USA > Nebraska > York County > York County, Nebraska and its people : together with a condensed history of the state, Vol. I > Part 7
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HIALL COUNTY MASSACRES
Prior to this, on February 5, 1862, Hall County had experienced one incident that was sufficient to place the fear of the Indians pretty strongly in the hearts of the settlers of that vicinity. Joseph P. Smith and Andreson, his son-in-law, farmers on Wood River about twelve miles west of Grand Island, were out after some logs on the north channel of the Platte River on that date, accompanied by the two sons, William eleven years and Charles nine years of age. Andreson took home a load of logs and on his return found Mr. Smith and the two boys brutally massacred by the Sioux Indians. The old man Smith had several arrows in his body and was lying on the ice with his face down, holding each of the boys by one hand.
In August, 1864, two boys, Nathaniel and Robert Martin, were helping their father in the hayfield .. The two boys were mounted on a fleet pony and when some Sioux Indians showed up, were making good their escape toward the shelter of the log house and barns at the ranch when an arrow pinned them together.
Passing on to 1867, Hall County experienced two more sad losses at the hands of these Indians. One was the attack on the Campbell ranch on July 24, 1862. No men being at home, the house was captured, a woman, Mrs. Thurston Warren, killed by a gunshot, and her son by an arrow. The two nieces of Mr. Campbell, aged nineteen and seventeen, were carried away with twin boys four years old, and a German, named Henry Dose, was killed close by. The Indians robbed the house, killed some stock, and escaped unmolested. Months later the Government bought the two girls from the Indians for $4,000, and as extra compensation released an Indian squaw who had been captured by Ed. Arnold's Pawnee scouts, at Ehm Creek, that season. Of the children captured, three were living, at least recently. They are Mrs. J. P. Dunlap of Dwight, Nebraska, Peter Campbell, of Wahoo, Nebraska (in Lincoln, in 1919), and Daniel, who in 1919 was living in Ohio.
A few months later two boys, Chris Geottsch and Henry Frauen, were killed in a raid some thirty miles from Grand Island, on the Loup River, near the present site of Dannebrog.
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That there were not more casualties in Hall County during the raid of 1864 was probably due to the fact that the German settlement, of some thirty or forty families living south of the present city of Grand Island, had built a fort in 1862. This was a fortified log house, 24x24 in size and with 25 port holes, had a well inside. This "Fort Independence" and the further fortified O. K. store, so protected this colony that they did not join in the exodus that was taking place up and down the valley, and escaped the troublesome period without loss of life.
TILAYER COUNTY AT HANDS OF RAIDS
Capt. H. E. Palmer, in his "History of the Powder River Expedition of 1865" (Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. II), deseribed the carnage in Thayer County resulting from the raids of the Sioux in 1864, as follows :-
"On my way out, near Big Sandy, now Alexandria, I met a party of freighters and stage coach passengers on horseback, and some few ranchmen, fleeing from the Little Blue Valley. They told me a terrible story, that the Indians were just in their rear and how they had massacred the people just west of them, none knew how many. After camping for dinner at this place, and seeing the last citizen disappear toward the States, I pushed on toward the Little Blue, camping in the valley, and saw two Indians about five miles away on a hill as I went into camp. The next day passed Ewbanks ( Ubanks) ranch, and found there little children from three to seven years old, who had been taken by the heels and swung around against the cabin beating their heads into a jelly. The hired girl was found some fifteen rods from the ranch, staked out on the prairie, tied by her hands and feet, naked, and her body full of arrows and horribly mangled. Not far from this was the body of Ewbanks, whiskers cut off, body most fearfully mutilated. The buildings had been burned and the ruins still smoking. Nearly the same scene of desolation and murder was witnessed at Spring ranch."
He narrates further that this raid on the Little Blue was made by the Cheyenne Sioux under the command of Black Kettle, One-Eyed George Bent, Two Faces and others. Mrs. Ewbanks and Miss Laura Boyer were carried away captives, and were ransomed from the Indians, who brought them to Fort Laramie in January. 1865. This band of Indians, Captain Palmer says, was attacked by Colorado troops under the command of Col. J. M. Chivington, on November 29, 1864, in their eamp on Sand Creek, about one hundred and ten miles southeast of Denver, and some six hundred men, women and children killed. It was supposed this Chiv- ington victory would stop this tribe from its course, but the Cheyenne and Arapahoes seemed determined to go ahead. On the 7th of January, 1865, more than one thousand Indians appeared suddenly before Fort Julesburg, and in a battle that ensued for several hours, fourteen soldiers and fifty-six Indians were killed. An expedition under command of General Mitehell started from Fort Cottonwood down the Republican Valley on January 16, 1865, and went through twelve days of terrible suffering in below zero weather in this pursuit.
GENERAL CARR'S BATTLE WITH THE SIOUX
1869. In June. 1869, an expedition commanded by Gen. E. A. Carr, of the Fifth Cavalry, with eight companies of regular troops and three companies of
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Pawnee scouts under command of Major Frank North, started down the Republican Valley to elear it of these marauders. At a point which was called Summit Springs, in the corner of Colorado, the Indians, comprising Sioux and "Dogsoldiers," renegades from various tribes, were completely routed. Fifty-two of them. in- cluding Tall Bull, were killed. Two women, Mrs. Susannah Alderdice and Mrs. Weichel, were in camp, where Tall Bull had kept them as wives since their capture on the Saline River in Kansas. These he shot rather than risk their capture, but Mrs. Weichel was saved and a large purse raised in camp for her benefit. Even after this episode the Buck surveying party was massaered, captured or otherwise disappeared, and a Daugherty party narrowly escaped such a fate.
However, this appears to have been the last time the Indians resisted the military in this part of Nebraska, and no serious losses were suffered after that, except the famous Cheyenne raid of 1878.
1878. Without going into the dramatic story of the flight of the Cheyenne from their reservation in Indian Territory, where they had been placed two years before, to their old haunts in the Black Hills, suffice it to say that three hundred of that tribe, under the leadership of Dull Knife, Little Wolf, Wild Hog and Old Crow, comprising but eighty-nine warriors, the remainder being women and children, erossed the Nebraska-Kansas boundary line on October 1, 1878. They eluded the detachments of soldiers and posses of civilians for some weeks, and were not brought to bay until they reached the northwestern corner of the state. There, in a winter campaign, they were practically exterminated. They had killed thirty-two people in Rawlins and Decatur counties, Kansas, but so far as known only one man lost his life in Nebraska, George Rowley, who kepl a "cowcamp" at Wauneta Falls.
1876. The next determined stand of the Sioux in a military way does not belong to Nebraska history. That was the campaign of 1826-26, which came upon the heels of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the white man's exodus into that region. The main event of that campaign was the surprise and massacre of the intrepid Gen. George A. Custer and his entire command of nearly three hundred regular troops in the bluffs of the Little Big Horn country under the leadership of Sitting Bull. Four days later General Crook arrived upon the battlefield, and in a series of fights took summary revenge upon the Indians. Of these Sitting Bull with several thousand followers escaped to Canada where he remained till 1881, when he returned on promise of amnesty.
1890. Another treaty had been made in 1889, by which the Sioux surrendered the richest lands of the "Great Sioux reservation" embracing all of South Dakota west of the Missouri, for five small distinct reservations and certain annuities. In 1890 another small outbreak of treachery was attempted at Wounded Knee, on the White River, by a band which had voluntarily surrendered. When this affray, which had threatened the extermination of the unsuspecting regulars was over, some three hundred reds were dead. In this war, old Sitting Bull and members of his family were killed, December 15, 1890, by soldiers sent to arrest him.
The Sioux were typical nomad hunters and warriors. Numerically and physi- cally strong, they made themselves masters of the buffalo plains. no other tribes being able to make a successful stand against them. The census of 1900 placed the nation at 21,000, distributed as follows :- Canada (refugees from U. S.) 600; Minnesota, 930; Montana, 1,180; Nebraska (Santee Agency) 1,310; North Dakota,
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HISTORY OF NEBRASKA
4,630; South Dakota (Cheyenne River, Crow Creek. Lower Brule, Pine Ridge and Rosebud Agencies) 15,480.
OTHER TRIBES OF INDIANS
THE OMAHAS
This tribe, a part of the Dakotas, or Dakotah Sioux, formerly resided north of the Missouri River, in Dakota. But being harassed by other tribes of the Sioux family, it is supposed they moved into Nebraska early in the eighteenth century. Marquette represents them on his map in 1673.
1266. Cover found them on the St. Peter's, where they formed two tribes --- the Hongashonos, and the Ishbanondas, or Grey Eyes-divided into fourteen elans, one of which preserved a sacred shell in a rude temple.
1780. By this time they were traeed to a point on the Missouri, at or near the mouth of the Big Sionx River, and soon afterwards crossed to the west side of the Missouri and settled on the Niobrara.
1804. Lewis and Clark found them, numbering about six hundred. Being pursued relentlessly by the Sioux and greatly reduced in numbers by smallpox, they burned their village on the Niobrara and removed to the Blackbird Hills. Black- bird is the name that was first given to present Thurston County.
1815-1830. Treaties were made with them on July 20, 1815, September 20, 1825, and July 15, 1830, eeding lands at Council Bluffs (Fort Calhoun as now known) for an annuity, blacksmith shop and agrienltural implements.
1830. After the treaty of 1830, they formed their villages at Bellevne, south of present eity of Omaha, and near the trading post of Col. Peter A. Sarpy, and at Saling's Grove, where they remained until June, 1855.
1839. Overtures of peace between the Omaha and their relentless enemies the Sioux failed of accomplishment. A mission established with them by Presbyterian authorities failed of much snecess.
1843. The Omahas returned to their villages and made peace with certain bands of the Sioux.
1846. Another mission established with them had but little more success than that of 1839.
1854. March 16th. A treaty was made by which the Omahas ceded their lands adjoining the Missouri, and north of the Platte and towards the Elkhorn.
1855. In July of this year, their great chief Logan Fontanelle was killed by the Sioux while on a hunting expedition. In this year, this tribe removed to their reservation of 345,000 aeres set forth for them by the Government, in Blackbird, now Thurston County.
1879. Their number had dwindled to a population of 1,050.
THE OTOES
The Otoes belonged to the Dakota family and were originally a part of the Missouris. Their home in Nebraska was originally on the west bank of the Missouri River about thirty miles north of the month of the Platte River. They were of a wandering disposition, frequently moving about from point to point.
HISTORY OF NEBRASKA
1623. The French reported on them under name of Attanka, but they called themselves Wahoohtahta.
1819-20. Major Long in his reports upon them asserted that the Otoes were a band from a great nation living at the head of the Mississippi River. from whom they separated in about 1724, coming west to the Missouri River, their first settle- ment in Nebraska being near the mouth of the Great Nemaha River. Their next camping ground was on the Platte, fifteen or twenty miles from the mouth, from which camp some of their chiefs probably visited the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804, at the latter's camp on the bluffs of the Missouri, sixteen miles above Omaha, from which incident the place derived its name of Council Bluff.
1817-1854. Treaties were made with them on June 24, 1817, and September 26, 1825, and by the treaty of March 25, 1854, the confederated tribes of Otoes and Missouris ceded their rights to the lands lying along the Missouri, and were removed to a reservation of 16,000 acres on the southeastern border of the state. This site was largely in what is now the south part of Gage County, and lapped over into the southeast corner of Jones County-now Jefferson-and took in some land in Marshall and Washington counties, Kansas.
1879. A new treaty was made whereby these Indians were to sell their lands and remove to Indian Territory.
1881. After the foregoing mentioned sale, the Otoes and Missouris moved to Indian Territory.
WINNEBAGOES
This tribe is a part of the Dakota family.
1793. Lived then in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
1863. After several treaties had been made with them, they moved to Crow Creek, in Dakota, above Fort Randall. That place was unsuited to them, and afforded no means of livelihood. Deaths were so numerous from disease, war and famine, that but 1,222 were left out of 1,985. They left there and came to the Omaha reservation and applied for shelter.
1866. May. Removed to Winnebago, to commence anew. They are a quiet, peaceable people, generally wearing citizens' clothing. They lived during the '80s in houses, built for them, and did not maintain a regular village. They played no active part in Indian annals of Nebraska.
PONCAS
This tribe resided for many years on a reservation near the mouth of the Niobrara River, in Dakota Territory. They were originally a branch of the Mahas or Omahas, and resided on the Red River of the North. Losing so greatly from repeated attaeks by the Sioux, they removed to the opposite side of the Missouri River and built a fortified village on the Ponca River. While they united with the Omaha, they generally kept apart.
1804-1832. They were small in number when the visit of Lewis and Clark was made. By treaties of June 28, 1817, and June 9, 1825, they improved somewhat, and in 1832 numbered 750.
1858. March 12th. They sold their lands to the Government and went on a
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reservation near the Yanktons, the compensation to be in installments of $185,000 with the support of their schools and agricultural aid. Prior to this treaty, the Poncas had not received very good protection under their treaty relations and their lands had been considerably invaded and seized by squatter settlers. But from the day they signed away what land rights they had left, in 1858, their real sufferings began. The Government failed to keep full faith with them much of the money appropriated was stolen by dishonest agents and contractors, and their old enemy, the Sioux, robbed them of whatever the white man overlooked.
1874. The Poneas now numbered ?30 and 132 half-breeds. They were then assigned to the care of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
1876. It was decided to remove them to a reservation in Indian Territory. By this time, the Poncas had acquired many of the arts of civilization, and it was hard for them to leave the home they had lived in for so many years. Forcibly removed from their homes, they were compelled to march on a long weary journey of three months to their new homes.
1879. Thirty of this tribe, with Standing Bear as their chief, left their southern reservation and returned to the Omaha reserve. A detachment of soldiers was ordered to take them back. But this proceeding resulted in some interesting litigation. Upon their arrival at Omaha, a writ of habeas corpus was sued ont, and heard before Judge Dundy, of the United States Court, wherein IIon. A. J. Popple- ton and J. L. Webster volunteered their services. This came up on May 2d, and after a careful hearing they were released from custody. Judge Dundy decided that an Indian is a "person" within the intent and purpose of the constitution and released the prisoners. They were finally restored lo the old Omaha reserve home and allowed to remain there in contentment.
IOWAS, SACS AND FOX
These three tribes, about 1880, occupied a reservation in the southeastern corner of the state, extending over into Kansas. These tribes never played a very great part in Nebraska Indian annals.
WESTERN NEBRASKA TRIBES
Considerable mention has been made in the foregoing account of the Sioux in Nebraska of the tribes that dwelt mainly in western and southwestern Nebraska.
The Arapahoes and Cheyennes occupied Nebraska as roaming tribes. They were pressed by the Sioux from the east and the Shoshones from the west. The south- western section of the state, ineluding Dundy and Chase counties, together with the high plains of eastern Colorado, were occupied by the Arapahoe and Cheyennes, who. from a time antedating the coming of the white men had held the headwaters of the Republican and its largest western tributary, the Frenchman, against the aggres- sions of all other tribes.
Before the advent of railroads, settlements were slow in southwestern Nebraska, and that territory was off the regular trails. The Oregon and California trails to the north and Smoky Hill route to south, kept operations away from this part of the country until the late '60s.
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BATTLE OF AUGUST 6, 1860
For several years, before the beginning of the Civil war, bands of Kiowas and Comanches had been ranging up in this vieinity, and in rounding them up on the pursuit northward, a detachment of troops. under command of Captain Sturgis, located them near the Republican fork, north of Beaver Creek. Twenty-nine were killed in the long, hard skirmishes that resulted.
BATTLE OF ASH IIALLOW
Several battles had been fought along the North Platte, between 1850 and 1860, in keeping these western Nebraska Indians rounded up. The most notable in Nebraska annals of these skirmishes was that at Ash Hallow. where General Harney defeated a large body of Indians, in 1855. It was at this battle that General Harney received the title of "The Hornet" from the Indians. Little Thunder, afterward a Brule chief, in describing this fight to W. M. Hinman, then interpreter at Fort McPherson (in Lineoln County) says the Indians called General Harney "The Hornet" because in this encounter they considered themselves badly stung.
WHITE MAN'S TREATMENT OF THE RED MAN
There are two sides to every question, and while many are the terrible depreda- tions and heartless, relentless eruelties detailed in the foregoing pages, as suffered by the hardy white pioneers at the hands of the redskins, there are those among the pioneers, who relate the other side of this question. When the white man eame he found the original American, the Indian, in possession of all the vast acres of fair Nebraska. For centuries this had been his hunting-ground and home, undisturbed.
Then comes in the paleface, who not only takes the acres to live upon, euts down such timbers as he needs, or clears such land as he wishes to cultivate, but the whites wasted timber by the thousands of acres in those early decades, just as they wasted the precious meat of the waning, disappearing bison and buffalo. No less an authority than Buffalo Bill narrated that he alone had killed over 2,000 buffaloes for a railroad camp in Kansas. As one settler of Hall County has expressed it for the compiler of these pages :
"Everybody was shooting the Indians' meat supply, and most of it rotted away on the prairie for nothing. This grieved the Indians' heart beyond expression, and it created a hatred or revenge against the 'palefaces' or 'Chickestalkers.' What more did the white man do? He swindled, lied, corrupted, where he had a chance toward the Indian, and some more villainous of our race even sold the redmen smallpox infected blankets, causing their death in great numbers."
Many pioneers have expressed the wonder that the Indians got mad at last and turned out to be most unmerciful brutes to the white man. Other students of the time have attributed, in part, the raids of 1864, to the assurances of the Mormons that retaliation could be taken upon the Government while it was busy with the southern secessionists. Some settlers, in reflecting upon these things have even wondered that the redskin allowed the paleface to stay at all. The white man writes the history, and whatever the redskin would say, could he record these pages, his age in Nebraska is mostly past. Except for the few now living on reservations in the corners of the state, the present generation of Nebraskans cannot come in touch first-hand to form their judgment.
CHAPTER III "THE BIRTH OF A STATE"
Before Territorial Days
DISCOVERERS-THE QUEST OF QUIVERA-FRENCH EXPLORATIONS-NEBRASKA UNDER FRENCH AND SPANISH RULES-AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS-LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION-THE ASTORIAN EXPEDITION-LONG'S EXPEDITION-TRAIL BLAZERS- GOVERNMENTAL CHANGES IN NEBRASKA TERRITORY-THE MORMONS-TIIE GOLD HUNTERS-"LIFE ON THE PLAINS" -OVERLAND TRAILS-"HAVE YOU AN EYE?"- OREGON TRAIL OTHER TRAILS- DECLINE OF THESE TRAILS-STAGE COACHES PONY EXPRESS SYSTEM-THEN AND NOW.
BEFORE THE TERRITORIAL DAYS
The history of Nebraska naturally begins with the history of the United States, or even to take the point still finer, with the history of the Continent. Wherever each individual student of history will agree that the history of the United States begins, there might we begin the history of Nebraska. But it is unnecessary to con- sume pages of the earlier history of our Nation. But there are a few events preceding the actual formation of Nebraska into a territory, or even preceding the first en- eroachment of the white man upon the native possessor of this vast, fertile empire, The American Indian.
DISCOVERERS
When Christopher Columbus dared to adventure where others feared to go, and by his single voyage revealed to the astonished gaze of Europe the existence of undreamed lands of wonder and beauty, he welded the first link in a chain of explorations and discoveries that paved the way for the great Middle West of Ameriea, and the garden-spot we love to call Nebraska. So to trace the evolution of Nebraska, we will briefly dwell upon the more important of these events.
By striking from the enslaved and paralyzed mind of the Eastern Hemisphere, and banishing the chains of fear and ignorance, Columbus opened up to the descendants of European peoples the fertile plains of Nebraska just as much as any other part of the United States.
In 1493, the year following, the pope granted to the King and Queen of Spain "all countries inhabited by infidels." Of course, at that time the extent of the great continent discovered by Columbus was not known, but, in a vague way, the papal grant included Nebraska.
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Of course, other voyagers had traversed the Atlantic and in recent years. con- flicting claims have been made. tending to bestow the honor of discovering thi- hemisphere upon other explorers than Columbus, but to all of these hardy, daring pioneers belong the honor of opening to the world the great country.
1493-1500. About 1496, Henry VIl of England, granted to John Cabot and his sons a patent of possession and trade to "all lands they may discover and claim in the name of the English crown." Between then and the end of that century. the Cabots explored the Atlantic Coast and made discoveries upon which England claimed practically all of the central part of North America.
1500-1539. Further northward. the French, through the discoveries of Jacques Cartier, laid claim to the valley of the St. Lawrence River and the region about the Great Lakes. from which they pushed their explorations westward toward the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and southward into the valley of the Ohio.
None of these expeditions vet affected the Missouri River region. but they laid the foundations for the struggle that opens American history. wherein three great nations-England. France and Spain-were contesting for this new "garden plot of the world." The people of all western Europe had been enmeshed through- out the fifteenth century in the feudal ideas handed down to them from centuries preceding. During the early sixteenth century, they began to emerge from this enveloping worship of the few. and for the first time since the modern Europe had arisen from the fragments of the Roman Empire were its governments coming into the hands of able rulers. The common people of each country were beginning to think for themselves along the currents that evolved the influences and motives that from one to three hundred years later drove their descendants across the broad Atlantic and impelled them half-way across the undeveloped Western Continent to the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri valleys.
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