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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (Oct. 22, 1909)
Reminiscences of a Wayfarer Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska as remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty one years here. ■■HHmHanBBenHBBU3M)4'«rmr«w.naauaaMnHBanBBneBua Nebraska Indians Fifty Years Ago. When I saw Nebraska first, It was practically an Indian country. True, the Indian title had hewn ex-1 tinguished sometime before the erection of territorial governments, In the two territories, but the Indians were all here, none laid been remov ed. The policy of the government for tunny years, and more especially with reference to the natives beyond the Mississippi, had been to locate the various tribes on small reserva tions of land,and devote the surround Ing country to settlement by white men. This, of course, destroyed the hunting lands of the red mail, and opened the way for civilization and all that follows in Its inarch through the world. The effect can easily be seen. In his original hunter ca pacity, it Is estimated to require fifty thousand acres of the wild do main for each hunter to support him self and touch family as those people ordinarily had, generally not exceed ing five, as an average. This was not conducive to a numerous popula tion, as all such are limited, under any circumstances, to the food sup ply; and when that Indispensable nec essary was only obtainable from wild game In the woods, or on the prairies, by the efforts of the hunter, the com munity that he could support in that way, was of necessity small indeed. On the basis of the estimate mention ed. Richardson county, would not sup port more than twenty-five Indians; whereas, under the civilized rule, it uow gives support to as many thous ands, and is capable of supporting double that number. if numbers add to the enjoyment of humanity, and the happiness of tin* race, the new order Is preferable to (he older one, but not otherwise. In those older countries where the consumers increase faster than do the means to feed them, Nature, which never forgives an offense against Its laws, or remits a penal ty, evens up the score with a fa mine. This may happen in any coun try, and will occur whenever, and wherever those conditions exist and something very like it may lie found in some of tile over-crowded cities in our own land of plenty and waste. It is a fact beyond dispute, that proximately. ten thousand people die of starvation every year in the great city of New York. The island oil which that modern Babylon stands, three hundred years ago. was inhab ited by a small band of Indians, who supported themselves on game from the forests and fish from the sea, and to whom starvation was never known. When some philosopher shall arise with a system that will explain all the conditions of life as they have been, and now are, on a sufficiently sensible hypothesis to make it plain to the ordinary understanding, that it is better for the whole, that a com munity small in number, lint as hap py and contented as the animal man can be in the condition in whieli na ture put him on the earth, should lie destroyed to give place to a different order of the same species, vast in numbers but unequal in rights and the means necessary to physical life and individual comfort, iu conse quence of which a large percentage die every year from actual starvation, and a larger percentage are subject ed to a life of misery, too abject, poignant and terrible to be described in any language, the world will re ceive something for which it has been waiting since Adam exchanged me d* lights nr the garden tor me hell lie found on the outside. But as I am not attempting a thesis on sociology, I will say no more on the subject. The Indians sold all their possessory rigiits for money, and the small reservations mentioned, upon which they resided, but which, except in a very limited degree thev never cultivated. I heir support came almost entire ly from the government, In the shape of annuities, jmid usually twice h year from the interest accruing on the money agreed to be paid for their land, and which was received in the treasury of the United States. On the western frontier, the tribes were not entirely deprived of hunting grounds; and until the Buffalo herds were wiped out by advancing civili sation, which occurred about the end of the decade of 1S70, the Indians along and near the Missouri made annual buffalo hunts on the plains to the west, and usually returned with enough of the meat of that animal to last them through tlie winter. It was prepared by drying in the sun for preservation, and would keep all winter without salt or other curing agency. Boundaries, as well as courses and distances were all established and reckoned, by the various Indian res ervations, here and there along the Missouri river and in the Interior, nut in every case on some affluent of the mighty drain for the water shed, afforded by lie Rocky Mountains to tlie west. Commencing with the Wynndottcs on tin' east, and the Delawares fur ther up the river, the trust lands of which were located south and east of the Iowa reservation, which was situated partly on the rigid hank of the Missouri and on the right bank of the (treat Nomalm, above its confluence with the greater stream Just below the present town of Itulo, there was west of that reservation that of the Sac and Pox of Missouri Indian, extending fiddlier west along tlie Nemaha, and its south fork to Honey Creek, and south Into Kansas about two and one-half tulles. That reservation was cut down from time to time till its west boundary was Walnut Creek, and later on another slice wat taken off and the remain der was nlloted in severalty to the surviving members of the tribe, and the old reservation, established in 1842, became one of the tilings thut had been, along »iiii the tribe that once inhabited it. To the west on Itig Hlue was locat ed the reservation of liie (does. It lias long since passed into the hands of tlie white man, ns nearly all the others have, and the foothold of the Indian has become lost in the coun try. In the early days the Otoe res ervation was the only point of Inter est between the Missouri and the mountains; beyond was tlie spread ing plains, tlie buffalo herds, sil ence and vacancy. The Pawnees were a roving, lliiev ing set of redskins, and were found mostly in the valley of the Platte and its several tributaries, and during the California emigration and for years after, were the scourge of the trail (that was the plainsmen's designa tion for the road- those gold seekers in the fifties followed, to the new Kldorudo by the Pacific), stealing ev erything they could get their hands on and could carry, or drive away; and in many instances were guilty of cowardly murders. The Cheyennes further west and among the Mack Hills -really a part of the Rocky chain—were not much better, but they did less mischief than the Pawnees. North of the range I of that tribe, and scattered on both sides of the Missouri, nil over Dako ta and Minnesota,were the numerous bauds of the confederate tribe of the Sioux—sometimes known as the Mnn-| duns, and celebrated by Longfellow | as the Dakotas, in ills great poem of Hiawatha. The North American tribes, though segregated into many apparently dif ferent peoples, are in fact a single Mice, different from all other types i r the human family, in habitat, men ial endowment, and physical cliarai t eristics. Nowhere in the world ex < epi on tills continent is there a peo ple who bear any striking family re semblance fo them; nor is there a siiiL'Ii tact in connection with them that indicates descent from any other known race of men. There is some evidence that another race once inhabited the southern half or at least a portion of the continent comprised within the middle western states of this republic, called by arch aeologists, “The Mound Builders.’’ But who knows anything about them, except they did what the known In dian tribes never did built strange mounds in different parts of the country that still remain, after all other traces of the builders have be. come lost in the darkness of vanished time? No tradition exists among the Indians as to when or by whom those mounds were constructed, mak ing It certain that no ancestors of theirs were the architects Whence, and by what means did this singular people get here, and why is it, that they are as completely ignorant of the history of the "mound building" race that preceded them, ns we are? These are questions for which there can be no answer, though we cannot forego tiie useless formality of ask ing them. t I have been betrayed into these speculations, first, because whatever is mysterious, uncertain or unknown, is sure to claim attention; and sec ond. because the fact that human beings of some type have been found on every spot of dry ground where life was possible, all over the earth separated by unsailed seas before the days of Columbus, making inter communication among them ;tn utter impossibility, and therefore their several origins mi insoluble secret of (»od and nature, has been an un failing source of speculative though! to me, whenever by any chance it is suggested, and the presence of tin* Indian on this continent when it was discovered, without any known means for hint to have gotten here from any other habitable part of the earth, is excuse enough for what I have here said on the subject. All of which tends to show, that we know about as much, or as little, about the ori gin of man as we do about, his ulti mate destiny, and whole volumes could say no more. But I must get hack to the Nebras ka Indians. The tribes north of us were scattered along the Missouri far up in Dakota, and thence into the British possessions. Those that con cern the matter in hand were the Omahas in the Black Bird Hills, ad joining which were the Wltinebagos, and further up the river, but still in Nebraska, were the Poncas (pro nounced Punkav.'s); and besides the! various bands of Sioux leafed part-! ly in Nebraska, and partly in Dako- ! (a and extending to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, there were : occasional wandering tibes, with no j fixed residence, that were constant ly foraging on whites and Indians in discriminately, trotn Texas to as far i north as the buffalo were to be found, stealing and plundering, wherever stealing and plundering could be I safely done. Among these were the | Comanche*, the Navajoes, kinfolks ot the Apaches, and other red devils of that ilk, from Old and New Mexico. There was now and then some trouble with our home tribes, incipi ent wars and scares, mixed with stealing and scalping, but on the whole the Indians wcie of more ad vantage to the early settlers than otherwise, for their yearly annuities were spent among our people, and as nearly always happens when the Indian deals with the white man, the red son of the wilderness got the worst of it. But that aside, it is a fact that the people of Palls City and Rulo, for the first two or three years that I was a resident of the country, depended largely on the In dian trade to get along al all. The Iowas patronized Hulo, while the Sacs did the same for Falls City. Those tribes had large sums in the federal treasury upon which the government paid five per cent per annum in semi-annual installments, which went to obtain the actual necessaries of life, and—whiskey, which, though not a necessity, was nevertheless in great demand. The Sacs had about $200,000 at Washington, and I heir trade was good for tit least ten thous and dollars a year, which was exceed ingly fortunate for the white people in this vicinity, as some of it lodged in the pockets of nearly everybody. I never saw a genuine live blanket Indian until I came to Nebraska, though I had heard and read a good deal about them, and in a general way, had formed a pretty accurate opinion of the race, i as contradistin guished from other kinds of people. As related in another paper of this series, the Indian village south of the Nemaha, was the first place of interest. 1 visited after my arrival in Falls City, and the head chief of the Sac tribe, Ne-sau-qult. was the first ' specimen of aboriginal manhood to I come under my observation. I met him in his castle il suppose an In dian's wigge-up is as much his cas tle as the house of the white man is I his), surrounded by his court, as j any other ruler of the kingly breed might be, but I observed that most of j the numbers of lii.s suite were females j —called squaws in the polite lang uage of the tribe—of a very dirty and greasy appearance. They were dressed in calico shirt waists;that is. their garments might be called such now —so far as visible, and the bal ance of their bodies, in each case, was enveloped in a red blanket drawn close about them. There was I a fire in the middle of the wigwam, over which, and suspended by some kind of crane, was .a large pot in which the dinner for the grandees of the court was cooking. ( saw enough of the boiling mass to learn that it consisted of a sort of hotch-potch, of beans, fresh meat of some kind (it might have been dog, as the Indians then regarded the flesh of that ani mal as of rare excellence), and some other stuff, possibly a hunk of ba con. producing a rather savory smell, not at all disagreeable to a hungry man, especially if tie didn't know who was cooking, or what was being cooked. It was early in the forenoon and therefore, our party not being par ticularly anxious for something to eat, did not wait to be asked to dine with the chief ruler of the dusky nation, but put In the time we had to spare in looking about the village, which was located on a ridge of land south of the falls and probably about a quarter of a mile in length. Tlie wigge-ups, and the people were much like those in the castle of the chief, dirty, greasy and repulsive, but with all that, there was not a single sick Indian in the village, which probably accounted for the absence of a drug store, though they had :i medicine man among them, a kind of, court physician, but I don't think they knew him by that title. f a in not conscious of any impres sion made on me by that first sight of the native race, except disgust, and 1 received tbat in full measure. If I thought of those people as a slowly fading race, it was probably because I thought they ought to fade, and to I lose no time in doing it, for of all the lazy, useless, worthless human beings 1 had ever seen or heard of, those were by long odds, tbe worst. They have left no land marks of any kind on the continent—I am speaking of Indians generally—that evidence the fact that any such inhabitants were ever here; and except for the human bones sometimes found in tlie soil, the record of their exist ence here is a complete blank. They will have a place in history neverthe less, for they were touched by that great robber race of the world, the Anglo-Saxon, and that touch was annihilation. For Sale, Pedigreed Poland China boar pigs, at $15 and $20 each. Gilts at $12.50. Inquire at Pleasant Hill farm, half mile west of the Christian church. 40-3t H. L. RAHLF. Poland China Hog Sale. We will sell at Chapman’s .1 pavilion, Kails City, Nebraska, -j ■ urday, October 23, commencing az one o’clock p. m., the following. 36 Boars and Gilts. All sired by our herd boars: 1 Quality, No. 295D1; Chief Look, No 48121; and Chief Gold Dust Xc 39244. These pigs are all growth" smooth, good backs, large str mo bones, with excellent symmetry of form. Our kind the farmer’s typ< Terms of Saie. Cash or time,with 7 per cent i-. terest from date of sale. Farmers, Bring Crates. H. C. W1TTROCK, W. F. RIESCHICK H. E. WYATT, Auctioneers—Col. C. II. Marion and Prank Peck. >1 ) V7. 'BlCorbeJ Oct. 15, 190). Dear Friend: Don't you love to smell good ham a fr - ing when you are right hungry? All ham is not th-j right kind of ham though. Nice ham a fresh eggs make a good breakfast. Don't they? The best ham and fresh meats at Schmitt's Meat Market. Yours / JACOB. Schmitt’s has actually been changed and cultivated by Uneeda Biscuit. No longer are people satisfied with crackers taken from the grocer s box or barrel—exposed to dust, moisture, handling. They have learned that the only crackers that are crisp, tender, always fresh and really good are those protected by a moisture proof package. These are the kind they get — as if just from the oven — when they ask for Uneeda sr Biscuit a