[37] This was the route of the Pony Express which was inaugurated some years afterward.
[38] Ben Holliday was one of those wonderful characters developed by a life of adventure and danger, having been nurtured amid the most startling incidents of the frontier. He was born near the old Blue Lick battlefield. At seventeen he was Colonel Doniphan's courier. When only twenty-eight years old he entered Salt Lake Valley with fifty wagonloads of goods, and was endorsed by Brigham Young as being worthy of the confidence of his people. Ten years later he was the head of the Overland Route; at forty-five the owner of sixteen steamers on the Pacific Ocean, with an immense trade to Central America, China, and Japan.
[39] Near the station of Ogallala, on the Union Pacific Railroad.
[40] The unfrocked monk, Geudeville, who travelled extensively in Canada, and published in London, in 1703, his New Voyages to North America, under the nom de plume of Baron La Hontan. It is doubted how far this jolly soldier and bon vivant travelled west. He had served at various points in the interior, and leaves no reason to doubt his presence, at various times, at what was Fort Gratiot, Michilimackinac, Green Bay, and other points in the region of the Upper Lakes. It is the opinion of the historians, however, that he went no farther than Green Bay. There can be but little question of the character of the fiction he attempted to palm off on his readers. His work is a literary curiosity, unexcelled in bibliography, for its bold assumption in attempting to impose on a credulous age a tale of fancied adventures and fictitious observation. He was a veritable Baron Munchausen.
[41] Bancroft.
[42] Although very rare indeed, among all other tribes, it was the leading physical characteristic with the Mandans, a nation long since extinct, who occupied the region at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
[43] This band was known as the Arikaras—not the Pawnees proper.
[44] See Long's Expedition and Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes.
[45] The proper designation of this numerous tribe is Dakota, meaning allied; the word “Sioux,” although difficult to trace to its proper origin, is generally conceded to be a nickname—one of reproach given to them by their ancient enemies east of the Mississippi.
[46] A common game among the savages. One party to the game takes a pebble or small bullet in the curve of both his hands. After he has tossed it about for a few seconds, he swiftly holds them apart, and if his opponent can guess which hand the pebble or stone is in, he wins; if not, he loses. Immense amounts are frequently wagered in this game, for the North American Indian is an inveterate gambler.