the basin of the Mississippi, on account of the discovery of that historic stream by Hernando de Soto, in 1541, and its exploration in part by him and the wandering remnant of his followers after he had sunk to rest in its mighty flood. With more or less definiteness, Spain asserted for centuries proprietary rights in the whole of North America, on account of the achieve- ments of Columbus and those Spanish navi- gators who followed him.

But her rivals, and particularly England and France, were quick to perceive the tremendous possibilities involved in the possession of lands in the western hemisphere, where, at almost

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

a single bound and at a trifling cost in money and life, national wealth, national resources. and territorial dominion might be immeasur- ably increased.

Thus it came about that in 1498, when Columbus, looking westward from the island of Trinidad, saw the shores of South America, Sebastian Cabot, sailing under a commission from Henry VII of England, discovered and explored the eastern portion of North America from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, thereby affording ground for Eng- land's claim to all portions of the continent of North America from the middle shore of the Atlantic ocean to the crest of the Alleghany mountains.

Francis I, King of France, early in the six- teenth century, turned his attention to discov- ery, exploration, and colonization in the New World. In 1524 John Varrazani, a Floren- tine in the service of France, sailed from the shores of Europe with four vessels, in search of an all-water route to Asia. Directing his course nearly to the west, on the 7th of March he discovered the main land of the continent, in the latitude of Wilmington, North Caro- lina. He explored this coast from one hun- dred and fifty miles south of Wilmington to the remotest point of New England, reaching Newfoundland in the latter part of May. In July he returned to France and published an account of his wonderful voyage, which at- tracted wide attention, but ten years were suffered to elapse before another effort was made to repeat his experiment. Beginning with 1534, French navigators, aided by their government, flocked across the Atlantic, ex- plored the eastern coast of the great northern continent, circumnavigated Newfoundland, en- tered the gulf of St. Lawrence and ascended the noble St. Lawrence river. They founded scores of towns, including Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), Quebec, and Mon- treal. French adventurers, trappers, hunters, penetrated the wilderness to the Great Lakes ; black-robed French missionaries preached the gospel over wide areas to savage tribes by lake and stream far into the interior. No fairer pages of history can be found than

those which record the exploration and settle- ment of New France, as the French posses- sions in North America came to be known. From the early part of the sixteenth century to the latter part of the seventeenth century, this work went continually forward. It was closed by the rediscovery of the Mississippi river by Joliet and his companian, the heroic Jesuit missionary, Father Marqette, in 1673. and by the exploration of that mighty stream from the Illinois to its mouth by La Salle, in 1682.

The name of Robert Cavalier de La Salle will be forever spoken with respect by every man who is at all conversant with his daring and adventurous achievements. No more con- spicuous name adorns the annals of colonial history in North America. Amidst the vacillat- ing and shifting policy of Louis XIV and his ministers with respect to the French posses- sions in the New World, where much was promised and little done, La Salle, with the prevision of genius and great statesmanship, saw more clearly than any other man of his race that the road to empire for France lay in the lakes, rivers, savannahs, and wildernesses of North America. Not only was the prevision of empire his but he possessed also the imagin- ation to conceive and the power and will to put into execution the plans which should have been the colonial policy of France from the first. La Salle was a Norman, born at Rouen in 1643; he was educated by the Jesuits, with whom he spent ten years as a student and from whom he acquired a habit of rigorous abstrac- tion. Abnormally reticent about himself and his work, he made few close friends and many bitter enemies. He was persistent, active, de- termined, and brave to a fault. In 1660 he left France for Canada. By that time the French possessions in North America had be- come known to the world as New France and comprised the entire basin of the St. Law- rence river, the Great Lakes region, Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and that part of Maine lying in the basin of the St. Lawrence. To the vain and licentious Louis XIV New France offered but a small and unpromising field for the display of his glory and power

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

and the gratification of his ambitions. It cost money to colonize, defend, and develop the distant province, and Louis was wasting his resources and exhausting the nation in deso- lating wars with England and the Holy Alli- ance. He had at last been prevailed upon to send to New France, in 1672, the ablest and most disinterestedly patriotic of all French governors, Count Louis de Frontenac, who, like La Salle, foresaw the approaching strug- gle for the continent between Protestant Eng- land and Catholic France, and was, like him, gifted with the prevision of empire in the New World.

On arriving in Canada, La Salle settled on an estate nine miles below Montreal, on the St. Lawrence. Here he came in contact with roving bands of Iroquois, who told him of a mighty river, far to the west, which rose in their country, flowed westward and he who followed its course for nine months, entered a wide sea. They called this river Ohio, mean- ing probably to include with it the Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to the gulf. La Salle pondered this important information. Like other explorers, he was imbued with the idea of discovering an all-water route to India ; and he argued that the discovery of this stream might enable him to reach the Pacific, whose waves he knew in their far course broke on the distant shores of Cathay. With a few Franciscan monks, known as seminary priests, and some men at arms, with the aid of Frontenac, he organized an expe- dition to explore the region of country west of the Alleghanies, drained, as he believed, by the river described by the Iroquois. Little is known of this venture into the wilderness be- yond the fact that the expedition reached the Ohio and descended its course as far at least as Louisville, Kentucky. In 1670 we hear of La Salle again wandering amongst the forests that border the Illinois and exploring the region drained by that stream, but again he stopped short of the great river.

Fort Frontenac had been erected near the outlet of Lake Ontario, on its northern shore, and here in 1678, La Salle was in command of this, the most advanced military outpost of

New France. In this environment this re- markably grave, solitary, thoughtful man ruled with absolute authority over a wide region of country. His days were spent amongst the Indians, half-breeds, traders, trappers, voyageurs, and couriers de bois (rangers of the woods), harkening to their strange tales of the wilderness and prairies, of river and lakes, Indian tribes, and the wild life of the woods and plains. Slowly, slowly, he matured the great design of uniting by a bold stroke these unknown and unexplored wilderneses to New France, thereby laying the foundation for a French empire in the New World. La Salle knew that Joliet and the black-robed priest Marquette had in 1673 rediscovered the Mississippi river under In- dian guidance, by following the course of the Wisconsin, and had paddled down the great river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, leaving the question of its ultimate termina- tion still in doubt. By some of his associates it was thought that the Mississippi flowed into the Pacific ocean, others that it discharged its waters into the Atlantic, and some that the gulf of Mexico received its mighty flood. The determination of this vital question was in La Salle's mind the first step toward empire. Resigning his command at Fort Frontenac, he applied for a commission from the king to explore the vast unknown region lying south and west of Canada and the Great Lakes, but such were the difficulties and hardships which he encountered that four years expired after receipt of his commission before he was able to undertake the great adventure. In Febru- ary, 1682, with a small fleet of canoes, and accompanied by about thirty Frenchmen and a band of Indians from western Canada, La Salle descended the tranquil Illinois. His course was impeded at first by floating ice, but at Peoria lake he struck clear water, and on the 6th day of February, 1682, the small flo- tilla of canoes issued upon the bosom of the mighty Mississippi.

Without a moment's hesitation, the canoes were pointed with the swift current and the momentous voyage which was to determine the course of the Mississippi was begun. The

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

party floated and paddled rapidly down its current, traveling only by daylight. Day by day they drifted swiftly, almost silently, to- ward unknown destinies. Slowly the mysteries of the New World unrolled before them like a scroll. The winter passed into spring, and in the bright sunlight and drowsy atmosphere they saw the tender foliage clothe again the wilderness. They passed numerous Indian vil- lages, some of which they visited, and where they occasionally spent the night. Not infre- quently they encountered Indians in huge war canoes, but, avoiding all hostile encounters, they drifted on and on toward their objective - the mouth of the Mississippi. They noted the steady trend of the river, through dense forests, swampy cane-brakes, wild-rice fields that lay along the shore, ever toward the south. Doubt finally dissolved into certainty ; they knew that it led on through semi-tropical lands to the heaving billows of the gulf of Mexico. On the 6th day of April, 1682, ex- actly two calendar months since they had em- barked on the river, they reached its delta, where its mighty flood divides into three chan- nels. Directing D'Autray to follow the east- most channel with some of the canoes, the Count Henry Tonty the middle channel, La Salle himself descended the western pass- age. Slowly paddling down these waterways, they noted soon the odor of brine in the fresh- ening breeze and suddenly before these keen- eyed voyageurs the tumbling billows of the gulf of Mexico came into view.

Proceeding along the marshy shore, La Salle picked up one after another the canoes of his party and, assembling his followers on a dry spot of land a short distance above the mouth of the river, he caused a column of wood to be made on which he inscribed the following : "Louis the Great, King of France and of Navarre, King. April 9th, 1682."

Then marshaling his men at arms, amidst the fire of musketry, the shouts of "Vive le Roy" and the chanting of the Te Deum by the priests, while the Indian braves and their squaws looked wonderingly on, La Salle plant- ed the column in its place. Standing near it

he then in a loud voice delivered a proclama- tion, of which the following is part :

In the name of the most high, mighty, in- vincible and victorious prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God king of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I this ninth day of April, one thousand six hundred eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of his majesty which I hold in my hand and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken and do now take, in the name of his ma- jesty and of his successors to the crown, possession of this country of LOUISIANA, the seas, harbors, bays, ports, adjacent straits and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers within the extent of the said LOUISIANA.

Thus the great basin of the Mississippi river came under the scepter of Louis XIV, the most dissolute monarch of Europe, and thus at the word of a single daring explorer, standing on the lonely delta of that great river, the territory of Louisiana, out of which came Nebraska, was called into exis- tence, a territory which comprised vast and unknown regions of dense forests, rich savannahs, sunbaked plains, apparently limit- less prairie, watered by a thousand streams. peopled only by savage Indian tribes, the abode of buffalo and other wild denizens of the for- est and plain; a territory which stretched from the pure springs of the far north whose confluent streams form the source of the mighty Father of Waters, to the hot marshy borders of the gulf of Mexico, and from the low-wooded crests of the Alleghanies on the east to the river of palms, the bold, naked peaks of the Rocky mountains and the sources of the Missouri of the west.

The New France of Robert Cavalier de La Salle and of Frontenac, comprising Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the region of the Great Lakes and the territory of Louis- iana, has long since been lost to its founders, but the memory of that glorious empire plant- ed in the wilderness of North America, with incredible hardships and labors which only men of heroic mo'd could have endured, still survives to animate the souls of the thought- ful and the hearts of the daring.

CHAPTER II

TERRITORY OF LOUISIANA

AS PART OF NEW FRANCE - ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT BY LA SALLE - HIS ASSASSINATION - EFFECT OF EXTENSION OF NEW FRANCE TO MISSISSIPPI BASIN - FRANCE LOSES HER COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA - RETROCESSION BY CHARLES V- AMERICAN OPPOSITION - JEFFERSON AND THE TREATY OF ILDEFONSO - JEFFER- SON'S AIMS CONCERNING LOUISIANA AND THE MISSISSIPPI - THREAT OF AL- LIANCE WITH ENGLAND - ALARM OF NAPOLEON BY THREAT OF WAR - LIVINGSTON ADMONISHES TALLEYRAND - ARRIVAL OF MONROE -

CESSION TO THE UNITED STATES - PRICE - POPULATION - IGNORANCE OF AMERICA CONCERNING NEW PURCHASE - EXPLORATIONS OF LEWIS AND CLARK

The history of Nebraska may properly be said to begin with the voyage of the heroic La Salle in 1682. An historical sequence of events leads the mind steadily forward from his dis- coveries till, by well defined processes of dif- ferentiation and elimination, a point is reached where the commonwealth of Nebraska stands forth clearly defined in the mighty sisterhood of states which comprise the North American republic.

In a comparatively short time after its dis- covery the vast territory of Louisiana became linked to Canada and the other French posses- sions in North America as an integral part of New France. This process was begun and car- ried forward by men animated by the desire to realize the ideal of its discoverer, which aimed at nothing less than a great interior French empire, composed of the most fertile lands in the world. The New France, as fash- ioned by the vision of La Salle, was to be yet fairer than the old, as the daughter will some- times be fairer than the mother. The work of reclaiming the wilderness was first carried on by French traders, trappers, hunters, and wood rangers, who extended their activities over the greater portion of the Mississippi basin, ex- tending south to the gulf of Mexico and

west to and including Texas. Where these went the Jesuit and Franciscan monks fol- lowed, preaching the pure and gentle religion of the lowly Nazarene to the savage tribes who inhabited these wildernesses and plains.

The earliest effort to establish settlements in the new territory was made by La Salle, himself, in 1684. Shortly after his return from the long voyage to the mouth of the Mississippi he repaired to France, and was supplied with three vessels, including a ship of the line, and a body of troops and emigrants, for the purpose of establishing a colony and erecting fortifications to guard the great river from English and Spanish aggression. But he missed the mouth of the Mississippi and sailed westward to Mata Gorda bay, Texas. Dissension arose between him and the com- mander of the war vessel that accompanied him, and La Salle, leaving the ships with a few of the emigrants and men at arms, tem- porarily established his headquarters at that point and began a search for the Mississippi. Failing in his quest, he, in 1686, undertook to penetrate the wilderness to the Illinois, where Tonty had been directed to remain with supplies and men. While prosecuting this venture this remarkable man fell by the hand

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

of an assassin. Others took up the work of settling New France and occupying at least the lower basin of the Mississippi river; as a result of which New Orleans was founded in 1723, by Jean Baptiste Lemoine, sieur de Bienville. Settlements were made also in the Ohio valley and elsewhere in the wilderness west of the Alleghanies, so that by the middle of the eighteenth century a chain of forts and military posts had been planted by the French from Quebec along the St. Lawrence, the Niagara, the Detroit, the Illinois rivers, and the Mississippi river and some of its tribu- taries, to the bay of Biloxi, on the gulf of Mexico, while the region of the Great Lakes was guarded by similar outposts of defense. Such settlements were accompanied by the orderly forms of government, supported by the military forces of Canada and France, in the hope of guarding and defending from Eng- lish aggression on the east and Spanish aggres- sion on the south and west, the most valuable and extensive colonial territory ever possessed by a single European power in North America.

The extension of New France to the basin of the Mississippi river from source to mouth and westward from the heights of the Al- leghanies, had the effect of setting metes and bounds to British possessions in the New World. Bitter and implacable rivalry arose between the English and French colonists, and bloody attacks and reprisals blur the annals of both Saxon and Gaul. Britain's claim of all North America from ocean to ocean by right of Cabot's discovery, and the stout resistance by the French to this claim, were the main causes of that series of sanguinary conflicts known in English colonial history as the French and Indian wars, which, beginning in 1690, with what is known as King William's war, raged with great fury and finally termi- nated at the close of the Seven Years' Euro- pean war, in 1763, thirteen years before the commencement of the American Revolution. By treaties which marked the closing of these wars, striking changes were effected in North America. By the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, which marked the close of that colonial dis- turbance sometimes designated as Queen

Anne's war, England made her first great in- road into French territory. By this treaty she obtained control of the valuable fisheries of Newfoundland, together with possession of Hudson bay, Labrador, Nova Scotia, and minor French possessions; and at the close of King George's war, in 1763, under the treaty of Paris, Canada itself and Cape Breton were ceded by France to England, with their terri- torial appendages, and the western boundaries of the English colonies were pushed beyond the Alleghanies to the eastern shores of the Mississippi river. Thus fell, as by a single blow, the dream of empire which had animated the soul of the courageous La Salle, and of which Count de Frontenac also had dreamed, and thus was laid the foundation of the vast colonial possessions of England in the New World.

Nothing remained to France of her proud colonial empire in North America except that portion of La Salle's discoveries which lay west of the Father of Waters and which had come to be designated in France as the pro- vince of Louisiana; all else had been swal- lowed up by her ancient rival, England. Even Louisiana passed immediately from her con- trol, for on the very day of the execution of the treaty of Paris by which she was shorn of Canada and Cape Breton, she entered into a secret treaty with Spain, under which the last fragment of the empire of Frontenac and La Salle passed to that country. Thus by the acts of a weak and licentious sovereign, the land of Clovis and Charlemagne was stripped of every vestige of her rich colonial possessions in the New World, and thus ended the struggle for a continent between the two most enlightened nations in western Europe.

But the tragedy of Louisiana was not yet played to the end, nor indeed could be until its destiny was fulfilled. Its cession to Spain increased her colonial possessions in North America, till, with Mexico, they covered nearly half the continent. Whatever secret understanding may have existed between her and the court of Louis XV as to the retroces- sion of Louisiana in the future, Spain entered into possession of her new province shortly

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

after the treaty of Paris in 1763, hoisted her national emblem at New Orleans, city of Bien- ville, and, amidst the tears, protestations, and lamentations of the French inhabitants, es- tablished her authority over the province, which was to continue to the opening year of the nineteenth Christian century. During these forty-five years of Spanish rule in Louisiana province, most marked changes had taken place in France itself. The monarchy had fallen, the French Revolution had termi- nated, and an effort had been made to establish a republic, which ended in what is known in French history as the "Consular Govern- ment," with Napoleon Bonaparte as First Con- sul and as such the chief officer of state.

On October 1, 1800, a treaty was en- tered into between Charles IV of Spain and the consular government, whereby Louis- iana was retroceded to France, entire, as re- spected its former boundaries. Peace had temporarily settled over Europe and Napoleon looked forward to a period of continued na- tional prosperity, wherein he conceived it pos- sible to realize, at least in part, the dream of the unfortunate La Salle. But the ink on the parchment whereon was written the treaty of Ildefonso was scarcely dry when a portentous war cloud suddenly obscured the rising sun of peace, wherein England, aiming at empire, threatened to involve France in another ter- rible conflict. Actual transfer of possession of the province to France was necessarily de- layed and before it could be accomplished the news of the retrocession had reached the United States. The Spanish governor had rendered himself obnoxious to this country on account of certain trade restrictions affect- ing navigation on the Mississippi and by re- fusing at New Orleans what was known as the right of deposit.

It had become apparent that the expan- sion and growth of the United States de- manded free access to the gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi. In this country it was understood too that by the treaty of Ildefonso France had obtained also what was then known as the Floridas, thus gaining control of the entire course of the

great river to the gulf. Agitation was at once started having for its object the cession by France to the United States, of New Orleans. the Floridas, and that portion of the lower Mississippi basin which reached from the city to the Floridas. The settlers of the western states and territories bordering on the river, particularly those of Kentucky and Tennessee, which had suffered most from the unjust re- strictions of the Spanish governor of New Orleans, were greatly excited and were angry to the point of desperation over the proposed extension of a single European power to the entire length of the great river. Resistance was urged to the point of seizing the lower Mississippi, with New Orleans, before the transfer of territory could be effected. In their petitions to congress the settlers de- clared: "The Mississippi is ours by the laws of nature, it belongs to us by our numbers and the labor we have bestowed on those spots which before our arrival . were barren and desert. Our innumerable rivers swell it and flow with it to the Gulf of Mexico. Its mouth is the only issue which nature has given to our waters and we wish to use it for our vessels. No power in the world can deprive us of this right."

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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 2

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