Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences Part 26

"One custom which obtained in those frontier days seems to have been peculiar to the time, for I have not found it since in other frontier communities. It was the custom of 'calling off' the mail upon its arrival at the postoffice. The postmaster, old Tom Tisdale--a genuine facsimile of Petroleum V. Nasby--would dump the sacks of mail, brought overland on a buckboard, into a capacious box upon the counter of his store, then pick up piece by piece, and read the inscriptions thereon in a sonorous voice to the crowd, sometimes consisting of one or two hundred people. Each claimant would cry out 'Here!' when his name was called. Sometimes two-thirds of the mail was distributed in this way, saving a large amount of manual labor in pigeon-holing the same. Nasby had a happy and caustic freedom in commenting upon the mail during the performance, not always contemplated, I believe, by the United States postal regulations. A woman's handwriting upon a letter addressed to a young man was almost certain to receive some public notice from his sharp tongue, to the great enjoyment of the crowd and sometimes the visible annoyance of the young man. At one time he deliberately turned over a postal card written by a well-known young woman of Beaver Crossing who was away at school, and on observing that the message was written both horizontally and across, commented, 'From the holy mother, in Dutch.' If I should ever meet on the mystic other sh.o.r.e, which poets and philosophers have tried to picture for us, old Tom Tisdale, I would expect to see him with his spectacles pushed back from his nose, 'calling off' the mail to the a.s.sembled spirits, the while entertaining them with pungent personal epigrams.

"One startling picture arises from the past, framed as Browning writes 'in a sheet of flame'--the picture of the great prairie fire of October, 1871, which swept Seward county from south to north, leaving hardly a quarter section of continuous unburnt sod. A heavy wind, increasing to a hurricane, drove this fire down the West Blue valley. It jumped the Blue river in a dozen places as easily as a jack rabbit jumps a road. It left a great broad trail of cindered haystacks and smoking stables and houses. A neighbor of ours who was burnt out remarked that he had 'been through h.e.l.l in one night,' and had 'no fear of the devil hereafter.'

"At the other end of the scale of temperature are recollections of the 'Great Storm' of April 13, 14, 15, 1873. There burst from a June atmosphere the worst blizzard in the history of the state. For three days it blew thick, freezing sleet, changing to snow so close and dense and dark that a man in a wagon vainly looked for the horses. .h.i.tched to it through the storm. Men who were away from home lost their lives over the state. Stock was frozen to death. In sod houses, dugouts, and log cabins settlers huddled close about the hearth, burning enormous baskets of ten-cent corn to keep from freezing.

"In these later years of life, Fate has called me to make minute study of many historical periods and places. Yet my heart always turns to review the early scenes of settlement and civilization in Seward county with a peculiar thrill of personal emotion and special joy in the risen and rising fortunes of those who there built the foundations of a great commonwealth. No land can be dearer than the land of one's childhood and none can ever draw my thoughts further over plain or ocean than the happy valley upon West Blue whose waters spring spontaneously from beneath the soil to water her fortunate acres."

PIONEERING

BY GRANT LEE SHUMWAY

On September 15, 1885, I crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, and came west through Lincoln. The state fair was in full blast but our party did not stop, as we were bound for Benkleman, Parks, and Haigler, Nebraska.

After looking over Dundy county, Nebraska, and Cheyenne county, Kansas, the rest of the party returned to Illinois.

I went to Indianola, and with Mr. Palmatier, I started for the Medicine.

He carried the mail to Stockville and Medicine, which were newly established postoffices in the interior to the north, and his conveyance was the hind wheels of an ordinary wagon, to which he had fas.h.i.+oned a pair of thills. He said that he was using such a vehicle because it enabled him to cut off several miles in the very rough country through which we pa.s.sed.

The jolting was something fierce, but being young and used to riding in lumber wagons, I did not mind. I was very much interested in everything, but the things that linger most clearly in my mind after all these years are the bushy whiskered, hopeful faces of the men who greeted us from dugouts and sod cabins. The men's eyes were alight with enthusiasm and candor, but I do not remember of having seen a woman or child upon the trip.

It seems that men can drop back into the primitive so much more easily than women: not perhaps with all the brutality of the First Men, but they can adjust themselves to the environment of the wilderness, and the rusticity of the frontier, with comparative ease.

I stopped for the night in Hay canon, a branch of Lake canon, at Hawkins brothers' hay camp, and I remember when they told me that they had three hundred tons of hay in the stack, that it seemed almost an inconceivable quant.i.ty. On our old Illinois farm twenty-five or thirty tons seemed a large amount, but three hundred tons was beyond our range of reasoning.

However, we now stack that much on eighty acres in the Scottsbluff country.

In due time I went on over the great tableland to the city of North Platte, and going down the canon on the south side of the south river, I killed my first jack rabbit, an event which seemed to make me feel more of a westerner than any circ.u.mstance up to that time.

My first impression of North Platte, with its twelve saloons, was not of the best. And my conception of Buffalo Bill dropped several notches in esteem when I saw the Wild West saloon. But in the light of years, I am less puritanical in my views of the first people of the plains. In subsequent years I rode the range as a cowboy, and drove twenty-mule teams with a single line and a black-snake, and while always I remained an abstainer and occasionally found others that did likewise, I learned to tolerate, and then enjoy, the witticisms and foolishness of those that did indulge. Sometimes the boys in their cups would "smoke up" the little cities of the plains, but they never felt any resentment if one of their number did not partic.i.p.ate in their drinking and festive sports.

I spent the winter of 1885 on the ranch of Hall & Evans, near North Platte, and one of the pleasantest acquaintances.h.i.+ps of my life has been that of John Evans, now registrar of the land office at North Platte.

In the spring of '86 the constant stream of emigrant wagons going west gave one an impression that in a little time the entire West would be filled, and I grew impatient to be upon my way and secure selections. In May I arrived at Sidney and from there rode in a box car to Cheyenne.

When we topped the divide east of Cheyenne, I saw the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies for the first time.

During the summer I "skinned mules," aiding in the construction of the Cheyenne & Northern, now a part of the Hill system that connects Denver with the Big Horn basin and Puget sound.

Returning to Sidney in the autumn, I fell in with George Hendricks, who had been in the mines for twenty years and finally gave it up. We shoveled coal for the Union Pacific until we had a grub stake for the winter. I purchased a broncho, and upon him we packed our belongings--beds, blankets, tarpaulin, provisions, cooking utensils, tools, and clothing, and started north over the divide for "Pumpkin creek," our promised land. In a little over a day's travel, one leading the horse and the other walking behind to prod it along, we reached Hackberry canon, and here, in a grove by a spring, we built our first cabin.

Three sides were log, the cracks filled with small pieces of wood and plastered with mud from the spring, and the back of the cabin was against a rock, and up this rock we improvised a fireplace, with loose stones and mud.

When we had rigged a bunk of native red cedar along the side of this rude shelter, and the fire was burning in our fireplace, the coffee steaming, the bread baking in the skillet, the odor of bacon frying, and the wind whistling through the tree-tops, that cabin seemed a mighty cozy place.

We could sometimes hear the coyotes and the grey wolves howl at night, but a sense of security prevailed, and our sleep was sound. Out of the elements at hand, we had made the rudiments of a home on land that was to become ours--our very own--forever.

EARLY DAYS IN STANTON COUNTY

_Statement by Andrew J. Bottorff_

I came to Nebraska at the close of the civil war, having served during the entire campaign with the Seventeenth Indiana regiment. I came west with oxen and wagon in the fall of 1866, bringing my family. We wintered at Rockport, but as soon as spring opened went to Stanton county, where I took a homestead. Here we had few neighbors and our share of hards.h.i.+ps, but thrived and were happy.

One day I heard my dogs barking and found them down in a ravine, near the Elkhorn river, with an elk at bay, and killed him with my axe.

The first year I was appointed county surveyor. Having no instruments at hand, I walked to Omaha, over a hundred miles distant, and led a fat cow to market there. I sold the cow but found no instruments. I was told of a man at Fort Calhoun who had an outfit I might get, so wended my way there. I found E. H. Clark, who would sell me the necessary supplies, and I bought them; then carried them, with some other home necessities obtained in Omaha, back to Stanton, as I had come, on foot.

I am now seventy-five years old, and have raised a large family; yet wife and I are as happy and spry as if we had never worked, and are enjoying life in sunny California, where we have lived for the last ten years.

_Statement by Sven Johanson_

With my wife and two small children I reached Omaha, Nebraska, June 26, 1868. We came direct from Norway, having crossed the stormy Atlantic in a small sailboat, the voyage taking eight weeks.

A brother who had settled in Stanton county, 107 miles from Omaha, had planned to meet us in that city. After being there a few days this brother, together with two other men, arrived and we were very happy.

With two yoke of oxen and one team of horses, each hitched to a load of lumber, we journeyed from Omaha to Stanton county. Arriving there, we found shelter in a small dugout with our brother and family, where we remained until we filed on a homestead and had built a dugout of our own.

We had plenty of clothing, a good lot of linens and homespun materials, but these and ten dollars in money were all we possessed.

The land office was at Omaha and it was necessary for me to walk there to make a filing. I had to stop along the way wherever I could secure work, and in that way got some food, and occasionally earned a few cents, and this enabled me to purchase groceries to carry back to my family. There were no bridges across rivers or creeks and we were compelled to swim; at one time in particular I was very thankful I was a good swimmer. A brother-in-law and myself had gone to Fremont, Nebraska, for employment, and on our return we found the Elkhorn river almost out of its banks. This frightened my companion, who could not swim, but I told him to be calm, we would come to no harm. I took our few groceries and our clothing and swam across, then going back for my companion, who was a very large man, I took him on my back and swam safely to the other sh.o.r.e.

While I was away, my family would be holding down our claim and taking care of our one cow. We were surrounded by Indians, and there were no white people west of where we lived.

In the fall of 1869 we secured a yoke of oxen, and the following spring hauled home logs from along the river and creek and soon had a comfortable log house erected.

Thus we labored and saved little by little until we were able to erect a frame house, not hewn by hand, but made from real lumber, and by this time we felt well repaid for the many hards.h.i.+ps we had endured. The old "homestead" is still our home, but the dear, faithful, loving mother who so bravely bore all the hards.h.i.+ps of early days was called to her rich reward January 28, 1912. She was born June 15, 1844, and I was born October 14, 1837.

FRED E. ROPER, PIONEER

BY ERNEST E. CORRELL

Fred E. Roper, a pioneer of Hebron, Nebraska, was eighty years old on October 10, 1915. Sixty-one years ago Mr. Roper "crossed the plains,"

going from New York state to California.

Eleven years more than a half-century--and to look back upon the then barren stretch of the country in comparison with the present fertile region of prosperous homes and populous cities, takes a vivid stretch of imagination to realize the dreamlike transformation. At that time San Francisco was a village of about five hundred persons living in adobe huts surrounded by a mud wall for a fortified protection from the marauding Indians.

Fred E. Roper was born in Candor Hill, New York, October 10, 1835. When three years old he moved with his parents to Canton, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, and later moved with his brother to Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Then he s.h.i.+pped as a "hand" on a raft going down the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, getting one dollar a day and board. He returned north on a steamer, stopping at Burlington, Iowa, where his sister resided.

In 1854, when he was nineteen years of age, Mr. Roper "started west."