ox train turned their cattle south; their herders said that they saw forty or fifty Indians go east on the south side of the river; but they went on a walk, so they thought they were peaceable. They went on east of Kiowa; there they met Joe Eubanks and shot him with an arrow, just around the bend, out of sight of Kiowa station. Some time after, he was buried, where he fell, by some train.

In my letter of October 26 I said that at the old man Eubanks' house there were two families. The old lady Eubanks and the oldest girl had gone to Missouri on a visit; so they were not killed. I was better acquainted with the older girl as she worked at Liberty stage station when I drove stage for the Overland Stage Company.

Somebody told that Jim Comstock helped bury the Eubanks family, but that is a mistake, as Jim went with the empty train that came to the Comstock ranch that Sunday evening and went by Kiowa station Monday, and all of the Comstocks were with it. So was George Hunt who was shot in the leg at Oak Grove. The men with that empty train said they saw the old man Eubanks and the little boy lying close to the road, about a half or three-quarters of a mile west of the Comstock or Oak Grove ranch. So somebody must have moved them, as the two yoke of cattle hooked to the wagon went on up home. We found them seven days after. One of the oxen was shot with an arrow. We pulled it out. The old man Eubanks and the boy had been down to Joe's helping him on his ranch as it was not all completed. I think Mr. Follmer is right when he tells where the old man Eubanks was buried. I helped bury all of the Eubanks family that was buried at that place. We buried the old man, the young boy and the girl all in one grave, and we buried Bill where he fell on the sand-bank. Just dug out all the sand we could and covered him up.

The old Fort Riley road crossed Elk Creek three or four miles down the creek from Nelson; so I have been told by old settlers; but we called it ten miles from Little Blue stage station, which was six miles northwest of Oak Grove Ranch-three miles or over north and about the same distance west, as the river came more from the north there. We called it twelve miles east to Kiowa; but the river has changed in some places, made cut-offs, as I found out when I went down to where the stagecoach turned around when we saw the Indians. I had said that we saw the Indians behind some second growth ash timber on a spring branch that emptied into the Blue close to the Thayer and Nuckolls county line on the low bottom. When I got there the timber had all been cut off and the low bottom had all been plowed up and the spring branch was all filled up. It was three or four hundred feet long, but there

was no sign of it, and the river had made a cut-off, and where the river made a short turn it was about filled up. So a person to look at it now would think it was all a dream on my part.

Mr. Gilbert's attention having been called to the statement of Captain Murphy that he detailed Captain Kuhl to bury members of the Eubanks family killed by the Indians and to the disagreement between that story and his own, he gave the following circumstantial account of the incident:

After we got back to the Little Blue stage station, which was about eighteen miles below Pawnee Ranch, Captain Kubl -I never saw his name spelled before but we called him Captain Cool-Captain Kuhl wanted some of our party to go down to the Eubanks family's place and show him where they were buried; and so we all went. He was the only man that wore a uniform in the party. He never got off his horse, but we told him where to cross the river, and he went over to where Bill Eubanks was buried and rode in the brush some. We told where the balance were buried, or showed him. Before we started up on that trip we knew that they were not buried, as myself and James Douglas had seen them the Tuesday after the raid of Sunday. Tuesday was the day that the Indians chased us in the coach back to Constable's train.

We turned and went with the train up to Little Blue stage station. Some of us-myself and James Douglas of Kiowa Station-wanted Constable to bury the Eubankses, but he said it was getting late for breakfast, or dinner, and would not stop until he made camp, so we passed them. But when the train stopped at Little Blue stage station and he turned the cattle across the river, the Indians drove them off about a mile south, but the mule train of twenty wagons was left close to the station on the north side of the river. That was about one o'clock in the afternoon. After dark they unloaded all of the liquor and the men got in the wagons and went down the road, traveling all night. We passed the Eubanks place when it was real dark so did not see them. When we went up the road again with our company we buried the Eubankses. Ed Wells and his brother-in-law-Bartley, I think-was with us.

Mr. Wells [Charles W.] was correct about the little boy. I did not know of him until after the Indian raid as I had never stopped at the Eubanks house, although I had driven the stage ever since they came there. That was in the spring that they came. I do not know whether the little boy was buried

with the others or not, as I did not help to handle him; but I helped to handle the old father and the girl and Bill. I did not help dig the graves. I had forgotten the small boy. Mr. Wells thought the girl had been scalped because they had been dead seven days in awful hot weather, and some of the hair on top of her head had fallen off, and it was bare; but I had seen too many that were scalped to not know the difference.

THE BEGINNING OF RED WILLOW COUNTY

BY ALBERT WATKINS

Agreeably to an act of Congress passed for the purpose of promoting a general celebration of the centennial anniversary of our national independence, Governor Garber issued the following proclamation :1

WHEREAS, Congress passed a joint resolution, approved March 13th 1876 recommending the people of the several states that they assemble in their several counties or towns on the approaching centennial anniversary of our National Independence and that they cause to have delivered on such day an historical sketch of said county or town from its formation, and that a copy of such sketch may be filed, in print or manuscript, in the clerk's office of said county and an additional copy in print or manuscript be filed in the office of [the] Librarian of Congress to the intent that a complete record may thus be obtained of the progress of our institutions during the first centennial of their existence.

Therefore in compliance with such resolution I do recommend that the people of this state assemble in their several towns and counties on the 4th day of July, 1876 and that they cause to have delivered an historical sketch of said town or county from its formation, and that copies thereof be filed in the office of the County Clerk of said county and in the office of [the] Librarian of Congress as by said resolution requested. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused to be affixed the great seal of the state of Nebraska. Done at Lincoln, the capital, this 25th day of April A D 1876 By the Governor

BRUNO TZSCHUCK, Secretary of State.

SILAS GARBER

According to this recommendation Royal Buck was chosen to prepare a history of Red Willow county, which was read at a county celebration at Indianola on July 4, 1876. Mr. Buck had been active in politics, was editor of

1U. S. Statutes at Large, XIX, 211; Messages and Proclamations, Nebraska, 1866-1892, p. 155.

the People's Press and Herald, Nebraska City, and register of the land office at that place. The address was printed in a local paper. The following nearly entire part of it seems to deserve preservation and further publicity in the publications of this Society:

In the fall of 1871, moved by the fame which the Republican valley had achieved, a few citizens of Nebraska City conceived the idea of opening up a settlement in the valley, and the location of a county and town. In October of that year, a company was organized under the laws of the state with a capital stock of $100,000. Books were opened, and 15,000 readily subscribed, and 5 per cent paid in and the following gentlemen were elected as officers: President, Royal Buck; vice president, J. Sterling Morton; secretary, B. M. Davenport; treasurer, J. V. D. Patch; directors, Dr. J. N. Converse, W. W. W. Jones, John Roberts, John F. Black, Sam. Tate, J. H. Madison and V. C. Utley. [Name, Republican Valley Land Company.]

On the 4th of November the board of directors passed the following order:

Ordered, That the president of this company be directed to organize such an exploring party from the directors and stockholders, as will be necessary-not less than ten in number, with Lathrop Ellis as engineer, and proceed to the Republican valley at the earliest practicable day, and locate a town site, and report his doings to the board of directors for their action.

In accordance with this order, the party was at once organized, as follows: Royal Buck, president; John Roberts, John F. Black, and W. W. W. Jones, directors, and John Longnecker, L. K. Sitler, Wm. Byfield, Frank Usher, Wm. McKinney and J. M. Davis, stockholders; Lathrop Ellis, surveyor.3

Two wagons were loaded with supplies for a thirty days' trip and were started in advance to the end of the B. & M.

* A biographical sketch of Mr. Buck may be found in the History of Nebraska, II, 346. His diary, in detail, of the Red Willow Expedition is in the possession of the Historical Society.

All the officers and other stockholders named in this and a foregoing paragraph were residents of Nebraska City, excepting Utley, who lived at Syracuse, Otoe county. Francis G. Usher, who was only twenty years old at the time of the expedition, now (1917) lives in Omaha, in good health. He did not settle with the colony but came back to Nebraska City. According to his recollection the settlers were Black, Sitler, Byfield, and Davis. Mr. Buck moved with his family to Red Willow in the spring of 1872. He acquired a large area of land and engaged in farming until 1889. He was the first postmaster of Red Willow. The records of the post office department show that he was appointed April 22, 1872.