HISTORY OF NEBRASKA
THE GRASSHOPPER PLAGUE
The Rocky Mountain locust during the three years from 1874 to 1876 threatened the practicability of carrying on agriculture in Nebraska, inasmuch as there seemed to be plausible reason for fearing, if not believing, that the invasion by this pest might be continuous. A thorough acquaintance with the history of Nebraska, however, would have largely allayed this fear because it discloses that the immigration of these insects was not regular but at periodical intervals. In his famous Ash Hollow campaign of 1855, General William S. Harney and his command, when in camp near Court House Rock, now in Morrill county, observed that the air was full of grasshoppers; and they were an inch thick on the ground. Of course they destroyed "every blade of grass." W. A. Eurleigh, in his report as agent for the Yankton Indians for 1864, says that crops were promising in that part of the country until the grasshoppers came in the latter part of July and destroyed every vestige of them throughout the territory. The air was filled with the insects so thickly as to produce a hazy appearance of the atmosphere, and every tree, shrub, fence, and plant was literally covered w'th them. In many places they carpeted the ground to the depth of from one inch to two inches. They appeared in a cloud from the northeast extending over a belt some 275 miles wide and passed on towards the southwest, leaving the country as suddenly as they came after an unwelcome visit of three or four days. Mr. George S. Comstock made the statement in 1910 that grasshoppers did great damage on the Little Blue river, where he resided, in 1862 and 1864. Captain Eugene F. Ware relates in his history of the Indian war of 1864 (p. 275), that in August, 1864, at Fort Laramie -- then within Nebraska territory -- the air was filled with grasshoppers. They were bunched together in swarrns like bees. He saw a cluster of the insects as big as a man's hat on the handle of a spade. Indian women were roasting, drying, and pounding them into meal to be made into bread. William M. Albin, superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Joseph, Missouri, reported in October, 1864, that "in consequence of the extreme drought, the backwardness of the spring, and immense swarms of grasshoppers, the crops in Kansas have been a partial, and in Nebraska and Idaho, a total failure." In his report for the same year, Benjamin F. Lushbaugh, agent of the Pawnee Indians, said that, "swarms and myriads of grasshoppers" came to that part of the territory in August, and thev had not left a green thing. There had been no rain during the entire season until the last of June and none after that of any benefit. Oats at the Pawnee agency were injured by grasshoppers in 1873, and the crops entirely destroyed by the pests in 1874. This destruction induced the 1,840 Indians of that tribe who remained at the agency to follow the 360 who had gone to Indian territory in the winter of 1873. The crops of the Otoe and Missouri Indians were entirely destroyed by grasshoppers and dry weather in 1868. In 1876 they destroyed the crops at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies in Nebraska. General Augur reported in 1868 that grasshoppers had entirely destroyed the gardens at Fort Kearny and Fort McPherson in Nebraska and also at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, and Camp Douglas, Utah. The Nebraska Advertiser, May 23, 1867, quotes statements from Missouri newspapers that grasshoppers were destructive in parts of that state; and they did some damage in Nemaha county.
CITATION: J. Sterling Morton and Albert Watkins, PH.B., LL.B. History of Nebraska, From the Earliest Explorations of the Trans-Mississippi Region (Lincoln, NE: Western Publishing and Engraving Company, 1918): 667-668. Google Books Search (accessed: December 31, 2008).
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