prey of disease, poverty-stricken, too cowardly to venture from the shadow of their tepees to gather their scanty crops, unlucky in the hunt, slow in the chase, and too dispirited to be daring or successful thieves."
   In the region between the Niobrara and Missouri rivers were the Poncas, some five hundred or six hundred in number, and but little better than the Omahas and Otoes in condition and circumstances. According to Lewis and Clark, the Grand Pawnee and Republican Pawnee, numbering respectively five hundred and two hundred and fifty men, dwelt in 1804, on the south side of the Platte opposite the mouth of the Loup; the Pawnee, Loup or Wolf Pawnee, comprising two hundred and eighty men, on the Loup fork of the Platte about ninety miles above the principal Pawnee; and a fourth band of four hundred men on the Red river. Clayton's Emigrant's Guide, in 1848, finds the old Pawnee Mission station at Plum Creek, latitude 41^o 22' 37"; nine and a quarter miles east of the Loup Fork ford (latitude 41^o 22' 37"; longitude 98^o 11'); and the old Pawnee village, formerly occupied by the Grand Pawnee and Tappa, half a mile west of the Loup Fork. This village was burned by the Sioux in the fall of 1846. In the spring of 1847 the Pawnee were found on the Loup Fork, about thirty miles east of the old village, according to the same authority.

   Celebrated Chieftains. Among the Indians distinction was won through heroism upon the battlefield; consequently, their great men are warriors. No doubt many of the great Indian chieftains would rank among their own people with the great generals of the civilized nations. Indeed none could be more brave nor exercise greater fearlessness and courage upon the battlefield. They had no use for a coward, and deeds of bravery were greatly prized. A history of the Plains country would be incomplete without mention of a number of distinguished chieftains:

   Marpiya Luta (Red Cloud), chief of the Ogalalla Sioux, was one of the great generals in various wars against the United States. He was born in 1821 in Deuel county, Nebraska. Red Cloud earned distinction and the name he bore at the age of sixteen, and for twenty years was a successful leader against other Indian tribes. He planned the fight against Fort Phil Kearney in 1866 in which nearly one hundred soldiers were slain. He abandoned the war path in 1869. He prominent in all the councils and treaties of his tribe after that date. In a tribal feud Red Cloud slew Bull Bear, a prominent Sioux chief. His home for many years was in small frame house near Pine Ridge agency. He visited Washington sixteen times. spent his last years in total blindness.
   Sentegaleska, (Spotted Tail), a Brule Sioux came up from the ranks and became one of the most distinguished of the red men. He gained prominence when only eighteen years old through deadly combat with a sub-chief, and rose rapidly in the councils of his people until he was chosen hereditary chief of the entire Sioux nation. He went to Washington as delegate in 1872, and was crowned "King the Sioux" in 1876 by General Crook.
   Spotted Tail was not only a warrior of courage, but was unusually trustworthy and was respected by the white men with whom he was always friendly. He was killed in 1881 by Crow Dog, one of his sub-chiefs whom he sought to discipline. The tragedy occurred at Rosebud agency as Spotted Tail was preparing to visit Washington
   Pit-a-le-shar-u (Man Chief) approaches more nearly a type of Indian statesman than a warrior. He was of commanding presence, over six feet tall and had an expressive face. He obtained the chieftainship of the Pawnees in 1852, and lived in the vicinity of Fremont and Genoa. Man Chief delighted in dress and wore a showy head-dress of eagle's feathers of which he was extremely proud. He was in every way worthy of his high office. He was a great orator and ruled his people wisely through persuasion rather than by force. He was a delegate to Washington when the treaty of 1858 was ratified. In 1874 a pistol wound in the thigh proved fatal; the shot, though reported to be accidental, was probably fired intentionally by someone who

differed from him on the removal of the Pawnees to Indian Territory.
   Logan Fontenelle (Shon-ga-ska), chief of the Omahas, was born near Fort Calhoun in 1825. His father was a Frenchman of nobility and his mother an Indian woman of the Omaha tribe. He was educated in St. Louis, but, upon the death of his father in 1840, he returned to Nebraska and became an interpreter. He was elected a chief of the Omahas in 1853 and retained the position until his death in 1855. He was respected and honored by the whites and had absolute control over his tribe. He was killed in battle with the Sioux.
   Ta-ta-nka-i-yo-ta-nke (Sitting Bull) was born in the spring of 1834 on the banks of Grand river near the mouth of Stonewall creek in South Dakota. This continued to be his habitat during the greater part of his life. At the age of fourteen he achieved distinction on the war-path, and his father bestowed upon him his own name, Sitting Bull. He was a priest, or "medicine man," rather than a chief, but was a natural leader and gained much power and influence among his people by organizing and leading war parties. He came into special prominence by his participation in the battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana, June 25, 1876, in which Custer's entire command was slaughtered. Sitting Bull then made his escape into Canada, where he remained five years, and finally surrendered to the United States on promise of pardon. He was held a prisoner of war until 1883, when he again went to reside on Grand river. He continued, however, to lead the opposition to the government and for seven years steadily opposed the treaty which was finally executed in 1889. He continued to be the center of Indian hostility until December, 1890, when he was killed during an attempt to place him under arrest.

   Expedition of Coronado. Spain was preeminently the seat of chivalry at the time of the discovery of America and during the following centuries, while the country now comprising the United States was being discovered and colonized in detail -- until it was laughed out of her by Cervantes and knocked out of her by the practical and prosy peoples of the more northern countries and of the Teutonic race. But the spirit of chivalry was prolific of adventurous discoverers, through whose valorous enterprise, Spain had come to possess, at the time the little strip along the Atlantic comprising the Americain (sic) colonies was ready for political separation from Great Britain, the whole territory west of the Mississippi river now comprised in Mexico and the United States, except that portion within the limits of the states of Washington and Oregon. That part of these Spanish domains north of the present boundary line of Mexico, comprised more than two-thirds of the present area of the United States. At this time Spain also dominated Central and South America. Though Spain was the first discoverer of America, and established the first permanent colony within the territory of the United States, she no longer owns a foot of the continent; and she became so weak that she lost all her holdings through force. It was of the spirit of Spanish chivalry to seek success by the royal road. Her explorers and discoverers were either animated by the search for gold -- like De Soto and Coronado -- or for more illusive treasure, such as Ponce de Leon's elixir of life. But the ultimate race was not to the swift nor the final battle to the strong. The continent came to the men who knew how to wait.
   While it is still an unsettled and perhaps not very important question whether the Spanish Coronado was the first white man to set foot in Nebraska, there is no doubt that he was the first white discoverer of whom there is any account of the great Plains tributary to the Missouri river, and that he came very near to the southern border of the state.
   In 1539 a Franciscan friar, Marcos de Niza, whom Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Mexico, had sent to investigate reports of populous settlements in the region now comprized (sic) in Arizona and New Mexico, brought stories of vast wealth in the Seven Cities of Cibola. An army of about three hundred Spanish soldiers and one thousand Indians and

servants was raised and equipped for the conquest of the new country, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, governor of New Galicia, a western border province of Mexico, was placed in command of the expedition. Coronado appears to have been a bold and venturesome cavalier -- a fit lieutenant of the ambitious viceroy. The expedition started from Compostela -- the capital of Coronado's province, about three hundred and seventy-five miles northwest from the city of Mexico February 23, 1540. On the 7th of July Coronado, with an advanced detachment of the main army, captured one of the seven small Zuñi villages, which, situated near the present western border of New Mexico, in about the latitude of 35^o, and within a radius of five leagues, constituted the Seven Cities of Cibola. These villages were composed of small storehouses, three or four stories high, but the disappointed Spaniards found in them poverty instead of the fabled riches. On an expedition from this point, Coronado was partly compensated for his disappointment, though doubtless in a way which he did not fully appreciate, by discovering the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
   It was found that the riches lay far beyond, in the land of Quivera; and probably, through a strategem (sic) to get rid of their cruel and oppressive visitors, the story of the New Eldorado was told by a native of Quivera who was met with as a captive of the natives of Cicuye, a fortified village east of Cibola on the Pecos river. The "Turk," as the Spaniards called the slave, on account of his appearance, told more stories of large towns with hoards of gold and silver and vast herds of buffalo in his country to the east. The greedy credulity of the Spaniards again listened to these fabulous tales, and in April or May, 1541, the army took up its eastward march with the Turk for its guide. The slave intentionally led them by a wandering course far to the south, and, provisions becoming scarce in the neighborhood of the head-waters of the Colorado river of Texas, Coronado sent back all of the army excepting from twenty-six to thirty-six soldiers, with whom he pushed northward on his journey of forty-two days to Quivera, now under the guidance of a good Indian, Ysopete, also a native of the Plains, the perfidious Turk having been taken into custody. The party crossed the Arkansas in the neighborhood of its southern bend, not far from the present site of Dodge City. Thus the first white man's crossing of the Arkansas was at a place which, two hundred and sixty years later, was to become an angle in the division between the Louisiana Purchase ceded to the United States, and the residue of territory still held by Spain. At this point the boundary line changed from its northern course to the west along the Arkansas river. About eighty miles to the northwest, at the site of the present town of Great Bend, Coronado found the first Quivera village. He first met Indians of that name beyond the crossing, not far from Kinsley and Larned. Here imminence of his exposure seems to have moved the Turk to confession that his people were strangers to the precious metals as well as to other riches, and he was straightway strangled by enraged Spaniards. There was now nothing for them to fall back upon, but appreciation of the richness of the soil; for Jarmillo, one of their chroniclers, says: "Some satisfaction was experienced on seeing the good appearance of the earth;" and Coronado himself writes that the soil of Quivera was "fat and black," and "the best I have ever seen for producing all the products of Spain." The buffalo is described by these travelers in a very naive and realistic manner. Like the reindeer to Laplander, this beast was food and raiment for the Indian natives, and it is curious to note that buffalo "chips" were used for fuel then as they were until recent days by our own pioneers. "One evening there came up a terrible storm of wind and hail, which left in the camp hailstones as large as porringers, and even larger. They fell thick as raindrops, and in some spots the ground was covered with them to the depth of eight or ten inches. The storm caused many tears, weakness, and vows." Making a moderate allowance for the quickened imagination of the belated Spaniards, these stories of what they saw, indicate that

they journeyed not far from Nebraska. The substantial agreement of the conclusions drawn by Mr. Hodge of the ethnological bureau, of the accounts of their journey by the Spanish travelers themselves, with the actual field work of Mr. J. V. Brower, leaves little room for doubt that these adventurers reached the neighborhood of junction City, or perhaps Manhattan, Kansas. Mr. Hodge, writing as late as 1899, observes that the common error in determining latitude in the sixteenth century was about two degrees; therefore when Coronado said that Quivera, "where I have reached it, is in the 40th degree," that means that it was in fact in the 38th degree; and Mr. Hodge adds: "Nothing is found in the narratives to show positively that either Coronado or any member of his force went beyond the present boundaries of Kansas during their stay of twenty-five days in the province of Quivera." Mr. E. E. Blackman of the Nebraska State Historical Society, thinks that the statements accredited to the Indians by Jaramillo, that there was nothing beyond the point reached by the Spaniards but Harahey -- the Pawnee country -- coupled with his own demonstrations that the Quivera village extended into Nebraska, show that the Spaniards crossed our border; and Simpson's studies led him to the conclusion that it is "exceedingly probable that he (Coronado) reached the 40th degree of latitude (now the boundary between the States of Kansas and Nebraska) well on towards the Missouri river." Bandelier; George Winship Parker, Hodge, and Brower all substantially agree with H. H. Bancroft's earlier statement (1899) that, "there is nothing in the Spaniards' descriptions of the region or of the journey to shake Simpson's conclusion that Quivera was in modern Kansas."
   The writings of the Spaniards referred to are, in the main, Coronado's letters and formal accounts of the journey by Jaramillo, a captain in the expedition, and of Castañeda who went back with the main body of the army, but industriously collected his material from hearsay, The latest and perhaps the most thorough manuscript work has been done by Parker in The Coronado Expedition, and Hodge in Coronado's March, and the results of their researches substantially accord with the field work of Brower and Blackman, which is still under prosecution, and may yet show that Coronado was the discoverer of Nebraska proper.
   While this expedition appears to have been barren as to practical results, yet it has been said of it that "for extent in distance traveled, duration in time, extending from the spring

From photograph owned by E. E. Blackman, vice. president Quivera Historical Society.

QUIVERA MONUMENT

Near Junction City, Kansas

of 1540 to the summer of 1542, and the multiplicity of its coöperating branch explorations, it equaled, if it did not exceed, any land expedition that has been undertaken in modern times." Another writer observes that "a bare subsistence and threatened starvation were the only rewards in store for the volunteers upon this most famous of all the Spanish explorations, excepting those of Cortez. They discovered a land rich in mineral resources, but others were to reap the benefits of the wealth of the mountain. They discovered a

land rich in material for the archaeologist, but nothing to satisfy their thirst for glory or wealth." But this erudite author, like his Spaniards, has missed, the main point. For they discovered the future granary of the world; and the fact they were oblivious or disdainful of their main discovery, pointed the moral of future Spanish history. The Spaniards took nothing and they gave little -- two friars left as missionaries at Cibola who soon wore the crown of martyrdom.

JACOB V. BROWER

Archaeologist and explorer -- rediscoverer of Quivera and Harahey

To Spain, from the first, nothing in her new-world conquests was gold that did not glitter; and for this she disdained to dig -- it was easier and more chivalrous to rob. She of course made pretense of having substituted for this mere material good, the priceless but easy gift, religion. A shrewder if not a juster race came after who were able to discern the true and inexhaustible body of gold hidden in the dull-hued soil; and they tilled and patiently waited nature's reward. And lo, to them is the kingdom. And Spain has her due reward. Driven from all her vast outlying domains by the relentless force of the modern industrial spirit, which she could neither assimilate nor entertain, into a little corner of Europe, there she lies, oblivious to progress, surviving chiefly as an echo, and consequential merely as a, reminiscence of the dead past.

   Expedition of the Mallet Brothers. The earliest authenticated exploration by white men on Nebraska soil was that of two brothers, Pierre and Paul Mallet, and six other Frenchmen in June, 1739. The Mallet brothers had probably come up from New Orleans the year before, and had wintered near the mouth of the Niobrara river. An account of their journey from that neighborhood to Sante Fe forms a part of the Margry papers, which consist of reports of early French explorers of the Trans-Mississippi country to the French authorities at New Orleans and which have been printed by Margry in Paris.

    Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1804, following the purchase of Louisiana, the Lewis-Clark expedition was sent out by President Jefferson for the purpose of gaining knowledge of the new and almost unknown territory.
   Following is a description of the company and outfit taken from the journal of Lewis and Clark:

   The party consisted of nine young men from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers of the United States army, who volunteered their services, two French watermen, an interpreter and hunter, and a black servant belonging to Capt. Clark -- all of these, except the last, listed to serve as privates during the expedition, and three sergeants appointed from amongst them by the captains. In addition to these were engaged a corporal and six soldiers and nine watermen to accompany the expedition as far as the Mandan nation, in order to assist in carrying the stores, or repelling an attack, which was most to be apprehended between Wood River and that tribe. The necessary stores were subdivided into seven bales and one box, containing a small portion of each article in case of accident. They consisted of a great variety of clothing, work utensils, locks, flints, powder, ball, and articles of the greatest use. To these were added fourteen bales and one box of Indian presents, distributed in the same manner, and composed of richly laced coats and other articles of dress, medals, flags, knives, and tomahawks for the chiefs -- ornaments of different kinds, partic-

ularly beads, looking glasses, handkerchiefs, paints, and generally such articles as were deemed best calculated for the taste of the Indians.
   The party was to embark on board of three boats; the first was a keel boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water, one large square sail and twenty-two oars, a deck of ten feet in the bow and stern formed a forecastle and cabin, while the middle was covered by lockers, which might be raised so as to form a breast work in case of attack. This was accompanied by two perioques or open boats, one of six and the other of seven oars. Two horses were at the same time to be led along the banks of the river for the purpose of bringing home game, or hunting in case of scarcity. . . All

Wm. Clark     Meriwether Lewis

the preparations being completed, we left our encampment on Monday, May 14, 1804. This spot is at the mouth of Wood river, a small stream which empties itself into the Mississippi, opposite to the entrance to the Missouri.
    The expedition, following up the Missouri river, came in sight of the present Nebraska on the afternoon of July 11, 1804. It camped In the Missouri side, immediately opposite the mouth of the Big Nemaha, and the next day some members of the company explored the lower valley of that river.
   This expedition is of particular importance as it gives the first historical glimpse of the eastern border of Nebraska. From the point where it first touched the present state at the southeast corner to the point at the northeast corner, where the Missouri river reaches its borders, the distance is 277 miles as the bird flies. According to the government survey, the distance between these two points is 441 miles, following the meanderings of the river. The Lewis-Clark expedition recorded 556 miles of river front for the state in 1804. On the 8th of September the explorers left the present limits of Nebraska and continued their voyage up the Missouri, then crossed the dividing mountain chains, and launched their boats on the swift Columbia, following it to its mouth. Two years later they returned over the same route and gave a graphic description of the vast country they had traversed.
   The explorers first camped on Nebraska soil July 15th, near the mouth of the Little Nemaha. The camp of July 18th was not far from the present site of Nebraska City. According to Floyd's journal, the camp of July 20th was on the Nebraska side, and under a high bluff, three miles north of Weeping Water creek. On the 21st of July the party passed the mouth of the Platte river and encamped on the Nebraska side (probably not far from the southeast corner of section 31, township 13, range 14 E). They passed on up the river for a dis-