EARLY DAYS IN PAWNEE COUNTY
By Daniel B. Cropsey
In March, 1868, I left Fairbury, Illinois, with my two brothers and a boy friend in a covered wagon drawn by two mules. We landed at Nebraska City after swimming the mules to get to the ferry on which we crossed the Big Muddy. We then drove to Lincoln the first week in April. My father had purchased a home there on the site where the Capital hotel now stands. Lincoln then was but a hamlet of a few hundred people. There were no shade trees nor sidewalks and no railroad. Later father built a larger house, out a considerable distance in those days, but today it faces the capitol building. The house is a brick structure, and all the bricks were hauled from Nebraska City. Afterwards father sold the home to Chancellor Fairfield of the State University.
The year before we came father had come to Nebraska and had bought a large body of land, about ten thousand acres, in Pawnee county. I being the oldest boy in our family, it devolved upon me to go to Pawnee county to look after the land, which was upland and considered by the older inhabitants of little value; but the tract is now worth about a million dollars. Among other duties I superintended the opening up of the lines and plowing out fifty-two miles of hedge rows around and through this land. I am sorry to say that most of the money and labor were lost for prairie fires almost completely destroyed the hedge.
I had many experiences during my two years' sojourn in Pawnee county. The work was hard and tedious. Shelter and drinking-water were scarce—we drank water from the buffalo wallows or went thirsty, and at times had to brave the storms in the open. The people were poor and many lived in sod houses or "dugouts," and the living was very plain. Meat and fruit were rarities. The good people I lived with did their best to provide, but they were up against it. Grasshoppers and the drouth were things they had to contend with. At times our meals consisted of bread and butter and pumpkin, with pumpkin pie for Sunday dinner. The barn we usually carried with us. It consisted of a rope from sixty to a hundred feet long for each mule or horse and was called the lariat. I put the pony one night in the barn across the ravine, I well remember, and in the morning I found a river between the barn and me. A rain had fallen in the night and I had to wait nearly a day before I could get to the pony.
Our only amusement was running down young deer and rabbits and killing rattlesnakes.
We often met the red man with his paint and feathers. He was ever ready to greet you with "How!" and also ready to trade ponies, and never backward about asking for "tobac." As I was neither brave nor well acquainted with the Indians I was always ready to divide my "tobac." Later I found out I was easy, for the boys told me whenever they met the beggar Indian they told him to "puckachee," which they said meant for him to move on.
We had no banks, and we cashed our drafts with the merchants. David Butler was governor at that time. He was a merchant as well, and made his home in Pawnee, so he was my banker. On two occasions I had the pleasure of riding with him in his buggy from Pawnee to Lincoln. It was indeed a privilege to ride in a buggy, for we all rode ponies those days, and I think I was envied by most of the boys and girls of Pawnee. On one of my return trips with the governor my good mother had baked a nice cake for me to take with me, which I put under the seat along with a lot of wines of several kinds and grades which the governor's friends had given him. Of course mother didn't know about the liquids. I'll never forget that trip. We grew very sociable and the Nemaha valley grew wider and wider as we drove along; and when we arrived at Pawnee the next day the cake was all gone, our faces were like full moons, and it was fully a week before I had any feeling in my flesh.
I also well remember the first train which ran between Lincoln and Plattsmouth. That was a great day, and the Burlington excursion was made up of box cars and flat cars with ties for seats. Crowds of young people took advantage of the excursion and we enjoyed it much more than we would today in a well-equipped pullman.