USA > Nebraska > Seward County > History of Seward County, Nebraska, and reminiscenses of territorial history > Part 6
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA
He remarked, "I never eat pork." "Very well," said the bland waiter, "help yourself to the mustard." Pork, mus- tard and dried apple pie was the bill of fare at that house.
I am glad that I am owner of one of those old coaches. My brother and I have the "one that Mark Twain, Generals Sherman and Sheridan rode in part way across the plains. It is the identical coach that was attacked in the Blue valley during the last Indian raid in that region. It was formerly known as Ben Holliday's private coach, and was the pala- tial private car of that era. Mr. Holliday was the owner of the stage line.
Have you ever thought how in one generation of man the abridgment of distance has been accomplished? Today with great luxury and ease and at a rate of less than three cents a mile you may achieve in less than an hour what forty years ago was a hard day's journey.
As we look back forty years and note the improvement in transportation, we cannot but anticipate what the prog- ress will be in the forty years to come. ' No one can tell what is before us. We all know that some of the most re -. markable men of the last century have been identified with this great problem of transportation; and the names of such public benefactors as Stevenson, Bessemer, Morse, Pullman, Westinghouse and Thos. A. Scott will always appear promi- nent among those who have done much in extending civili- zation and making traveling a luxury. Look at the great plains of those days and behold the change. Civilization with its railroads, its schools and churches, and millions of fruitful farms has taken the place of the bullwhacker, the buffalo and the Indian.
Nebraska and Kansas are now two of our very best ag- ricultural states, and never in their history have the people owned outright as much and owed as little as they do now. Nature has done much for them, and now intelligent irriga- tion is developing the arid plains on their western borders and of the states beyond into farms and orchards that are now and will continue to attract thousands who are seeking new homes.
*It has been the pleasure of the author of this book to see and ex- amine the old coach at Arbor Lodge.
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA
EXTRACTS FROM THE SCRAP-BOOK OF REV. BYRON BEAL.
Rev. Byron Beal came to Nebraska with his parents in the autumn of 1860 and settled eight miles west of the site of Grand Island at the mouth of Wood river. The author feels that he has struck a mine of wealth in being permitted the free use of the reverend's scrap book. From a series of most interesting communications to the state papers we freely quote.
Doctor Beal commences his papers with the grand old poem, "Breaths there a soul so dead." Later the doctor says, "If you will follow me I will draw aside the curtain and permit you to look in upon the life of the pioneer homes of this state."
My father, Enos Beal, came from Wisconsin in the fall of 1860 and took a claim and made settlement at the mouth of Wood river. Grand Island city was not yet in existance. Here he took a claim beside a man by the name of David Crocker, who soon sold out to Fred Evans, the millionaire owner of the health resort of Hot Springs, South Dakota, who was at the time a poor man, a dashing dare devil plains- man. A man of exploits as Indian fighter and buffalo hunter and will be noticed later.
At this time I do not think there was a foot of rail-road in the state. There was a telegraph (built that year) beside which ran the four horse overland stages. Father had been a man of wealth, but business reverses had swept it away and here we were to build a new home.
Mr. Townsley put in a saw mill on Wood river and fa ther built the first frame house in that country. To the north or south there were no settlements for hundreds of miles. West of us there were a few straggling settlers for thirty miles until Ft. Kearney was reached.
Among these was Hon. James E. Boyd, later our gov- ernor. He lived on Wood river twelve miles from the fort. When a boy I worked for him a few weeks putting up hay for the government. It seemed like old times and as if I was a boy again as I met the governor a short time ago in the city of Lincoln when he took me by the hand and called me "Byron," and reminded me that I was getting gray. I said,
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA
"Governor you must remember that forty years have pass ed since we were neighbors on Wood river."
I well remember some furious debates the governor used to have with his father-in-law, a radical republican. No man in that day doubted Mr. Boyd's democracy.
To the eastward eight miles away was the German settlement. Among the leading men of that day who yet remain are Fred Hedde, Wm. Stalley and H. Koenig.
The little village of Columbus seventy miles to the east- ward with but few scattering settlers between us and them.
There were less than thirty thousand people in the whole territory. But mark you there was a sociability and hearti- ness of welcome among the people of that day never excelled since, if indeed equaled. If any one had a little wheat he went seventy-five miles to mill, somewhere north of Co- lumbus. Potatoes were four dollars per bushel. I have sold corn at $3. per bushel in ear and $3.50 shelled.
Our markets were at our doors; the vast trains of cover- ed wagons that passed along on their way to Pike's Peak and California with the soldiers at Ft. Kearney bought all we had to sell.
The climate was much different than at present. Fear- ful winds came in summer and downed trees, unroofed houses and often hot winds came and withered the crops, and such blizzards in winter and long droughts in summer. There has not been anything like it of late years.
The thunder seemed to roll on the very ground and the lightning was terrific, something fearful.
We lived here in peace for a while, but on the 5th of Feb., 1862, our little settlement was thrown into a fever of excitement, when two families were clothed in mourning. On that day Captain J. P. Smith and two sons, Charles and Willie, aged nine and twelve years with a four horse sled and Alex Anderson, a fourteen year old neighbor boy with a two horse sled, went to the Platte four miles away for loads of wood and were all murdered by the Sioux Indians. It was a small party of them out on a horse stealing expedition. Mr. Anderson followed the boys to the river where he saw Mr. Smith and a boy on each side of him fall down on the ice shot to death with arrows. Little Willie was not quite
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dead. They had started to run when shot. With agony in his heart, Mr. Anderson wheeled his team around and drove home and gave the alarm. Swift riders went up and down the road and Mr. Wm. Eldige found the Anderson boy about a hundred yards up the channel where he had run and was killed. The parties put the four bodies on a sled and re- turned home then pushed on after the Indians. A light snow was falling and it obscured the trail and as there were but few of them and they poorly armed they turned back. I saw the horrid sight of Mr. Smith and three boys after they were prepared for burial. I shall never forget that sight, but certainly do not desire to see such another. Sadly we lowered the coffins into one grave under an elm tree on the banks of Wood river.
In following papers we will tell of the fate of those murderous Indians that will fill you with sadness or glad- ness as to whether you are a reformer or an old settler.
Trapping beaver, mink and otter in 1860 was quite prof- itable. I have sold beaver skins from two to three dollars per pound and they weighed from two to three pounds each. One trip up the Platte, near Boyd's ranch and down the river, I caught enough so I sold forty skins.
I think it was in 1863 that three of us boys were camped on the South Loup about ten miles above where Loup City now stands. We went hunting and trapping when a band of Sioux warriors passed one night with a dozen stolen horses taken from the Pawnees. They passed within a few feet of our wolf traps. We trailed them far away, but concluded that we did not want to meet that crowd and we pulled for home twenty-five miles away.
(Like the boy in the bear story the track was too fresh).
When we got home the whole county was in an uproar. The Pawnees were out in full force after the Sioux and it was thought that likely we were killed. Hunting buffalo was the way the people got their meat. I once went out with a party and got back with eleven quarters of meat for my share and some hides.
I dropped a fine young bull at first shot. This is fine sport as long as you are the hunter, but when an old bull
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turns hunter and you are on foot then comes a time when the bull has the fun.
I was out on Elin Creek west of Kearney in company with an old hunter (Mr. Hiller). We slipped down a ravine close to a herd and Hitler resting his gun over my back and shot a cow. This performance was repeated several times, we would lie down in the tall grass. We had three dead cows within a hundred feet. By this time the herd was thirty rods away and just on top of the hill. When his dead- ly gun was turned on another cow she was hit. She whirled and down the hill she came, striking a bee-line for us, striking her front feet in a vicious way. She came like a cyclone. I said to Hiller, "great guns; old man let's get out of this." He said, "lie low and keep still." We did so and the result proved just what Hiller predicted. She had not seen us at all for she turned aside, ran down the gulch and fell. . Had we run she might have caught us.
Of course in those early days we had some bad men in Ne- braska. Every body carried a pistol even to church. I car- ried a navy then far more regularly than I now carry a pen- knife.
It was a bad practice and is apt to breed a murderous spirit.
There was a man named Slade near Laramie that was a terror to the whole country; he was killed by the vigilantes. The vigilantes were an excusable force in a new country.
Tom Keeler and two brothers were a hard lot. One of these fellows was in constant dread as he carried a cocked revolver in his belt.
I had to sleep with him one night and I objected to his putting a cocked revolver under his pillow. So he hung it up on a nail. Hank killed a man on the Platte with a double barrel gun and my father defended him at his preliminary trial. He was sent to the penitentiary at Lincoln and I be- lieve he was burned to death at time of fire in the prison. Tom was a small but desperate man. I was with an Omaha wagon train once. The train was in charge of a big burly ruffian named or known as "Big Burns," a gambler and gen- eral bad man.
We camped on the Elkhorn when Burns and a lot of
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA
drivers went over to Tom Keeler's two miles away and got to gambling and in the midst of the game Tom blew out the lights, drew his gun, knocked Burns down and coolly rob- bed him of several hundred dollars with the house full of men. I saw Burns next morning; he looked bad. Tom got into trouble with a neighbor and they had sworn to kill on sight and Tom was the victim. He went dead the first round.
Horse stealing was considered the crime of crimes to be punished with death. A little Frenchman stole an Arabian horse at Lone tree (now Central City). He crossed the Platte and joined a train for the west. John Rise and Ben Johnson (men that I knew) followed and captured him, hung him on an island and threw the body into the river.
I am heartily glad to say the neighbors did not justify this murder. But in some cases linch law did seem neces- sary else the whole country would have been given up to thieves and murders.
Grasshoppers came, time and again destroyed our crops.
Our political meetings of that day were held in our log school houses. Governor Thayer, Senator Tipton and Governor Butler were among our first political speakers in Hall county. These men were then young and in their prime and made speeches that I have never heard excelled. In gratitude I mention my adopted father Hon. Enos Beal. He was Probate judge two terms in Hall county and a member of the Legislature. He was a man of remarkable powers of mind, a genial whole souled Christian gentleman whom I loved as I loved no other man on earth and "our Nebraska" is dearer to me because it holds his ashes.
The doctor here pays a very high tribute to our "grand old man," Colonel, General, Senator and Governor Thayer, but as these pages contain another sketch of him we omit this.
(The religious meetings on the frontier has never been excelled to our knowledge. They were held sometimes in a mill, sometimes in the loft of a barn or in a log cabin.)
Rev. Thos B. Lemon was about the first to visit us. We all loved that great hearted brainy man of God, an honor to humanity and the Christian ministry.
I cannot forget how Rev. John L. Martin, on bended
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knees and with streaming eyes, besought the people to be- come Christians. Then Rev. Jenny and Rev. Marquette that did grand work for the master in the wilderness. Many times we were long times without churches and ministers, but we were not without God.
Some of the grandest thoughts of God and our own lit- tleness comes to us when alone viewing his wonderful works. The man only, is educated who studies nature, men, and books and God. And although without churches we were not without religions instruction.
We had many terrific prairie fires in 1860 however, little destruction was wrought because there were few honses and no cattle to burn. The sight of a prairie fire at night when the long line extended for miles was a grand one and most beautiful. Sometimes, however, it lost its charming features where it was headed our way. One night a great tire swept in from the north, leaped the fire guard and burned father's stable with two fine work horses and also my nice colt that I had just bought. This was my first horse that I had saved my money and paid for. My boyish grief was unbounded.
The coming of the U. P. railroad wronght mighty changes. Before this lands had little value, but with it came a mighty tide of people. Cities sprang np along the line as if by magic, and almost before we were aware of it, we were surrounded on every side by the forces of Chris- tain civilization.
I remember the event in 1867 of a young lawyer, the forerunner of a new intellectual life as the railroad marked a new era in material progress. Word spread far and wide that a lawyer had come. I had seen Indians, buffalo, freight- ers and Mormon trains. I new how to drive oxen. 1 could ride a broncho, had traversed the plains. I was indeed quite a traveler, but in all my rounds had not seen a live lawyer. So I saddled my broncho and straped on my Colt revolvers and rode down to Grand Island to see the new and strange sight, a lawyer. It was our O. A. Abbott.
The first editor of our community was the irrepressable Seth P. Mobley and his superior half, Mrs. Mobley. She was the best writer of the two. My "first ride on the rail" was from Grand Island to Omaha, fare $15. It was in spring
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time when the valley was largely under water. We had rid- den ten miles when we came to a dead stand still and the conductor stuck his head into our car and yelled out, "You folks who want to go to Omaha, come ont and help get the tender on the track." Out we went and helped pry it on, then run the train by hand around a bend. We walked part of the way and pushed. We boated it across the Elkhorn. After a night and day of labor of this sort we reached Omaha.
Here the Rev. indulges in a little moral lesson. He says: I have been in almost every town in the state before the ad- vent of a railroad to their place and heard the fervent pray- ers of the people for the coming of a railroad, but no sooner do they come than "Hades, is to pay and the company is charged as robbers without mercy." To an old fogy this looks funny.
In closing the doctor says, 'Young men and young wo- men of Nebraska, Yours is a goodly parentage, yours were noble sires, prove yourselves worthy to live in this grand state. It is a grand heritage to be decendants of the first settlers of this commonwealth. They were educated in the great university of trial and conflict with the untamed forces of a new land. You are enjoying the fruit of their labors.'
I teach my children to be especially reverent to the old settlers and the old soldiers.
For myself I feel like saying of Nebraska and her people as Ruth said to Naomi, "Thy people shall be my people and thy God shall be God, where thon diest there will I die and there will I be buried."
Our state has a grand future. We live in a wonderful century. Our country is moving forward and upward to- ward the sun kissed mountain, peaks where righteousness reigns. Up where the fatherhood of God and the brother- hood of man will not only be beautiful in sentiment, but in living principles observed by all
God grant that in this upward march of our race to bet- ter things our state may keep well to the front.
I close in the language of the immortal Grady. "The trend of the times is with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness and bending down humbly as Elisha did and praying that my eyes may be made to see,
·
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA
I catch the vision of this republic, its mighty forces in bal- ance, and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children, plenty streaming from its borders and lights from its moun- tain tops, working out its mission under God's approving eye until the dark continents are opened, and the highways are established and the shadows lifted and under one lan- guage, one liberty and one God, all the nations of the world harken to the American drum beat in which favored land, Nebraska! ("our beloved Nebraska") shall be one of the chiefest states and shall march amid the breaking of the millenial dawn into the paths of righteousness and peace."
In looking through the doctor's scrap book, we find some thrilling events related which we must give on the subject of "Hunting for scalps."
The avenging of the murder of Smith and the three boys at Wood River.
Upon the death of Smith and the boys, Fred Evans mounted his swiftest horse, (he had good ones) and he was noted as being the hardest rider in Central Nebraska, well armed with six-shooters, rode in hot haste to Kearney to in- form the commander that he might at once get his soldiers on the trail. But that coward did not propose to risk his worthless carcass on so perilious a mission and so informed Evans. This caused the brave plainsman to boil over with wrath and he denounced the captain as a coward and a fraud.
Evan's work was not entirely lost. A company was sent a little way up Wood River but soon returned. £ Mean time John Talbot of Doby Town, with a small company of settlers captured fourteen Sioux a little way east of the Fort and thinking them to be the murders, took them to the Fort and gave them over to the military. The captain turned two of them loose and told them to go to their camp and in- form the chiefs that unless the murderers were given up the twelve would be shot or hanged. The Indians soon re- turned with the news that if the twelve Indians were not turned loose immediately there would be, ere long, some more dead white men in that section. The coward turned the cut throats free. From this hour hostilities were on. Soon another band of fifteen Sioux came from the north and
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stopped about six miles west of the scene of tragedy and killed some oxen of a settler who locked himself up in his house, then the Indians struck north, when seventeen set- tlers pursued in haste, and as they remembered the perfidy of the captain at the Fort, resolved to take no prisoners. The trail was lost in the sand hills and the Indians escaped. But now a new party appears as crafty and cunning as the Sioux and as rapid riders as the best. the Pawnees, overtook a band of Sioux on Wood River and in the midst of a winter blizzard entered their cam and killed all but one of the band. They returned and came to the widow Smith's home with the bloody scalps to show the poor woman how that they had avenged the murder of her husband and children. There was apparently peace now for a while. In May, 1861, I was camped with three teams on the Platte for two months. There were five of us including two young women. All of a sudden we were surrounded by a war party of Cheyennes, numbering about one hundred and fifty. They had just come from a fight with the Pawnees where they had the worst of it and were not in good humor. They pulled out papers, however, to prove that they were good ingins. They wanted flour, meat and everything else in the eating line. Just then we had nothing too good for them, although we did not feel so very generous in our hearts. The scoun- drels stole two blankets while they were parading as" "good Indians. "
(Here the doctor reads a little lecture to Dr. Geo L. Mil- ler that was sensible but space forbids it a space here.)
In 1864 the Sioux attacked Martin's ranch on the Platte and shot two boys, Nathan and Robert, who were riding a stallion. These boys were pinned together and fell off the horse and were passed by. They both recovered. Later came the massacre of a train at Plum Creek. These were immigrants followed by the stampede of settlers, beginning at Boyd's ranch and extended to every part of Nebraska west of the Missouri river settlements, and even the resi- dents of Omaha and Nebraska City trembled. It was a ter- rible panic stricken stampede from the mountains to the river. We went that night to the German settlement, eight miles, where Wm. Stally built a fort of logs 24x24 and others
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put up sod forts around Koenigs and Wiches store. The crowd went on to Columbus and there halted. It was a motley crowd of wagons, cattle, horses, men, women and children. It was a solid mass of confusion. At Columbus Fred Evans organized a small party on swift horses well armed and went back to learn of the true situation. The danger did not prove so great as feared and soon most of us returned to our homes.
About this time Mr. Storey, a blacksmith near Boyd's ranch was killed while away on a hunt. Soon eight Indians came to the ranch and were taken by a squad of soldiers who set out for Fort Kearney and camped on an island and later reported that the Indians escaped, but later confessed that they killed them. (There were more interesting incidents related in these reminiscences but space forbids and we close their recital reluctantly.)
Am glad for my readers that I got hold of the doctor's scrap book.
HISTORICAL LETTER OF DR. GEO. MILLER
I arrived in Council Bluffs on the night of the 18th of October, 1854. after an overland journey of five days and four nights in a Concord coach of the Western Stage Com- pany from Keokuk, Iowa. I had come from my home in Syracuse, N. Y., by way of St. Louis and steamer to Keokuk by appointment to meet my father, the late L. Miller, by whose influence I was persuaded to become a citizen of the new territory which was born into the Union in the earlier months of that year. I accompanied him in the wild venture to the new land on that delightful journey. On the morning of the 20th of October we crossed the Missouri, planted foot on Nebraska soil, and took our first view of the untamed re- gion from what is now the chief town in one of the youngest and greatest agricultural states of the national sisterhood. My age was twenty-four, I was by profession a physician, and I claim whatever distinction may attach to the fact that I was the first medical practicioneer bearing proper creden- tials who located in Nebraska. My wife, the bride of a year, was left to the hospitality of kindred in Ann Arbor, Michi-
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gan while I came on to spy out the land and select our future home. "Omaha City" was the name of the place which had been playing havoc with my imagination for several months, from pictures of its importance and glowing promises that had come to me from my father who had the disadvantage of never having seen it himself. When I say that the ter- ritory did not contain a single white tiller of the soil at that day, and that Omaha consisted of a map of three hundred twenty acres subdivided into town lots, numerous white stakes, not more than a dozen white people who could truth- fully say they were residents, and not a house that would not disgrace the name, some idea may be had of the scene that first impressed the immigrant from imperial New York. The great motionless ocean of prairie land was spread out in the attractive contrasts of rolling upland and valley with the familiar browns of autumnal vegetation lighted up by warm sunshine which descended from beautiful cloudless skies through a hazy atmosphere in a way that no other country dare attempt for a comparison. Apart from these natural charms of scene, wildness and chaos was on every hand, and confronting all was the discouraging legend of the great "American Desert." But aboriginal savagery was here to aid the work of disenchantment in the form of the first Indian, the real thing, I had ever seen except the half- civilized Iroquoise of the New York reservations.
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