By John T. Bristow
COURIER-TRIBUNE Editor’s Note:—History can be dry or it can be interesting. When it is colorful, filled with the lives of people, it will be remembered far longer than if but dry facts are presented. We think that this true story by John Bristow of Wetmore is one that will make the English Colony of old Nemaha County days long remembered.
Although at the outset you will likely be thinking of a current and very popular song hit, you must read far into this contribution before you can put your finger on the line from which the above caption stems. Also, for a clear picture of it all, you must go back with me three score and five years to a favorite hunting grounds in the upper reaches of Spring creek.
My father had bought a coon-dog from a traveler. This night—Christmas Eve—was to have been the try-out but the way it turned out, Dad could not know then how badly he had been “skinned.” That came later. Old Drum had a wonderful voice, and though he “lied” a few times on later occasions, he never did tree a coon.
In the party were Roland Van Amburg, Bill (Thuse) Peters, Jim Scanlan, Bob Graham, my father and myself. Incidentally, Van Amburg was the last man to take up a homestead in these parts. He homesteaded the 80 acres now owned by Ambrose McConwell, almost adjoining town, in the middle 70’s. He was a happy-go-lucky, clownish sort of man.
Well, Van was not exactly the last one to file on a homestead here, but he was the last one to do it in the regular way. Lawyer F. M. Jefferies, while publishing the Spectator in Wetmore in the 80’s filed on a quarter a few miles northwest of town—but it developed that the land was improved and occupied by Eli Swerdfeger, who had by mistake filed on another number. When Eli’s neighbor threatened to do mayhem to Lawyer Jefferies, he relinquished — and Swerdfeger’s correct filing was even later than Van’s. They called it “claim jumping”—though it was hardly that, in the true sense of the term. There had, however, been some claim jumping earlier, where settlers were negligent in fulfilling the lawful requirements. A claim jumper in the old days was held in about the same degree of contempt as is now the “scab” workman in a unionized community.
With team and wagon and dog, we reached the timber about dusk, barely ahead of a blizzard. Owing to the storm, the projected coon-hunt did not take place. The whole night was spent around a bonfire out there in the deep wood. The men talked about going home, but the intervening six miles of unbroken prairie would have been hard to negotiate with a team on a night like that.
Fortunately for us, it was not very cold. Disagreeably cold, to be sure, but in severity—low temperature—it did not compare with the blizzard which blew in upon us last Monday (Jan. 18, 1943) with a temperature of 10 degrees below zero, to be followed the next morning with 22 degrees below.
The campfire, built in a sheltered spot, was near a tree which had some holes cut in a big limb, old choppings which were assumed the work of Indians. Those holes started Thuse Peters to talking. In telling of an occurrence alleged to have taken place on the Kickapoo reservation, in which he himself had figured rather conspicuously, Thuse graciously endowed the mate of the squaw in his story with a fine growth of whiskers—which whiskers, however, the Redskin did not have. Or did he? Thuse was a little wild of the mark in some of his statements, probably all of them. Bob Graham called him for that one about the Indian’s whiskers. “I’m surprised,” said Bob, “you living here against the Indian reservation all your life. You should know Indians do not have beards.”
“Well,” inquired Thuse, glancing toward one of the party having heavenly hirsute adornment, “does an Irishman have whiskers?”