Reminiscences Of Page T. Francis

The following reminiscences of pioneer life in Red Willow County contributed by Mr. Page T. Francis, a substantial early settler, was published in the Red Willow County Gazette of August 10, 1911.

The contribution is a valuable illumination of Mr. Buck's history. It was procured through Mr. John F. Cordeal, the indefatigable student of the history of southwestern Nebraska :

Strife For County Seat

I was born February 12, 1843, in the town of Leeds in the state of Maine.

In May, 1861, I enlisted in the Third Maine regiment, Company A, and was discharged in December, 1862, for wounds received at the battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia, in McClellan's Penisular campaign; and, by the way, I have got the bullet yet in my hip.

I reenlisted in 1863 and served until the close of the war. I was wounded in 1864 again and transferred to the Veteran's Relief Corps, for wounds received in 1864.

I was discharged by reason of the close of the war in 1865.

I came to Nebraska in April, 1867, to Otoe County. I settled first in Otoe County.

I went to Webster County in 1870, and to Red Willow County, 1872. It was my home then until 1895.  Since then my home has been in Dawes County, Crawford.

I went to Red Willow County in June, I think, 1872. I don't recollect the date exactly, but I think it was the early part of June. I took a preemption where the town of Hartley now is. A part of the town is on the preemption.

I was there during the organization of the County and the location of the County seat.

In the fall of 1871 a colony had come out from Nebraska City, headed by Royal Buck, who had taken up land on Red Willow Creek, and went back to Nebraska City and issued a paper in the fall of 1871 and in 1872, called the Red Willow Gazette, which advertised that country extensively, and in 1872 a great many people went up there and were disappointed, because they didn't find things as they had been represented.

That is, there was to be a mill built, and when all these men came they found there was nothing done.

They had taken their claims and desired to have the County seat located on the school section near the mouth of the Willow, but early in the spring of 1872 a man by the name of D. N. Smith, who was secretary of the Republican Land Association, which is a corporation which was in connection with the B. & M. Railroad, he came there and made arrangements with Hill [Edgar E.] and Hunter [George A.] to have them prove up on their preemptions and get more land on Coon Creek, near the present site of Indianola; and when we had our organization and election there were two places and two sets of officers, one where Indianola now is, and the other up at Red Willow.

The election was very close, and both places claimed they had secured the location of the County seat. We had two County organizations, and the party that had located the County seat where Indianola is organized, got a set of books, records, seals, and commenced to do business.

An organized party from Red Willow came down and claimed they were the proper officers and took the Indianola people by surprise and took the records and seals and carried them off to Red Willow. They intended arresting the officers of that party. It got noised around, and the adherents of Indianola hunted up the sheriff, Hunter, and we ransacked that country up there and found the records and seals and arrested all the parties who came down there and got them and brought them down to Indianola and had them bound over by our judge, Hill, for appearance at the district court; and we so continued until nearly all the people in the County were bound over to the district court by one County judge or the other. They were in court for several years.

Reliance On Buffaloes

Now we had rather dry years at first there, and the settlers were nearly all people of limited means, and the buffaloes, which were very plentiful at that time through the country, were the main source

of living.

The hides fetched all prices, from seventy-five cents to two dollars apiece, and the meat was good eating, and the settlers killed a few buffaloes and took the hides to the railroad and would buy groceries. That was a great help to the settlement of that country.

Militia

As ammunition was a little high and guns scarce, we organized a company of militia to protect ourselves from the Indians, which were around here, though they never done any harm in Red Willow County that I know of; but we needed the guns for killing the buffaloes.

We reported our dangerous position to the government, and we got a provision of eighty needle guns and a lot of ammunition, and that helped materially in supplying the people of that County. That was a scare put up because ammunition was scarce and guns were high, and we organized -and got a lot of government guns, and they killed a lot of buffaloes.

Grasshoppers

Now in 1874 there got to be a good many people in there, and they had put out crops, as much as their means would allow.

It was a very dry year. I can't think of the date, but along when we were in hopes of raising something we got a swarm of grasshoppers in there that cleaned up everything.

So that in 1874 there was absolutely nothing raised. Everything was destroyed by drouth and grasshoppers together.

In 1875 we had a reasonable amount of rain, and we got a very fair crop.

In 1876 we got grasshoppers again. We had a good prospect until the grasshoppers came in. They destroyed everything again in 1876, and the prospects for making a living there were very small. As that was about the time of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, I went on the Union Pacific Railroad to Sidney with teams and engaged in freighting from the railroad to Port Robinson and the Black Hills, and stayed there until 1880. I was engaged in freighting there until 1880.

For a person who had never seen the grasshoppers it would be absolutely impossible to describe them as they were, to make them understand it. I think in 1876 I had about 100 acres of corn, and in two hours after they commenced to light I believe they would average a depth of four inches all over the ground, and as much hanging to the stalks of the com as could find holding places.

A person who has never seen them, you can't make them understand it. I had a nice crop there in 1876, at ten o'clock in the morning, and at four o'clock in the afternoon there was absolutely nothing left on the place. I had an acre of onions, and every place there had been an onion there was a hole in the ground. You couldn't walk over a corn field any more than nothing. They would light on anything like a corn field or anything that was possible for them to eat, and they were thicker there than other places. They would gather in there.

In the summer of 1872 there was one company of soldiers camped on the Willow. Buck and some others represented they were necessary. They camped in tents. They had nothing permanent, and they did not stay very long. They left before cold weather. My recollection is there were not over fifty there all together. They camped right above where the old wagon road used to cross near where Helm lives now. It is quite a little ways farther north than where the railroad crosses — the old wagon road of the buffalo hunters. We had a bridge there. They camped right in the bend just above there."

Here is another little thing. They organized in 1873. This Buck party sent a man by the name of Wildman down to Lincoln to lobby the legislature to make the counties larger than they had been making them. Their custom had been to make the counties twenty-four miles square. They wanted to make Arapahoe and Red Willow the County seats, and so they lobbied the legislature to enlarge the boundaries of the counties, to make them thirty miles wide north and south, so it would throw Arapahoe and Red Willow a little nearer the center of the counties.

The report of the adjutant-general, dated October 12, 1872, shows that there were then at Camp Red Willow, near the junction of Red Willow Creek and the Republican River, one company each from the Second Cavalry, Third Cavalry and Ninth Infantry, under the command of Captain J. D. Devln of the company last named.  Report of the Secretary of War, 1872 p. 104."

Furnas, Red Willow and Hitchcock were four townships wide and five long, and Chase and Dundy the same width but still another township long, to reach the Colorado line.  They were all established by the legislature of 1873.  Phelps, established by this legislature, was of the regular form and size.  So all the counties east of Harlan, to Gage, were four townships, or twenty-four miles square.

Battle Of Massacre Canon

The Pawnee came out there on a buffalo hunt to secure some meat. They crossed to the south side of the Republican River, way down below Red Willow County some place, and went up the Beaver and Sappa. The buffalo country was covered with them, and the Pawnee had pretty good luck, and they came up and went to cross from the Beaver to the Republican, near where Trenton is.

And they met some buffalo hunters who told them their old enemies, the Sioux, were hunting on the divide between the Republican and the Frenchman, and they said that was not right, that the white men didn't want them to hunt, and they crossed the river and went along a long cafion that comes in from the north, now called Massacre Canon, and went up this cafion eight or ten miles to get up near the top of the divide; but the Sioux had seen them and knew they were coming up that cafion, and they hid themselves back from the banks of the cafion, on both sides, until the Pawnee had got clear up in by them, and they came down on them from each side and just massacred them. They killed 64 right there on the ground and killed a number of others that died farther down.

The Pawnee were not in any position to help themselves, so they took right down the cafion. I was there the next day. The Pawnee had put up their meat, and they had all their horses loaded — everything they could possibly cure, and it was nearly the whole tribe of Pawnee. They had nearly all their household goods, and they cut everything else from their ponies, and their meat and things was piled up and strung along. They even lost their dogs, hundreds of dogs and hides. The summer buffalo hides are no good for robes, but the Pawnee had taken the hides off and tanned them to do up their meat in and for other purposes in camp, and they had all those hides.

A great many people went up there and gathered up those hides and made leather things of them.

Taylor made a house of them.

They had killed two buffaloes [for meat]. The squaws had commenced to skin them when the Sioux attacked them. It was in the early part of the day.

In those cottonwood trees along the river a great many Indians had been buried. They laid poles or something across, where there were forks, and they wrapped them [bodies] in hides to keep birds or animals from interfering with them.

The land here in 1872 was out of the market, that is, you could not make filings until the land office was open and in running order at Lowell, which was the 8th day of August, I think. The other party had gone, but we stayed there to go to the land office and make our filings, and Hill came down and wanted to go with us.

We told him we were out of grub. He said he was pretty nearly out. He had a little bit of flour and some molasses. We told him to bring it down and come on. He brought his stuff down, and we told him to put it in the grub box. We hadn't had any grub in it for some time.

We had found several Indian skulls, and we had put them in the grub box for safe keeping, and when we went to put his grub in, he said, "My Lord, what are you fellows living on?"

There was places where they were buried out away from the river, and they had put up forks and laid poles across, and they were buried on platforms of poles. But mostly they had put them up in trees there.

We were never troubled by the Sioux. The only Indians I ever saw in Red Willow County were the Pawnee, the Omaha and the Oto, that used to come up from their reservations hunting buffaloes.

The only trouble with the Pawnee was their picking up and taking little things. Like one day I had been giving them some things, and I had a big sheath knife, and it was sheathed and thrown down on the ground by the wagon, and I looked and he had stuck his foot into the belt and walked away right straight. I hollered at him, and he just took his foot up and went right on.

We were never in any danger from any Indians or anything of that kind.

I will tell you about a buffalo hunt. They were north of my place on Dry Creek, on the divide. A man by the name of Bill Berger, County commissioner, he had lost some horses, and heard that a party by the name of Clifford, a squaw man who lived on the Medicine, had found them, and Berger wanted to go over there and get them. He had no horses, so I took my horses to drive him over there, and when we got up on the divide between Dry Creek and the Medicine we ran onto an Indian, and he raised up and stopped us.

They were surrounding a herd of buffaloes and didn't want us to drive over for fear we would stampede them. We wanted to go on, but they insisted — they wanted us to go down where the camp was and wait until they had the hunt, and as there were too many of them for us, we complied with their request. They kept riding around this bunch of buffaloes until they got them kind of working in. They were on horseback and on foot too, but if the buffaloes would start to get outside the lines, the Indians would show themselves and turn them back. There was a big flat there, and when they got them pretty well corralled up there, they kept riding right around and shooting. They had guns and bows and arrows and things of that kind. They didn't have much ammunition.

They shot a great lot of buffaloes in there in that way and left it for the squaws to take care of and dress the meat.

The men aimed to kill the buffaloes on a very hot day, and the squaws would cut it up and hang it up in the sun, and it would cure nice and sweet in that way.

They never used any salt. They had ordinary canvas tents that had been furnished them by the government. Some of them had tepees made of hides and canvas. They put up a lot of poles and tied them together at the top, and the tent was sheeted over this. When they moved they took them down, and the poles were bunched together on the sides of the horse and run back, and then they just piled things on top of the poles behind and dragged them.  We could always tell plainly where a camp of them had been moving, because there was the pony trail in the center, and the pole trail on each side, where they had been dragged.

Published by Nebraska State Historical Society, 1919

Transcribed and Contributed by:  Kim Torp

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