USA > Nebraska > Douglas County > Omaha > Omaha: the Gate city, and Douglas County, Nebraska, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 2
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Some writers have advanced the theory that this entire story was con- cocted for the purpose of getting rid of the Spaniards and that the Indian was not a prisoner, but a member of the tribe who was willing to sacrifice his life if need be for the safety and welfare of his people. Whether this theory has any foundation or not, the story had the desired effect, for on May 5, 1541, the expedition left the Pecos Valley for the realm of Tartarrax.
The Spaniards called their Indian guide "the Turk," because of some real or fancied resemblance to that people. Some of the more observing members of the expedition noticed that when they met some wandering party of Indians on the plains, if the Turk was the first to converse with them, they confirmed his story concerning Quivira, but if the white men were the first to question them they knew nothing of such a country. Castaneda says that after leaving Cicuye they marched about two hundred and eighty leagues, when they came to "a con- siderable river." Archæologists believe this to have been the Arkansas, and the place where Coronado first reached it is not far from Great Bend, Kansas.
By this time the stock of provisions was almost exhausted, the principal article of diet being buffalo meat. Coronado called a council of his lieutenants and it was decided that the main body should return to the Pecos Valley, while the commander, with thirty of his best soldiers, should continue northward. Believing that the Turk had deceived him, Coronado ordered him to be securely bound and guides were obtained from a party of plains Indians. Coronado's account of the remainder of his march is so fanciful that it is difficult to determine just how far north he continued. He says that he reached another large river ( supposed to have been the Kansas), where he sent a message to the lord of Harahey (the Pawnee chief) to visit him, which he did with 200 naked warriors. He finally reached Tartarrax's country, where he found an old man wearing a copper breastplate, which he seemed to prize very highly, but found no silver utensils, no vessels of beaten gold, no cross, no image of the Virgin Mary, no lofty buildings. The only satisfaction left to Coronado was the hanging of the
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Turk, who had so grossly deceived him. Just before his death the Indian in- sisted that the cities to which he was guiding the Spaniards were "just a little farther on."
In his report of the expedition Coronado says: "The place where I reached Quivira is in the fortieth degree." If he was correct in his estimate of latitude. he probably struck the present State of Nebraska somewhere on the Republican River, about Franklin or Webster County. In 1881 or 1882 some workmen engaged in making an excavation near the little Town of Stockton, in Franklin County, unearthed an old saddle stirrup of the design used by Moorish horse- men of the sixteenth century. It was found several feet below the surface and strengthens the theory that Coronado and his associates were the first white men to set foot upon Nebraska soil.
A great deal of speculation has been indulged in regarding the location of Quivira. Some have attempted to show that it was near the head of the Gulf of California ; several places in Colorado claim the honor ; others think the site of this mythical province is marked by the ruins called "Gran Quivira" in New Mexico, and still others have claimed that the country of Tartarrax was near the present Junction City, Kansas. The engineers engaged in building the Union Pacific Railroad found near the mouth of the Loup River mounds and other evidences of populous villages. These evidences of a once densely popu- lated region support, in some degree, the statement of the Turk when he was about to die his tragic death that the cities of which he had spoken were "just a little farther on."
DON JUAN DE ONATE
In 1599 Don Juan de Onate led an expedition eastward from New Mexico, but the accounts concerning his movements are so conflicting and uncertain that little definite information can be gained from them. In his own story he says he came to the City of Quivira, "which is on the north bank of a wide and shallow river." Some historians think that the river mentioned is the Platte, and the location of the city as described by Onate corresponds fairly well to the ruins found in the Valley of the Loup near its mouth. He also says he fought with the Escanzaques and killed a thousand or more of them. If such a battle really occurred it might have taken place within the limits of the present State of Nebraska. Onate, however, was given to romancing and not much credence is placed in his story.
PENALOSA
Another Spanish expedition into the Missouri Valley was that of the so-called "Duke of Penalosa." On March 6, 1662, he left Santa Fe with great pomp and state, riding in a carriage drawn by four horses, and for three months led his forces over prairies "so agreeable that not in all the Indies, Peru and New Spain, nor in all Europe, have any other such been seen so delightful and pleasant." At least such is the report of his chronicler, Nicholas de Freytas, one of the friars who accompanied the expedition.
At the end of three months Penalosa came to "a wide and rapid river," where
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lie met a war party of the Escanzaques, numbering about three thousand men, on an expedition against the Quivirans. De Freytas' narrative says the Escan- zaques lived along the fortieth parallel of north latitude and that they were a powerful and warlike tribe. Penalosa made some sort of a friendly agreement with the war party and marched with it toward Quivira. After a march of several days they reached another large river, on the opposite side of which they could see a stream of considerable size entering it from the north. Along this tributary could be seen "a vast settlement or city, in the midst of a spacious prairie." This city, the Escanzaque chiefs said, was in the Province of Quivira, and De Freytas says "it contained thousands of houses, circular in shape for the most part, some two, three, and even four stories in height, framed of a hard wood and skillfully thatched. It extended along both sides of this second river for more than two leagues."
Penalosa and his Indian allies encamped on the south side of the large river (probably the Platte), intending to cross over the next morning and honor the chief with a visit. But during the night the Escanzaques stole out of the camp, crossed the river and attacked the city. All the inhabitants who were not killed fled in fright, so that Penalosa did not meet a single live inhabitant of that fabled province which had so long commanded the attention of the Spanish adven- turers in New Spain. Not a very likely story, but it served to increase Penalosa's importance with the Spanish authorities, which was doubtless the purpose for which it was told.
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS
As early as 1611 Jesuit missionaries from the French settlements in Canada were among the Indians who inhabited the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. In 1634 Jean Nicollet, the agent of the Company of One Hundred authorized by the King of France to engage in the fur trade, explored the western shore of Lake Michigan about Green Bay and went as far west as the Fox River Country, in what is now the State of Wisconsin. He is said to have been the first man to make a report upon the region west of the Great Lakes.
Early in the year 1665 Claude Allouez, one of the most zealous of the Jesuit fathers, visited the Indians in the vicinity of what is now known as Ashland Bay, on the southern shore of Lake Superior. In the fall of the same year he held a council with representatives of several of the western tribes at the Chippewa village, not far from Ashland Bay. At this council were chiefs of the Chippewa, Sioux, Sac, Fox, Pottawatami and Illini. Allouez promised. the Indians the protection of the great French father and opened the way for a profitable trade with the natives. At the council some of the Illini and Sioux chiefs told the missionary of a great river farther to the westward, "called by them the Me-sa-sip-pi, which they said 110 white man had yet seen (they knew nothing of De Soto's expedition of more than twenty years before), and along which fur-bearing animals abounded."
Three years later Allouez and another missionary, Father Claude Dablon, founded the mission of St. Mary's, the oldest white settlement within the pres- ent State of Michigan. The French authorities in Canada, influenced by the reports of Nicollet and the missionaries, sent Nicholas Perrot as the accredited
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agent of the French Government to arrange for a grand council with the Indians. The council was held at St. Mary's in May, 1671. Before the close of that year Jacques Marquette, another Jesuit missionary, founded the mission at Point St. Ignace for the benefit of the Huron Indians. For many years this mission was regarded as the key to the great unexplored West.
MARQUETTE AND JOLIET
Father Marquette had heard the reports concerning the great river to the westward and was filled with a desire to discover it, but was deterred from doing so until after Perrot's council of May, 1671, which resulted in the estab- lishment of friendly relations between the French and Indians. Even then he was delayed for nearly two years, but in the spring of 1673, having received authority from the Canadian officials, he began his preparations at Michili- mackinac for the voyage. It is related that the friendly Indians there tried to dissuade him from his undertaking by telling him that the Indians who lived along the great river were cruel and bloodthirsty, and that the stream itself was the abode of terrible monsters that could easily swallow a canoe loaded with men.
Such stories had no effect upon the intrepid priest, unless it was to make him the more determined, and on May 13, 1673, accompanied by Louis Joliet, an explorer and trader, and five voyagers, or boatmen, in two large canoes, the little expedition left Michilimackinac. Passing up the Green Bay to the mouth of the Fox River, they ascended that stream to the portage, crossed over to the Wisconsin River, down which they floated until June 17, 1673, when they first saw the Mississippi, opposite the present Town of McGregor, Iowa. Turning their canoes southward. they descended the Mississippi, carefully noting the landmarks as they passed along. On the 25th they landed on the west bank "sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin River," where they noticed footprints in the soft earth. This was about twelve miles above the present City of Keokuk, Iowa. Following the footprints back from the river, they came to a village of the Illini Indians, where they remained for several days. They then continued their voyage down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas. There they came to a tribe of Indians whose language they could not understand and from here returned to Canada. They reached the French settlements about Michilimackinac after an absence of some four months, dur- ing which they had traveled about two thousand five hundred miles.
Joliet was a good topographer and he prepared a map of the country through which he and Marquette had passed. The reports of their voyage, when pre- sented to the French authorities, made the knowledge of the Mississippi's exist- ence certain and it was not long until steps were taken to claim the country drained by it for France.
LA SALLE'S EXPEDITIONS
In 1674 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was granted the seigneury of Fort Frontenac, where the City of Kingston, Canada, is now situated, and on May 12, 1678, Louis XIV, then King of France, granted La Salle a permit to continue the explorations of Marquette and Joliet, "find a port for the king's
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ships in the Gulf of Mexico, discover the western parts of New France, and find a way to penetrate Mexico."
Late in the year 1678 La Salle made his first attempt to reach and descend the Mississippi, but it ended in failure, chiefly because his preparations had not been made with sufficient care. Affairs at Fort Frontenac then claimed his attention until December, 1681, when he started upon his second, and what proved to be his successful expedition. He was accompanied by his lieutenant. Henri de Tonti; Jacques de la Metarie, a notary; Jean Michel, who was the surgeon of the expedition; Father Zenobe Membre, a Recollet missionary, and "a number of Frenchmen carrying arms." It is not necessary to follow this little expedition through all its vicissitudes and hardships in the dead of winter and a wild, unexplored country. Suffice it to say that on April 8, 1682, La Salle and Tonti passed through two of the channels at the mouth of the Mississippi leading to the Gulf of Mexico. The next day La Salle formally took possession of "all the country drained by the great river and its tributaries in the name of France, and conferred upon it the name of Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV. the French king." Under this claim Nebraska became a dependency of France.
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA
Before the close of the year 1682 small trading posts were planted by the French at Kaskaskia and Cahokia-the oldest settlements on the Mississippi River. In April, 1689, Nicholas Perrot took formal possession of the upper Mississippi Valley in the name of France and built a fort and trading post on a river, to which he gave the name of St. Nicholas.
In 1712 the French Government granted to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy mer- chant of Paris, a charter giving him exclusive control of the Louisiana trade under certain conditions. Crozat sent his agents to America, but when they arrived in the Gulf of Mexico they found the Spanish ports closed to their ships, for Spain, while recognizing the claim of France to Louisiana, as based upon the discovery of La Salle, was jealous of French ambitions. At the end of five years, tired of combating Spanish opposition and other difficulties, Crozat surrendered his charter.
Crozat was succeeded by the Mississippi Company, which was organized by John Law as a branch of the Bank of France. In 1718 Law sent some eight hundred colonists to Louisiana and the next year Philipe Renault took about two hundred people up the Mississippi, the intention being to establish posts and open up a trade with the Indians. Law was a good promoter, but a poor execu- tive. In 1720 his whole scheme collapsed, and so dismal was the failure that his company is known in history as the "Mississippi Bubble." Ten years later the entire white population of Louisiana was only about three hundred and fifty. On April 10, 1732, Law surrendered his charter and Louisiana once more became a French crown province.
THE MALLET BROTHERS
The first explorations in Nebraska, of which there is any authentic account, were made by Pierre and Paul Mallet, of New Orleans. Accompanied by six
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other Frenchmen, the two brothers ascended the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in 1738 and spent the winter near the mouth of the Niobrara. The next season they went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the account of their journey forms part of Margry's Narrative.
From the Margry Papers it is learned that upon breaking camp in May, 1739, they followed for several days a course nearly parallel to the Missouri River. On June 2d they "reached a river which they named the Plate, and see- ing that it took a direction not far from the route they had in mind, they followed it, going up its right bank for seventy miles, where they found the river made a fork with the river of the Padoucas, which just there flows in. Three days afterward (June 13th), they crossed to the left bank of the river, and traveling over a tongue of land, they camped on the 14th on the other bank of the River des Castes (Hill River), which here falls also into the River Plate."
WORK OF THE ENGLISII
In the meantime the English had not been idle in the matter of claiming territory in the New World. In 1620 the British crown, ignoring Spain's papal grant and the explorations of De Soto, issued to the Plymouth Company a charter including "all the lands between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels of north latitude from sea to sea." As the fortieth parallel now forms the southern boundary of Nebraska, the entire state was included in the Plymouth Company's grant. Eight years later (1628), the Massachusetts Bay Company received a charter from the English Government to a strip of land about one hundred miles wide "extending from sea to sea." Had the lands of the Massa- chusetts Bay Company ever been surveyed, the northern boundary would have been almost coincident with the northern boundary of Nebraska, and the southern would have crossed the Missouri River about twenty miles above the present City of Omaha.
Thus it was that Nebraska was early claimed by both Spain and England "by right of discovery," and some years later by France as part of the Province of Louisiana. No efforts were made by either England or Spain to colonize the interior, the former nation being content with the settlements along the Atlantic Coast, and the latter so intent on discovering rich gold or silver inines that no attention was given to founding permanent settlements.
The Hudson's Bay Company was organized by the English in 1670 and its trappers and traders went into all parts of the interior, in spite of the French claim to the Mississippi Valley. In 1712 the English traders incited the Fox Indians to hostilities against the French. Again in 1730 the English and Dutch traders influenced some of the tribes to make war on the French in the hope of driving them from the country. The first open rupture between France and England did not come, however, until 1753, when the French began building a line of forts from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River to prevent the English from extending their settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains. This brought on the conflict known in history as the "French and Indian war," which kept the American colonies and the Indian tribes in a state of unrest for several years.
The war was ended by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which was concluded on
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November 3, 1762, and was ratified by the Treaty of Paris, on February 10, 1763. By these treaties France ceded all that part of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi River, except the City and Island of New Orleans, to Great Britain. On the day the Treaty of Paris was concluded it was announced that, by an agreement previously made in secret, the City and Island of New Orleans and "all that portion of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi, including the whole country to the head waters of the great river and west to the Rocky Mountains," was ceded to Spain. Thus the jurisdiction of France in that part of North America now forming the United States was brought to an end and Nebraska became a part of the Spanish possessions. The French inhabitants became Spanish subjects, many of them remaining in the province and taking an active part in business and political affairs.
Then came the Revolutionary war, which again changed the map of Central North America. At the close of the French and Indian war, many of the people living east of the Mississippi refused to acknowledge allegiance to Great Britain and removed to the west side of the river. At the beginning of the revolution a number of these persons recrossed the river and allied themselves with the colonists in the struggle for independence. The British had established several military posts in the territory acquired from France at the close of the French and Indian war, the most important of which were the ones at Detroit, Michigan, Vincennes, Indiana, and Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Illinois. In 1778 the Vir- ginia Legislature authorized an expedition under Gen. George Rogers Clark for the reduction of these posts. The expedition was successful, all the British establishments in the Northwest, except the one at Detroit, falling into the hands of the Americans.
At first glance it may seem that Clark's conquest of the Northwest had little or no effect upon the subsequent fate of Nebraska. But this is another case of "The Seen and the Unseen." It must be remembered that the capture of the British posts of the Northwest was the cause of the western boundary of the United States being fixed at the Mississippi River by the Treaty of 1783, which ended the Revolutionary war and established the independence of the United States. Had it not been for General Clark's successful campaign, the Territory of the United States would in all probability have been confined to the thirteen original colonies and the history of the great Mississippi Valley in that case can only be conjectured. But by extending the limits of the new republic to the great Father of Waters the way was opened for the acquisition of territory west of that river, and in time Nebraska became one of the sovereign states of the American Union.
CHAPTER IF
INDIAN HISTORY
DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN FAMILIES AT THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY- INDIANS OF NEBRASKA-THE PAWNEE-THE PONCA-THE PONCA LAWSUIT- THE OTOE-THE OMAHA-TRIBAL ORGANIZATION- LEGEND OF THE SACRED PIPES-MANNERS AND CUSTOMS-OMAHA CHIEFS-IMPRESSIVE BURIAL OF BLACKBIRD-LOGAN FONTENELLE-TREATIES WITH TITE OMAHA.
When Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to the Western Hemi- sphere in 1492, he believed that he had reached the goal of his long cherished ambitions, and that the country where he landed was the eastern shore of Asia. The first European explorers in America, entertaining a similar belief, thought the country was Indian and gave to the race of copper colored people they found there the name of Indians. Subsequent explorations established the fact that the land discovered by Columbus was really a continent hitherto unknown to the civilized nations of the world, but the name given to the natives still remains. The North American Indians are divided into several groups or families, each of which is distinguished by certain physical and linguistic characteristics. At the close of the fifteenth century the various leading groups were distributed over the continent as follows :
In the far North were the Eskimo, a tribe that never played any conspicuous part in history. They still inhabit the country in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle, where some of them are occasionally employed as guides to polar expeditions.
The great Algonquian family, the largest and most powerful of all the Indian nations or groups, occupied a large triangle, roughly bounded by the Atlantic Coast from Labrador to Cape Hatteras and lines drawn from those two points to the western end of Lake Superior. In the center of the Algonquian country-along the shores of Lake Ontario and the upper water of the St. Law- rence River-was the home of the Iroquoian tribes, viz: The Oneida, Onon- daga, Mohawk, Cayuga and Seneca. To the early colonists these tribes became known as the "Five Nations." Some years later the Tuscarora tribe was added to the confederacy, which then took the name of the "Six Nations."
South of the Algonquian triangle, extending from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast, the country was inhabited by the Muskhogean family, the principal tribes of which were the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Cherokee. The people of this group were among the most intelligent, as well as the most warlike and aggressive, of the North American Indians.
In the great Northwest, about the sources of the Mississippi River and extending westward to the Missouri, lay the domain of the Siouan family,
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which was composed of a number of tribes, closely resembling each other in appearance and dialect, and noted for their physical prowess and warlike tendencies.
South and west of the Siouan country the great plains and the foothills of the Rocky Mountians were inhabited by the bold, vindictive Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other tribes, and still farther south, in what are now the states of Arkansas and Louisiana, was the Caddoan group. Scattered over other parts of the country were a number of minor tribes which claimed kinship with none of the great families. These tribes were generally inferior in num- bers, often nomadic in their habits, and consequently are of little historic significance.
Volumes have been written on the North American Indian-his legends, traditions and customs-and the subject has not yet been exhausted. In a work of this nature it is not the design to give an extended account of the entire Indian race, but to notice only those tribes whose history is intimately connected with the territory forming the present State of Nebraska, and especially the region about Omaha. These tribes were the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe and Omaha.
THE PAWNEE
Some early writers took the position that the Pawnee were the descendants of the ancient Aztec nation, but the best authorities agree that the tribe belongs to the Caddoan family and that the original habitat was probably on the Red River of Louisiana. In the Caddoan migration toward the northeast the Pawnee became separated from the main body and established themselves in the Valley of the Platte, where they were found by the Siouan tribes at a very early date. They called themselves Cha-hik-sic-ha-hiks or "men of men." Fletcher thinks the name Pawnee is derived from Parika (a horn), owing to the custom of these Indians of stiffening the scalplock with paint and grease until it resembled a horn. The Indian called "the Turk," mentioned in connection with the expe- dition of Coronado, is believed by some ethnologists to have been a Pawnee.
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