In May, 1869, the Fifth U. S. Cavalry arrived at Fort McPherson under General Carr. Eight companies were left here and four companies went to Sidney and Cheyenne. The government was surveying this county at that time and the troops were used to protect the surveyors. Large bands of Indians had left the reservation and were killing settlers and stealing horses. During the summer of 1869 the order from General Auger, commanding the department, was to clear the country of Indians between the Union Pacific and the Kansas Pacific. I was an officer of the Fifth U. S. Cavalry and was in command of the post at North Platte in 1869 and 1870, and was in all the Indian campaigns until I resigned in 1878.
The first bank in North Platte was started in 1875 by Walker Brothers and was later sold to Charles McDonald.
GRAY EAGLE, PAWNEE CHIEF
By Millard S. Binney
It is not often that one sees a real Indian chief on the streets of Fullerton, but such happened in June, 1913, when the city was visited by David Gillingham, as he is known in the English tongue, or Gray Eagle, as his people call him, chief of the Pawnees.
Gray Eagle is the son of White Eagle, whom the early inhabitants of Nance county will remember as chief of the Pawnees at the time the county was owned by that tribe.
Gray Eagle was born about three miles this side of Genoa, in 1861. He spent his boyhood in the county and when white men began to build at the place that is now Genoa, he attended school there. When he was fourteen years of age he accompanied his tribe to its new home at Pawnee City, Oklahoma, where he has since resided. The trip overland was made mostly on horseback, and the memories of it are very interesting as interpreted to us by Chief Gray Eagle, and John Williamson, of Genoa, one of the few white men to make this long journey with the red men. Gray Eagle made one trip back here in 1879, visiting the spot that is now Fullerton—then only a few rude shacks.
Uppermost in Gray Eagle's mind had always been the desire to return and see what changes civilization had brought. In 1913 he was sent to St. Louis as a delegate to the Baptist convention, after which he decided to visit the old scenes. From St. Louis he went to Chicago and from that city he came to Genoa.
"I have always wanted to see if I could locate the exact spot of my birth," said Gray Eagle, in perfect English, as he talked to us on this last visit, "and I have been successful in my undertaking. I found it last week, three miles this side of Genoa. I was born in a little, round mud-house, and although the house is long since gone, I discovered the circular mound that had been its foundation. I stood upon the very spot where I was born, and as I looked out over the slopes and valleys that had once been ours; at the corn and wheat growing upon the ground that had once been our hunting grounds; at the quietly flowing streams that we had used so often for watering places in the days so long gone by; my heart was very sad. Yet I've found that spot and am satisfied. I can now go back to the South and feel that my greatest desire has been granted."