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Nebraska
Was Once Scene of Turbulence
Kearney, Nebraska,
takes its name from old Fort Kearney, which stood south of the river, a few miles
east of the city, at the junction of the emigrant trail from Kansas
City and the Platte
Valley trail.
It was a center of turbulence during the times of Indian
warfare. Here during the construction of
the Union Pacific Railroad, according to General G. M. Dodge, there were more
desperate fights and literally hair-raising adventures than James Fenimore
Cooper ever dreamed of, and here Major F. J. North, with his four companies of
Pawnee Indians, made history defending the Overland Route against hostile Indians.
The Plum Creek, Ogalalla, and Summit Springs campaigns under
Major North’s direction did much to prove conclusively to the Sioux and Cheyenne that he was
their absolute master.
The same writer says that every mile of the railroad had to
be surveyed and build within range of the rifle and under military protection,
and much of the success of the enterprise he attributes to the active support
of General Grant and George Sherman.
West of Kearney the bluffs, consisting of loose overlying
rocks of late Tertiary age, are about a mile from the railroad. Could the traveler restore the landscape of
late Tertiary. He would find himself
surrounded by scenes greatly different from those of the present. The swampy lowlands of that time were covered
with vegetation similar to that now growing in moist climates farther south. He would recognize few of the animals. Though they formed an assemblage very
different from that of today, they much more closely resembled the living
animals than those of former ages.
Camels and llamas were abundant and great ground sloths and glyptodants,
whose relatives now live in South America, inhabited western Nebraska during the Pilocene time. Mastodons with tusks on both the upper and
lower jaws, much like those of the Miocene epoch, still persisted.
Short-legged Rhinoceroses remained abundant and there was a
great variety of wolf-like carnivore.
Saber-tooth Tigers and true cats, some of them
considerably larger that the modern tigers, were also abundant.
Three-toed horses were still numerous, but the modern genus
Epuus was not among them.
One of the curious animals of the time in Kansas
and Nebraska
was a gopher rodent that had two large horns on its nose. Its enormous claws indicated good burrowing
power and its horns also may have been used in digging.
(Overland Guidebook,
U. S.
Geological Survey.)
Daily Alaska
Dispatch – April 21, 1916
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