by Eugeine Ware
On July 21, 1864, we went about twenty-five miles, and camped at an abandoned ranch which had belonged to a man named Jereux. Ben Gallagher remained at O'Fallon's Bluffs, but our scout "John Smith" went with us. On the march up the river we met several large caravans of wagons, all armed. None of them bad less than one hundred armed men, together with a squad of cavalry and from three to half a dozen stages loaded with passengers.
All day long on both sides of the river we saw smoke signals. In the evening at Jereux ranch the wolves howled around us in great numbers. We generally got up early, went into camp early in the afternoon, and grazed our horses until sundown. The grazing of horses was very hazardous. we took our horses and hobbled them by the left fetlock with the halter-strap, tying their left hoof within eighteen inches of their heads, so that when the horse lifted up his head he pulled his foot up from the ground. They were hobbled in that manner successfully, and then the whole company was detailed out between them and the hills on foot, armed, remaining on guard until sundown, when the horses were brought in and tied half-and-half on each side of the picket-rope; then each of the horses was fed a quart of corn, and a guard was stationed out to prevent a run or a stampede.
During the howling of the wolves at night, every once in a while John Smith would say, "Do you hear that wolf?" pointing in a certain direction, and would say, "That isn't a wolf – that is a Cheyenne," and he told us that the Cheyennes by their wolf-calls had a method of signaling or communicating to those far back or in the distance, and communicating many things, such as the number of soldiers which they saw, and whether it was dangerous to attempt an attack or not, and so forth. He said he did not understand the signals, because they were agreed upon for the occasion only, and differed with the occasion.
We noticed while marching that the ground rose in sort of steps on the plateaus and that we were getting up to a higher altitude. These steps were many miles apart, and the surface was getting, if possible, more dry, and desolate than it had been.
The Salt Lake trail went by Fort Laramie. The old route crossed the South Platte a considerable distance east of Julesburg, and went over the dividing ridge to Ash Hollow, and down Ash Hollow to the North Platte. But the hills of Ash Hollow were very steep, and another road had been laid out.
On the south side of the South Platte, perhaps about a mile east of the mouth of "Lodgepole Creek," a Frenchman by the name of Jules had started a trading-post. The place was a great Cheyenne crossing-ground going north and south, and a frequent place of Cheyenne rendezvous. It was also much used by the Sioux. The Cheyennes had a great liking for the country on the South Platte at the mouth of Lodgepole, and had had camps there for many years. Jules was said to be a half-breed French-and-Indian trader, and to have established this post for the purpose of trading with the Cheyenne Indians. It was said his name was Jules Beni but everybody called him "Jules." He was a man of keen native shrewdness, an exceedingly dangerous man, with a peppery, fierce disposition. He had killed several persons, and had become a great deal of a character in the country. A man who had known him several years told me that Jules once killed two persons of local celebrity, cut off their ears, dried them, and carried these four ears in his pockets. That every once in a while he would take them out and show them to somebody. They were great trophies, as he thought. He kept supplies for the pilgrims, and at one time had a large stock. An old pioneer told me that one time Jules got half drunk, and brought out several sacks of flour which he was selling for a dollar a pound, made a mortar-bed out of it in front of his store, knocked in the bead of a barrel of whisky which he was selling for $10 a quart, got a hoe, poured in the whisky, and got to making mortar in a manner as, he said, he had just seen a fellow doing down at Omaha, where he had been getting a stock of goods. This drunken freak represented the waste of several hundred dollars' worth of his stock. He got to be so bad and dangerous that Slade, the superintendent of the stage company, had to kill him.
At the time of which I write, nothing was left of the Jules ranch; it was gone, but the stage company had a large stable there, and a large boarding-house a blacksmith shop, a telegraph station, a large sod corral, a wareroom built of cedar logs, and about eighty tons of shelled corn in sacks stored therein. There were quite a number of men there – blacksmiths, relays of telegraph operators, perhaps a dozen stage-drivers, and men who were taking care of horses. I would say there were fifty men there, all armed to the teeth, and with everything arranged so they could fight behind sod walls, and make a desperate resistance.
Ben Holladay claimed to be the owner and proprietor of all of this stage line and property, clear through to the Pacific Coast. He was a great celebrity. He was reputed to be very rich, and yet he had a reputation for great daring and a love for wild and dangerous life. His organization of this stage line across the continent in its then unsafe and lawless condition was a wonderful achievement. I saw him twice, passing on the road – once at Fort Kearney and once at Julesburg, and he impressed me as a man of restless and untiring vigor.
"Julesburg Station," as it was then called, was situated well down on the flats near where the course of the river then turned, and the main wagon-road ran alongside of the houses. There is a present town Julesburg, but it is on the other side of the river, and several miles farther down. The wood that was used was most of it cedar, hauled from Jack Morrow's canyon, and the balance of the building material was sod.
Near this place, which I will call Old Julesburg, the river-crossing started in a little east of the station, not very far down the river, and went around in a curve, coming out say a quarter or half a mile farther up the river. There was another crossing farther up the river, that crossed over west of the mouth of Lodgepole; the two trails went up Lodgepole Creek on opposite sides, until they joined several miles farther up. Those present at that time were in the habit of calling the lower one the "California crossing," and the west one the "Mormon crossing," because it appears that the Mormon trains crossed there and went quite a distance up the west side of Lodgepole.
The fact that General Mitchell was coming up the Platte to make an inspection, and organize military protection, and visit Fort Laramie, was noised around in advance, a great deal, and before we got to Julesburg wagons for the Salt Lake route had congregated in great numbers at Julesburg, and wanted to go up the road behind General Mitchell. As we approached near Julesburg, we came to a place where the river had at one time flowed close to the bank. There was a long stretch of dry sandy arroyo about eight feet below the sharp edge of the perpendicular bank. Along this bank ran the telegraph line.
Before we reached the place a heavy storm was lowering. The air swirled around, and a cool wave descended. All at once a terrific storm broke in upon us from the southwest. We could hear it coming with continual resounding peals of thunder. Crash was following crash so loud, heavily and quickly that, fearful the horses would become terrified and break away, General Mitchell ordered the horses all to be taken down on the sand under the bank. Finally the General's horse, and the mules from the ambulance, and all were taken down under the bank. The storm at first went over our heads without rain, and furnished us a grand electrical display. The noise finally ceased for a little while, and there came a calm, and the boys got up on the edge of the bank above the horses, sitting down and holding their horses below them in the arroyo by the bridle-rein. We all thought the matter was about over, and were congratulating ourselves that we had not been soaked with a rain. We watched the electric storm roll over on the North Platte bills, when all at once came a flash of lightning and shock of thunder that knocked almost the entire company over. Several were stunned, several fell over the bank, and the balance jumped down. The lightning had struck one of the telegraph poles not far from us, and splintered the poles or damaged them for a great distance on each side. It was such an astonishing peal that it was a little while before anybody spoke. As we saw the wire lying on the ground, and the neighboring poles shattered, General Mitchell ordered t
wo of the soldiers to go each way, and see how many poles were affected by that blow of lightning. The men reported that, taking the poles that were shattered or to some extent visibly damaged, there were thirty-three in number, which was nearly a half-mile on each side of us.
In a little while it began a drizzling rain, and after it had rained enough to wet us all through, we arrived, July 22, 1864, at Julesburg, and found nearly three miles of wagons there. They wanted to go through on the Salt Lake Trail. They were camped along the line of the river; the grass had been pretty well eaten out; everybody in the pilgrim trains was mad, and most of them quarreling. Having no organized head, they did not intend to go across the river until they knew that General Mitchell had crossed the river with his soldiers, and had started up. They wanted to feel safe. Major Woods of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry was with us; he was a most active, daring and capable man. I have spoken of him herein before.
The crossing of Platte River in those days with a train was a matter of very serious moment; but we had got used to the theory, and knew how to do it. It was to find a route that was the most firm, and then puddling it by marching one horse back of another until the quicksand became settled; then the road became firmer. The horses sometimes floundered greatly, but that served to settle the road. They were ridden across about ten feet apart.
So the first thing to be done on this occasion was to pick out a road for the crossing of the present train. The action of the water in the river was such that a good crossing today might be a poor one next week if untraveled, and so each crossing was a matter of its own. There was at this time plenty of water in the river at Julesburg.
On this occasion Major Woods started out with his horse to pick out a road across the river. He laid it out in a general way, so that he knew where he had been, and could see his own tracks. Then he came back, and the line of soldiers went over again right after him, and back, and made the road. In the mean time the wagons were ready, and the Major at the head of the wagon train, each wagon about one hundred feet behind the other, started across, with men of the train along the line standing in the water on both sides with whips to keep the horses stepping fast. If a horse should stop he would in course of time sink down in the quicksand, and the object was to have each wagon, one right behind the other, go as fast as the horses could pull it. The wagons started, and it was a roar of yelling from the time the first one went in, during all the afternoon, and well up into the night. The travelers had lanterns, and at night men with lanterns stood in the water on both sides of the track; and the Major kept bossing the job, hour after hour, riding backwards and forwards between the wagons, and once in a while changing his horse.
Along about midnight one of the mule teams got balky, and the mules turned out of the road, and in the effort to get them back the wagon was halted until the mules could be backed again into line, and the result was that the wagon began sinking. The mules were taken out, and succeeding wagons went around the wreck, which was soon down to the bed in the mud. There was no way to stop a wagon alongside of the wreck, and take off its cargo, and Major Woods with some assistance struggled in vain to keep the wagon from sinking faster on one side than the other. In the work, and heroic tugging, which Major Woods did, he strained himself so that he himself had to be taken out of the river and carried over to his tent. The wagon slowly sank until it disappeared from sight in the fathomless sand below. Some of the natives around managed to save and confiscate some few things of the load, such as the bows and cover, meat, the driver's bedding, etc., but the wagon and almost its entire cargo disappeared – went down where it was never recovered or could be found afterwards. In the morning the train was almost all across, with a reported loss of the wagon and two mules which were being led or driven, and which got where they could not be relieved, and sank out of sight. The lost wagon was reported to have been loaded with nails.
Major Woods was put into an ambulance, and I saw no more of him until after we got to Laramie some days afterwards.
When the train was all across, General Mitchell called the drivers together, and the different separate wagon-bosses, and told them that they had got to keep together, stay together, help each other, and fight for each other; that otherwise they were liable to be disbanded, murdered and plundered. He picked out what he thought were the best three wagon-bosses in the lot, and told these people that they must select one of them to be the boss during the trip, and that he would see that the one selected did the right thing, and if not he would put him in the guard-house at Fort Laramie when they passed. This arrangement proved very satisfactory, as the train went on through, presumably in good order, for it never reported any trouble after that. At the mouth of Lodgepole was a great area of flat, grassy land. It was a beautiful place for camp.
Chapter XIX.
A Study of the Pawnees – Their Peculiarities on the March – Their Physique – Their Habitat – The Smoky Hill Route – July 23, 1864 – March up Lodgepole – Camp on Lodgepole – July 24th – Jules Stretch – Well on Summit – Mud Springs – Pawnees Sent Back – Court House Rock
COMING up from Cottonwood Springs I had a very good chance to study the Pawnees. Up as far as Jack Morrow's they kept huddled together, but after we passed that place they began to spread around over the prairies. The Pawnees were one of the capable tribes, and this battalion was the pick of the whole. Major North was a brave, industrious officer, and did his best to keep his Indians in some sort of order and style, but it was almost like trying to command a flock of blackbirds. At Fort Kearney there had been issued to each of these Indians a hat, blouse, and pair of trousers. All the balance they furnished themselves. They rode their own horses, with Indian saddles and bridles. These saddles were shaped like sawbucks, and on the forks were hung their lariats and belongings. They did not care much for hats, and by the time we reached Julesburg there were not many hats left, and most of those were on the tops of their ponies' heads, with holes cut in the top for the ponies' ears to stick out through, and fastened to the bridle. In scouring over the prairie they would race their horses, and if a hat blew off the Indian paid no more attention to it than a bird would in flight, shedding a feather. They were not used to hats, and only those having some rank or authority seemed to desire to hold onto them. In addition to this, most of them from time to time took off their blouses and tied them to their saddles, and above their trousers they had on nothing but their naked, sunburned skin. The slang expression for an Indian out there in those days was "abbrigoin." General Mitchell would watch them skirmishing around and would say, "What in [blankety-blank] do you think those abbri-goins are good for anyhow?" Before we got to Julesburg every Indian had cut the seat out of his cavalry pants, and they were in two sections, held up by an outside belt to the waist. Ever and anon squads of them would take off their two separate trouser-legs and tie them to the saddle, and then the Indian would ride along with nothing on but a breech-clout and moccasins, and he as a soldier was a sight to behold.
When we camped it was generally near the river, and Mr. Abbri-goin went in, not for the purpose of washing, or getting clean, but for the purpose of fun and cooling off. He generally came out as dirty as he went in. The Indian was kept as clean as he was accustomed to get, by abrasion. He wore off the surface dirt. It was attrition, not water, that kept him as clean as he got. The wild Indian if locked up in a room would soon kill himself with his own stench, were he not used to it. Horses could smell him half a mile to the windward, and civilized horses shied at him, sniffed and snorted at him, and tried to run away from him the same as from a buffalo or wild animal. The pioneers did not like the Indian, owing to the latter's unprintable manners and unspeakable habits. Our boys also would go into the river at the end of the days trip, and although the Pawnees were as good in physique as any of the Indians and were picked men, they were not up to our men, who were not picked men. Our men were only the average Iowa farm boys, but in physical appearance they exceeded the Indian. They had heavier shoulders and thi
ghs, and as they were around in the water with the Indians the superiority of the white soldier was manifest. Only one of the Indians was the superior of our company, and he was a very large young Indian about six and a half feet high; he was in fact the only really handsomely shaped Indian in the whole battalion. He resembled the "Big Mandan" of whom I have spoken, but he was an exception.
Besides all this, our men were the better horsemen, and as a class were better every way. The Indian as an individual was inferior, and as a race was inferior, to the Iowa farm boy, in whatever light it was desirable to consider it. There has been so much of fancy written about the Indian that the truth ought at times be told. The white man has done everything that an Indian can do, and I have seen things done during the Civil War that an Indian could not do, and dare not attempt to do. In physical strength, discipline and heroism the Indian does not compare and is not in the same class with the white man with whom the Indian came in contact. The Indian is not a soldier, and he cannot be made one. He has been tried and found wanting. He is spurty. He lacks the right kind of endurance, pertinacity, mind, and courage. We all got very much disgusted with Mr. Indian before we got through.
The Pawnee Indians are the favorite Indians of many writers of romance, and perhaps they deserve the celebrity. They had better tribal and village organization than most Indians. They held a wide extent of country, and along, the Arkansas river on the south and along the Platte River on the north many places are pointed out as Pawnee battlefields. One numerous band of them had a large village on a stream in northern Kansas. The village was called the "Pawnee Republic." It was visited by Major Zebulon Pike in October, 1806. This village gives to the river the name of the "Republican River," in Kansas; the county in Kansas is called "Republic County," and the modern city on its site is a flourishing county seat named "Republic." The Pawnees were taken, finally, and held, as in a vise, between civilization on one side and their bitter Indian foes on the other, and they had to fall as all other Indian nations before them had fallen. After the Smoky Hill route through Kansas to Denver was opened they never got south of it. They finally were crowded in by their foes, and were compelled to submit to being put onto a reservation. Thereupon the Sioux of the Ogallallah tribe, together with the southern Cheyennes, claimed to be the sole proprietors of the territory between the Platte and Arkansas rivers, and they objected to the Smoky Hill Route. This Route ran nearly between the two latter tribes, who had confederated, and with both tribes it was a demand that the Route should be abandoned. In both of General Mitchell's Indian councils it was demanded that it should be abandoned by the whites. The Smoky Hill Route did run through the best buffalo country, and its occupation was a vital menace to the Indians, although the whites did not fully appreciate the fact at the time. The Indians finally closed the Smoky Hill Route for a while by war and a concentration of hostilities, and afterwards the Government sent Lieutenant Fitch, a very capable officer, to reлxplore the route, improve its location and alignment, and make report. This was done. Lieutenant Fitch made his report and read it to me from his retained copy. I begged it from him, and still have it, and I make it a part of this narrative by attaching it as an appendix hereto.