Conservative.
press the holidays of anoiout Eomo because -
cause they wore irreligious. Did ho over
hear of a country where their day of
thanksgiving is always marked by the
climax of a brutal foot-ball game ? A
laud where a bicycle race is the grand
emblem of our love for buried heroes
and always held on decoration day ?
Does he know of a country where their
nation's birth is glorified by peanut
stands by day and a bowery dance by
night ? Has he over known an exhibition
of millinery to show forth the faith of a
nation in a risen Lord ?
The legislature of Kansas , by its
action upon King Edward's vote of
thanks , intends to maintain the reputa
tion of the state for carrying a higher
pressure to the square inch of danifool-
ism than any equal area between the
poles. Mrs. Lease , Mrs. Nation , Jerry
Simpson , St. John and such a legis'la-
txire are true descendants of John
Brown and his coterie of jawhawkers.
The announcement that Towno is to
assume management of the Liquid Air
combine gives credence to the report
that Jones of Arkansas has hopes of re
viving the embers of Bryanism.
T. M. S.
INDIAN NEBRASKA.
THE CONSERVATIVE is in receipt of a
very obliging note from Mr. James P.
Dunlap of Dwight , Nebraska , relative
to Indian remains. Dwight is in the
southeast corner of Butler county , about
three miles from where a "very early
map , published in Cincinnati , showed
an "Oak Grove City , " which seems
never to have existed.
Mr. Dunlap says that two miles east
of Dwight is the site of an old Indian
village , where in the early days of set
tlement , numerous relics were to be
found on the prairie : broken pottery ,
arrow-heads and the lumps of flint from
which arrow-heads were chipped off.
They used to notice also , he says , piles
of rock on the ridges , surrounded by
mussel-shells and broken pottery : evi
dently camping-places , where , as Mr
Dunlap puts it , the Indians "had cooked
mussels and broken dishes and bad a
good view of the surrounding country
while they were at it. " Relics are no
longer plentiful , he says , but the circle
of an old building is still visible , one
there used to be the rotten remains of a
centre-post. This was on a hill which
commanded the country for some dis
tance about and was near to water.
Savannah.
Mr. Dunlap speaks further of a spo
in section 12 , township 16 , range 2 east
"Old Savannah , "whore there were many
remains of the circular lodges of the Ind
ians , which have now been plowed over
for many years : this would bo in
the middle of the north border o
Butler county , on the Platte river. Also
of the remains of fortifications two
miles south of Linwood ( in the northeast -
east corner of the same county ) where
Skull Creek leaves the hills , on the east
ide. These are mentioned in Mr.
George D. Brown's History of Butler
county to 1870 , in Volume IV of the
Historical Society's reports , where the
antiquities of the region are briefly
iouched upon.
The Pawnee Fort.
Mr. Dunlap gives some interesting
mrticulars of these earthworks. He
says that in the GO's they were still some
ten feet high , ha ving a large openingand
with many pits inside the inolosure. He
jives also the Pawnee account of them :
; hat these pits were dug down to water ,
and answered the double purpose of fur
nishing a water supply and sheltering
; ho women , children and-young ponies ;
; hat they were moreover covered , and
provided with holes to shoot out at , and
that they were to have been their last
refuge in case the enemy gained the
outer walls. He says the Pawnees used
to speak of the Sioux as the ones against
whom these provisions were made , and
to say that they defeated them ; but the
reference can hardly be to any particu
lar fight , since the warfare between
these two tribes was continuous. The
evidence indicates that , as Mr. Dunlap
understood , the Pawnees were always
too much for their northern neighbors ,
at least in defending their own homes ;
though surrounded as they were by
hostile tribes , and especially as they
were directly in the line of the white
man's immigration , their destruction
was more swif t and complete than that
of any other large nation.
It is said that there were a number of
places in that same section of the state
which were esteemed particularly big
medicine by the Pawnees. One was a
hill on the south side of the Platte op
posite Fremont , where there was a
"whirlpool , " whatever that may have
been. Another was on an island in the
Platte "near the Lone Tree. " There
was a stage station known as Lone Tree ,
the present Columbus. The third was
on the west side of the Loup , under a
high cut bank at the mouth of Cedar
river. All these spots were held in
superstitious awe by the Pawnees. Can
any of the THE CONSERVATIVE'S readers
give any news of their present condi
tion ? Or are there any high school
boys who can be got to devote some
Saturdays to this investigation ?
A. T. R.
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE WORD
MISSOURI.
State Superintendent W. T. Carring
ton of Missouri , in the following letter
to Mr. George H. Heafford , gives the
origin of the word Missouri and corrects
a popular misconception as to its
meaning :
"The word 'Missouri' is of Indian
origin , being the name of a tribe of that
laino inhabiting the country at its
nouth. The original spelling was
Missouria , ' which probably accounts for
he popular pronunciation , 'Mizzourah. '
I quote from Rader's History of Mis
souri.
" 'In 1705 a prospecting party of
Frenchmen ascended the Missouri river
to where Kansas City is now located.
Tin's was the first ascent of this noble
river by white men. It was first called
Pek-i-ta-nou-i , by Marquette , which is
an Indian word meaning 'muddy water. '
About 1712 it was first called Missouri
: rein the name of a tribe of Indians who
inhabited the country at its mouth and
along a considerable portion of its banks.
There is no authority for the often re
peated assertion that 'Missouri means
muddy. ' This definition of the word
was given it after the name of the river
was changed from Pokitanoui to Mis
souri. ' "
A circle of 100
NORMAL SCHOOLS , miles radius , with
the city of York
as its centre , contains' a population
of 826,481 or 77 84-100 per cent of the
entire population of the state , as shown
by the 1900 census.
Outside of this circle the entire popu
lation of the state is 242,108 or 22 66-100
per cent of the population as shown by
the said census.
Drawing a longitudinal line at a point
crossing the state of Nebraska at Broken
Bow or Arapahoe , and the entire popu
lation west of that line is , as shown by
the census , 110,809 , or about 10 per
cent.
The establishment of a normal school
at a point where this longitudinal line
would cross any of the railroads would
accommodate less than 10 per cent of
this number , or approximately less than
1 per cent of the state's population. Such
location , owing to the lack of communi
cation from the standpoint of transpor
tation , would require travel to be so
circuitous as to make it more expensive
to students residing on any other than
the road upon which the school was lo
cated than the fare to the normal at
Peru.
The Board of Trustees of the Normal
at Pern estimates that $60,140 will be
required the next two years for current
expenses alone , and the sum of $75,000
is asked for additional facilities. This
would be the same if there were two
other schools located in the western part
of the state and they , too , would soon
be making similar demands for money ,
all of which foreshadows the danger and
penalty attending such propositions.
The Governor should veto all the
abnormal demands now being made for
new and not needed normal schools. The
primary object of the asked-for ap
propriations is purely a selfish and not a
public one.
