Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences Part 10

"My baby, Arthur, born January 9, 1869, was the first white child born in Fillmore county. I recall one time that I was home alone with the baby. An Indian came in and handed me a paper that said he had lost a pony. I a.s.sured him that we had seen nothing of the pony. He saw a new butcher knife that was lying on the table, picked it up, and finally drew out his old knife and held it toward me, saying, 'Swap, swap!' I said, 'Yes,' so he went away with my good knife.

"The worst fright I ever did have was not from Indians. My sister Minnie was with me and we were out of salt. Mr. Dixon said he would go across the river to Whitaker's and borrow some. We thought that he wouldn't be gone long so we stayed at home. While he was away a cloud came up and it began to rain. I never did see it rain harder. The river raised, and the water in the ravine in front of the dugout came nearly to the door. The roof leaked so we were nearly as wet indoors as we would have been out.

The rain began about four o'clock in the afternoon. It grew dark and Mr.

Dixon did not return. We thought that he would certainly be drowned in trying to cross the river. While we were in this state of suspense, the door burst open and a half-clad woman rushed in, saying, 'Don't let me scare you to death.' I was never so frightened in my life, and it was some time before I recognized her as my neighbor, Mrs. Fairbanks.

"Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks had gone to Whitaker's, who were coopers, to get some barrels fixed for sorghum, and left the children at home. When it rained they thought they must try to cross the river and get to their children. Mr. Dixon came with them. At first they tried to ride horses across, but the one Mrs. Fairbanks was riding refused to swim and threw her into the water, so she had to swim back. They were all excellent swimmers, so they started again in a wagon box which those on land tried to guide by means of a line. With the aid of the wagon box and by swimming they succeeded in getting across. That was in the fall of 1869.

"The only time I ever saw a buffalo skinned was when a big herd stayed a week or more on the south side of the river. Kate Bussard and I stood on the top of the dugout and watched the chase, and after they killed one we went nearer and watched them skin it."

Mr. Dixon took his claim without seeing it. In October, 1866, he went to the land office and learned that he could then take a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres but the new law would soon go into effect providing that settlers could only homestead eighty acres. Mr. Dixon was afraid that he could not go and see the claim and get back to Nebraska City and file on it in time to get one hundred and sixty acres. In telling about it Mr. Dixon says, "I thought it would, indeed, be a poor quarter section that would not have eighty acres of farm land, so I took my chances.

"In the year 1868, the first year that we had any crops planted, it almost forgot to rain at all. The barley was so short that it fell through the cradle. There were no bridges so we had to ford the river.

It was hard to haul much of a load across because the wagon would cut into the mud on the two banks while the sandy river bottom would stand a pretty good load. That difficulty I overcame by making bundles or sheaves of willow poles and placing them at the two banks and covering them with sand. Later the settlers made a bridge across the river near the homestead of H. L. Badger. This has ever since been known as the 'Badger Bridge.' The first bridge was made of logs which we procured along the river.

"I was making a hayrack of willow poles at the time of the total eclipse of the sun. It began to grow dark, the chickens went to roost, and it seemed that night was coming on.

"The year 1869 was rainy and we raised good crops and fine potatoes that season. That was the year they were driving Texas cattle up to eat the northern gra.s.s and then s.h.i.+p them east over the Union Pacific railroad.

The cattle stampeded, so they lost many of them and we saw them around for a year or more.

"My first buffalo hunt was in 1867. The country seemed to be covered with great herds and the Indians were hunting them. Twenty of us started out with five wagons. There were Jake and Boss Gilmore, Jim Johnson, and myself in one wagon. We had only about three days' supplies with us, expecting to get buffalo before these were exhausted, but the Indians were ahead of us and kept the buffalo out of our range. Our party crossed the Little Blue at Deweese. Beyond there we found carca.s.ses of buffalo and a fire where the Indians had burned out a ranch. Realizing that it was necessary for us to take precautions, we chose Colonel Bifkin our leader and decided to strike another trail and thus avoid the Indians if possible. We traveled toward the Republican river but found no track of either buffalo or Indians, so we turned around and followed the Indians. By that time our food supply was exhausted, but by good luck we shot two wild turkeys.

"We were soon following the Indians so closely that we ate dinner where they ate breakfast and by night we were almost in sight of them. We thought it best to put out a guard at night. My station was under a cottonwood tree near a foot-log that crossed a branch of the Little Blue. I was to be relieved at eleven o'clock. I heard something coming on the foot-log. I listened and watched but it was so dark that I could see nothing, but could hear it coming closer; so I shot and heard something drop. Colonel Bifkin, who was near, coming to relieve me, asked what I was shooting at. 'I don't know, perhaps an Indian; it dropped,' I replied. We looked and found merely a c.o.o.n, but it did good service as wagon grease, for we had forgotten that very necessary article.

"The Indians kept the main herd ahead of them so we were only able to see a few buffalo that had strayed away. We went farther west and got two or three and then went into camp on the Little Blue. We always left a guard at camp and all of the fun came when Boss Gilmore and I were on guard so we missed it. The others rounded up and killed about twenty buffalo. One fell over the bluff into the river and it fell to our lot to get it out and skin it, but by the time we got it out the meat had spoiled. The water there was so full of alkali that we could not drink it and neither could the horses, so we started back, struck the freight road and followed it until we came to Deep Well ranch on the Platte bottom. We had driven without stopping from ten o'clock in the forenoon till two o'clock in the morning. We lay down and slept then, but I was awakened early by chickens crowing. I roused the others of our party and we went in search of something to eat. It had been eight days since we had had any bread and I was never so bread-hungry as then. We came to the Martin home about three miles west of Grand Island and although we could not buy bread, the girls baked biscuits for us and I ate eleven biscuits. That was the home of the two Martin boys who were pinned together by an arrow that the Indians shot through both of them while riding on one pony.

"That morning I saw the first construction train that came into Grand Island over the Union Pacific railroad. If I remember correctly it was in November, 1867.

"We took home with us five wagonloads of buffalo meat. I did not keep any of the hides because I could not get them tanned. Mr. Gilmore got Indian women to tan a hide for him by giving them sugar and flour. They would keep asking for it and finally got all that was coming to them before the hide was done, so they quit tanning, and Mr. Gilmore had to keep baiting them by giving them more sugar and flour in order to get it done."

Mr. and Mrs. Dixon have eight children, all living. They still own the original homestead that was their home for so many years.

PIONEERING IN FILLMORE COUNTY

BY JOHN R. MCCASHLAND

In the fall of 1870, with Mrs. McCashland and two children, Addie and Sammy, I left Livingston county, Illinois, and drove to Fillmore county, Nebraska. We started with two wagons and teams. I had three good horses and one old plug. I drove one team and had a man drive the other until I became indignant because he abused the horses and let him go. Mrs.

McCashland drove the second team the rest of the way.

A family of neighbors, Thomas Roe's, were going west at the same time, so we were together throughout the journey until we got lost in the western part of Iowa. The road forked and we were so far behind we did not see which way Roe turned and so went the other way. It rained that night and a dog ate our supplies so we were forced to procure food from a settler. We found the Roe family the next evening just before we crossed the Missouri river, October 15, 1870.

East of Lincoln we met a prairie schooner and team of oxen. An old lady came ahead and said to us, "Go back, good friends, go back!" When questioned about how long she had lived here, she said, "I've wintered here and I've summered here, and G.o.d knows I've been here long enough."

When Mrs. McCashland saw the first dugout that she had ever seen, she cried. It did not seem that she could bear to live in a place like that.

It looked like merely a hole in the ground.

We finally reached the settlement in Fillmore county and lived in a dugout with two other families until I could build a dugout that we could live in through the winter. That done, I picked out my claim and went to Lincoln to file on it and bought lumber for a door and for window frames.

I looked the claim over, chose the site for buildings, and when home drew the plans of where I wanted the house, stable, well, etc., on the dirt hearth for Mrs. McCashland to see. She felt so bad because she had to live in such a place that I gave it up and went to the West Blue river, which was near, felled trees, and with the help of other settlers hewed them into logs and erected a log house on the homestead.

While living in the dugout Indian women visited Mrs. McCashland and wanted to trade her a papoose for her quilts. When she refused, they wanted her to give them the quilts.

I had just forty-two dollars when we reached Fillmore county, and to look back now one would hardly think it possible to live as long as we did on forty-two dollars. There were times that we had nothing but meal to eat and many days we sent the children to school with only bread for lunch.

I was a civil war veteran, which fact ent.i.tled me to a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres. I still own that homestead, which is farmed by my son. After visiting in the East a few years ago I decided that I would not trade my quarter section in Fillmore county for several times that much eastern land.

FILLMORE COUNTY IN THE SEVENTIES

BY WILLIAM SPADE

We came to Nebraska in October of 1870 by wagon and wintered a mile east of what now is the Red Lion mill. We made several trips to Lincoln during the fall and winter and one to Nebraska City, where brother Dan and I shucked corn for a farmer for a dollar a day with team.

I moved on the William Bussard claim, later the Elof Lindgren farm, in March, 1871, and raised a crop, then moved on our homestead in section 24, town 8, range 3 west. We built part dugout and part sodup for a house and slept in it the first night with only the blue sky for a roof.

Then we put on poles, brush, hay, dirt, and sod for a roof. This was in October, and we lived in this dugout until 1874, then built a sod house.

In April, 1873, we had a three days' snow storm called a blizzard. In the spring of 1871 I attended the election for the organization of the county of Fillmore. I followed farming as an occupation and in the fall of 1872 William Howell and I bought a thres.h.i.+ng machine, which we ran for four seasons. Some of the accounts are still due and unpaid. Our lodging place generally was the straw stack or under the machine and our teams were tied to a wagon, but the meals we got were good. Aside from farming and thres.h.i.+ng I put in some of the time at carpentry, walking sometimes six miles back and forth, night and morning.

In July or August, 1874, we had a visit from the gra.s.shoppers, the like of which had never been seen before nor since. They came in black clouds and dropped down by the bushel and ate every green thing on earth and some things in the earth. We had visits from the Indians too but they mostly wanted "hogy" meat or something to fill their empty stomachs.

Well, I said we built a sodup of two rooms with a board floor and three windows and two doors, plastered with Nebraska mud. We thought it a palace, for some time, and were comfortable.

In June, 1877, I took a foolish notion to make a fortune and in company with ten others, supplied with six months' provisions, started for the Black Hills. We drove ox teams and were nearly all summer on the road; at least we did not reach the mining places till August. In the meantime the water had played out in the placer mining district so there was "nothing doing." We prospected for quartz but that did not pan out satisfactorily, so we traded our grub that we did not need for gold dust and returned to our homes no richer than when we left. However, we had all of the fresh venison we could use both coming and going, besides seeing a good many Indians and lots of wild country that now is mostly settled up.

EARLY DAYS IN NEBRASKA

BY J. A. CARPENTER

I came to Gage county, Nebraska, in the fall of 1865, and homesteaded 160 acres of land, four miles from the village of Beatrice, in the Blue River valley. I built a log house 12x14 feet with one door and two windows. The floor was made of native lumber in the rough, that we had sawed at a mill operated by water power.

With my little family I settled down to make my fortune. Though drouth and gra.s.shoppers made it discouraging at times, we managed to live on what little we raised, supplemented by wild game--that was plentiful.

Wild turkeys and prairie chickens could be had by going a short distance and further west there were plenty of buffalo and antelope.

Our first mail was carried from Nebraska City on horseback. The first paper published in Gage county was in 1867 and was called the _Blue Valley Record_. 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. I remember when I came through where the city of Superior now is, first in 1866 and again in 1867, nothing was to be seen but buffalo gra.s.s and a few large cottonwood trees. I killed a buffalo near the present town of Hardy.

We have lived in Nebraska continuously since 1865 and it is hard to believe the progress that it has made in these few years.