obtained relating to the history of a past which can never be repeated. The value of all the society now possesses will be enhanced many fold as the years more widely separate that past from the future. The white men are confronted with a conjectural problem of the future. We read in history's pages of the glories of ancient Greece, but we see her only in ruins. We read of the grandeur of Rome, but we see her in decay. If we would go back to more antecedent days we find evidences of civilization only by excavations of the remains of buried cities. Here on this continent we have seen another race, that has been the proud possessor of these lands for centuries, disappear. The red men were not able to maintain the supremacy of their race nor the lands of their birthright. When we look back over our past faded glory and departed grandeur we may well ask ourselves, "Will the white man be able to preserve his present high standard of civilization and progress and prosperity?"

If he is to do so, he should preserve the history of the extinct race that dwelt on the American soil, just as he should preserve the history of his own past; for out of these he may gather the lessons of wisdom that will give him the essential promptings for his own preservation. This, in part, is the mission of the Nebraska State Historical Society.

The Indian collections of the historical society will continue to become more valuable as antiquities. They will become more priceless than the mummies of Pharaohs, or the hieroglyphics from the Nile. They will become more interesting than the groves and temples of the Druids, the wonderworkers of the ancient Celts. This collection is all we have left to tell the story of the life of a human race that has been swept away by an all powerful and conquering white man. To them the heavens have been rolled away as a scroll. To them the moon and stars have gone back into utter darkness.

Putting all other considerations aside, the people of Nebraska, in this the age of their strong manhood and unrestrained prosperity, can do a no more commendable or worthy thing than to appropriate a part of their revenues for the preservation and housing of these valuable collections of the historical society.

ADVENTURES ON THE PLAINS, 1865-67

BY DENNIS FARRELL

I was a little over twenty-two years of age when I reached Leavenworth, Kansas, with the full intention of crossing the plains to California. I was slight of build but large in ambition, and, while I am not brave, I dared to go anywhere I felt like going. I was out to rough it, and hired to the government as one to help take six hundred head of horses to the different military posts between Leavenworth and Fort Laramie. We started on the 30th of April, 1865. There was a long rope fastened to the tongue of a wagon and stretching forward, and to this rope were tied one hundred horses by their bridles, with five men riders, one at the head of the line, three in the swings, and one on the wheel horse.

Our trip was uneventful until we passed Fort Kearny. It was our custom to drive until about noon or later, and then, in order to give the horses water, an hour or two of rest and a chance to feed, we picketed them out. We used iron picket pins, a foot and a half long, driven well into the ground, and fifty feet of rope. Some of the men were always out among the horses to prevent them from tangling or being thrown by the ropes. About two days after we left Fort Kearny, suddenly the horses became excited and turned their ears toward the bluffs across the river where Indians were waving their red blankets and yelling their war cry at the top of their voices. The horses stampededI was in the midst of them and picket pins flying in the air-and ran toward the bluffs on our side of the river. Many of them were killed and many others so badly maimed

that they had to be shot. Our military escort of cavalrymen and some of our own men followed, but failed to recover a large number of them. At the first alarm some one yelled, "Lie on your face!" and so I did, expecting every instant to be crushed by the horses or killed by flying picket pins. This was the only incident of note until we reached Julesburg, as Fort Sedgwick was then called, and I stopped at this place. The string of horses with which I was detailed was turned over to the commandant of that post.

I found employment in the quartermaster's department under Captain Westbrook. In the fall I left the government employ and bought out old Sam Watt's interest in the eating house which was a part of the ranch he kept in the military camp at Julesburg. Sam Watt was also postmaster. He was a Missourian, about fifty years old, and well posted on frontier life. He was about fifty years of age then; he told me about the old Frenchman, Jules, and how he was attacked and killed by the Indians and the ranch set on fire. Old Jules' ranch was about a mile and a half below or east of the fort proper, but inside of the four-miles circuit. The story of the cattlemen wearing his ears as watch guards is manufactured out of whole cloth, as there were no cattlemen on the plains at that time; there were nothing but bull-whackers, wagon-masters or mule-drivers. Sam Watt knew Jules personally, and I regret that I cannot recall, at this interesting period, some of the things he told me. In reading "The Great Salt Lake Trail" I find illustrations' purporting to be Old Julesburg

1 Fort Sedgwick was established May 19, 1864, as Camp Rankin, but was not constructed until September of that year when, on the 27th, it was christened Fort Sedgwick by the war department. The post was situated on the south side of the South Platte river, about a mile west of Julesburg. In 1867 the name was transferred to the station on the Union Pacific railroad situated, not opposite old Julesburg, but a little more than three miles farther east and on the north side of the river.

when, in fact, they are a picture of Jack Hughes' (of the firm of Hughes & Bissell of Denver) Julesburg of 1865 and 1866. Hughes had a contract with the government to furnish so many hundred cords of wood. Old Julesburg did not have any frame houses, but one can see in the picture two of the old adobe houses. Old Julesburg was on the south side of the Platte, and when the railroad builders reached a point opposite with their track, they called their town New Julesburg, and, in order to sell lots, they advertised the great improvements they were going to make there at once.

Captain Westbrook, quartermaster of the post, was a Californian. He was succeeded by Captain Neill, a West Point soldier from Pennsylvania.

While keeping this eating place at the fort, I boarded some of the officers and occasionally served transient meals Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, writing from Fort Laramie, August 31, 1866, said that Fort Sedgwick "is sometimes called Julesburg, by reason of a few adobe houses called by that name, three miles from the post." (House Executive Documents 39th Congress, 2d Session, v. 6, doc. 23, p. 9.) This statement indicates that the site of old Julesburg had been abandoned and the name applied to the place which became a station on the Union Pacific railroad the next year.

The first buildings for Fort Sedgwick were constructed of sod by Company F of the Seventh Iowa regiment, under Captain Nicholas J. O'Brien. Captain P. W. Neill was of the Eighteenth U. S. infantry, then in the Division of the Missouri, and the next year, under the reorganization, in the Department of the Platte. Captain Eugene F. Ware describes the manner of constructing the first buildings in his History of the Indian War of 1864, page 326. Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, writing from Fort Sedgwick, August 24, 1866, said: "The post was first built of sod, and now looks like hovels in which a negro would not go". (House Executive Documents 39th Congress, 2d Session, p. 6.)

Jules was not killed by Indians, but by Jack Slade, a desperado, at his ranch near O'Fallon's Bluff. It is said that Slade shot off one of Jule's ears and wore it as a memento. This brutal incident is related in detail in the history of Nebraska, volume 2, page 180, note; and in "The Great Salt Lake Trail”, p. 205. The pictures alluded to by Mr. Farrell are in the book last named, page 162. Captain Royal L. Westbrook was in the volunteer service. He was appointed assistant quartermaster from California in 1863. It does not appear that Captain Neill was in the quartermaster service.-ED.