"History of Nebraska Methodism: First Half-Century"
by Rev. David Marquette, D.D., 1904  

INTRODUCTION.

   IT is well known that for ages this territory was inhabited by savage tribes of Indians. It is not so generally known that the territory now embraced in the State of Nebraska was foreign territory up to 1803, a little over fifty years before Methodism began its work in the territory. In 1681 LaSalle, a French explorer, having traversed the lake regions, came to the Mississippi River, down which he floated in his boats to its mouth, taking possession of the great Mississippi Valley in the name of his sovereign, Louis XIV, and naming the region Louisiana in his honor. Thus nearly 200 years before Methodism entered upon its work in Nebraska, or even before Methodism was born, the Roman Catholic Church had taken possession of all this fair territory. For a time (1763-1801) even Spain, the most Catholic of all Catholic nations, unless it be Italy, had possession. Even as early as 1540 a Spanish adventurer, Coronado, had visited Nebraska. But afterwards it reverted to France, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century Nebraska had for its ruler the Great Napoleon, and for its religion the Roman Catholic.
   It is now well known that Napoleon's object in securing the retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France,
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was to work out a great scheme of colonization in Louisiana. How successful this strong man was in accomplishing his schemes, Europe had already come to know, to her sorrow, and trembled at the deadly certainty of his undertakings. He seemed to be a man of destiny that could not be defeated. But a higher destiny, the destiny of the great Republic, and the Protestant religion, was in this case in conflict with his personal destiny, and he was doomed to defeat. Yet it is startling to think how near this puissant man, now at the zenith of his power, able at this very moment to seize without question the reins of government in his own France, and soon to march in triumph with his conquering legions to Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram, and dictate his own terms to Russia, Prussia, and Austria, came to the accomplishment of the plans of colonization in Louisiana, on which he had set his heart. Had he succeeded, the history would have been very different from the one I am writing.
   How did we escape the clutches of this mighty man? How did he come to be turned from his long cherished purpose, a thing that so rarely occurred in his life?
   When in 1801, Robert R. Livingston arrived in Paris with $2,000,000 and authority from Jefferson to purchase a small strip of ground which would secure to us the mouth of the Mississippi, and also the right to the navigation of the river, Napoleon was nearly ready to consummate his great scheme of colonization, and as a recent writer puts it: "But for the delay imposed upon the

First Consul, first by Godoy, who would not yield Louisiana until every condition of its transfer had been fulfilled, and secondly by Toussaint and his followers, who balked the French in San Domingo, General Voctor at this time might have been setting in order a threatening foreign host at New Orleans."
   Happily, before they succeeded in this western country, circumstances and events were by the Louisiana Purchase providentially closing this territory forever to the domination of the Catholic religion, and opening it to the best type of Protestantism. While the political exigencies of the Great Napoleon, and the wisdom and statesmanship of the greater Jefferson, made them the immediate human agencies by which this new state of affairs was brought about, subsequent events have made it plain that it had always been the purpose of God that this continent, as a whole, and Nebraska as a part, should be dedicated to a purer and more spiritual type of religion, with a moral and spiritual efficiency capable of building out of a heterogenous (sic) multitude that should come from all parts of the world, and from all the races of men, a homogeneous race of Americans.
   And it was no accident or mere coincidence that while political events were so shaping as to give ample territorial scope, the prime factors that were to mold these elements into the most free, intelligent, moral, and forceful nation on the earth, were at the same time being brought into existence and raised to an efficiency equal to

the needs of the new country and the new nation. It hardly needs to be stated that the two factors that were to make the largest contribution to this result were that system of public schools that was to provide free education to the masses, and that Church, that by its spirit, organization, and method, was to proclaim a free gospel to the masses.
   Of national greatness Leckey, the historian, says*: "Its foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in a high standard of moral worth and public spirit, in simple habits, in courage, uprightness and soundness and moderation of judgment." Bancroft, our great American historian, says: "The Methodists were the pioneers of religion. The breath of liberty has wafted their message to the masses of the people; encouraged them to collect white and black in church and greensward for council in divine love and full assurance of faith, and carried their consolations and songs and prayers to the farthest cabins of the wilderness."Ý
   This recognition on the part of Leckey of those moral ideals for which Methodism has consistently stood as the true elements that constitute national greatness, and the recognition by Bancroft of Methodism as the pre-eminently pioneer Church, promoting these qualities in the masses of sturdy emigrants out of which these great States were to be built, is but the expression of that

consensus of opinion held by those most qualified to judge that the vigorous evangelism of the Methodist itinerants did more to conserve the best moral qualities the people brought with them into the great West, and to stimulate into healthy development those finer, stronger traits of character that constituted the vigorous and all conquering manhood of the West.
   If then we inquire what were the influences that determined the character of the men and women that were to transform the 76,000 square miles of raw prairie that constitutes, territorially, the State of Nebraska into a State characterized by the highest civilization, and as low a percentage of ignorance as any State in the world, we must go back to that beginning of the peaceful conquest of the continent that began immediately after the brave colonists had effected their independence and set out on their national career.
   Perhaps no one has set forth more forcefully and clearly the great movement of the population from east to west, which set in immediately after the war of the Revolution, than did President Roosevelt in his address at the Bi-Centennial celebration of the birth of John Wesley, in New York, February 26, 1903. The following extract will show his estimate of the movement and the great service which the Methodist pioneer preacher rendered during the period:
   "For a century after the declaration of independence the greatest work of our people, with the exception only

of the work of self-preservation under Lincoln, was the work of the pioneers as they took possession of this continent. During that century we pushed westward from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, southward to the gulf and the Rio Grande, and also took possession of Alaska. The work of advancing our boundary, of pushing the frontier across forest and desert and mountain chain, was the great typical work of our nation; and the men who did it - the frontiersmen, plainsmen, mountain men-formed a class by themselves. It was an iron task, which none but men of iron soul and iron body could do. The men who carried it to a successful conclusion had characters strong alike for good and for evil. If left to himself, without moral teaching and moral guidance, without any of the influences that tend towards the uplifting of man and the subduing of the brute within him, sad would have been his, and therefore, our fate. From this fate we have been largely rescued by the fact that together with the rest of the pioneers went the pioneer preachers; and all honor be given to the Methodists for the great proportion of these pioneer preachers whom they furnished.
   "These preachers were of the stamp of old Peter Cartwright - men who suffered and overcame every hardship in common with their flock, and who in addition tamed the wild and fierce spirits of their fellow pioneers. It was not a task that could have been accomplished by men desirous to live in the soft places of the earth and to walk easily on life's journey. They had to possess the

spirit of the martyrs, but not of martyrs who could oppose only passive endurance to wrong. The pioneer preachers warred against the forces of spiritual evil with the same fiery zeal and energy that they and their fellows showed in the conquest of the rugged continent. They had in them the heroic spirit that scorns case if it must be purchased by a failure to do duty, the spirit that courts risk and a life of hard endeavor if the goal to be reached is really worth attaining. Great is our debt to these men and scant the patience we need show toward their critics.
   "It is easy for those who stay at borne in comfort, who never have to see humanity in the raw, or to strive against the dreadful naked forces which appear clothed, hidden, and subdued in civilized life - it is easy for such to criticise the men who, in rough fashion, and amid grim surroundings, make ready the way for the higher life that is to come afterwards; but let us all remember that the untempted, and the effortless should be cautious in passing too heavy judgment upon their brethren who may show hardness, who may be guilty of shortcomings, but who nevertheless do the great deeds by which mankind advances.
   "These pioneers of Methodism had the strong, militant virtues which go to the accomplishment of such deeds. Now and then they betrayed the shortcomings natural to men of their type, but their shortcomings seem small indeed when we place them beside the magnitude of the work they achieved."

   While Nebraska had been inhabited by no less than 10,000 human beings prior to the settlement which began in 1854, these aboriginal inhabitants may be said to have built up absolutely nothing that was of value to the new comers. The reason for this is found in the fact that these aboriginals belonged to one of those undeveloped and unchristianized races that depend almost entirely on the resources of unaided nature to supply their simple wants. For them to change their location, or to remain in the same place for a century or more made scarcely any change in the general aspects of the country. When they came they brought nothing into the country; while they staid they did nothing to develop the natural resources of the country; if they went away there was little or nothing they could take with them that would affect the country in one way or another. In the Christian sense of the word, they can hardly be said to have known what a home was, or how to make one. Their wants were so few and simple that scarcely anything that characterizes the Nebraska of to-day was in existence then. It could not be said that they had developed any form of industry or commerce. Hence they had no farms, strictly speaking, but only a few stray patches of broken soil where the squaws raised a little maize or vegetables. There were no industries, unless we would call such establishments as that of the "ancient arrow-maker in the land

of the Dakotahs," institutions of industry. There were no schools or churches, except such as had been brought in by the white missionaries, and there was only one of these, at Bellevue. Indeed, it may be affirmed that the Indians turned Nebraska over to the Christianized white race in a state of raw, crude nature, not one whit improved, or its wealth and resources developed in all the years and centuries of their possession, and with not a single element of modern Christian civilization in existence. Everything had to be built up from the foundation. It is marvelous how quickly these settlers surrounded themselves with all these elements of the highest Christian civilization. And the church edifice was felt to be as much of a necessity as the school-house, and would come in due time. And though the money to build school-houses was raised by taxation, while that to build churches must be raised by voluntary contributions, the church was none the less certain to be built. And though the teacher's salary was raised by taxation and he was given legal recourse to collect it at law, while the preacher's support must come from voluntary offerings, and in the case of our Methodist preacher, he had no legal right to fix the amount of his own salary and no recourse by civil law to collect it, yet the people were just as sure to have a preacher as they were to have teachers for their children, and his work was just as faithfully and efficiently done as that of the teacher.

THE PERIODS OF THE HISTORY OF NEBRASKA METHODISM.

   WITH the exception of Kansas, the development of which was simultaneous and under like conditions, the development and history of Nebraska Methodism are unique in the character and distinctness of the periods into which it naturally divides itself. The two main periods are the first quarter of a century, during which the pioneer phase of the work predominate, and the second quarter of a century in which while there was some pioneer work yet to be done, the building of churches and parsonages, the more complete organization of the forces, the founding and development of her educational and benevolent institutions, and the development and strengthening of the older charges, were her chief tasks.
   The first quarter of a century may be subdivided into three periods. The first of these extends from 1854 to 1861, and is marked by the first events connected with the beginning of our work, the organization of the Kansas-Nebraska Conference, the external conditions under which the work proceeded being characterized by an almost unprecedented financial disturbance and depression, and an entirely unprecedented political struggle between freedom and slavery in the political arena, causing great excitement and intensity of feeling between the opposing forces; the second of these periods opens with the organization of the Nebraska Conference in 1861, and ex-