When Vice-President Colfax and Horace Greeley, and Governor Bross of Illinois, made the journey overland to California, about twelve years since, they went all the way by stage from the Missouri River to Denver, Colorado, to Salt Lake, etc., through the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. It took them about thirty days to go. Mr. Greeley said he "could think of these plains (called in your maps the 'Great American Desert') as fit for nothing but to fill up between commercial cities!" But he was partly mistaken, as his friends are now planting a colony (named Greeley) of intelligent settlers on the Cach-le-pow-dre Creek, south of Cheyenne, fifty-five miles toward Denver, where ninety thousand acres of land have been secured for tillage, and where saw-mills and stores and dwellings are to be erected. The success of this enterprise has led to another one. The railroad has projected civilization one hundred years ahead, opening up a highway for commerce from New York to the "Golden Gate," to Asia, Africa, and China, which will astonish the world and divert the course of trade to the Pacific coast.
But you are interested mainly, I see, in reading about the incidents which attended the opening up of this great national highway.
The dangers attending the building of the road were sometimes very great, as the Indians saw very plainly that it was the white man's encroachment on his hunting-grounds. And when even the telegraph-poles were being put up, long before, the Indians imagined that the government was thus putting them up to fence off their hunting-grounds, so they could not get any more buffalo! And once, after I came to Fort Sedgwick, the wires were said to be "down," and no communication could be had with other posts in the upper country. It was feared that the Indians had been tampering with the wires, and torn them down. But the operators went out under an escort of soldiers to see what the difficulty was. They came back again in a couple of days, and reported that the Indians had not meddled with the wires at all. But it seemed that some buffaloes in a large drove had taken the privilege of scratching their rumps against the poles, and thus tore them down; and getting their horns entangled in the wires, the wild creatures had carried off about four miles of telegraph-wire!
[ WHY DOES NOT THE INDIAN MEDDLE WITH THE TELEGRAPH? ]
It is said that the pioneer company over the plains got together several chiefs and explained as well as they could the modus operandi of obtaining electricity from the clouds, and making it useful in conveying intelligence to great distances. This was hard for them to believe, because they are superstitious, and attribute all phenomena they do not fully understand to conjuration or charms, such as their medicine-man practices. However, they concluded to put the matter to a test.
So it was that two principal Indians, about one hundred miles apart, agreed to send a message over the lines on a given day, and then they would travel toward each other as fast as they could to see if the message (known only to themselves and the operator) should be correct. Of course it proved as we would expect, and they were satisfied. This intelligence has spread from one tribe to another, and they, believing that it is somehow (as it is in truth) connected with the Great Spirit who controls the winds and the storms; hence they do not meddle with it.
But it is not to be supposed that the Indians quietly submitted to the building of the railroad through their country.
The most formidable obstacle which was met with in building the road occurred in 1866, by the throwing off the track a train of cars at Plum Creek, near the Platte River, two hundred and thirty miles west of Omaha.
The Indians were led on by a half-breed, and probably one or more scalawag whites were engaged in this diabolical act, as one was found among the killed with his face painted black and wearing Indian clothing. Some one having a fertile imagination made a picture of this scene, and I saw it copied in Philadelphia for some wall-paper to ornament hotel dining-rooms. Speaking to some ladies there about the delightful trip to California over the Pacific Railroad, one exclaimed, "I would like to visit California, but oh, my! I never could venture on the danger. Just look at the picture in the window, corner Chestnut Street and Broad. The horrid Indians have thrown the cars off the track, and killing all the passengers!" I explained to her that it was a fancy sketch entirely, gotten up for a bar-room wall-paper, and that it was ridiculous and false; for the picture was made to show the locomotive off the rail, and the Indians riding round the cars in white shirt sleeves and bright-red, flaring neckties, like gay cavaliers or brigands!