We lowered the body, the coffin still open; and his family insisted on putting in a number of his personal belongings on top and about the body. It is so many years ago I will not attempt to give them accurately, but a bow and arrows, food, tobacco, a knife, and a medicine bag were among the lot. The lid would not go down, of course, and was left on top of the debris, and some dirt thrown over it. Decatur then read the Episcopal burial service, and we all joined in when possible. This part seemed to please the Indians very much. They afterwards set up pieces of wood like rafters from the offset, about three feet above the ground to the point, and then covered that with brush and dirt, making a mound that can be seen a long way off. Much might be and has been written of the American Indian, of his council fires, his medicine dances, etc., and much of it latterly is trash. A man or woman comes out here from Washington or the east, stays a summer on a reservation, goes back and writes a book on the Indians, a good deal of which is utterly worthless as history. It is harder every day to write intelligently of the real Indian. There is so much. that is veneered on to him, now, by residence with the white man that the original timber, is almost unrecognizable. I shall never regret that I had the chance to see and associate with this race while they were much nearer real aborigines than at present. The human mind works pretty much the same way in the savage and the civilized; the motives are very similar the world over. You would hardly find an Omaha today that would stand in front of the agent or interpreter, and beat his breasts and say, “Big Injun, me, four squaw, heap scalp, plenty horses, me chief Omaha." And yet I have heard just that, and in a council each one would arise, walk round the circle, and recite his standing and record in the tribe. It is not the custom now, with Indians. At a white man's pow-wow here in Lincoln just after the election, I observed that our young chiefs, our Webster and our Estabrook and others, did not beat their breasts; they did not walk around the circle and step before the head man; but according to a printed program they all in turn arose, bowed to the chairman, and then set forth in the best American they knew, what each one had done for his country, his city, and his tribe; and before they got through you unavoidably had the idea that they must be pretty big fellows at home. And each and every one announced in a loud voice the name of his tribe, it was "Republican." Wherein does this differ materially in motive or machinery from an ancient wigwam conclave? The Indians have been divided respectively into the fishing and hunting tribes and the corn or crop-growing tribes, or by another authority the canoe and boat Indians of the east, and the horse or riding Indians of the plains. Just now when we are hearing so much of the Sandwich Islanders, their early customs and morality, it may be remembered that of all savage races, the North American Indian worshipped one great invisible God, the Great Spirit over all. He never bowed down to idols; and all history bears testimony that they naturally were a brave and virtuous race, wherever uncorrupted by the Mietonga. For the rest, they were just like whites, some very remarkable characters, and some very worthless Indians; some exceedingly truthful, proud of their name and character, and some too mean to despise. We trusted many for hundreds of dollars six months or a year even after the right to go to the pay-table and collect was interdicted--and seldom was an account lost or denied. There are good Indians alive, or there were when I knew them. I hope the experiment of making them soldiers will not be abandoned without the fullest trial. Slaves you can never make of them, but soldiers you may, and it is in harmony with their race, their conditions, and former surroundings. "HARK BACK." And now to our little colony a few moments again and I am done. That was an ideal summer; it was the purest democracy I ever saw; no man was above his neighbor, money made no difference for few had much, and those that had could not buy the things most valuable, viz:--help and aid physically, a good temper, the faculty of assisting to pass the time, or the ability to do something in behalf of the general welfare. It was the golden age of hospitality, for the latch string of every cabin hung outside. Without an officer of the law in our community, and no known code or written law, we lived a season in which there was no crime committed, and no theft permitted. We made our own laws and obeyed them. The bones of elk, antelope, deer and buffalo were numerous on the prairie. It seems to me as if every forty acres must have had at least one skeleton or a portion of the remains of these animals. The heavy snow of the winter of 1856-7 wore the small game out, or they starved, and the Indians and what white hunters there were, caught them in drifts and cut their throats by thousands for their skins. Buffalo skulls could be picked up readily, and their "wallows" and trails were deep and many. The grass withered and dried up in summer, and it was a great question if this prairie soil was good for anything. This may sound foolish now; but when you reflect that we had never seen any land not naturally covered with stones and trees, and of a different color and formation, it will not seem so ridiculous. We drove ten miles in a lumber wagon to see wheat growing on the bottom. A man had half an acre fenced in round his house, and the wheat was really growing! All stock was turned loose on the prairie, and could roam westward as far as it pleased. Our daily regret was that we had not stock enough to eat up the grass that went to waste, as we thought. An old friend. came from the east to see me, and when he returned, he told everybody for months, "Greatest country! Why, John took me in a buggy over a hundred miles and the wheels never struck a stone and you can plow a mile without turning round. Think of that!" B 1 Speaking of plowing furrow. In 1858 or '59, David L. Collier got an act passed by the legislature for a road from Decatur to West Point and Columbus and to have a deep furrow plowed. S. Decatur, J. E. Wilson, and C. Dunn were the Commissioners, 1 and the work was done in the summer of '60, as far as West Point, and it saved many a pilgrim from being lost. That was a furrow 30 miles long without turning round. Think of following a furrow now across otherwise trackless prairie; but the old "furrow road" was a great institution in its day. SNAKES. By the way it has often been a source of wonder what became of all the snakes a few years later. In 1857 you could not walk out in any direction without seeing or hearing a rattler-Massasauga. Big blow snakes abounded. We never opened the stable door mornings without carefully looking to see that his snakeship was not curled up in the litter ready to strike. Two of us killed forty in one afternoon. One Fourth of July we picnicked on the Reservation. Just as a clean cloth was spread on the grass for the dishes, a fierce rattle was heard in the centre, and the ladies tumbled backward in affright, while Decatur clubbed a ten year old shake-tail to death, Bull-snakes crawled up the logs of a cabin to a bed-room window, and curled round the bed-post to the horror of a maiden lady who woke up one morning to greet such a visitor! Another lady was mixing dough, when a snake dropped from a scantling into the bread-trough. The first thing in laying out the foundation of a new cabin was to mow half an acre of grass, close, round the site, so we could see the snakes. They seemed ubiquitous. An odd genius kept a pet bull-snake around the house; would not let the women or children kill it;-said it caught flies and toads and hurt nobody. The snake had a hole under the logs, and would only come out when the old man was about 1 See Territorial Laws, Sixth Session, 128-129, Law dates from Jan. 10, 1860.-ED. the place. One day Mr. Snake crawled out and stretched himself in the sun just under the rockers of a chair. The old woman came in tired, pushed her sun-bonnet up, threw herself in the chair, and leaned back heavy. There was a squash, a hiss, a muss and the old man's pet was gone forever. Where did they all go to? Ask the philosopher who has accounted for the grasshoppers. WHISKEY. Along with snakes naturally comes whiskey.. It was nearly as free as water. It only cost eighteen to twenty cents a gallon in St. Louis, and there were no license laws, no restriction on any one selling it or giving it away, no society bans, nothing but your own good sense of right and the strength of your constitution to prevent drinking any amount of the stuff. An old fellow lived in a log cabin half way to Ashton,--a keg of whiskey and a tin cup stood in the corner, always free; if the old man wasn't home, all you had to do was to help yourself. On the road every one carried a jug or a bottle, for the snakes were really bad, you know. I did an odd thing once. While the temperance excitement was at its height in this State, many arguments were made regarding restrictions on selling liquor, and many disputes as to whether men would drink more if it was cheap and plenty, or no restriction legal or otherwise on its use. I happened to think of the conditions surrounding this early Nebraska colony in this respect, and I wrote down one hundred names of those I had known. there or up and down the river, exposed to the same state of affairs, and then traced their careers out as far as possible, to see the effects in after life of the license and liberty of their earlier portion. Here is the result: Out of the one hundred persons, twenty-eight were dead when I made the figures, eight were lost, but I had a knowledge of them for some years after the date named, |