It was customary for the old men of the Indian tribes unacquainted with the art of writing as we know it, to gather their clansmen around them for the purpose of relating to them the valorous deeds of their ancestors. From father to son the tales descended; and thus the chronicles of the tribes were perpetuated. In these days, when we have a press that records, daily, not only the happenings of our own people but of the whole world, we do not charge our memories with facts; and, anomalous as it may seem, we are better informed about what occurs in the antipodes, than about what transpires around us. Things that are of first importance to us are forgotten in the consideration we give to things that are of consequence to men who are naught to us. And yet with all our means for the preservation of facts, much of that which is of real significance is left unrecorded.

No history is fuller of tragedy and sacrifice, of poetry and romance, of sorrow and mystery, than that of the people who first came to the region of which I write. The pioneers of southwestern Nebraska, after crossing the great river that forms the eastern boundary of our state, drove their white-covered wagons across the frontier, beyond the outposts of civilization and the help of men, into a land that was uncharted as the ocean. They found a prairie stretching, like the ocean, away to limits of vision, the surface tossed, as if by the wind, into mighty waves that were crested, not with foam, but with flowers. They found the land tenanted by wild animals and by savage men, the uplands teeming with buffaloes, the lowlands sheltering elks, deer, and antelopes. At night, out of the darkness that

against the Sioux in 1876 and 1878. They surrendered to a detachment of soldiers under Major Carlton on the 23d of October, 1878, in the sand-hills, about forty miles southeast of Camp Sheridan. They were confined at Fort Robinson, and the undertaking to remove them again to Indian Territory on the 9th of January, 1879, was met with desperate and bloody resistance.-ED.

rimmed their camp fires, they heard the wail of the coyote. From the branches of the trees beneath which they sought shelter, they saw the eyes of some great cat, glowing like living coals.

When they reached their chosen land, they unhitched their horses or unyoked their cattle, and turned them loose to graze. The first desire of every white man, indeed his first need, is to have a home. They selected the site for the dwelling they meant to raise. They cut the trees that nature had furnished for their use along the streams and from them fashioned their habitation, or they turned the prairie sod, and from it built a shelter from the sun and wind and rain, using poles to support the roof and the untanned skins of deer or buffaloes for door and windows; or, like the wild creatures that had been in undisputed possession of the land since their first coming, they dug a cave in a cañon's bank; or they traveled wearily back, across the trackless plain, to the nearest railway station, where they loaded their wagons with boards with which they constructed shacks to shield them from winter's blasts. There were no carpenters, no artisans-none to help them but their comrades. They learned the lesson of self-reliance, the first lesson of the pioneer, of which we of to-day know too little.

In health, the life, though hard, had its compensations in the prairies, in the glorious sunshine, in the free, pure air of this westland; but in sickness there was no doctor who might be summoned by telephone, no one to administer comfort, but some kindly neighbor-woman with her homely remedies. And all that could be done for the dead was to lay them in the earth, on some lonely hillside, sometimes in a rude pine box to save them from molestation by prowling wolves, but often merely wrapped in blankets to protect the closed eyes from the pressing clods. Tears and a prayer were awarded the departed, and outpouring of sympathy from all the countryside for the living. Even to the poor

sick Indian who came to their door the white settlers extended the hand of charity.

But all was not pain and sorrow. There were parties and social gatherings at the homestead houses. There were weddings and other joyous occasions. There were devotional services and times of thanksgiving, when the hearts of the pioneers were grateful for such blessings as they enjoyed. There were holiday seasons when, despite the poor harvest, the Christmas spirit prevailed.

Carlyle said, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books." In the popular signification of the term, we have had no history. No armies have marched across our land; no decisive battles have been fought upon our soil; none of our people have done anything to achieve fame and honor. The writers of history find nothing in our homely annals worth recording; and yet our pioneers can chronicle events that have the profoundest human interest. The happenings of their daily life contribute to a story that is as thrilling and as tragic as any that is told. After all, who shall say they are too insignificant to warrant repetition?

"All service ranks the same with God:

God's, puppets, best and worst,

Are we: there is no last nor first."

The incidents that filled those early days did not constitute the sum of life. Aside from the human element that entered into the computation, the manifestations of nature cast spells that were felt but that cannot be defined. The expanse of prairie, the tree-bordered streams, the flooding sunlight, the cloud flecked sky, the chasing shadows, the slipping waters, the sifting snowflakes, the sparkling stars, the silent moonlight, the scent of the wild flowers, the sweep of the storm cloud, the flash of the lightning, the crash of the thunder, the hiss of the rattle snake-all inspired sentiments that make the memory of those days, to those who

lived in them, pleasant to contemplate, and that will some day find expression in masterpieces of art and literature.

The proudest distinction any of us can enjoy should be that of calling ourselves pioneers; but the honor should be reserved for those who endured the hardships and privations of frontier life; for those who prepared the way for things that, in a material sense, are better; for those who have made this country what it is. To the first settlers we, who find this land a fit place to abide, owe a debt of gratitude we cannot repay.

NEBRASKA, MOTHER OF STATES

BY ALBERT WATKINS

Virginia was called the mother of presidents-before she lost her political "pull" through the errancy of rebellion and Ohio succeeded to it through strategic location and even more aptitude, or greed, in grasping opportunity than her venerable hegemonic predecessor had shown. So, also, prior to the prolific parturition of Nebraska's Titan territory, the Northwest Territory was or might have beencalled the mother of states. The 265,878 square miles of the Northwest Territory produced the five medium sized states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin and contributed 26,320 square miles of the 83,531 contained in Minnesota. The 351,558 square miles of Nebraska Territory produced the three great states of Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota; about three-fourths of the greater state of Wyoming; nearly all of the immense state of Montana; and made a considerable contribution to Colorado.

Until the territory of Arkansas was formed, in 1819, all of the Louisiana Purchase north of the part now comprised in the state of Louisiana was under a single territorial organization, bearing the successive names of The District of Louisiana, The Territory of Louisiana, and Missouri. Out of this vast territory of Missouri there have been created the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and, in part, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. But the territory of Missouri, except that part in the neighborhood of St. Louis, was an unsettled wilderness occupied only by savage