Nebraska

“ But like other Nebraska waters it is up and away, and with a rush and ripple glides under the bridge, around the bluffs, and far away to the north, until it kisses the waters of the Niobrara. We can follow its course north only a little way farther than we can south, but the valley and stream is wider, the bluffs higher, and the trees loftier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Annie tried hard not to be depressed by the treeless stretches of the Nebraska plains.
“This is different from Illinois,” she ventured once, gently; “it is even different from Iowa.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Jim, enthusiastically, “it is different! It is the finest country in the world! You never feel shut in. You can always see off. I feel at home after I get in Nebraska. I'd choke back where you live, with all those little gullies and the trees everywhere. It's a mystery to me how farmers have patience to work there.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every time Norris baits the power trust or lambasts the social lobby, Nebraska gets the same amusement out of his antics that a small boy gets out of sicing a dog on an alley cat. When he shies a brickbat at a president, Nebraska has as much fun as a kid pushing over an outhouse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nebraska was the first state after leaving Colorado. This, again, like Texas and Wyoming, is a vast country of grassy plains, on which many thousands of cattle are reared. The endless plains, though rich in grass, look desolate, owing to the total absence of trees, except in the vicinity of towns, where some attempt has been made to remedy the want. It is a very thinly inhabited state; for miles and miles, as we swiftly passed on, not a soul could be seen. The rail line through it, from west to east, is about 480 miles long. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Come, reader, go with me on my first ride over the plains of Nebraska behind oxen; of course they do not prance, pace, gallop, or trot; I think they simply walk, but time will tell how fast they can jog along. Sorry we cannot give you the shelter of a "prairie schooner," for the wind does not forget to blow, and it is a little cool. ”

“ We shall as surely reach the goal we purposed when we started, as that the rich prairies of Nebraska will ere long feed and educate millions of brave men and women, gathered from every nation on the globe. Every consideration for the improvement of your home life, for the morality of your towns and cities, for the elevation of your schools and colleges, and the loftiest motives of patriotism should move you, men of Nebraska, to vote for this amendment. ”

“ It seems as if Providence presented this occasion in order to give you an easy opportunity of asserting a principle infinitely valuable to the whole country. Only a few persons are directly interested; but the decision of Congress now will determine a governing rule for millions. Nebraska is a loyal community, small in numbers, formed out of ourselves, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. In an evil hour it adopted a constitution bad in itself and worse still as an example. ”

“ When Nebraska was first organized as a territory, a party of people in Quincy, Illinois, conceived the idea of starting a city in the new territory and thus making their fortune. They accordingly sent out a party of men to select a site.
These men reached Omaha in 1854. There they met Logan Fontenelle, chief of the Omahas, who held the land along the Platte and Elkhorn rivers. ”

“ As I take my seat in the car, a young, well-dressed boy sits near me in a quiet state of intoxication. Well, I am really ashamed! To think I have seen two drunken men to-day and only seven during my three months' stay in Nebraska. So much good for the high license law. If you cannot have prohibition, have the next best thing, and drowned out all the little groggeries and make those who will have it, pay the highest price. Poor boy! You had better go to Nebraska and take a homestead. ”

“ My father and family came to Nebraska in 1858, living two years at Genoa. At this time the government assigned what is now Nance county, to the Pawnee Indians, as a reservation. When the white settlers sought other homes our family located eight miles east of Columbus, at McAllister's lake. Every fall my father hired about sixty squaws to husk out his crop of corn. Only one buck ever came to work, and he was always known as "Squaw Charlie" after that. He spoke English quite well. They were slow workers, husking about twenty bushels per day. ”

“ Rapidly the pioneer story-tellers are passing beyond recall, and the real story of the beginning of our great commonwealth must be told now.
The memories of those pioneers, of their deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion, of their ideals which are our inheritance, will inculcate patriotism in the children of the future; for they should realize the courage that subdued the wilderness. And "lest we forget," the heritage of this past is a sacred trust to the Daughters of the American Revolution of Nebraska. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1856, when Frank North came to Nebraska, a young boy, he mingled fearlessly with the Indians along the Missouri in the region of Omaha, where our family first settled, learning their mode of warfare and living, and their language, which he spoke as fluently as his mother tongue. In 1861 he took a position as clerk and interpreter at the Pawnee reservation and by 1863 he had become known as a daring scout. ”

“ Nebraska probably owes as much to her as to any one person for the present high plane art has attained within its borders. The four cities in which she has resided, Hastings, Grand Island, Kearney and Omaha, have felt her vivifying influence and breathe a more elevated atmosphere of art. She is the mother of one child, a daughter. ”

“ Until well into the sixties freighting across the plains was a great business. The “Oregon Trail,” the “Old California Trail,” and the “Old Salt Lake Trail”—all nearly identical in Nebraska—ran along the Platte across the entire state with various terminal branches near the eastern border, to the Missouri river towns; while branches from St Joseph, Missouri and Leavenworth, Kansas, ran up the valleys of the Big Blue and Little Blue rivers and joined the Nebraska roads near Ft. Kearney. The Oregon and California migration was of large magnitude by 1846. ”

“ After a last look at the wide, wide country, that in a few years will be fully occupied with the busy children of earth, we left "Stone Butte," carrying from its stony, grassy sides and top many curious mementos of our May-day in Nebraska.
Then I went farther north-west to visit the home of a "squaw man"—the term used for Indians who cannot endure the torture of the sun dance, and also white men that marry Indian maidens. ”

“ L. D. Hunter were pioneer settlers of Nebraska and Weeping Water, coming from Illinois by team. Their first settlement in the state was near West Point in Cuming county where father staked out a claim in 1857. Things went well aside from the usual hardships of pioneer life, such as being out of flour and having to pound corn in an iron kettle with an iron wedge to obtain corn meal for bread. ”

“ We felt sorry for the troubles of the poor men, but learned this lesson from their experience—never buy a tent so old and rotten that it won't hold to the fastenings, to go out on the prairies of Nebraska with; it takes good strong material to stand the wind.
In the afternoon we all went up on to the table-land to see the prairies burn. A great sheet of flame sweeping over the prairie is indeed a grand sight, but rather sad to see what was the tall waving grass of last year go up in a blaze and cloud of smoke only to leave great patches of blackened earth. ”

“ In 1872 a postoffice was established in the settlement where we lived, which was an improvement over going four miles for mail. For the first schoolhouse built in the district where I lived I helped haul the lumber from Brownville, Nebraska, on the Missouri river, sixty-five miles from the village of Beatrice. The first few crops of wheat we raised were hauled to Nebraska City, as there was no market at home for it. On the return trip we hauled merchandise for the settlement. Every fall as long as wild game was near us we would spend a week or two hunting; to lay in our winter supply of meat. ”

“ Like the Pike's Peak diggings, and the placers of the Colorado Valley, and the Carson and Virginia City camps, these called for and received a new territorial establishment.
In 1860 the territories of Washington and Nebraska had met along a common boundary at the top of the Rocky Mountains. Before Washington was divided in 1863, Nebraska had changed its shape under the pressure of a small but active population north of its seat of government. The centres of population in Nebraska north of the Platte River represented chiefly overflows from Iowa and Minnesota. ”

“ A telegraph line was erected in Nebraska, 1862; now Nebraska can boast of nearly 3,000 miles of railroad.
I want to say that I find it is the truly energetic and enterprising people who come west. People who have the energy and enterprise that enable them to leave the old home and endure the privations of a new country for a few years that they may live much better in the "after while," than they could hope to do in the old home, and are a people of ambition and true worth. ”

“ Like all the streams we have noticed in Nebraska it is very crooked, yet we do not wonder that the water does not know where to run, there is no "up or down" to this country; it is all just over to us ”

“ Political interest in the Territorial period centred mainly in a fight for the capital, waged between the towns of the Missouri river front, Bellevue, Brownville, Nebraska City, Plattsmouth, Omaha and Florence, those of the North Platte interior, and of the South Platte. This struggle engendered extraordinary bitterness, since success might mean continued life, and defeat prompt demise, to competing towns. As population increased the question of the capital was complicated by the question of statehood. ”

“ To-day "the moving millions, both in this country and Europe, are making earnest inquiry for Nebraska." 50,000 new inhabitants came to it in 1880. The close of the late war brought many ex-soldiers and their families here to claim land privileges near Omaha, and from "the four quarters of the globe the swelling thousands have come to settle with those that made their way thither. From Maine and Texas, and from every territory of the Rocky Mountains, they came." "The rank and file, the bone and muscle, were men who came to stay, who counted the cost, who measured the sacrifice." ”