Daughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska

“ Grasshoppers and drouth brought real adversity then, for, unlike the present, we were unprepared for the lean years. But we had hope and energy, and pulled together for the settlement of our county and the growth and prosperity of Fairbury.
We dreamed then of the days to come—when bridges should span the streams, and farm houses and fields of grain and corn should break the monotony of the silent, unending prairie. We were always working for better things to come—for the future. The delectable mountains were always ahead of us—would we ever reach them? ”

“ Chadron was a town of unsurpassed natural beauty in the Pine Ridge country, where Billy Carter, the Dick Turpin of western romance, held forth in all his glory and at whose shrine the sporting fraternity performed daily ablutions in the bountiful supply of booze water. Crawford was the nesting place for all crooks that were ever attracted to a country by an army post.
These affairs incident to the pioneer life of northwestern Nebraska are now but reminiscences, supplanted by a civilization inspired by all of the modern and higher ideals of life. ”

“ I was very much interested in everything, but the things that linger most clearly in my mind after all these years are the bushy whiskered, hopeful faces of the men who greeted us from dugouts and sod cabins. The men's eyes were alight with enthusiasm and candor, but I do not remember of having seen a woman or child upon the trip.
It seems that men can drop back into the primitive so much more easily than women: not perhaps with all the brutality of the First Men, but they can adjust themselves to the environment of the wilderness, and the rusticity of the frontier, with comparative ease. ”

“ There burst from a June atmosphere the worst blizzard in the history of the state. For three days it blew thick, freezing sleet, changing to snow so close and dense and dark that a man in a wagon vainly [262] looked for the horses hitched to it through the storm. Men who were away from home lost their lives over the state. Stock was frozen to death. In sod houses, dugouts, and log cabins settlers huddled close about the hearth, burning enormous baskets of ten-cent corn to keep from freezing. ”

“ After a college course of four years my husband entered the ministry and served for twenty-five years in Nebraska, except for one year of mission work at Cheyenne, Wyoming. The itinerant life is not unlike the pioneer life and brought with it the bitter and sweet as well, but the bitter was soon forgotten and blessed memories remain of the dear friends scattered all over the state of Nebraska, and indeed to the ends of the earth. ”

“ The same fall the fertile soil of the Platte Valley, after two years of cultivation, responded to the demand of civilization. There was a market west for every bushel of grain and every pound of vegetables grown. So at least the patient and persevering ones received their reward.
The sources of amusement were few, and yet all enjoyed the strange new life. A pleasant ride over the level prairie dotted with wild flowers, in any sort of vehicle drawn by a pair of oxen, was as enjoyable to the young people then as a drive over the country would now be in the finest turnout that Fremont possesses. ”

“ Anything was better than the monotony of staying at home, and the boundless freedom of the prairies was always enticing. An hour's drive and the heat of the sun became oppressively intense. The barren distance far ahead was unbroken by tree, or house, or field. There was no sound but the steady patter of the ponies' feet over the prairie grass; no moving object but an occasional flying hawk; no road but a trail through the rich prairie grass, and one seemed lost in a wilderness of unvarying green. ”

“ He had been good to her in the main, although he swore at her and abused her sometimes when he got drunk or played at cards too long, but he was better than the braves were to their squaws, and she did not have to work as they did; she had wood and food and she could buy at the trading post the blankets and the strouding and the gay red cloths, and the beads with which the squaws delighted to adorn their necks and to stitch with deer sinew into their moccasins. She had lived each day unconscious that there might not be a tomorrow like it. ”

“ The early settlers of Fremont were for the most part young people from the eastern states, full of ambition and hope. There is in the youthful heart a spirit of energy, of doing and daring in order to realize, if possible, dreams of a perhaps glorious future in which may be won honor and fame and wealth. Then again the forces of nature are never at rest and man, being a part of the great whole, must inevitably keep in step with the universal law. ”

“ From the year 1856 until the beginning of the civil war in 1861 the early settlers of Nebraska experienced nearly all of the ills and hardships incidental to a pioneer life. Fifty years have passed since then and to one having lived through those trying days—or to a stranger who merely listens to the almost incredulous tales of a past generation—there arises a question as to why any sane person or persons should desire to leave a land of comparative comfort and plenty for one of deprivation and possible starvation. ”

“ Occasionally the older Indians, in memory of the days of their supremacy, dressed themselves to correspond and acted as in other days, but the younger generation knows nothing of those things and is as the white man. In Oklahoma they go to school, later engage in farming or enter business. "Civilization has done much for them," said Gray Eagle. "They are hard workers and have ambitions to accomplish great things and be better citizens. Only we old Indians, who remember the strenuous times of the early days, have the wild blood in our veins. The younger ones have never even seen a buffalo." ”

“ A girl of fourteen, happy and care-free under the protection of her father husband one day, putting him in the place of father, and mother, trusting to him, and suddenly standing beside the rude trading post way out on the treeless spaces of the trail that seemed to come from solitude and lead away to it again, and listening to the story of the frightened cowboy on his broncho whose almost unintelligible words finally made her understand that her protector, the kind man she had learned to love, had died a death so horrible it would make the strongest man shudder. ”

“ The invigoration and exaltation of careering over undulating prairies on a beautiful, speedy, and spirited horse thrilled every sense and satisfied, as to exhilaration, by physical exercise, the entire mental personality. Nature's roads in Nebraska are unequaled by any of their successors.
This excursion was in a wagon without springs; and after driving alone, as far as the Weeping Water crossing, I overtook an ox train loaded with goods and supplies for Gilman's ranch on the Platte away beyond Fort Kearny. ”

“ It is almost impossible for people of the present day to realize the hardships and privations that the first settlers in Nebraska underwent. Imagine coming to a place where there was nothing but what you had brought with you in wagons. Add to the discomfort of being without things which in your former home had seemed necessities, the pests which abound in a new country: the rattlesnake, the coyote, the skunk, the weasel, and last—but not least—the flea. ”

“ On the north were the bluffs of the Elkhorn river, but the great Elkhorn Valley was a part of an unknown world. South of the little townsite of Fremont the Platte river moved sluggishly along to meet and be swallowed up in the great Missouri. Ten or twelve log cabins broke the monotony of the treeless expanse that stretched far away, apparently to a leaden sky. My heart sank within me as I thought but did not say, 'How can I ever live in a place like this?'" And yet the writer of the above lines has lived in Fremont for forty-seven years.
The histories of the world are chiefly men's histories. ”

“ With the first rush of settlers into northwest Nebraska, preceding the advent of railroads, numerous villages sprang up on the prairies like mushrooms during a night. All gave promise, at least on paper, of becoming great cities, and woe to the citizen unloyal to that sentiment or disloyal to his town. It is sufficient to recount experiences in but one of these villages for customs were similar in all of them, as evidence of the freedom common to early pioneer life. ”

“ A dance in a room twelve by sixteen feet in a log cabin, to the music of the Arkansas Traveler played on one violin, was "just delightful." A trip to Omaha once or twice a year was a rare event in the woman's life particularly. Three days were taken, two to drive in and out, and one to do a little trading [89] (not shopping) and look around to view the sights. A span of horses, a lumber wagon with a spring seat in front high up in the air, was the conveyance. Women always wore sunbonnets on these occasions to keep their complexion fair. ”

“ In the early history of Lexington, Nebraska, as in all western states, there was no crime committed more reprehensible than that of stealing a horse. One might kill a man and it would be overlooked or excused, but the offense of stealing a horse was a crime that nothing could atone for but the "wiping out" of the thief. And generally when the horse thief was caught the nearest tree or the upraised end of a wagon tongue was immediately brought into use as a gallows upon which the criminal was duly hanged without the formalities of courts or juries. ”

“ It was wonderful how many cultured people drifted into the almost unknown western country. It was not infrequent to see in humble sod houses shelves filled with standard books and writings of the best authors. This was the second wave of population, and though many things had to be sacrificed that in the old life were considered necessary to comfort, pioneer life had its happy features. ”

“ It was a wrong, perhaps, but natural feeling to have when I found by after reading of annals of the plains that Slade died the death that such a fiendish nature should have suffered.
Addie Becksted still lives in a little cabin down among the hills about Bellevue, her children and grandchildren about her, and still bears traces of the beauty that was hers as a girl. She is only about ten miles distant from Omaha but has not visited it for years. ”

“ Nikumi released from her reptile inhabited cave by the little red bird in the tree down the ravine, came back to her tipi. She had kept her child but she had lost her lover and her life. How should she take it up again? She had been always quiet and little given to the chatter and laughter of the young squaws; she was only a little more quiet now, and Mary's lot was decided; she would always be an Indian woman.
One day Sarpy came to her and told her that Gale had left money for her and she was to come to the fort for what she wished. ”

“ It all seems to have been a part of Nature's great plan. Out of the desolation of the past there has come the new life with the new civilization, just as new worlds and their satellites have been created out of the dust of dead worlds. ”

“ What was the result of sending three men fifty miles out into an unbroken, and at that time, almost unknown prairie, to speak into existence simply by the magic of their own unconquerable, though unaided, enterprise and perseverance, a city that should not only be suitable for the seat of government of the state, but should be able, almost as soon as its name was pronounced, to contribute from its own resources sufficient funds for the erection of a state house and other necessary public state buildings, remains to be seen. ”

“ The cottonwood is a giant now, and its vibrant foliage talks, summer after summer, in the evening breeze with humanlike voice, and tells its life story to the graceful, swaying elm near by, while the gnarled and scrubby little apple tree, shaped, as to its head, like a despondent toadstool, stands in dual shade, and bears small sweet apples, year after year, in all humility. ”

“ Settlers came to the little hamlet of Genoa, that had been first settled by the Mormons in 1857, and though later given over to the Indians, it was one of the oldest towns in Nebraska.
A church was established under the care of the New England Congregational Mission and Rev. Charles Starbuck was put in charge. A small farmhouse where travelers could be accommodated, and a few homes of those who had bought land, comprised the village life. This freedom from restraint was indeed new to one accustomed to the rush of busy life in New York. Daily rides over the prairie on my pony were a delight. ”

“ The young and able-bodied men, making ropes of their blankets, were let down the steep side of the butte, while the poor old men kept up a constant wailing for days, until death, from lack of food and exhaustion, had stilled their voices. As the singing gradually ceased, the Sioux, while watching, saw white clouds passing over the butte, having the appearance of large, white birds with outstretched wings, on which they carried the old men to the "Happy Hunting Grounds." ”