"Purchase your horses, wagons, and oxen or mules to transport your supplies at Leavenworth, and if the transportation is not needed here on its arrival, it can be sold at public auction for its full value in the States. By this means each soldier will hardly cost ten dollars, whereas by the Benton route each one would cost three hundred by the arrival here.

"One more suggestion. Could not the one hundred thousand dollars already appropriated, and not yet expended, be transferred to the old road I speak of? It is much the shortest and best route and emigrants come through every season, arriving here by the end of September, their animals in very good condition.

"A post is to be established at Boisé in the spring, and there will always be troops at Fort Hall to protect emigration, and all that is needed are ferries at these posts, and little work on the road.

very

"There will then be grass, water, and all that is requisite for a military or emigrant road.

"I do believe, if the one hundred thousand dollars is expended, and the Benton road finished, that not ten emigrants will travel it for twenty years to come.

"But suppose you make the road from St. Paul to Benton, then you must establish a line of posts through the Sioux and Blackfoot country, requiring at least 1,500 soldiers, at a cost of half a million annually, and there would be a war, at a cost of three or four millions more.

"In a conversation with Major Blake, of the army, who came by the Benton route with 300 recruits last summer, he spoke favorably of the route, and said he would apply to bring over horses from St. Paul, via Benton, to this department. Now, I am satisfied that the cost by that route will be ten t mes as much as by the route from Leavenworth, via Laramie, Hall, and Boisé; and, in addition, the major's route is much the longest; and in the months of May and June, from St. Paul west, say one thousand miles, you have much wet and marshy prairie, which I consider impassable.

"Starting in July, then, you could not come through in the same season; and w.ntering in the mountains north

east of us would cause much expense, the loss of many animals, and much suffering amongst the men." 14

Against Major Steen's unsupported statement that the cost per soldier from Fort Snelling to Washington Territory would be three hundred dollars, Lieutenant Mullan shows an estimate in detail that it would be only fifty-four dollars. The road was used but little for military transportation, though, contrary to Major Steen's prediction, it became an important highway for emigrants to Idaho, Washington and Montana.15 The construction of the Northern Pacific railroad in 1883 in the main superseded the Mullan road. The arrival of the Northern Pacific railroad at Bismarck in 1873 greatly reduced the traffic from Sioux City, and the last through trip of a commercial steamboat from St. Louis to Fort Benton was made in 1878. Steamboat traffic on the river was reduced and its main initial points changed by the successive arrivals of railroads at the Missouri river from the east, the Chicago & Northwestern at Council Bluffs in 1867; the Sioux City & Pacific at Sioux City in 1868; the Northern Pacific at Bismarck in 1873; and the body blow was struck when the Great Northern reached Helena, Montana, in 1887. In his booklet, "Nebraska in 1857", James M. Woolworth said that Omaha "is at present the head of navigation of the Missouri river". A very promising commercial traffic by barges has recently been established between Kansas City and St. Louis.

In explanation of the fact that the high up Missouri river points mentioned herein are placed in Nebraska, it should be said that until the territory of Dakota was estab ished, March 2, 1861, Nebraska territory extended north to the Canadian boundary and west to the Rocky mountains. The Lieutenant Warren mentioned became famous afterward in our sectional war. He was chief

14 Ibid., p. 1.

15 Bancroft's Works, v. 31, pp. 384, 406.

engineer of the army of the Potomac and ordered the occupation of Little Round Top on the Gettysburg battlefield, a point of great strategic importance. He participated in the famous battle of Ash Hollow, Nebraska, in 1855, and made important surveys in the territory in 1857-58. The Century magazine was published at New York and gave special attention to military affairs. Copies of it are in the public library of Chicago. Its issue of June 16, 1860, describes the Spread Eagle as a side-wheel vessel drawing four feet; therefore it could not keep up with the Chippewa and the Key West which had stern wheels and drew only thirty-two inches. According to Larpenteur, 16 the Chippewa, the crack steamboat of the Missouri at that time, reached Fort Brulé, six miles above Marias river and sixteen miles below Benton, July 17, 1859.17 The boat was burned at

16 Forty Years a Furtrader, v. 2, pp. 326, 446, notes.

17 In his report to the commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, dated October 20, 1869, General Winfield S. Hancock, commander of the Department of Dakota, gives interesting information about the navigation of the upper Missouri as follows:

"The navigation of the Missouri River above Sioux City, and, indeed, above St. Louis, may properly be divided into two parts: one to the mouth of the Yellowstone, (Fort Buford,) north of St. Louis two thousand two hundred and thirty-five miles; or of Sioux City, one thousand two hundred and twenty-five miles; the other, above Fort Buford to Fort Benton, the head of navigation, seven hundred and twenty-six miles. Boats drawing three feet of water may reach the mouth of the Yellowstone at almost any time during the season for boating on the Missouri. The Yellowstone is the first great tributary the Missouri receives. It gives the character to the Missouri River below the point of meeting, gives it depth, and changes the color of its waters. The Missouri is a clear stream above its junction with the Yellowstone; below that point it is yellow and muddy as it appears at the mouth of the Missouri. Boats drawing eighteen inches can only reach Fort Benton when the year is a favorable one, after the first high water of spring, derived from the melting snows in the mountains. At Fort Buford, no doubt, will be the point, hereafter, where the larger boats will transfer their loads to craft more suitable for the Upper Missouri. The obstacles met with in a low stage of water are bowlders in the bed of the river, deposited there by floating ice, and which may be felt grating against the bottom of boats at many points during low water. The most noted obstacles of this nature are those at Dauphin Rapids, one hundred and fifty miles below Fort Benton, by water, and thence in a lesser

Disaster Bend, fifteen miles below the mouth of Poplar river, June 23, 1861. "She was a stern-wheeler, 160x32 feet, owned by the A. F. Co., W. H. Humphreys master."

degree to Cow Island Rapids, thirty-five miles below. When I passed down the river, 9th of July, 1869, the year being an unfavorable one for water, there having been during the winter but little snow in the mountains, we found there were but seventeen inches of water on Dauphin Rapids, and scarcely more at Cow Island. The steam boat "Only Chance", on which we were, drawing that number of inches light and empty, the passengers and baggage having been removed, passed over it with difficulty, and I believe was the last boat to pass over either rapids." (Report of the Secretary of War, 2d sess. 41st cong., v. 1, p. 61.)

INFLUENCE OF OVERLAND TRAVEL ON THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF NEBRASKA

BY H. G. TAYLOR

[Paper read at the annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society, January, 1912.]

Surrounded with comforts of every description, nourished by a prosperity so prodigal that its resources seem exhaustless, conquering and successful, we of Nebraska are inclined to scorn the achievements of the past and claim for ourselves the credit of the accomplishments and high standing of our state. To be sure, there is reason for a vaulting pride. In point of educational efficiency Nebraska heads the list of states. In productivity of soils there is no state of the same area that is her superior, and in the intelligent treatment of these soils her citizens are abreast of the latest thought and method. In the number and quality of her horses, cattle, hogs and other live stock she finds a source of wealth and fame. In the character and prominence of her statesmen, educators and other leaders of thought she is unusually well favored. Pride in these things is pardonable because it forms the basis of a firm and enduring loyalty, but it should not be indulged to the point of forgetting that others besides ourselves are responsible to a large degree for this happy condition.

While over a million of us here in Nebraska are enjoying the comforts and privileges of modern life, we should be reminded now and then that many of our blessings are the fruits that have ripened from the sacrifices, privations, labor and forethought of the men and women who first came to this country and caught the vision of its possibilities. We