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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (Nov. 5, 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. More of Aboriginal Folk Lore and T radition. In my Iasi paper I made a brief nummary of the Indian triboa Inhab iting the Territory of Nebraska when 1 saw its great plains for the first time, in tilt early history of the country. I also indulged in some re flections on llti mysterious origin of tills singular race, but as the same reflections might be indulged In con cerning all the races of men which now exist, or have existed in past ages, It is of no geater importance lo do that in the case of the North American Indian, titan it would be In the case of any other known subdi vision of the genus homo. The cir eiinutance that this continent, when discovered to the European nations by Columbus, was as thickly populat ed by human beings as the means of llieir subsistence would allow, is one of the insoluble secrets of creu Unit, which tuts, and will always, en gage the thoughtful attention of thinking men. hut probably to no geater extent, than they have given the same attention to other unknow able tilings, with which the realm of nature everywhere abounds. To me, the Indian has always been a natural curiosity, and as such I have studied hint as thoroughly as my means of doing so would permit; and wlml I shall say of him here will he rather my deductions from facts than a rec itation of the facts themselves, for In no sense am I attempting to write his history, as, of himself, he lias none. In tin' order of nature there is noth ing misplaced, or foreign to its stir oundiugs, -no exotics, but every thing possessing organic life Is in digenous to the soil and climate ns these exist in tile place of its origin. I do ift>t mean by this that environ ment makes the type or species of any genera, Inti that they tend to a modification of such, there is sitiree ly tiny doubt. That the Negro was not found itt the temperate or colder regions of the earth is a sufficient reason I hat he could not originate there, and the same may be said of the aboriginals all over the world It is now clearly established h.v reliable scientific research, that the Aryan and the Mongol existed at the same time and in about the same degree of north latitude, but the difference in the configuration of the earth in their several habitats, was sufficient to differentiate their physical char acteristics Into two essential!; dis similar races in the course of ages of which there is no writt• u record among men. The North American Indians, unlike many other aborigi nal races, were not builders, nor me chanical, beyond the art of const rue ting bows and arrows, and other im plements of warfare, and* probably some artificial means for catching fish, etc. Their habitations were mere temporary affairs, that could be taken down and carried with them from place to place in their wander ings, which was made necessary in order to obtain their wonted food sup ,piy. These people, spread over the whole continent with the exception of Mexico, must have Imd possession of the country for untold ages, in fact so long that no truce of tlnir origin is possible of attainment. They appeared to be as ignorant of their neighbors, the Toltecs of Mexico, and their successors, the V/tocs, as thev were of their own predet , ssors. tin1 “Mound Huilders," and resem bled those superior races in no par ticular whatever. We find only the faintest gleams of civilization among them.and no evidence of religion of any kind beyond a vague notion of a great spirit, and a confused belief that one who has slain many of his enemies in war and had their sealps as trophies, would after death, go to what they called the happy hunt ing lands; and to facilitate his for tunes in that other state, his friends, as a part of the funeral ceremonies, would kill his favorite horse over his grave, and bury all his warlike accouterments with his body, that lie might have them for use over there. A ceremonial of the kind was per formed over the grave of fho head man or chief of the Omalias, Henry Fontenelle, who was killed by one of the half-breeds near old Aspinwall, up in Nemaha County, only a short time before 1 became a citizen of Ne braska: and a like honor was pro posed for Hob White Cloud, an Iowa chief, who was pursued and shot to death, by members of Ills tribe.down in the valley of the Nemaha near the house of William Simpkins, ;; little above the Falls, in the winter of 1861 and 1862. White Cloud had killed his associate and head chief, litggarash, on the Iowa reservation, and the friends of the deceased Indian pursued the murderer, and overtak lug him as related, made short work of him. The proposal to give him a warrior’s send-off to the happy hunt ing grounds,laid lo tie abandoned, as It was likely to povokc a war or at least riot in the tribe, among whom Paggarash had been exceptionally popular, I have said that the Indians as generally known to on people, do not resemble those ancient people of Mexico, the Aztecs,lu any particular, and I say It advisedly, for 1 have seen what is authoritatively claim ed to he, the last of that historic j race, in the valley of the (Ilia (pro nounced Heela) river, in tin- Terri tory or Arizona. They an known as the Confederate Tribes of Plimn (pro pany with one of my associates.Judge liouneed Pemo) and Maricopa Indium, Inti they are no more Indian, us we know such people, than they are ICnglish, French, Scotch or Irish. They are as distinct from the North American Indian as they are from any of these. I saw those people for the first time nearly forty years ago, and under circumstances favor able to a correct examination and fair estimate of their general ap pearance, habits, and manners, to get her with their mode of iiving, their housings, clothing, etc., They have been under the supervision and protej Mon of our government since the ne gotiation of whnt Is known as the Gadsden Treaty in IS.'il!, under which the I'nited States obtained from the Mexican government an irregular strip of country on the south side of (lie Gila, probably a hundred miles wide at Its widest point and extend ing from the Itlo Grande east to the Colorado on the west, in which is situated the reservation of those eon federate tribes 'I'lils word “tribe" is applied to them for the want of some better conventional designation It isnot deserved, a s that people have always been self supporting, nml have never been dependent on t!1e government for anything,though i think they figure in the records of the Interior Department, as do the Indians generally. There was noth ing about them that reminded me of any class or tribe of Indians I had ever seen, nor a single characteristic in their physical make-up that at all resemble the blanket tribes ✓with which I luid been familiar, on the plains or among tbe mountains, lie. 'tween tbe Missouri and the I’acifie ocean. They were distinctly dissim ilar in ail respects, in color, stature, shape of tile head, and mon particu larly in facial oxpession. kind of hair and eyes- all different and of a decidedly superior order. There was an entire absence of that heavy, brut al expression of countenance obser vable on tlie fo'-e of the ordinary son of the forest, that inefaeeable stamp that great nature puts on the mirror of the soul, the human face, that pro claims the savage without audible speech. That people, so far as I was able to judge from what I saw of them, were free from all such dis figurments peculiar to the native tribes on thin continent in its north temperate sections. It is claimed on the authority of the great Grmun naturalist. Alexander Von Humboldt, that tin-re are sufficient rave charac teristics common to till the American tribes, to make it probably, if not en tirely certain, that they descended from the same ancestry, and arc therefore Hie same people slightly modified by local and climatic con ditions. This claim would haw geater persuasive value. If it were a fact that the illustrious German had seen the tribes inhabiting that por tion of the continent comprised with in the I'nited States and the Canadas, but it is not certain flint lie saw any of the people found in the western hemisphere, except those in South and Central America n'nd in Mexico; and there is nothing more certain than, that they had nothing in com mon with the wandering nomads of our country. At the time t’ol'tez conquered .Mex ico in 1621, the dominant race. the Aztecs, had reached a degree of civ ilization in all its departments that amazed the Kuropean world. To them ii seemed incredible that.in the wilderness of the new world,nations existed whose mechanical genius had enabled them to construct great temples and cities, adorned with a splendor rivaling the greatest in the older civilization over the si a. They couldn't understand it. and prob ably never did, but us I am restrict ed to statements of a genera! char acter, and have neither the space nor the inclination to pursue the subject in matters of detail, highly interest ing though it be,I will i online my self to tilings coming tinder my own observation, which lias been nty sole purpose in writing these reminesc enees from tlte beginning. In thi.* winter of 1870-71, I was of ficially located at the town of Yuma, on the Colorado river, in the terri tory of Arizona, that river being tin dividing line between that territory and the stale of California. The i capital was Ideated at Tucson, an i old town on the Santa Cruz, one off the affluents of the Gila, some three hundred miles to the east. Official duty required tny presem ,. Slt the capital, and there was no means of getting there except by stage roach. Tin- route led up the valley of the Gila to a few n.ilrs east of the Fima villages, where the valley of tli Santa Cruz intersects that of the la. r river, thence southeasterly along the valley some fifty or more miles to the ancient Jesuitical Pueb lo or lown of Tucson. That is a cur ious river, as you do not always sc, its waters. It will he a flowing stream all right for several miles,and till at once will disappear, sink out of sight, to reappear again miles away, without anything to Indicate that its flow had been interrupted in tin least It flows some of the time on top of the ground in its reg ular channel, and some of the tini" under tile ground in an invisible channel. 1 have been told that the Humboldt river in Ne vada plays tricks (if a similir kind, but as 1 never saw that river, except from the window of u Pullman sleep er ! have had no opportunity to wit ness the phenomenon. Well, about the, first of January, 1S71, in eom Tvveed, the U. S. District attorney; ('apt. Rowell, and a lawyer from Dos Angeles, Cal,, Frank Ganahl, we st: rli-d mi the long night aud day trip through it wild, unsettled desola tion. that would require not less than seventy-five hours of constant travel to accomplish, with such food as w;is to be had at stations established at intervals of many miles along the cheei less and dreary road (trail in those days), and with only such sleep as could he gotten between jait of the crazy old hack provid 'd fci ine journey. The only compensa tion fi'i the discomfort of the trip,was tlie ! en appetite it furnished us for tin beans and bacon and muddy cof fee that were served to us with un varied regularity at every meal sta tion on the route.,, Judge Tweed, like myself, was anx ious Hurt we go through ilie Fima villages before or about sunrise. We had both heard of the habit of those people of watching for tin* coming of the sun in the morning, as it is a tra dition among them, that Montezuma, in some lost age of which they have no rec ord, promised his followers to one day re-appear on the earth, and that lie would come wit 11 the rising sun. It seems that story of Montez uma is not unlike that which the fol lowers of Jesus Christ belie ve con cerning him, as it is written in the 21st Chapter of tin* Gospel of St. Luke: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring. And then shall they see the son of nan coming in a cloud with power and great glory." The two id* as have much in com mon ami strongly appeal to the im agination, which wo know has a lan guage of its own, that all the family of man know and understand. The driver of the stage was willing io accommodate us, and so managed his progress that we arrived among the cone-shaped huts of the village only a few moments before the sun showed itself above the tops of the mountains to the east. Wo had time to observe that on the roof of the huts or houses in our immediate vi cinity there was one or two, never more, elderly people, sitting cross legged with their faces turned to the east, immovable and silent, their eyes fixed on the line of the horizon where the sun would shortly appear, and as oblivious of our presence apparent ly, as though we were not in the* prospect at all. I noticed a solitary woman on the top of one of the huts keeping that vigil of the ages, alone. ■'That woman." said the driver, "is a widow. Her husband is dead, and she believes he will come back with the god of her people, and she will see him some morning at sunrise." There was no levity in the speech of the driver, nor anything approach ing ridicule or a disposition to make light of the sorrowful devotions of that poor ignorant devotee of a faith that had been the inspiration of her people through many weary centuries, and will continue to be, till they disappear from the earth forever. All tills was new and strange to me, though I had In ai d of the cer emonial many times, as I had heard 01 strange performances of people professing religions with which I was unacquainted, but it) see some thing of the kind in my immediate presence impressed me as nothing ever did before, and was an experi ence 1 can never forget. The place where it occurred added materially to its solemn and unique character,—an universal desolation, walled in by mountains as old as the world, rock ribbed, verdtireiess and as lonely as the ocean itself. It struck me thin these people were sun worshipers as well as the fol lowers of Montezuma, and if so, I was ready to forgive them freely and entirely, for what is there in all the vast realm of nature that does not worship that glorious luminary- the source of all life, and all that sup ports it. The scene was sublimely in structive, and in that presence 1 felt like bowing to those lonely watch ers on the housetops, as they, in the faitli of a glorious coming, were I bowing in spirit and hope, to that higher than all in heaven. For Sale. Some choice Ilarred Plymouth Rock < ockrels Addc-ss Mrs. S. It. Ayers, Morrill, Kas. 42-t.f Means Much To the level-headed young mart, a bank account, added to the de termination to make it larger means much. The names o' many such are on our books Young man, young woman. i your name is not on the lis: would it not be wise to open arr account at once and keep adding / to it? It’s the right thing to do. The amount may be small at firsc — but all things must have a be ginning. THE Falls City State Bank And commence the saving habit no v EDGAR K. MATHERS DENTIST Phones: Nos. 177, 217 Sam'l. Wahl Btildist DR. C. N, ALLISON ID El NT f S'F Phone 248 Over Richardson Court iv Bank. FALLS CITY, NEBRASKA CLEAVER & SEBOLD INSURANCE REAL ESTATE AND LOANS NOTARY IN OFFICE re re. KOBERTS Office over Kerr’9 Pharmacy Office Phene 260 Residence Phone .:71 Magnetic Healing Miss Lizzie Heitland. a gradu ate of the Weltmer School of Magnetic Healing, of Nevada, Mo. I am prepared to treat dis eases of all kinds. Phone 27‘>. Located at Mrs. Burris’ residen south of the convent. 4t TO introduce fine materials, clean methods, scientific equipment into the making of soda crackers was one triumph— To actually bake into them a subtle goodness, a real individuality, never before known, was another triumph— But to effectually protect them so that the fullest benefit of these fine materials, this careful, cleanly baking, this unique goodness comes to you unaltered, was the crowning triumph that gave the world Uneeda Biscuit t NATIONAL BISCUIT COMPAQ