Cuming County

TAKEN FROM THE 125^TH ANNIVERSARY

Published by West Point News

 

IN THE BEGINNING

BY Gwen Lindberg

 

            Many feet, belonging to a variety of people, have walked across the face of our Cuming County over the years. 

 

            There were people living here thousands of years before Columbus discovered America.  Archeologists working at Logan Creek in Burt County discovered remnants of nomads who roamed the land way back in 6,471 B.C.

 

            These early inhabitants were followed by the pottery makers who occupied the plains about 500 A.D. and after.

 

            Much later came the Indians.  The Omaha tribe was very well acquainted with the Elkhorn river country, calling the river by their Indian name, “Wate”.

 

            Its tributaries were:  Maple creek “Ti’ha xa i ke”, the place where the tents skins were cached when the Omaha fought the Pawnee; Plum creek was “Zha’uzhi ke”, or Weed creek; Lower Logan was “thorn-apple creek”; Pebble was known as the creek were Uki’pato killed a buffalo bull, and Taylor creek was “ni’shkube te”, or deep water.

 

            The Omahans were buffalo hunters, but usually lived in tepees or earth lodges in semi-permanent villages and did some cultivation of plants for food.

 

            One village, “The Little Village,” was built near Clark creek in Dodge county in the spring of 1841.  The tribe moved there from the Missouri river because of Sioux attacks.  There were few earth lodges built because they moved back to their old village in Dakota county a couple of years later.

 

            Ten years after that, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed by President Franklin Pierce, opening up the Nebraska Territory.  The land extended from the Missouri to the crest of the Rockies, and from the fortieth parallel north to the Canadian border.

 

            That also marked the birth of the Republican party, formed by “Anti-Nebraska” forces, who didn’t want the territory to determine whether it should be slave or free.  In their first national convention, June 17, 1856, they nominated Colonel John C. Fremont of California for president.

 

            That same summer Benjamin B. Moore left Hillsdale, Michigan with his wife Anna, Daughter Kate and sons Abram, George and Oscar, and came to Nebraska.

 

            That was a year of promise to Nebraska settlers.  Timely rains had fallen.  The few small fields of wheat and corn had borne good crops.  Buffalo were abundant.  Congress had voted $50,000 to build a new capitol at Omaha and another $50,000 to make a good road from there to Fort Kearney.

 

            It was the year when people were singing “Listen to the Mocking Bird”, My Darling Nelly Gray”, “Jingle Bells” and Frankie and Johnny”.

 

            People were reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, was touring the country.  Cigarettes were still unknown and the steam calliope had just been invented.  Gail Borden received a patent on the process for condensing milk.

 

            According to a census taken by Acting Governor of the new territory, Thomas B. Cuming, Nebraska had 2,700 people, exclusive of Indians. 

 

            Cuming took over for Francis Burt who died, two days after receiving the oath of office at his bedside.  Burt and Cuming counties are named for the two men.

 

            Cuming County boundary lines had been established by an act of the territorial legislature and approved in March, 1855.

           

            Moore and his family, according to one-time West Point Republican editor E.N. Sweet, “after viewing the country in different parts of the state, came to the conclusion that no portion of it excelled the Elkhorn Valley in beauty and fertility, and made a claim and erected a cabin at Catherine, or Dead Timber.”

 

            Two years later, Feb. 12, 1857, the boundary limes of the county were more exactly defined and the county seat moved to Manhattan, another “paper”, or ficticious, town.

 

            In 1857 the sun failed to show its face in Dodge county for two months.  Thirty-foot deep ravines were filled with snow.  In Burt county snow fell for six days and nights without stopping.  A settler was lost in the December storm and his funeral held in April after the snow had melted.

 

            In Cuming county the creeks and rivers were buried by the snow.  The settlers traveled on foot to the embryo town of Fontanelle and hauled back goods on hand sleds so they wouldn’t perish.

 

            “Fortunately”, according to Sweet, “an abundant supply of fresh meat was available without going far from home, without money and without price.  The Elkhorn Valley was literally filled with antelope, deer and elk.  When the deep snow covered the face of the country, they flocked to the friendly shelter of the timber on the river bottoms, and during the winter Mr. Moore and his sons killed not less than seventy of them with axes in and around Dead Timber.”

 

FIRST SETTLERS IN COUNTY

 

            The following season the family left their claim and settled at what is known as De Witt (southwest quarter of Section 4, township 22, range 6), the first white settlers in the present Cuming county.

 

            About a dozen other persons, mostly young, unmarried men, who expected to become permanent settlers, came about the same time.  Soon, most all left.

 

            According to Uriah Bruner, writing in 1895, West Point was laid out about the same time the Moore family came in March 1857.

 

            “This entire country and west of here was prairie and bare of timber.  It was at that time considered a hazardous undertaking to settle upon the prairies, miles away from timber.  Settlers needed wood to build houses, cattle sheds and for fuel.”

 

            Bruner was part of the “Nebraska Settlement Association”, formed by a group of easterners and a few Omaha citizens to look for a good townsite location.  Others in the group were John J. Bruner, Henry A. Kosters, Wm Sexauer, Andrew J. Bruner, Peter Windheim, Henry Eikey, Charles Beindorf and some other Omahans.

 

            In that early party were Uriah and John J. Bruner, who came up the Elkhorn over the snow-covered prairies in March to find the streams bursting with spring floods. 

 

            Unable to ford the streams, they built bridges over Belle, Logan and Cuming creeks.  It took several days to reach the site near which West Point now stands.

 

            Early reports say that when the party of men reached the heights east of West Point and looked down upon the broad wooded valley of the Elkhorn, they said fervently, “This is the place!”

 

            The committee made a favorable report to the association at Omaha and it was unanimously agreed that the report be accepted and a town be located as recommended.

 

            The town was first called New Philadelphia during the summer of 1857, but was soon after changed to West Point.

 

            According to Nebraska Place-Names, West Point was so named because, when located, it was the most westerly point that was settled in the Elkhorn River valley.  The railroad did not come until 1870, after West Point was named.

 

            Several members of the committee took “squatters” claims in the neighborhood of the town site.

 

PAWNEE RAID

 

            The contentment of the settlers was short-lived when the Pawnee Indians made a raid on the settlement under their great chief Petaleshara.

            Sources vary on the number of Indians in the party.  Margaret DeWald, in her compilation for the “101 Celebration” booklet, said “four thousand strong came up the river valley on the pretense of hunting.”  This agrees with an old settler’s story in the “History of the Elkhorn Valley.”

 

            The “History of Nebraska” written in 1882 quotes E.N. Sweet, founding editor of the West Point Republican, as saying about three thousand Pawnees came to plunder the whites.

           

            “They seemed to be in a half-starved condition, and in order to satiate their hunger commenced a systematic warfare upon the settlers, pigs, poultry and stock whenever favorable opportunity offered.”

 

            They made their appearance in the vicinity of West Point on the 29^th day of June, and butchered a heifer belonging to Mr. Clemens.

 

            They committed other depredations further down the valley and the citizens organized and started in pursuit.  About sundown on the 29^th a company of volunteers from Fontanelle and vicinity, commanded by Captain Kline, arrived at West Point.

 

            The following night was spent in notifying the citizens of the prospective trouble, and nearly all of the settlers came to West Point.

 

            Soon after sunrise the next morning two Indians were seen approaching the town from the south, creating no little excitement. 

 

            Two young men mounted horses and started for the Indians, who immediately turned and ran toward the river, swam it and made their escape.

 

            Later in the day a number of Indians made their appearance across the river, opposite the saw mill.  Two Germans, seeing their approach, concealed themselves between the sawmill and river, with a view of sending some to their “happy hunting grounds.”

 

            Their guns, however missed fire and the Indians retreated up the river.  Captain Patterson, a young lawyer of Fontanelle, led thirty men up the river on the east side, in order to protect the few settlers in the vicinity of DeWitt.

 

            When they got there they saw eleven Indians approaching the home of Benjamin Moore.

 

            “The party conceived the idea of making them prisoners and moved into the kitchen, where Mrs. Moore and daughter were preparing dinner, with a view of decoying the Indians into the sitting room.”

 

            The Indians entered the room, and some of the whites blocked the south door to prevent their escape.

 

            “Soon after firing commenced, by which party is unknown, and then followed a scene which beggars description. With a wild war whoop the Indians rushed out of the house, dashed through the lines of the whites and ran toward their camp on the opposite side of the river, followed by a deadly shower of leaden hail.  The battle cry sounded by the retreating Indians was answered by their comrades across the Elkhorn (a distance of two miles or more) and as the echo and re-echo of the terrible war whoop found its way along the river and over the prairie, consternation filled the breasts of all who heard it, and many of the settlers were panic stricken.”

 

            A proposition was made by Joseph McKirahan to follow the retreating Indians to their camp, but the party from Fontanelle refused to do so, or give their horses to those who volunteered.

 

            It was rumored that several hundred Indians were preparing to swarm down upon the little band of settlers, to avenge the death of their fallen braves.

 

            “Children screamed, anxious mothers wept, and tremblingly drew their frightened little ones around them, expecting every moment to hear the shrill war whoop.  Sturdy fathers and husbands firmly awaited the onslaught with nerves highly strung, and rifle firmly clutched, determined to defend their loved ones to the last.”

 

            A consultation was held and the majority determined to abandon West Point and go to Fontanelle with all they could take.  Neligh, Crawford, McClellan, Babbitt, Schademan and Thomas, who were opposed to the move, remained a short time after the rest had left and secreted the most valuable articles which could not be taken along.

 

            There were only two persons left in the county, A.L. Ward and Caspar Eberline, both of whom were several miles above DeWitt at the time of the fight, “in blissful ignorance of the stirring scenes being enacted.”

 

            They soon followed the rest.

           

            The cattle around West Point had been collected before the citizens left and placed under the charge of W.R. Artman and John McKirahan of West Point, Johnson and Sprietk of Fontanelle, and the Moore brothers of DeWitt, who volunteered to drive them.

 

            The cattle herders were separated from the main body of fugitives and imagined that the Indians had murdered their friends.  They feared they’d be attacked, so deserted the cattle and hid in the slough grass of the friendly river bottom.

 

            In the evening the rear guard of the party found the cattle and drove them along four or five miles until they found the herders in the tall grass.  Reunited, the entire party reached Fontanelle in safety and without molestation.

 

            The Fourth of July a party was organized to go to DeWitt to see what the Indians had been doing.  In the group were Neligh, Josiah McKirahan, Crawford, McClellan, Clements, J.B. Robinson, Thomas Parks, John Shoer, William Keyes and others.  They found a dead Indian lying on the kitchen floor with a bucket of water beside him, a pan of unbaked biscuit dough on the stove hearth, dishes broken, feathers strewn on the floor and bureau drawers broken.

 

            “While the party was viewing the picture of desolation and death, from without came the startling cry of ‘Indians! Indians! Indians!’ and in an instant all was commotion.  A general rush was made for the wagons in which their arms were lying, and in the excitement which followed, a gun was accidently discharged, its contents lodging in Mr. Shoer, killing him instantly.  The alarm was discovered to have been a false one, and soon after the sad accident the party started for Fontanelle where they arrived the same evening, bearing with them the lifeless body of their unfortunate comrade.”

 

            Martial law was declared and General Thayer was in immediate command of the militia.  Gov. Black and Generals Curtis and Estabrook accompanied the expedition of 200 men and a Howitzer cannon.  The Indians were overtaken at Battle Creek in Madison county, near where the town of Battle Creek is now located, where the Omahas had joined them on their way to their annual buffalo hunt.

 

            Word had been sent to the Omahas the previous night to quietly break camp at daybreak and separate from the Pawnees, for the Pawnees would be attacked early the next morning.

 

            The militia charged upon the camp and the Pawnee men, women and children rushed out of their tepees in great terror.

 

            “Chief Spotted Horse, wrapped in the American flag, came forward and made a great speech to his braves, telling them that, while they might whip the few white men that were there, their great Father in Washington had more white men than there were grains of sand on the Elkhorn, and he would soon send soldiers enough to kill them all.”

 

            A council was called and the Pawnees agreed to pay all of the damages and surrender their ringleaders who had robbed the settlers. 

 

            “Eight of the ringleaders were at once surrendered, tied to the tail of one of the commissary wagons and a weary march homeward was begun by way of Columbus, where the troops were disbanded.”

 

            The little unpleasantness frightened away many of the new settlers and kept others from coming in, which made the prospects for the future look rather blue.

 

            About that time gold was discovered near Pikes Peak.  People flocked to the new Eldorado, creating a demand for all kinds of produce which was freighted from the Missouri river over land.

 

            To show the extent to which the county was depopulated, when the census was taken in the summer of 1860, only five legal voters were enrolled.

 

            The first land patent was issued to Patrick Murray, giving title to the northeast quarter of sections 3 and 10, township 21, range 6 east, on July 3, 1860.

 

            John and Joseph Rogensack and George Weigle came in 1859.

 

            That was also the year of the first attempt to make Nebraska territory a state.  The people voted against it so statehood was postponed.