Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences

by Daughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska

REMINISCENCES OF GAGE COUNTY

By Albert L. Green

The writer has in his possession an old map of the North American continent published in London in 1796, twelve years after the close of the American Revolution, whereon the region now comprising the state of Nebraska is shown as a part of Quivera; that supposed kingdom of fabulous riches in quest of which Coronado pursued his tedious wanderings more than three hundred years ago. At the time this map was published the French had visited Indian tribes as far west as the Missouri, and it must have been from French and Spanish sources that the geographer and map-maker gathered the information that enabled him to compile that part of his map covering the vast unknown regions of the west. Guess-work and supposition resulted in elongations and abbreviations of territory and rivers that made it possible for him to show our own Blue river as emptying into the Gulf of California, and the great kingdoms of Quivera and Teguayo as extending from the Missouri river to the Pacific coast. The greater part of what is now Mexico is shown as "New Biscay" and "New Navarre," while Mexico or "New Spain" is crowded down towards Central America. The existence of the Rocky Mountains, at the time this map was made, was unknown; and the whole region covered by them is shown as a vast plain. While spending leisure hours among some rare old books in the library of the Union League of Philadelphia, I came across the chronicles of Coronado's wanderings and adventures, as detailed by his monkish chaplain and preserved in the Spanish archives. A careful perusal of these fully convinced me that the route traversed was through eastern Nebraska as far northward as the present site of Lincoln, and possibly as far as the Platte. The great salt marsh was referred to, and the particulars of a disastrous encounter with the warlike Otoes are given. Mention is made of the Missouri nation and its bold warriors, as well as of other tribes whose habitat and hunting grounds were the plains or prairies of eastern Nebraska. In prehistoric times the Indian trails led along the level river bottoms where both wood and water could be obtained and where game was usually most abundant, and also in the direction of salt springs or licks where salt might be obtainable and the larger kinds of game be more plentiful. At the time of its settlement by white people the bottom lands of the Blue were threaded by many deeply worn trails that had evidently been traveled for centuries and a careful consideration of happenings, as recorded by the monkish chronicler, and the fact I have just stated in regard to the prehistoric routes of travel, forces the conclusion that Coronado's weary cavalcade must undoubtedly have followed the course of the Blue river to a point where the well worn trail diverged towards the great salt basin. Possibly the party may have encamped on the site of Beatrice and there can be little doubt that one of the Indian cities mentioned by the faithful monkish historian, occupied the present site of Blue Springs, where evidences of an ancient Indian town can still be seen, and the outlines of ancient fortifications be traced. Fragments of Indian pottery and stone knives and implements, of both the paleolithic and the neolithic ages, are frequently turned up by the plowshare in that vicinity, all indicating a long established occupancy that must have continued for centuries. As late as the early part of the last century the Pawnees occupied the site; and when the writer as United States government agent took charge of the Otoes and Missouris, in the summer of 1869, there were still old warriors living who remembered hearing their fathers tell of deeds of bloody warfare done in this very vicinity, and who pointed out to the writer the very spot, in a deep draw or ravine on the prairie a few miles east of Blue Springs, where a war party of thirty Otoes met a well-deserved, but terrible death. At the time of this occurrence the Otoes were living at the mouth of the Nemaha and were on very bad terms with the Pawnees, many of whose scalps the writer has seen adorning Otoe medicine bags or hanging in their wigwams. The Pawnees had started on a buffalo hunt, leaving at home only the old and decrepit and a few children, and the Otoes, knowing that the defenders of the village had started on the hunt, made an attack at daybreak the next morning, murdering and scalping old and young alike and after loading themselves with plunder, hastened on their homeward trip. Unfortunately for the Otoes the Pawnee hunters had encamped only eight miles up Indian creek and one of them that morning had returned to the village on some errand and arrived just in time to discover what was going on. The Otoes wounded him severely, but he succeeded in escaping to the Pawnee camp and giving the alarm. The enraged Pawnee warriors, mounted on their freshest and fastest ponies, were not long in reaching the village, nor were they long in discovering the trail of the Otoe war party, which they followed until they overtook it at the place pointed out to the writer. Here a fierce battle took place which resulted in the complete extermination of the Otoe party; the tall slough grass, in which they took shelter, having been set on fire, the wounded all perished in the conflagration. This is probably one of the most tragic incidents of which we have any knowledge as having happened within the limits of Gage county.

The first store established within the county was located in a log house on Plum creek near the present site of the village of Liberty. It was established, primarily as an Indian trading place, by a Mr. MacDonald, of St. Joseph, Missouri, but was under the management of Mrs. Palmer, who with her husband, David, were the first white settlers within the limits of the county, having arrived in 1857 a few weeks prior to the coming of the founders of Beatrice. David was drowned a few years ago while bathing in the Blue. The store on Plum creek, on one occasion, was raided by a party of Pawnees who, loaded with plunder, were pursued by a large party of Otoes, who overtook them on the Little Blue some distance above the present site of Fairbury, and killed them all. The site of this battle was pointed out to the writer by the Otoes while accompanying them on a buffalo hunt in 1870. The skulls and bones of the slain were still in evidence at that time, being concealed in the dense thicket in which the battle had taken place.

About the year 1868 a war party of Osages made a raid on the aboriginal inhabitants of the county and murdered and scalped several squaws who were chopping wood near the Blue. The trail of the Osages was followed, by a war party of Otoes, to the reservation of the former and satisfaction exacted in the shape of a gift of forty head of ponies. On their way back the Otoes concluded that they had settled too cheaply and feared they might be censured by the kindred of the murdered women. They halted, and leaving the forty head of ponies under guard, made a flying raid on the Osage pony herds and succeeded in stealing and getting safely away with another forty head. In due time, with eighty head of Osage ponies, they made a triumphal daylight entry into their home village. If they had been unsuccessful they would have stolen in one by one during the darkness of the night.

The last Indian war party to traverse the soil of Gage county consisted of thirty naked and painted Omahas. It transpired that a party of Kickapoos had raided the pony herds of the Omahas and stolen thirty head of ponies, and in order to throw suspicion on the Otoes, had cunningly directed their trail towards the Otoe reservation, passing in the night as near to the Otoe village as possible without being discovered. The Otoes at this time were expecting, and trying to guard against, a raid from the Osages, whom they had great reason to fear, as it was fully expected that they would exact satisfaction, sooner or later, for that extra forty head of ponies that the Otoes had stolen. As a protection from the Osages, the Otoes had constructed a sort of a stockade of poles tied together with withes and strips of bark, in front of each wigwam, where they kept their nearly eight hundred head of ponies under careful watch every night. The Omaha war party stealthily approached under cover of the darkness and finding sentinels posted and watching, they hid in the tall weeds and sunflowers as close to the stockades as they could safely get, until daybreak, when the sleepy sentinels, thinking all danger over, entered the wigwams for something to eat and a nap, then emerging from their hiding places the Omahas made quick work of cutting the lashings that bound the poles and selecting thirty of the best ponies they could get hold of. The noise of the ponies' hoof-beats, as the Omahas rode swiftly away, aroused the Otoes, and in a very few minutes the whole village was in a commotion. Fierce war whoops resounded; the heralds went about calling the braves into action and soon there was mounting in hot haste. The writer, awakened by the tumult, stepped out upon a balcony in front of the agency building and beheld a sight such as no historian of the county will ever again record. In the far distance the naked Omahas were riding for their very lives, while perhaps a hundred or more Otoes were lashing their ponies in a wild frenzy of pursuit. In the village the greatest commotion prevailed, the women wailed, the heralds shouted, and the dogs barked; scores of women stood on the tops of their wigwams shrieking and gesticulating and the temper of the community closely resembled that of a nest of hornets when aroused by the rude thrust of a pole. It was nearly noon when the distant war whoops, announcing the return of the pursuers, were heard; as they drew near it was apparent that they were wildly triumphant and were bringing with them the thirty hideously painted Omahas. The prisoners were delivered to the agent who directed his police to disarm them, and cause them to be seated on the floor of the council room where they formed a dejected looking group with their naked bodies and shaved and vermillion painted heads. It was then that their leader explained that their seizure of ponies was honestly intended as a reprisal for ponies which they had lost. Old Medicine Horse, an Otoe chief, assured them that his braves would have killed every one of them if the agent had not talked so much about the wickedness of killing, and it was only their fear of displeasing him that caused them to take prisoners instead of scalps. After much speech-making, the agent adjourned the council and suggested that the Otoes take the Omahas to their wigwams, feed them, and allow them to depart in peace; and this was done. The only blood shed during the campaign was in the shooting of one of Elijah Filley's hogs by the Omahas. The first notification I had of this atrocious and bloody affair was when Elijah, then quite a young man, came to see me and file a complaint, bringing with him the blood-stained arrow that had pierced the vitals of his innocent hog.

Perhaps one of the saddest tragedies of those early days occurred in 1870 when two homesteaders, returning to their families from a trip to Brownville for provisions, were brutally murdered by a half-breed named Jim Whitewater. Jim was just returning from a buffalo hunt and had secured a supply of whiskey from a man named Wehn, at Fairbury. Being more than half drunk, he conceived the idea that the bravest thing he could do would be to kill some white people; and it happened that he came across the poor homesteaders just at that time. It was about dusk and the poor fellows had halted for the night, by the side of a draw where the grass was tall enough to cut for their horses. They had unharnessed their teams, tied them to the wagons and were in the act of mowing grass for them when a pistol shot rang out and one of them fell mortally wounded; the other, being attacked, and though mortally hurt, tried to defend himself with the scythe that he had been using, and in doing so cut the Indian's hand, almost severing the thumb. The scene of this terrible affair was just over the Gage county line in Jefferson county and consequently it devolved on the sheriff of that county to discover and arrest the murderer. As Whitewater had been seen in the vicinity, suspicion pointed to him and his arrest followed. He soon escaped from the officers and was hidden for two weeks, when the Indian police discovered his place of concealment in the timber on Wolf creek. His own brother, assisted by other Indians, captured him by strategy, bound him securely with their lariats and delivered him at the agency. The writer had gone to Beatrice on business and was not expected back until the next day, but in his absence his wife, then a young woman of about twenty, took energetic measures to insure the safety of the prisoner by ordering him placed in irons, and kept under a strong guard until the agent's return. In the meantime, having finished the business at Beatrice and there being a full moon, the writer decided to drive the twenty miles to the agency between sundown and midnight, which he did, arriving there shortly after midnight. Of course, until his arrival, he had no intimation that Whitewater had been captured. Before leaving home the Indians had reported that they had reason to believe that he was hiding somewhere on Wolf creek, as his wife had taken dried buffalo meat to that locality, and as the writer, in returning, had to drive for about forty rods through the heavy timber bordering that creek and cross it at a deep and rather dangerous ford, and knowing that Whitewater had declared that he would take both the agent and the sheriff with him to the other world, and that he was heavily armed, the writer is not ashamed to confess to a feeling of nervousness almost akin to fear, as he was about to enter that stretch of timber shaded road dimly lighted by the full moon. He first carefully let down the curtains of the carriage and then made his team dash at full speed through the long stretch of timber, plunge and flounder through the ford, and out once more upon the open prairie, the driver expecting at almost any moment to hear the crack of a pistol. On arriving within sight of the agency building, instead of finding it dark and silent as he had expected, the writer was greatly surprised to see it well lighted and many Indian police standing about it as if on guard. The next morning the writer with several Indian chiefs and the Indian police started for Fairbury with the prisoner; the Indians riding two abreast and carrying a large United States flag at the head of the procession. The trip was made via Beatrice and the distance traveled was about fifty miles. The Indians feared an attack from the Rose creek settlers; neighbors and friends of the murdered men, and as they approached Fairbury the entire line of Indians commenced a melodious chant which the interpreter explained as nothing less than an appeal to the Great Spirit asking him to incline the hearts of the people to treat the Indians kindly and fairly. On arriving at Fairbury the cavalcade halted in the public square and was soon surrounded by the entire population of the hamlet. It was nearly dark, but the good ladies of the place set about preparing a bountiful meal for the hungry Indians, to which they did ample justice. There being no jail in the place, we waived a hearing and started the next morning for Pawnee City, where prison accommodations could be had. Shortly after leaving Fairbury the interpreter told the Indians that evidently the Great Spirit had heard their appeal, to which they all vociferously assented. Jim was kept at Pawnee City until his trial, which took place at Fairbury before Judge O. P. Mason, who sentenced him to imprisonment for life. Whitewater was one of three individuals among the Otoes who could read and write, the other two being Battiste Barneby and Battiste Deroin, both of whom were very capable interpreters. Polygamy being allowable among the Otoes, Deroin was one who had availed himself of its privileges, his two wives being sisters. On learning that Whitewater had been imprisoned for life, his wife soon found another husband, greatly to his sorrow and chagrin. It was during Whitewater's imprisonment that the reservation was sold and the Indians removed. Eighteen years after his conviction he received a pardon and left the penitentiary to rejoin the tribe. What retribution he meted out to those who aided in his capture or to his wife's second husband, the writer has never learned.

A year before the writer took charge of the Otoes and Missouris, a delegation of their chiefs had accompanied their agent Major Smith, to Washington and made a treaty under which the whole reservation of 160,000 acres was to be sold at $1.50 per acre. The writer was informed by Major Smith that a railroad company would become the ultimate beneficiary, provided the treaty was ratified by the senate, and that he had been promised a section of land if the scheme proved successful. Smith urged the writer to use all the influence possible to secure the ratification of the treaty and before the writer had taken any steps to secure its defeat, he also received an intimation, if not an absolute promise, from interested parties, that in the event of its ratification, he should have his choice of any section of land on the domain. Believing that such a treaty was adverse to the interests and welfare of the Indians, the writer at once set about to accomplish its defeat, in which, through the aid of eastern friends, he was finally successful.

Coronado's chronicler mentions, among other nations with whom the expedition came in contact, the Missourias as being very fierce and warlike, and it may be a matter of local historical interest to state that the Missouri "nation" with which Coronado became acquainted, and from which one of the world's largest rivers and one of the largest and richest states take their names, reduced to a remnant of less than one hundred individuals, found an abiding place within the limits of Gage county for more than a generation. Placed on a reservation with the Otoes and under the care of the same agent, they still retained their own chief and their own language, though circumstances gradually induced the adoption of the Otoe tongue. The old chief of the Missouris was called Eagle and was known as a war chief. It was his province to command and direct all hunting operations. He was a man of very striking appearance, over six feet in height, straight as an arrow, with fine features and apparently about seventy-five years of age in 1869. He was an hereditary chief, and probably a lineal descendant of one of the kings of the Missouri nation that Coronado and his followers met. Old Eagle was the only chief of the Missouris, and was respected and highly esteemed by both the Missouris and the Otoes. During a buffalo hunt, in which the writer participated with the Indians, Eagle chief was the highest authority in regard to all matters pertaining to the chase and attack on the herd. In 1869 the head chief of the Otoes was Arkeketah who was said to have been appointed to that position by Major Daily. He was a polygamist and very much opposed to the ways of the white man. In fact he was such a reactionary and stumbling-block to the progress of the tribe that the writer finally deposed him and advanced Medicine Horse to the position of head chief.

The number of Indians living within the borders of Gage county in 1869 was probably not far from eight hundred. The reservation, comprising two hundred and fifty square miles, extended some distance into Kansas and also took in a part of Jefferson county in this state, but the Indians were all domiciled in Gage county. Their principal village was situated close to the site now occupied by the town of Barnston and where a fine spring afforded an ample supply of water. The wigwams were of a type adopted by the Indians long before the discovery of America, and most of them were large enough to accommodate several families. It was a custom of the Otoes to vacate the wigwams and live during the winter in tipis which were pitched in the timber where fuel was close at hand. In 1869 only three persons in the confederated tribes wore citizens clothes, the rest were all blanket Indians, who, during warm weather, went almost naked, and habitually painted their faces and shaved heads, with vermillion and indigo.