importance of arresting it in the early stages when this was possible. As this is the only chance I have ever had to make an official report on my success with the cases of the troops on that interesting expedition, I will say here, that owing more to careful sanitary conditions and pure air than to any skill of mine, only one man was lost during the several weeks of the voyage to Ft. Pierre. My business was to attend to all the sick persons on the two boats that were companions on the voyage. I was kept pretty busy. It was frequently necessary for me to be transferred from one boat to the other, and the yawl, the vehicle of all work in navigating the Missouri, was brought into requisition for this purpose, and even in the darkness of the night I was obliged to make the transfer. [Interest in this sketch would be lost, and it would be unworthy a place in the records of the historical society of Nebraska, if it should deal with merely personal incidents. Perhaps the foreground and background have been laid to warrant an intelligent judgment upon the condition of the frontier at the time the visit was made to the Mandans, Two Kettles, Minnecongues, and other noble bands, who then, as now, constituted the leading tribes of the Sioux nation. If so, it will be appreciated as a fact marking the contrasts between then and now of the prodigious progress and marvelous change that, at the time I took this journey, not 100 white men occupied the country in all the grand area of what was then embraced within the boundaries of Northern Nebraska. B. R. Folsom had started a small settlement in Tekamah. Rev. Father Tracy (Romanist) had, I believe, planted a few of his people in Dakota county. Cuming City, Washington county, and Ft. Calhoun contained a dozen or two of the pioneers. The whole region was, with these exceptions, without white inhabitants, so that, as a matter of fact, when the two steamboats swung out into the river at Omaha and moved around the bend and passed Florence, they were in a country which was as wild as when the Creator first fashioned it. Descriptions of scenery are intentionally omitted, but the beauty of the opulent foliage, which decorated the banks of the river between Omaha and the Vermillion river region in Dakota in those umbrageous June days, was a source of great pleasure to the military family on board the two boats.

In our monotonous windings upon the sandy-whiskered channels of the Missouri, I do not remember to have seen a human being on

its shores until the arrival at Sioux City, now a flourishing town of not less than 30,000 people. We there met its founder, the late Dr. David Cook, a man of medicine and enterprise, who came down from one of two log cabins to greet the stranger and his unexpected friend, the writer of this narrative. Those cabins constituted all there was then of the now beautiful and prosperous town, which is the intellectual, commercial, and industrial centre for a large and populous agricultural region, which is not confined to one state, with its paved streets, electric lighting, telegraphs, telephones and tramways, great stone and brick buildings and blocks, numerous schools and churches, and every other solid proof of civilized strength and refinement. Dr. Cook, like some of the rest of us, in those dreary and dismal days, dreamed large dreams of the future of the new land, but he never dreamed dreams large enough to equal the reality, which, thanks to his fortune, he lived to see with his own eyes. His was a genia and generous spirit. He was then in the full vigor of middle man hood. A round and smiling face, a finely moulded head planted on a pair of sturdy shoulders, a good physician, an honorable citizen, and a warm-hearted man; he did not deserve to be driven back from the outposts of his ambitious enterprises by pecuniary necessities, discouraged in the struggle to bring results which came at last as he had predicted and hoped. I have seen times in the battle of a long and active life when I regretted that I did not accept his kind offer, a goodly bonus in real estate in Sioux City, if I would transfer my allegiance and person from Omaha to that locality. It will go without saying that I know of no reason to regret it now.

At the time of the early settlement of Nebraska vague and exaggerated reports floated down the Missouri through veracious Indian traders and Missouri navigators of all sorts, that somewhere, on large known and unknown islands in the upper Missouri, vast forests of cedar would be found to bring tribute to our people. I will not vouch for it as a fact, but I am not willing wholly to deny that one of the inducements I had to make the journey to Ft. Pierre—an American fur company agency, so named by the Frenchman who owned and occupied it was to make a discovery of cedar. Coal was imagined to exist in the same region, and this great staple was one of the things hoped for, but which, like the cedar forests, was never seen on that long water journey. A few small and stunted cedar growths

on one or two islands proved to be the only foundation for the timber story, and a very black article of tough slate, made doubly black by the wash of the water on the river bank in two or three places, gave rise to the unofficial reports of the geologists, whose long range observations of imaginary coal deposits were taken from the decks of passing boats engaged in the fur trade.

Twenty-four days had come and gone before we reached Ft. Pierre. The first 300 miles was absolutely without incident worthy of mention here. Progress over Missouri river sand-bars with a sternwheel boat, with the water in a falling way, led to all sorts of havoc with the intense, nervous constitution of my commander and friend, Captain Turnley, of whose public addresses from the hurricane deck of the "Baird" to pilots, and to some other people, Captain Billy Wilcox, of Omaha, who was "at the wheel" on that voyage of the Missouri misery, is known to have a lively recollection to this day. Many hours of each day were spent in cutting logs up into fuel, which had stranded on the sand islands and the shores, in which crew and soldiers took reluctant part. A growing scarcity of timber and increasing evidences of barrenness of the soil began to be marked features of the country after we reached the mouth of the Vermillion river, 100 miles beyond that of the Big Sioux. Now we were fairly in the Indian country. No sign of civilized life is here. Ascending smoke from the distant hilltops show, that the honest and true owner of the land is alert with signals to his more or less distant brothers, telling them that the white man is coming. It is hard to realize that this red native American has given place in all these regions to great communities that, where I saw only vast and uninhabited and boundless areas, teeming populations, railways, telegraphs, young towns and cities, civilized homes and refined social manners, and order maintained by law, have unquestioned sway.

The first Sioux Indian I ever saw was on the 28th day of June, 1855, when we encountered a small Sioux village upon the right bank of the river. The ruling chief displayed an old star-spangled banner that somebody had given him as a sign of welcome, peace and friendship, which greatly amused Lieutenant Sweeney, whose sense of the ridiculous was as keen as I have ever observed it to be in a man. An exchange of grunts and greetings followed between the Indians and our people. No evidence of hostility was seen on the

route beyond the absence of Indians, which indicated that they were advised that armed forces were in their country, but the army officers never allowed the danger of an attack to be out of their minds, and guards by night and caution by day was the military order after Sioux City was passed, which marked the last of the white settlements. If actual war had existed with the Indians, the boats could, and probably would, have been ambushed from the shores of the river when near approach to them was unavoidable, and the fear of this was not out of the minds of some of us after we reached the "water that runs," River L'Eauquicourt. This tributary of the Missouri located legends of great pine forests, twins of the cedar imagery, which has been already mentioned, and had about the same foundation. One of the immediate results of the Harney expedition, of which the Missouri boat flotilla was a part, was the establishment of a large military garrison near the mouth of this river, which was named Ft. Randall. It was in connection with this military post that I first heard of Captain Nathaniel Lyon, of the Second infantry, whom I had never met, and of whom I may have something to say later on in this paper, or in a separate one on General Harney's Sioux camp and Major Howe's court martial in the autumn of 1855, after my return from the Pierre expedition. It may be stated here that Captain Lyon, without ever having seen me in his life, and only upon report from his brother officers at Ft. Pierre made an open fight for my appointment as post trader at Ft. Randall, of whose board of post administration he was a member. I was defeated as I remember by Captain Todd, of Sioux City, who had resigned his commission in the army to accept this place, and Major W. H. Wessels, my friend, gave the vote which elected him, because it was a part of the unwritten code in ante-war days in the army that an army officer resigning his command to take a post-tradership was entitled to the votes of his brother officers. Captain Lyon did not recognize the unwritten code. I was a pauper in those days, so to say, and did not know of my escape from a place, which was worth at least $100,000 a year until months after the event when Major Wessels told me the facts himself.

As we ascended the river, the battle of the boats with the narrow and shallow channels proved their unfitness for the service into which bad judgment had brought them. Terrific storms were encountered

at different times, which caused fears of disaster, since we found that the Indian country could blow harder winds and clap louder thunder than any other known region on earth. In the course of the long voyage, we passed in the vicinity of the "mauvais terre.” In later years, it was to be my fortune to know, as an intimate friend, the distinguished geologist, Ferdinand V. Hayden, who achieved enduring fame by his labors in that desert region, and by his subsequent work as the author of the only United States geological survey of Nebraska that has ever been made. It befell me to be a personal witness of his labors. The first authentic discovery and report upon Rocky Mountain coal was when, during the construction of the Pacific railroad, Hayden brought into my editorial room of the Omaha Herald, upon his own narrow shoulders, a bag of this black but precious product, from the Rock Springs region, dumping its contents upon the floor. Over that shining heap of coal the eloquent scientist delivered an oration, which I regret to say, could not be produced in print in the absence of a competent reporter. It was full of predic

tions of the immense future value of these coals to the Pacific railroad and the trans-Missouri country, which have since been realized an hundred fold as the great steam generator of the continental railway, and hearth-warmer of all the vast region through which the national highway passes. Professional disappointment arising in the injustice of the government, in my opinion, was the primary cause of poor Hayden's subsequent insanity and premature death.

I must close this recital. Ft. Pierre consisted of a stockade and rude buildings unassailable by the red enemy from without, when its gates were closed. Colonel Montgomery, Major Wessels, Surgeon Madison and others, made our welcome most cordial. Large numbers of Sioux had congregated for council, perhaps not less than 6,000 of them being in the neighborhood. Great "talks" were had. I remember an impassioned speech from one of the grayhaired heads of the tribes, who wore a blue coat and metal buttons, a relic of some former visit to Washington, by which I was much impressed. A finer body of men in physical stature and dignity of personal bearing I never saw in my life than I saw during my week's stay at Ft. Pierre in these untutored Sioux Indians. Agent Galpin of the fur company is remembered for his intelligence and kindness to me, and especially on account of his bright minded