CHAPTER II.

DISCOVERY OF NEBRASKA.

HE discovery of Nebraska dates back to a period far more distant than many really suppose. Judge James W. Savage has given much time and thought to the study of this subject. In an address delivered before the State Historical Society, April 10, 1880, he says: "Fourscore years before the Pilgrims landed on the venerable shores of Massachusetts; sixty-eight years before Hudson discovered the ancient and beautiful river which still hears his name; sixty-six years before John Smith, with his cockney colonists, sailed up a summer stream, which they named after James the First of England, and commenced the settlement of what was afterward to be Virginia; twenty-three years before Shakespeare was born, when Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and

Charles the Fifth sat upon the united throne of Germany and Spain, Nebraska was discovered, the peculiarities of her soil noted, her fruits and productions described, and her inhabitants and animals depicted." Three hundred and fifty years ago Nebraska was discovered by the brilliant and adventurous Coronado. The expedition of Coronado from the City of Mexico to the plains of Nebraska, in 1540-41, was one of the most wonderful undertakings in the history of the North American continent. Leaving the home of the Montezumas with all army of eleven hundred men, scaling the mountains of Mexico, pushing across arid plains and deserts of burning sand, meeting and conquering hostile tribes, swimming rivers, and surmounting almost every conceivable obstacle, he at last reached the valley of the Great Platte, it is supposed, near where the city of Columbus now stands. He and his noble band of brave and toil-worn men were the first to traverse the beautiful prairies, climb the hills, and cross the streams of the country destined in future ages to be one of the most thrifty and wealthy States of the American Union.
     Not long after the conquest of Mexico by Cortes, in 1519, Nunez de Guzman governed the northern portion of Mexico. Guzman was a bitter enemy of Cortes, and envious of his brilliant discoveries. He had a burning desire to

eclipse Cortes in his marvelous discoveries and the magnitude of his conquests. Visions of vast cities of wealth, beauty, and splendor, which he was to conquer, constantly rose before him. Guzman had a slave--a Texas Indian. This slave was cunning and shrewd. He went to his master one day, and told him a strange story touching the wealth and splendor of seven cities lying away to the north. He said, when a boy he often went with his father to these cities, and that in beauty, wealth, population, and magnificence, they compared with the City of Mexico itself; "that whole streets blazed with shops of gold and silver smiths, that the most precious stones abounded, and that the inhabitants were gorgeously attired, and lived in all the ease and luxury that wealth could bestow."
     This story excited the curiosity of the governor, and inflamed his lust for gold. He determined, if possible, to find these cities of wealth; but all efforts to find them failed.
     In 1536, four men, half-starved, half-naked, sun-burnt, and foot-sore, from eight years' exposure to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, shipwrecks, and battles, reached the City of Mexico. They were Spaniards. Eight years before, they had landed on the shores of Florida, with four hundred companions. Reaching the New World, they started out on their mission of discovery,

expecting to find vast cities of wealth and splendor; but, alas! their expectations were doomed to disappointment. They waded through swamps, swan rivers, climbed mountains, and fought battle after battle with hostile tribes. They went north and then west, and after months of weary travel gazed upon the "Father of Waters," afterwards called the Mississippi. They crossed this mighty stream, and traveled several hundred miles in a northwest, and then in a westerly, direction. In their wanderings they doubtless passed over the territory that is now Kansas and Colorado, and over the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains. Daring the eight long years of weary travel, through drenching rains and blinding snows, pelting hail-storms and savage tribes, suffering from intense cold in the winter and heat in the summer, one after another of these brave men fell, either from thirst or hunger or exposure, or from the hand of the bloody savage, and only four of all the four hundred reached the City of Mexico to tell the sad story of their sufferings. In their travels west of the Mississippi River, they heard of vast cities of wealth lying away to the north. They related what they had heard from the aborigines they had met at different points in their long and lonely journey. The story of these four men kindled anew the desire in the hearts of the Spaniards to discover the

rich cities of which they had so often heard and dreamed.
     In 1540 the viceroy of Mexico nominated Coronado to head a powerful expedition for the discovery of the Northwest. Coronado was a Spanish cavalier. He came to Mexico in the bloom of manhood. He was a brilliant man, of pleasing manners, and skilled in all the arts of war. He soon won the affections of the daughter of a wealthy Spanish nobleman, and they were married. His marriage to this beautiful and accomplished lady, as well as his own superior talents, soon brought him into note among the Spanish nobility, and he was chosen to take the responsible position of leading the new expedition of discovery.
     Early in the spring, at the head of eleven hundred men, Coronado left the City of Mexico, scaled the rough mountains, passed over the plains, crossed the Rio Grande, and late in the fall reached a number of cities lying, it is supposed, not far south of where the city of Saute Fe now stands. The natives of these cities received Coronado and his men with the utmost kindness; their kindness, however, was returned by Coronado with the greatest cruelty and the most inhuman treatment. He burned their cities, put to death many prisoners of war, while he made slaves of many others. Having completely subjugated them, he remained during the winter. In May, 1541, he and his

men left the beautiful valleys where they had remained during the winter, and proceeded on their way to the north. Day after day this little band pressed their way northward, traveling over treeless prairies, with the blazing sun above them, and burning sands beneath them. They measured the distance they traveled by each man's counting the steps he took during the day.
     Late in July, 1541, Coronado reached the southern boundary of the State of Nebraska, and soon after explored the valley of the Great Platte. His description of the soil, the Indians, the buffalo and antelope, the wild grapes and plums, and the terrible hail-storms were exactly as we saw them with our own eyes more than three hundred years afterwards.
     The next spring Coronado was thrown from his horse, and received an injury from which he suffered great pain for a long time; and as he had been told when a boy, by one who professed to foretell future events, that he would die from the effects of an injury caused by the fall from a horse, he imagined that the end of his life was near, and returned with his wife to the City of Mexico.
     The viceroy received him with great coolness, looking upon his expedition as a comparative failure. While he had discovered a vast, rich, and beautiful territory, the cities of wealth and splendor, such as Pizarro had found in South America,

and which floated in visions before the mind of the governor, had not been realized. Here the history of Coronado ends. The curtain of oblivion drops, and he is seen no more; but the country discovered by him gladdens the hearts of millions.
     So the territory of Nebraska first belonged to Spain by the right of discovery. Relics that belonged, it is thought, to the soldiers in Coronado's expedition, have been found at different places. "Near the margin of the Pecos River, New Mexico, in a little crevice between the rocks, and among bones gnawed by the wolves, there were found, some years ago, the helmet, gorget, and breast-plate of a Spanish soldier. Straying perhaps from his companions, perhaps wounded in a skirmish, perhaps sick and forsaken, he had crawled to this rude refuge, and, for from the flagrant gardens of Seville and the gay vineyards of Malaga, had died alone. The camp-fires of Quivera were consumed more than three centuries ago; the bones of the profane Moor and the self-devoted Turk have bleached in the sunshine and decayed; the seven cities of Cibola have vanished; the cross of Coronado has moldered into dust, and these rusted relics are all that remain of that march through the desert and the discovery of Nebraska." Not many years ago an antique stirrup, of the exact shape and character of those used for

centuries by the Moors and Spaniards, was found near the Republican, at a spot seven miles north of Riverton, in Franklin County, Nebraska. It was buried very deep in the ground, and was supposed to have belonged to one of Coronado's soldiers. Touching the above statements, I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
     While Coronado was slowly pushing his way through unknown regions to the prairies of Nebraska, another brilliant expedition under the folds of the Spanish flag was going forward away to the southeast. Dc Soto, at the head of six hundred men, was pressing his way through the swamps of Florida to the north, and in the same year (1541) that Coronado discovered Nebraska, De Soto discovered the Mississippi River. While this mighty river had been crossed by a company of men a few years previous, their transient sight of it can never rob the name of De Soto of the honor which justly belongs to him as its discoverer. Descending the stream in 1542, De Soto died, and to conceal the knowledge of his death from hostile Indians, his body was sunk in the middle of the stream at the hour of midnight, and the rolling tide of the mighty river still sings his requiem.
     But little was known of the Mississippi for the next hundred and thirty-one years. Matters of greater importance than its exploration

engaged the attention of Spain and France, and the New World was almost entirely lost sight of.
     In 1673, Father Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, with Louis Joliet and five Frenchmen, launched their birch-bark canoes on the Wisconsin River, determined to explore the "Father of Waters" Descending the stream, they soon reached its mouth, and sailed out into the broad and majestic Mississippi. They passed down the stream until satisfied it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico; then they returned, and made their report accordingly. Nine years later--in 1682--La Salle left the mouth of the Illinois River, and sailed down the Mississippi to its mouth, thus completing the work begun by Father Marquette and Louis Joliet. La Salle gave the name of the whole country drained by the Mississippi, Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV, and took possession of the same in the name of the French king. The province of Louisiana included the vast country between the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Alleghanies on the east. In this vast territory was the present State of Nebraska. In 1762, France ceded the province of Louisiana to Spain, and Nebraska was again the territory of Spain. In 1800 it was re-ceded to France, and Nebraska was again French territory. In 1803, France ceded Louisiana to the United States, and Nebraska becomes the territory of the United States.

     In 1805 the district of Louisiana, by an act of Congress, was changed to the "Territory of Louisiana." In 1812, the Territory of Louisiana became the Territory of Missouri, and Nebraska was within its bounds. In 1834, by an act of Congress, all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi, and not within the States of Missouri and Louisiana or the Territory of Arkansas, was called the "Indian Country." In this territory was the present State of Nebraska. On May 30, 1854, Congress passed an act organizing the Territory of Nebraska, and President Pierce appointed Francis Burt, of South Carolina, Governor. Governor Burt reached Bellevue, October 7, 1854, and became the guest of Rev. William Hamilton, who had charge of the Presbyterian mission located at that place. Shortly after reaching Bellevue, the governor was taken sick, and, on the 18th day of October, died, having taken the oath of office only two days before his death. The vacancy in the executive office was filled by Secretary T. B. Cuming. The first official act performed in the Territory by an executive officer was the issuance of the proclamation of the death of Governor Burt. That official act bears date October 18, 1854.
     On the first day of March, 1867, Nebraska was admitted as a State into the Union. The Honorable David Butler was the first governor of the

State, and under his able administration the State witnessed the most marked prosperity.
     The first reunion of the old settlers of Lancaster County was held at Cushman Park, June 19, 1889. In his address to the Association on that occasion, Hon. O. H. Gere made the following reference to the first Legislature of the State, and to Governor David Butler "Every law passed by that memorable Legislature of '69 weighed a ton. Its work was original and creative, and it did it well. Its moving spirit was the governor, David Butler. Some of its members came down to Lincoln from hostile localities, and had it in their hearts to destroy him and his works; but before the session was a fortnight old, his genial though homely ways, his kindness of heart, his sturdy common sense, the originality of his genius, and the boldness of his conceptions, captured them, and when the forty days were done, no man in the two houses avowed himself the enemy of David Butler. The history of Nebraska can not be written without giving large space to what Governor Butler did." No man has done more for the State than Governor Butler. The beginning of the rapid development of the State dates back to the period of her admission as a State into the Union. From the time of her admission her growth has been a marvel.
     An unbroken tide of emigration has been

flowing in ever since. All over her beautiful prairies, towns have sprung up, and grown, as by magic, into cities. Moral growth has kept pace with the material development of the State.  School-houses and churches are seen everywhere.  They dot the prairies, crown the hills, nestle in the valleys, and crowd the cities. The once dreary and desolate plains of Nebraska rejoice and blossom as the rose. What a marked difference between Nebraska now, and when the wild and half-nude savage threaded her trackless wilds! Following in the wake of civilization amid the gospel come the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, and all the valuable improvements of the age.