USA > Nebraska > Nebraska history and record of pioneer days, Vol. V > Part 5
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But the Seventh Day people stayed on, worshipping God after their own conscience and hanging out their washing Sun- day morning. So they plan to celebrate their fiftieth anniver- sary at North Loup next August and expect to have a great homecoming of the children and friends from the four quar- ters of the world and the seven seas. The Bulletin of the Seventh Day Baptist Church at North Loup is an eight page periodical which brings this news to the Historical Society li- brary. It brings also on its front page a picture of Chalk Bluff or Happy Jack, which is a bold hill on the North Loup river so chalky white that it may be seen for many miles. It tells this tale of the bluff:
"Happy Jack Swearenger, a trapper and government scout lived at one time in a dugout below this bluff, which gave it the name of Happy Jack. It is said that as Mr. Rood, pioneer Seventh Day Baptist, was hurrying back to camp after his initial trip to the top of the bluff, he stumbled over Happy Jack who was fast asleep on one of the cat steps on the side of the bluff. Immediately he found himself facing Happy Jack's gun but as soon as the scout saw the situation Mr. Rood was allowed to go unmolested."
The Bulletin further exhorts with the following invita- tion :
"Come and tell us of your experience with poverty, home- sickness, drouth, grasshoppers, blizzards, prairie fires, hunt- ing, fighting, dugouts, leaky sod houses, and don't forget the fleas."
G. B. Pavey died at Grand Island December 10, 1922 in his 70th year. He came to Nebraska in July 1858, and has been a continuous resident.
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
Freighting from the Missouri river to the mountains was a favor- its and almost universal means of existence for Nebraska settlers in the territorial period. It was the one occupation which brought in money to many a log cabin home and enabled the family to stick by their land. One by one the old Nebraska freighters pass on. Peace to their mem- ory. Many a time the writer of these lines has been given a free ride by the bull-whackers of the freighting outfits on the old well-traveled trail leading from Nebraska City to Fort Kearny and the mountains. They were fast-disappearing from the trail then, as the railroads push- ed westward taking their job away from them. Often the writer has listened to their complaint that the railroads were ruining the Nebras- ka country, driving the freighting wagons off the trail, taking away the market of the early ranchmen and-worst of all-bringing in an alien population untrained in the fine art of hospitality and fellowship which followed the overland trails from the beginning. These musings and memories started by noting the death of Jacob M. Epler at Julian, Nemaha county, November 26, 1922, in his eighty-fourth year. Mr. Ep- ler began freighting with oxen from Nebraska City in 1859 and follow- ed the freighting trail for five years, most of the time in the government service. He then settled upon a Nebraska farm and made an honorable record throughout his successful career.
Fred Uhlir, of Verdigree, Knox county, startled his community by unloading four head of young buffalos at that station the last week in January. He bought them from a buffalo ranch at Pierre, South Dakota, paying $1,000 for the four. A bull and three cows composed the ship- ment. It is the intention of Mr. Uhlir to increase the herd and use them in crossing upon cattle for the purpose of securing buffalo robes as well as beef. The time when buffalo hides sold from the hunter's wagon at a dollar a piece and every settler's dugout and sod house had buffalo robes on its beds seems like yesterday to the editor of this magazine. From his boyhood home every autumn went forth a dozen wagons filled with buf- falo hunters bound for the Republican valley-then the great buffalo . hunting field. No cornfed beef can ever compare with the rich, delicate gramma grass flavor of the wild buffalo. In later years frontier families pined for the good old buf falo steak and dried buffalo which had been their chief diet during the period of early settlement. Children of that time could not be persuaded to eat dried beef after the disappearance of the buffalo. Here's a hope that the buffalo will survive in Nebraska, his original home of greatest numbers. Buffalo robes now command from $100 to $300 apiece and the cross of the buffalo, especially upon the black breeds of cattle, is said to produce a robe of extraordinary beauty.
A monument was recently erected on the John Reiter farm near In- dianola. Upon it is this inscription:
"Pawnee Squaw, wounded in battle between Sioux and Pawnees Aug- ust 5, 1873, at Massacre canyon; left for dead; was picked up by a hunt- er; brought to Indianola and left at the home of L. B. Korn, where she died a few days later. Burial made by E. S. Hill, L. B. Korn and G. A. Hunter."
The grave of this Pawnee woman has been enclosed with a strong fence made from gas pipe and the large stone, set in cement, which stands as a monument ought to protect the grave through all future years. Mr. E. S. Hill, one of those who buried the woman in 1873, is the chief pro- motor of this monument.
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
SKULL CREEK, BUTLER COUNTY
The story of Skull Creek in Butler County and days of early settlement there is told in graphic tale by an early set- tler.
Skull Creek is in the northeast corner of Butler County. Linwood is the principal nearby town. A great Pawnee vil- lage stretched along the bench land of the Platte valley there for many years. We have records of visits to this village in 1833 and at intervals thereafter by government agents, mili- tary officers and explorers.
The bluffs back of the bench land were graveyards of the Pawnee nation for many years. The editor of this magazine has paid several visits to this ancient cemetery. Everywhere the hills are dotted with sunken spots and the rank growth of sunflowers marking the graves of these early Nebraska peo- ple. Modern white settlers have shown no more respect for the dead than the explorers in Egypt have shown for king Tut- ank-ahmen. Everywhere the spade of the white man had dug into the graves, throwing out bones, beads, fragments of weapons, clothing. Many a Pawnee chief will wander empty handed across the fields of the happy hunting grounds for lack of the weapons his people placed with such loving care by his side.
Skull Creek received its name from an abundance of skulls washed out by the waters from the bluffs, or, as one tradi- tion tells, left on the battle field in a great fight many years before. The writer of this story, whose family settled in But- ` ler county in 1863 says :
"Once a year the Omahas, Otoes and Pawnees would come and spend several days in marching around these graves, sing- ing and moaning for the loss of their honored dead. It was the delight of the settler to dig into these graves to see what might be found. Gun barrels, iron saddle stirrups, and bones were found. The finding of these things goes to prove the fact that when an Indian warrior is buried, that his horse, saddle, and gun, is buried with him as he is supposed to need them in the happy hunting ground where he is going. My wife can well remember of going up on this bluff when she was a girl, and picking up all kinds of beads in great quantities found on the ground around these graves.
"At the foot of this bluff was a field of about thirty acres surrounded by a wall of dirt, some eight or ten feet high, made by the Indians and used as a fort, or breastwork in time of battle. A great portion of this wall was made from dirt dug up near where the wall was built, yet not all, for a lot of it was brought from the 'catcher' holes that were dug in great numbers all over the field. These holes were very curiously
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
made. They were dug round and not larger at the top than a wash tub, and dug about that size down for some three or four feet, then they were dug out inside just the shape of a jug. Some of them were ten or twelve feet across and often ten feet deep. Into these holes the Indians would place their corn and such things as they had stored up for winter, so that when the enemy came upon them, they could be driven off, and afterward come back and dig up their stuff. The object of digging these holes in such a shape, was to have as small a top as possible so that it could be covered in such a manner that no one but the owner could find it. And so the dirt from these holes was carried by the squaws in their blankets and helped to build the wall around the field."
(Editor's Note: These holes were "caches," from the French word "cacher"-to hide or conceal.)
Representative Crist Anderson, of Bristow, Boyd county, puts an- other big Nebraska storm on the calendar in an article printed in the Bristow Enterprise October 18, 1922. He writes:
"Forty-two years ago, October 15 and 16, 1880, a howling blizzard and snow storm was raging over these prairies. We then lived in a little log house on Turkey Creek in Holt county. Many of the leaves were still on the trees as they are now. The storm, as I remember it, lasted nearly three days and left over a foot of snow on the level, and just a part of the sod corn stalks sticking out. Some of that snow re- mained in the draws until the next May,
' Our log hut was small, no floor, a board and dirt roof, but it was warm and we had plenty to eat, plenty of wood and we did not suffer as did some that hard, long winter. Some of the people could not get supplies and many had to grind corn in their coffee mills. Game of all kinds was plentiful."
Josiah Miner, who settled nine miles southwest of Friend in 1872 and still lives on his original soldier's homestead, has a splendid grove of walnut trees planted by him fifty years ago. Mr. Miner is originator of the idea of a walnut log cabin upon the new capitol grounds as a per- manent memorial to the soldier homesteaders of Nebraska. A model of this log cabin has been presented by Mr. Miner to the Historical So- ciety and used for illustration of his idea before members of the legis- lature.
Hon. George F. Smith of Waterbury, Dixon county, writes a warm letter of appreciation for volume XX. He says: "I can scarcely give expression to my delight and gratification in reading this volume. It is a great book and so historically correct that while reading it one can almost see the stirring events of that early period being enacted. My father was one of the forty-niners. He drove oxen from Galena, Illinois, to Sacramento, California, in the summer of forty-nine and was conse- quently one of that great company which the book so adequately por- trays. How rich indeed is this imperial state of Nebraska in the poss- ession of so large a part of the area in which those wonderful deeds were done."
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
DEATH OF GOOD OLD MAN
One of the most interesting and probably the oldest In- dian died on the reservation near Walthill January 12, 1923. This was Ta-ou-ka-han, translated into English, Good Old Man. Old Indians reckoned their age by the time when as they say "the stars fell." This remarkable phenomenon, which filled the night with blazing meteors from horizon to horizon, occurred in 1833 and impressed itself upon all the In- dian tribes. Good Old Man was nine years old at the time ac- cording to his story. Besides his Indian name and its transla- tion, Good Old Man was named Arthur Ramsey by the white missionaries.
Good Old Man was born when the tribe lived on the Elk- horn river near Fremont. Later the tribe moved to a vil- lage site near the present town of Homer. Still later they moved to the Papillion valley, giving up that region by the treaty of 1854 and moving to the present location, then called Blackbird Hills.
Good Old Man told the story of the buffalo hunt on Beav- ci' Creek, in what is now Boone county in the summer of 1855, when Logan Fontenelle was killed by the Sioux. Good Old Man was selected by the Ethnological Bureau at Washington as one of the typical Indians for a portrait in the Smithsonian museum. Some years ago the editor of this magazine secured phonographic records of Good Old Man's favorite songs in the Omaha tongue and very excellent photographs while singing these songs.
A land mark of early Lincoln was H. W. Brown, the bookstore man. For forty years he was in the drug and book business in Lincoln. He was one of the old-fashioned book dealers. He loved books. People loved to talk with him about books. His book store was a center of book in- terest. With him the love of books was greater than the love of money and he had no mind for adoption of more modern commercial methods which sell books regardless of merit or development of book taste in the public. Mr. Brown sold out his book business in Lincoln a number of years ago and is now living at the age of 79 near his boyhood home at Sidney, Maine. He served as a Union soldier in the Civil War and was a prisoner at Andersonville, finally making his escape from the rebel prison at Florence, South Carolina, and getting back to the Union lines.
The story of the pioneer preachers of the gospel in Nebraska is one of great interest and social value. One of them, Rev. Jacob Adriance, died at Fremont December 18, 1822, at the age of eighty-seven. He set- tled at Tekamah in 1857 and began his service as a minister of the M. E. church. Since that time he was almost continuously in the missionary church service until a few years ago when failing health caused his re- tirement. In 1862 he secured a farm in Dodge County on a soldier's land warrant issued to his father and signed by Abraham Lincoln.
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
WHITNEY VILLAGE, DAWES COUNTY
A recent issue of the News, published at Whitney, revives memories and historical recollections connected with that vil- lage. The editor of this magazine first visited Whitney in the summer of 1888 and for the next eight years in his work as a Dawes County editor was a frequent visitor in that commun- ity.
The story of Whitney might well be entitled "The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of a Frontier Community." The first white village in the neighborhood called Dawes City was lo- cated on the south side of the White River about a mile from the present Whitney. It was planned to be the county seat of Dawes County, but Chadron, the railroad division point, out- voted all other rivais for that honor. When the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad (then called Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley) built west from the White River in 1886 the walls of a large Sioux earth lodge were standing on the bank of the White River near the right of way. The station was christened Earth Lodge. A little later, when settlers came in and began to homestead and preempt the White River val- ley, there was objection to Earth Lodge as a name and the rail- road company changed the name to Whitney, in honor of P. Whitney, whom many settlers of that time remember as a very active gentleman who handled the sale of town lots along the line of the railroad.
The village of Whitney enjoyed a boom in the years 1887- 89. A continual stream of settlers poured in. Not only the White River valley, but the smooth "gumbo" prairie north of Whitney was rapidly claimed by the newcomers. Several store buildings went up in Whitney. A dozen business houses started, stores, shops, a hotel, churches. A mill located there and a newspaper started. Providence sent the rain just right for the rich gumbo land. Many fields of spring wheat yielded thirty and forty bushels to the acre in 1889. It seemed that nothing could stop the high tide of prosperity from filling the White River valley.
Then rapidly came the dry years, beginning with 1890. The financial panic came along in 1893. Settlers mortgaged their claims, and moved to the mountains, back east, down into the Ozarks. Whitney began to fade from the face of the earth. It was at this period that a famous political epigram was coin- ed in Whitney. It was the hard times campaign of 1894- Silas A. Holcomb of Broken Bow running as populist candidate for governor against Thomas J. Majors of Peru, republican candidate. Joint debates were held between the populists and the republicans in the school houses. At a debate in Whitney George A. Eckles, Chadron lawyer, spoke first for the repub-
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
licans. He painted the blackest picture possible of the condi- tion which would follow if Holcomb were elected. Credit would be refused the people of Nebraska by eastern merchants and money-enders. Loans would be called. Banks and stores would break. Farmers would be sold out by the sheriff. At the close of forty minutes Mr. Eckles had demonstrated his great ability as a prophet of disaster. Before the populist speaker assigned to reply to Mr. Eckles would get the floor, Von Harris, a farmer living just west of Whitney, rose from a back seat and made this speech: "Mr. Chairman, hard times. can't hurt Whitney." The effect was electrical. A great roar of laughter and stamping of feet filled the room. The ans- wer was so complete that subsequent speakers scarcely refer- red to the disastrous prophesy.
Since that time the village of Whitney nearly disappeared from the map, ambitious ranchers hauling its houses miles across the country to locate on their claims. The mill burned down. The editor flew as far as Mexico. Just a little group of old-timers gathered at the post office and swapped stories about the early boom. Then things happened, one by one. The White River, Trunk Butte Creek, East and West Ash, Cottonwood and Lone Tree streams were impounded and their waters spread out upon strips of land. Alfalfa was planted. Winter wheat put in. The potato crop found a place in the valley. Dry farming methods came in. Cows were milked and the cream separator swiftly whirled. Hens and eggs and pigs and cows multiplied.
So Whitney came back. It now has a community club of two hundred members. It has a twenty thousand dollar school house. It has a lumber yard, two general stores, a bank, a grain elevator, a hotel, plenty of garages, lots of pep and a newspaper. Thus the "Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Whit- ney village in Dawes County" makes an epic cycle of Nebraska history. And all true.
Interesting sociology items printed in the Fairbury Journal of December 7 recall two events of half a century ago which could not happen now. First of these was a lottery project for the purpose of raising money for a Nebraska State Orphan Asylum. Second was a proposition submitted to the voters of Jenkins Mills (then an important point in Jefferson county) to vote twelve thousand dollars bonds to aid in the establishment of a foundry and machine shop at that place. The precinct was to own stock in the enterprise. Only a few of the old- timers, or historical students of economic events, realize how often in the early years were these propositions for aid in establishing factories by bond issues put across in the western states. The ambition of early towns to become manufacturing centers made them an easy mark for the promoters of that period. The constitution of 1875 stopped the game.
41
NEBRASKA HISTORY GENERAL JOHN M. THAYER
Interesting Correspondence With the Secretary of Worcester Light Infantry Veteran Association of Massachusetts, Where General Thayer began His Career as a Soldier in 1842
Recently the editor has had a most interesting correspon- dence with Mr. Herbert L. Adams, secretary of the Worces- ter, Massachussetts, Light Infantry Veteran Association. From this correspondence it appears that this organization is putting into record form the career of its different members through the years. One of these members is General John M. Thayer. Apparently the people in Massachussetts lacked a great deal of having adequate information concerning Gen- eral Thayer. They were in possession of a newspaper clipping at the time of his death stating that he had been United States Senator from Nebraska and subsequently governor. The sec- retary wrote asking for more definite information.
From the correspondence the following extracts are taken :
Worcester, February 9, 1923.
I am just in receipt of your valued favor of February 7 and I do not delay in expressing my sincere appreciation of aid afforded us.
General Thayer was indeed a distinguished soldier and citizen, one of the most distinguished of the many who served during the past 120 years in the ranks of this old military or- ganization, and it affords us a great deal of satisfaction to be able to publish such a complete and authentic account of his life.
I am taking the liberty of herewith enclosing a copy of typed matter, this being the initial copy, and subject to re- vision, and before publication it will be carefully checked by comparison with the publications of your society and official military records.
I note by your memorandum that General Thayer held a commission as Brigadier General in 1855 in the Nebraska Mil- itia, which seems to confirm the meager information given in an Associated Press dispatch at the time of his death, in 1906, that, prior to the Civil War, he saw considerable service and gained a high reputation as an Indian fighter; and I am prompted to ask if you would have the kindness to procure from the records of your Adjutant General's Office, data cov- ering his service up to the outbreak of the Civil War, i. e., date of his entering the state militia, service, and any appointments or commissions he may have received prior to his appointment as Brigadier General.
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NEBRASKA HISTORY
Worcester, Mass., 24th March 1923.
The additional information you give us concerning the career of General Thayer is most welcome and will be incor- porated in the sketch for the history, and, thanks to you, it will make one of the most interesting sections of the work.
We who have served in the ranks of the old company, which has had a continuous existence for 120 years, take much pride in the organization as a body and in the individual rec- ords such as that of General Thayer who is one of a large number of the old command who have become distinguished in military and civic life. Three governors of this state, one of Maine, Nebraska and Wyoming; Senators (U. S.) Representa- tives in Congress; U. S. Attorney General; Judges of high courts; twenty or more State Senators and representatives; Members of Governor's Council and a dozen or so Mayors of our city, to say nothing of the very many who won high rank in the various wars in which the country has been involved, the last and crowning glory from a military standpoint, in the fact that the company was Co. C, of the 104th Infantry, 26th Division U. S. A., whose colors were decorated by the French Government in France, the only American regiment to be so honored.
Worcester, Mass., 28th February, 1923.
This is in somewhat tardy acknowledgement of your very kind favor of February 16, with the Volume V, of your publi- cations you were so good as to loan us and which I have found, aside from that part relating to General Thayer, of very great interest.
I have now made up a somewhat better sketch of the life and career of General Thayer, which I am taking the liberty to enclose an extra carbon copy of and which I hope you will consider as more adequately doing justice to such a career. You are at liberty to destroy or place this matter in your files if desired.
I call your attention to one item in this sketch with which you may not agree, that is the lines relating to a (possible) connection with the family of Hon. Eli Thayer who became so conspicuous in western affairs just about the time that Gener- al Thayer was winning renown in the same section of the coun- try.
Strange as it may seem, it has been impossible for me to confirm my belief that these two men were closely related, al- though Eli Thayer hastwo daughters now living in Worces- ter who appear to be in ignorance, and so far as I have search- er, the published genealogies of the Thayers make no mention. It would seem to me however that inasmuch as both John M. and Eli Thayer were born in the same town (Bellingham being set off from Mendon) and both born within a year of each
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other, they must have come from the same family. I am still looking and may have to change my sketch as far as it has mention of Eli Thayer.
I have the good fortune to have in my own home here, a gentleman, George C. Hitt, a former resident of Indianapolis, connected by relationship with former Congressman Robert C. Hitt, of Illinois, who was personally acquainted with General Thayer and a number of his associates in civic and military life when he was (Gen'l. Thayer) a resident of your state. He also has been interested in reading the book and looking over your catalog of publications and has more than once remarked about the fine work your society is doing on historical lines and I am glad also to compliment you. It has pleased me also to find a number of your publications on file here at our public library.
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