 As you know, we have a humanities program now. This program is brought to you by the Nebraska Humanities Council, a statewide, non-profit organization, cultivating an understanding of our own history and culture, with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the People Initiative, and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment. If you enjoy this type of programming, please consider supporting the Council with the contributions. Donations are matched by state and federal funds. Your help preserves our past and its former future. Last year, we invited Jeff Barnes, a humanities speaker, and I want to tell you, I called Jeff right away and asked him if he could be here, and he said yes. So, as he's still last year, former newspaper reporter and editor, cash chairman of the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission, former marketing director for the Durham Western Museum, and the author of the book, Parts of the Northern Plains. Today he's going to talk about to live and die on the planet. So I present Jeff. Thank you very much. It must have been a good question, because when I spoke, it was moved to college, and after I gave the talk, it became good. Okay, well, to come to that a bit, I'll give you a tale of death and doom and despair. Well, I'm putting the book together about the forts. Of course, you can't help but come across tales of the Mormon Trail and the Oregon Trail and how they won't be able to get on to my game with it. Oh, okay, yeah, that is kind of it. Does that work? Does it have one letter? Yeah, I... We don't have to take notes, we won't tissue. Oh, but please do fill out the questionnaires. Oh, and the evaluations. The evaluations, I mean, because it really helps keep the program going and frankly, I think it's kind of unethical for me to fill those out for you. I'm kind of going to write a screen for that, too. Anyway, talking about the... When I was doing research for the forts, I think you couldn't help but come across stories about the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail and the California Trail and the Oberlin Trail. You know, they all came by the forts. The forts were built for the protection of those, and in the course of doing that, you start to pick up on the stories and one of the things I thought was kind of fascinating is that in different ways, people could meet in early demise in trying to get across Nebraska. And that's what led to the talk today. Before I really get into that, though, I'll kind of set the stage in what was happening in America at the time and what was causing all this to happen. This is a map of the United States in 1845. And from 45 to 50, it's really a semi-decade in the United States' history. Tremendous change taking place across the country that had an impact on what I'll talk about today. Essentially, the United States ended right about the Mississippi River line about the 50-yard line of the country. Yeah, the end of the road was Missouri. We're unorganized out here in Nebraska and still, to some extent, I guess. That's a good thing. But four major events took place over the next five years that had a tremendous impact on them in creating the transit. For one thing, the United States and the United Kingdom resolved their disputes over the Oregon territory and that opened up that section of the country for settlement. That started bringing immigrants through what's now Nebraska. We went to war with Mexico and came out on the top side of that and that opened up the entire southwest portion of the United States for settlement. The Mormons were making their immigration out to the Great Salt Lake. That brought people through our part of the country. And then finally, in 1849, Gold was discovered in California and that brought a tremendous number of people passing through the area. It really was incredible what we were seeing happening in the United States at that time. And I'll give you an example, just by the sheer numbers alone, four and five had estimated 5,000 people across the Great Clients to get out west. Five years later, an estimated 55,000 were coming through the central part of the United States. In fact, from 1840 to 1866, an estimated two and a half million people crossed to get from one side of the country to the other. And this is something that had never, ever been seen in the history of the world where you would have that many people coming for peaceful reasons. When people are moving by the thousands and then the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, it's usually caused by war or disease or pestilence, something like that, driving them away. These are people that were coming on their own free will and volition, looking for free land or instant wealth and freedom of religion. It was truly the Great Migration which was punctuated with great tragedy. An untold number of people actually died in trying to get from one part of the country to the other from the country back then. Very many times unexpectedly, they were unprepared for what they found out here or what was waiting for them. And wills were constantly being created, willowers, orphans. They tell stories about a young man who lost his wife and was left with four kids and usually had to knock them out to other families at that point. There's another story about a young woman who had five children, the youngest of which was six months old. And what do you do at that point when you're halfway across the country and you've already sold your possessions in your home, back home, where you came from and then at that point, what do you do? This is a map that's showing the Oregon Trail back then. This shows where Nebraska is, but an estimated 20,000 people died in the course of the Oregon Trail in trying to get from the Missouri River to the Wellanette Valley. In terms of percentages, that's one out of every 17 that met an early demise. We've got at least 34 in this room, so two of us would be gone. It doesn't even worse for the Mormons where they saw at least one out of every 10 perished in trying to get from usually Iowa or Missouri to the Great Salt Lake. So to kind of raise the question, what was causing this? What was causing this tremendous amount of loss of life? Because with 20,000 people and the extent of Nebraska passes through Nebraska, the extent of what they found disaster in Nebraska, I'd have to imagine at least a fourth of them died in trying to get across the state. That's why it's sometimes called interstate 80 of trail of death. You don't realize it when you're passing here. But there's an average of about 22 unknown burials for every mile they can travel in the industry. Of course people were buried where they died generally, and you know the Platte River Valley is without a doubt Nebraska's largest and longest cemetery. Just a tremendous number of people are perished here and of course there are graves lost for history, highways going over them, planted fields, homes, everything. So it's just incredible what it actually happened in this state. And of course that begs the question well what happened, why were they dying in these numbers? By far, the greatest cause of death in crossing Nebraska was by accident. If these people were leaving Westport or St. Joe or Nebraska City or Florence today, OSHA would never allow them to leave. These things were disaster way up to happen. Just to snap a finger, you were gone because of what had happened out here on the Great Plains and tried to get through this thing. And out of the accidents, by far the greatest cause of accidental death was by accidental shooting. I chose this picture because it shows the most dance in it, but people, when they came on West, they didn't bring any gun. They brought guns. They brought shotguns, rifles, pistols, revolvers, almost just anything they could get their hands on because they were coming into a strange land. They knew they were going to need firearms for putting meat on the table or on the buttboard or whatever it might be. Of course they knew they were going into Indian territory and there was a lot of uncertainty but I was waiting for them for protection. And I think people just wanted to have guns and it was a great time for that because Samuel Culp was going into his mass production at this point. Other manufacturers were and guns were being turned out very rapidly and very cheaply. It was very affordable for people to buy and own guns. Usually when they had guns it was passed down to relatives or ancestors that might have been in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812. But this made it possible for them to buy their own gun, not use grandfathers gun. The thing about it, a lot of these weapons didn't have the safety features that we have today and they didn't have the mandatory safety training that we were required to have. And so they would put them in the most unbelievable places. These things would have a hair trigger going on. Stick them in a pocket, just slide them on the buttboard and have them hanging on a nail or whatever. And so they were constantly discharges of guns going on because the trails were bouncing along. One journal keeper wrote the never-grant died in their Scots book. His jaw was shot away when a loaded pistol fired from his back. And they were killing themselves, they were killing family members, they were killing people in the next widening train. There are countless tombstones along the trails where the inscription read, I was at the name of the day of death, shot himself accidentally. It just, it was happening constantly because of the gunfire going off on the plains here. Second most leading cause of accidental death was accidental drowning. You know, when we cross Nebraska today we don't think anything about crossing the creeks of streams because we've got fantastic bridges. You know, even when we cross the Platte River, if we were riding shotgun and happened to be reading something we may not even realize that we crossed the Platte. But of course back then, crossing even the smallest stream was a major undertaking and one that you always stopped to say a prayer for before you went across. Very uncertain where the river crossings. You usually had to cock up the wagon to keep water from seeping in. And if the water was fairly high there was always a great risk that it would actually turn over the wagon, spilling you and your family and your belongings instead of going down the river. And some family members were not prepared. People, when they came to major streams like the Little Blue or the Kansas or the South Platte or the Laramie rivers they would sometimes go hundreds of miles out of the way to find a suitable crossing. And you want to get there at the right time for that too. There's one story about an immigrant who had been riding all day with his wagon with his family and just exhausted by the end of the day. They came to the stream and there was some debate whether they should cross it or not and they were just too exhausted they decided to make camp for the night. The following morning the river stream had risen another four feet and making it impossible for them to cross. They had to wait another two weeks before it finally lowered enough that they could cross the river. And of course you could take a ferry if a ferry was available but of course these were very very expensive to get your wagons across. They had to make money for themselves so they did charge a healthy fee and getting across the stream but but even these could spill sometimes. It was just a really kind of nippy situation and the rivers were just not kind to them. You could also get crushed by a wagon. Of course these are huge vehicles conistogues, prairie schooners and starting out initially when they were coming through Kansas and Nebraska people had a good number of their wagons so that just added to the weight of the wagons. And it was perhaps most unfortunate to the children of the families that were crossing here. Of course they got wagons being led by Pope by Loxon and Mules. They would lurch when you took off and came to a sudden stop that would throw kids off the wagons and sometimes they would also even run between the wheels of the wagons and that made it very possible for the kids to be crushed by it. If they were fortunate enough and the wagons were light enough they might escape with a broken bone or a broken arm or leg or some serious bruising but usually they were mangled horribly and kind of prayed that they died quickly but usually they did very, very painful. Sometimes the families would hold up and wait for somebody that had medical training that could set a broken arm or leg if they got caught in the wagon wheels or men with tail coats or coat nails getting caught up in that. That was usually due to fatigue because you know, thinking about crossing a great place, you're bouncing along and you've got the sun beating down on you and dust being picked up and you just get plain worn out by riding in a covered wagon for the day and you know people are usually falling asleep at the wheel or at the reins and taking this fill into the wagon just a horrible, horrible incident. If you did break an arm or leg if there wasn't anybody there that could set it if they could tolerate it, it would be long enough to bounce into Fort Carney or Fort Lavery that's where you could get the medical attention otherwise you might have to sit by the side of the road and just wait for the next person that came along that did have medical training and could set that for you. It just was a horrible, horrible situation to be in Second most leading cause of death was by disease and these were some of the many diseases that could mean fatality back then. Of course, we don't think about diaphragm rabies, you know, hydrophobia, mumps tuberculosis, carl fever, measles today we don't even think about these things but these are all very, very deadly diseases back then. The ironic thing about it was that a lot of these people came from the east coast of large cities and they were thinking by getting out to the great plains they would have fresh, clean air clean water and they'd leave all the filthy air of the cities behind them. Well, people didn't realize back then but the disease is transmitted by bacteria, viruses, germs, they have no concept of germs back then and when you're traveling in as large as these wider transworlds with hundreds of people in there you have that many people in close confines and even if you have clean air there's still an opportunity for disease to spread very, very rapidly. By far the greatest killer in Great Plains in 1867 the year Nebraska became the state was cholera. This is a drawing out of the hold of Missouri River Steamboat all the people in the hold are suffering from cholera, men, women, and children I don't have a drawing of what it looked like they were suffering on the Great Plains but probably because what's a very strong disease to draw on. You know we hear about cholera today it usually follows an earthquake or a hurricane and an undeveloped part of the world of course this was the undeveloped part of America at the time and cholera involves the rapid loss of fluids at both ends of the body there's extreme vomiting diarrhea and also accompanied by horrible cramping and extremely high fever and very, very swift acting you could feel fine in the morning be completely incapacitated by the afternoon and by the evening if you were still conscious you might see your friends digging your own grave that's how fast it struck. This is a hand belt for remedies for cholera and these remedies usually didn't work. The best treatment for cholera is the replacement of those fluids just as swiftly as possible by fresh clean water and immigrants actually were notoriously filthy people. They would often bathe in and drink wastewater not knowing what's swimming around in it actually and actually just made their situation worse by doing that just a horrible, horrible end. The next greatest cause of death and this is particularly bad for the plains Indians with smallpox smallpox we don't think much about today we've all got our little inoculations from our children and it's officially been eradicated from the world by the United Nations reports but back then it was a very real very feared disease I don't know if any of you have ever seen smallpox before but this is one more shocking cause I have but this is what smallpox looks like this is a small Indian child and it's horrible disfiguring pustules across the entirety of the body it's accompanied by a very painful also with a very high fever if you are able to survive a smallpox of course left with horrible scars for the rest of your life there's the story of the Mandan chief two bears he was a great friend of the whites that were coming in and it was all for trading and accommodation until smallpox in his family he knew that the white settlers had brought this to and wiped out his family completely he contracted it himself and survived it and he didn't feel favored for that in fact he said they didn't need to bother to bury him when he died because he was so horrible looking that even the wolves wouldn't eat him and all of the diseases were like that by far even more than the Indian was the greatest threat to the Indian tribes the great times was the population by disease 1800 when the United States first started having contact with the Indians there were an estimated 600,000 Indians by the end of the century was down to 250,000 largely caused by disease this had a number of detrimental effects in relations between whites and Indians for one thing the white got a great number of the population the kind of numbers that they needed to resist the white settlement that was coming in it was also very hard on the tribal leaders the elderly people of the tribes and the tribes relied on these elderly for their experience to get the true situation like this and it created a great amount of distrust between the Indian tribes and the white people of course the Indians knew that the whites had brought these diseases to them and distressed them forever and the white population saw this as another example of an inferior race that was destined to be replaced by a superior race so that just exacerbated the situation through disease other causes of death of the plant of course there was always a great fear about animals they were seeing animals that they had never seen before immense buffalo herds wolves lions rattlesnakes just all kinds of strange creatures that were new to them and of course there was a fear that these animals could read death they actually really did if they were killed by a buffalo there's usually some foolhardy hunter that got too close to a buffalo to shoot and miss the shot and took the horns instead if you were going to be killed by an animal on the Great Plains it was likely because of animals that you had brought yourself horse herds, cattle herds you got into a stampede trying to control it there's a good chance that you might be crushed by those if you got kicked on the head by a mule or something like that or if your horse stopped, startled, enrolled and crushed you underneath that was by far the greatest risk of being killed by animals on the Great Plains nature was a very very very fear this is a drawing of a man trying to control his horse team in the wagon with a prairie storm approaching people were seeing things that they had never seen of nature before in coming to Nebraska think about it of course they didn't have storm shelters or anything like that the wide open spaces with no buildings nothing to block the horizon really not a lot of trees needed they were seeing things that were caused by where we are in the country today of course we got the warm up grass from the gulf and the cold winds coming down from Canada and the high winds coming across the Rocky Mountains and it just creates a perfect kind of storm calder here if you're out of the plains and you start to see clouds boiling up on the horizon getting larger and larger and larger and the huge bolts of light you start to get terrified by oh no when that got brought there comes the end of times one journal keeper wrote one experience in life on the very point that it rained in hail as it doesn't know other place in the United States and one man wrote back to his mother in Indiana says you think it rains in Indiana but if you want to see a storm come to the point it was terrified of what they were seeing of course one of the bigger bigger things that shocked them was hail this is a drawing of the hail storm over the North Platte River and of course these people terrified by what they were seeing of the huge clouds and the lightning there I don't think we hold it now but Nebraska traditionally holds the record for the largest hail stones in the country you know about the size of the melon sometimes and that was the kind of things people were seeing across the great plains of course when these hail storms started they took cover underneath their widings at least the oxen teams and the wheels to take the damage hopefully they're not going to stand key after that happens when they try to get cover because of course there weren't any buildings very very few trees they would try to use pots skillets that kind of thing as cover for their heads which usually resulted in broken tunnels because of the hail stones hitting them a lot of bloody faces because of the hail storm I couldn't find any record of anybody being killed but there was one recorded miscarriage as a result of being caught in the hail storm lightning this is a tombstone out at Fort Laramie person killed by lightning at Fort Laramie Wyoming Territory May 25th 1881 this is a private Fort Laramie when Fort Laramie was closed the graves that were there were disinterred reinterred at Fort Laramie but he was one of thousands of people that were actually killed by by lightning and crossing the plains men, women, children and of course his indiscriminate and back then there were no TV towers there were no lightning rounds on top skyscrapers you were out on the plains if you were on horseback or on foot or on a wagon there were no trees about you might be the largest target or the highest target around and you took the lightning bolts and there were many many instances of tombstones along the trail with the same inspiration killed by lightning flooding of course when you camp tonight you want to be alongside the stream because you need the water for cooking and cleaning and that sort of thing this is a photograph of George Custer and his wife Libby camped on Big Creek in Kansas this was one of Custer's military camps and fortunately for him he was off on a campaign on this next incident happened but before he left on campaign he made sure that Libby was on the highest ground around of course in Kansas there's not a lot of high ground she got on a nice little burn near the creek unfortunately for her and the rest of the camp there had been a big storm further upstream from her camp on Big Creek the storm the wash out from the storm came down to the creek during the night and rose 7 feet within 3 hours of course this is nighttime with a moonless night and they didn't hear any storm coming until finally woke them up just about 4 o'clock in the morning and of course looking out her tent door tent flap between flashes of lightning seeing soldiers being washed down the creek 6 soldiers were killed by the flooding here and of course she being on a higher ground to survive that but it was just a tremendous thing and that's what happened with the streams out here part of the year they cover a very small amount of water if you get one of those flash floods it just wipes out everything there and that caught a lot of the immigrants off guard as well especially those that of course it can't close to the stream then winter this is a drawing of the Mormon trail a hand car train getting caught by a blizzard out in Wyoming in October of course we've all lived long enough in Nebraska we've seen blizzards in April we've seen blizzards in October we've even seen snow sometimes as late as June and as early as September and that was one of the things about being on the Great Plains you never knew what you would get something like this and these folks these poor folks were caught off guard one German keeper had written each day the weather got colder and many were frostbite I'm losing fingers, toes are ears 15 people were buried 13 of them frozen to death no shelter for this the only thing you can do is to keep moving it just had to have been excruciating like horrible it just it's just impossible to contemplate something like that and you didn't even have to be on the trail to be the victim of winter as well this is a painting of winter quarters what's now Florence, Nebraska the north part of Omaha the other side of the Missouri River there and you can see all the cabins scattered across the valley there even if you have a roof over your head you are still subject to the horrible cold and sometimes wetness of winter but they were suffering from malnutrition and disease as well and that's to made it 360 Mormons died in the course of being camped out here in the north part of Omaha and that at least has something I wanted to tell you all about as well as burial on the plains and how people's attitudes changed over the course of time as they went further down the trail when they left Westport and the first death started to occur it was kind of treated typically as it would have been treated back home the train was held up for services proper burial site was found coffin was secured and services were held by the time they were getting into Nebraska attitudes were really starting to change about that of course they knew they only had limited amount of time to get there to where they were going before the weather really started to turn poorly so the trains were not holding up for one death most of them would keep going so that left the family to provide wood was starting to become scarce so they weren't building coffins of course with a time frame involved the graves weren't being dug as deeply the services weren't as long people in there at this point usually wrapped up in a family quilt or blankets or something like that and buried in a shallow grave and attitudes really started to change about that too people originally started out great sorrow for what had happened then there became almost indifference to it and then finally almost became almost humorous for some that one general keeper had written about some immigrants who had found an exposed human skull and were using it for target practice that's how different they were to death at that point just truly truly tragic and that's what led to the popularity of the song and the verse it matters not I've been told where the body lies when the heart grows cold in grand or grand this wish to be o' bearing the knot in the lone prairie for many people fate almost worse than death was having to be buried out on the prairie because there wouldn't be any family member to take care of you there was always a great fear of Indians marauding your graves which was very real until Indians realized that a lot of people were dying of color so the body's alone at that point but there was also wolves and coyotes who would naturally dig up graves and so you just prayed if you were going to die you made it to Oregon or to Salt Lake City where you could be with your family and be had your grave taken care of at that point because you didn't want to be by yourself out of the prairie back to causes of death Indian attack initially when the immigrants started coming through the Indians kind of kept their hands off they were more curious than anything they would just kind of watch the trains passing through as they grew bolder they started to approach the wagon trains and you know bartering for passage coffee, sugar, bacon clothing that sort of thing so the kind of acting as pole collectors that started to change greatly in the 1860s when the civil war broke out and the regular troops that were on the planes got sent back east to fight in the wars that made it possible for the Indian tribes to start counterattacking the trains coming through of course the buffalo had been driven away by this point the whites were coming in greater and greater numbers our treaties had been broken and the plains Indian realized this was their last chance to get back what had been theirs so attacks started coming fairly frequently on the plains, especially Nebraska in 1864 and 65 in fact the Ply River valley outside of the civil war states was probably the most dangerous and deadly area in the country at that point particularly subject to attack were shippers they were carrying a good number of the goods that the plains Indians wanted and they traveled in smaller numbers the wagon trains painted to travel in large groups in fact the United States wouldn't allow wagons to pass unless they had at least 100 in the train because Indians weren't going to attack large numbers of wagons and I told you they all had practically to the rafters with guns so they were going to stay away from them so the shippers generally got the worst of the attacks this is a painting which likely never happened of course this is the kind of thing that we remember from our childhood seeing in movies or TV shows Indians did not attack forts it happened a couple of times it didn't happen where they had stock-cated walls around it Indians didn't like to attack when there were lots of people with lots of guns and for the most part the forts of the time didn't have these stock-cated walls there were only about two or three incidences of that would be such a precious commodity you weren't going to waste time putting stock-cated walls out especially if you could see the Indians coming from miles away this kind of thing didn't happen when Indians were attacking soldiers it was usually because they were able to catch them off guard this is a painting of the so-called Fetterman Massacre in Wyoming what had happened here was a small group of Indians were taunting the soldiers in Fort Filt Carney they sent out a party of about 80 soldiers headed by Captain William Fetterman to pursue these Indians they went over the ridge and were met by another 2,000 Sue Cheyenne and Arapahoe so 2,000 against 80 you're not going to have any survivors that's what had happened with the Fetterman Massacre if they were going to be killing soldiers it usually involved catching much smaller groups than 80 off guard the next photograph here is by far the most shocking thing you'll see here today but this is Sergeant William Williams on the set of the cavalry who got separated from his group in Kansas and I'm sure he didn't live too long because they were very much into torturing these soldiers if they were able to catch them they know from the Indians from the arrows the felting on that came from probably 6 different tribes involved here and you can tell that from the cuts I mean the Sue made cuts usually with the chest something like that the Cheyenne would make slashes on the thighs Arapahoe would cut off nose tips that kind of thing so they each let calling cards on it's kind of like the Kidder Massacre which happened up in Northwest Kansas when George Custer came across those men had been tortured for a great deal of time fire, everything just you couldn't even recognize the bodies really by the time they were found and that leads into the real exciting part of the show Massacre Massacre was a term that got used very very frequently in the popular newspapers of the day probably overused but there were examples where you could definitely say this was a massacre that happened here and the kind of ironic thing about it is it was very kind of an equal opportunity crime I mean Indians were massacring whites whites were massacring Indians Indians were massacring Indians and whites were massacring whites and that's kind of what you had in the great times this was a large area they didn't have radio television communication which kind of binds everybody together and makes sure they're all on the same page these are people who came from very different cultures very different beliefs very different experiences and sometimes the situation got so bad that massacres were there I'll start with the Dakota uprising in Minnesota what had happened here again with the treaties being broken for the Sioux that were in the state they were supposed to have been getting annuities which included food in 1862 bills weren't coming through a lot of bureaucratic hijinks going on and unfortunately for the Sioux they were also going through a famine at the time and that leads of course to some entubilities making a small attack at kind of a remote homestead farmstead out in the country and erupted across the entire state before it was over 800 white settlers were killed during the Dakota uprising this is a painting of the attack on the village of New Olm it was an attack twice there an untold number of Indians were killed in the uprising eventually the federal troops to Minnesota weren't able to reestablish control which ultimately ended with 300 Indians being sentenced to hang President Lincoln commuted that down to 38 just those that were proven to have been burners and rapists during the uprising and 38 were executed in Mankino, Kansas San Creek two years later in Colorado was kind of a reversal of that the third Colorado cavalry out of Denver was hired on a three month period for the control of the attacks that had been happening in Colorado they had not seen any action during most of this period and were starting to be called a bloodless third as a joke by the residents of the territory unfortunately for the Cheyenne village the third Colorado found them on the San Creek and even though this was a peaceful village you can see the American flag there even though this was a peaceful village they began an attack on it the village sent out a small girl waving a white flag to indicate that they were peaceful she was immediately shot and about 38 were killed about 100 men and children excuse me about 100 women and children were killed in the attack and it was just brutal by the trial they started killing indiscriminately killing children the bodies of the women were molested hacked out of parts cut off as souvenirs for the troops they were called the bloody third after that and unfortunately their term had expired before any of them were able to be brought to trial for this including the commander is just one of the outrageous incidences of American history and the thing about it is they may have thought they were doing a good deed but by this attack on this peaceful village it just inflamed the plains for the next seven years of course work gets around the left head it's done by the blue coast and attacks were coming very, very frequently on the great plains because of that nobody forgot among the Indian treasured happiness Massacre Canyon this is a Nebraska site what happened here in 1873 was a group of punnies from their reservation in central Nebraska were hunting buffalo in southwest part of the state and this is still Nebraska was a state for five, six years at this point this part of the state had not been settled yet but they found and heard a buffalo were doing a buffalo hunt in the canyon here and in a horrible bureaucratic mixup the United States was also allowing the Sioux to hunt them in the same area at the same time the Sioux and the punnies were lifelong enemies and for the 350 punnies that were discovered by the 1000 Sioux because they came over for the Sioux it was kind of like Christmas morning they just said here's our enemies let's go to town and the attack just ruthless just absolutely indiscriminately killing not only men but of course on the hunting front there was a large number of elderly and women and children that came along to help with the work as well this is a true decimation there was a tenth of the tribe that were lost here finally rescued by the fifth cavalry out of Fortman person who were on patrol in the area and were able to drive off the Sioux but this is the last draw for the punnies in Nebraska as a result of this they gave up the reservation of the state and moved to it in territory what's now Oklahoma let's down by Trenton yeah I've got another photograph that shows you what's there today too then finally the mountain meadows massacre this is where you get into a situation where even though the people are the same race and speak the same language and supposedly share many of the same values they can still go horribly alive what happened here in 1857 a large country from Arkansas was moving out to California and they were fairly well supplied had all the cattle they needed but even in the course of traveling across the country you still make trades along the way to survive and get the things that you need they were passing through Utah territory and were expecting to make a lot of trades and they were training cattle for fresh fruits and vegetables that sort of thing unfortunately for them at that time that the United States was strongly contemplating going to war with the Mormons out of Utah Utah was the residents the Mormons there were still continuing their polygamous ways there was a lot of mistrust and hatred for her around the United States for that some other things had exacerbated the situation and there's actually planning to move troops from the United States into Utah to suppress the Mormons that had to put in their own federal government to run the territory of course this kind of thing you know here seeing innuendo and tails and everything that starts building up in the territory and for some of the leaders that was the opportunity to fortify their position and really get people fired up about anybody coming into the Utah territory and that was unfortunately for the Phantom Party when they came through Utah they got to Salt Lake City and found it was pretty much boarded up nobody was going to speak with them trade with them or anything because there was always a great fear of excommunication if you did help anybody that was passing through so they did they barely eked it out through the territory and as soon as they get out of Utah then they can start doing the trades and surviving and getting through unfortunately before they got out they were attacked by what initially appeared to be Paiute Indians but soon came to the realization that these were Mormon extremists that were attacking them these were people that were not going to allow them to pass through any means and they held them off for quite a few days until finally one of the leaders of the Mormon extremists that verified themselves came out promised that he knew these people that he would drive them away but the people would have to leave their belongings behind lose their guns and finally they agreed just get us out of here they were going to peacefully escort them from their wagons and out of the territory about a mile from where they had left their wagons extremists up in the hell surrounding them opened fire and killed everybody over the age of nine men, women and children execution style killings just indescripted he was anybody under nine would not remember this the children were going to be adopted into families and hopefully just grow up nobody would ever hear a word about this but of course word did spread especially even among the Mormon community a lot of people when they heard what had happened here immediately left the church left the territory went back to where they had come from they were able to suppress us for a number of years and it was finally no trials were actually set for one person John Lee the person who had convinced the people to lay down their arms he was eventually executed this is more than 20 years after the incident happened he was the only one ever punished for that and it's still of course not discussed very much there's an excellent book called American Mask which tells the story it's just incredible something that would happen like that in the United States at the time just astounding and then in closing I'm going to do a little in-memoriam of what you can find along the trail today for those who did pass on starting in Omaha of course in Florence there's the Mormon Pioneer cemetery this is actually on the burial ground for the winter quarters and there are only about four or five graves that are actually identified most of the graves are long long gone so the people that died in winter quarters are commemorated in this large monument to their experience there this photograph actually took just two days ago this is kind of neat I wanted to see this for quite some time but this is the Susan Hale grave and you see I've got a spelled Hale with an E there that's what the historic factor says under grave it's spelled without an E and there's another spelling H-A-L-E so there's some mystery and confusion involved in this but Susan Hale was a young woman 34 died in 1852 and at the time it was reported she had died by drinking from a well that had been poisoned by angels and it's not known if that's true or not the historical fact that's at the grave now says it's from cholera so she died within an hour after drinking from a well but the tombstone there that went up so that she was killed by drinking poison from a well poisoned by angels this is not the original tombstone the word is the legend is that her distraught husband this is just Northwestern pasting her distraught husband sent his family on board and returned to St. Joe and then some people say he went to Omaha but returned to St. Joe and got a headstone for his wife and brought it back through a wheelbarrow pushed it all the way back from West Park Missouri with the field and directed it and of course that became kind of a landmark for those passing along on the Oregon Trail and unfortunately the immigrants coming through said oh this is so touching I got to be a souvenir of this I'm going to chip off a little piece until the first tombstone was completely gone I can't remember if there was a second one put up this might be the second or third tombstone right there further along the trails for the first and national cemetery think about the national cemetery they live on when the forts don't and as forts closed up around the great plains the soldiers that were buried there their bodies were disinterred and reinterred at the fort at first so there's about 20 different forts represented here and it takes some time to look around among the tombstones especially in the older section of the cemetery because they've got very interesting details you know I'm not just killed by lightning but this person was assassin and he put in the burger and all kinds of interesting little early devices Rachel Patterson I don't know if any of you may have may have visited this already but Rachel Patterson was a very young woman 18 18 years old had just been married two months married and had sold off her possession with her husband came out west died of cholera at the Ash Hollow site and very very tragic and she's one of the first burials here this is her original tombstone which is kind of protected with the historical placard the organ trail marker and both historical placards tells the entire story of her there what year was it? this was in I believe this was in was in 52 I think you know I just replaced the slide this morning and I had a photograph of this I could have told you on the incident but I always hold the whole ground here but I believe that it's been no way because I remember the fort was back when I was 1847 the fort was back then yeah they had chiseled into the stone the fort was the one you didn't have to be a college professor and then Rebecca she was with the Mormon trail and she was she died in I think she was one that died in 52 but when she had died she had also died of cholera it's kind of interesting that the three graves in Nebraska all three died of cholera I don't have any instances of kind of immigrant males it was crazy to find that anyway when she had died her grave was marked by two semi-rims from a wagon wheel the iron rims and they used that to mark the grave when the Burlington Railroad came through here and started laying down track they found that grave with the two iron rims across it and this is where the track originally stood they were planned to come right through there but when they found the grave because it was identified the shift of the track over to the side so it didn't travel most graves tracked this one right over there's no way to know and eventually of course the Burlington did raise the track so there's just a small section of it here at the market but of course there's a state historical marker the grave is very well marked a little historical display and everything this is just right outside you can see all the background there just to the south of Garin and then finally this is the Massacre Canyon site today there's a nice little wayside museum in the gift shop Trenton Chamber of Commerce and the marker here the actual Massacre Canyon is back over this hill here this granite object used to be in the old section of the highway which is over here but when the highway got moved they picked up everything including that can't miss a tourist opportunity so gonna make it convenient for people really neat little site where's Trenton? it's in the southwest corner of the state it's about 20 miles west of McCook along Highway 34 and that's the tale of to live and die on the plains I told you some pretty pretty gruesome stories I think you knew what you were in before though but I hate to leave on a less than positive note because I mentioned that 1 out of 17 from the Oregon Trail only died 1 out of 10 from the Oregon from the Mormon Trail well that meant 16 out of 17 made it 9 out of 10 on the Mormon Trail but in either event really, really incredible incredible folks I'm willing to give up everything for a chance of uncertainty you did not know what you were going to find on the Great Plains they were usually shocked by what they did find but these are really incredible people whether they lived or died I'm really impressed and proud of what they experienced here in Nebraska as Nebraska history pretty proud of that as fellow Nebraska history nuts, I hope you are too thank you very, very much for any questions I think we might be happy to...yes sir? for the later, are there much game left at all on the trails then? not a lot, yeah when the trails really started filling up the buffalo of course was being driven away and you had to go quite a few miles off the trail to find any game at any time I had an ancestor, he was my great-great-grandfather his name was Altheas and Napoleon Barnes I don't know you can tell his dad was inspired by it he was a hunter for two wagon trains and I know that from his newspaper and I'd love to know which time and how far he went two wagon trains, that's a good ride I imagine his work was really cut out for you how do you die? no, I'm kidding I think he got this way too old he went two wagon trains we were pretty tough on the bird is there evidence of what they found along the waste quarries flora, like plants and vegetation I know what like the Susan Hale bridge I know just before she had diversed three of their oxen had been lost from eating poisonous weed so I knew they figured out really quickly what was good to eat what was not good to eat but to tell you, I haven't looked into that a lot good question I don't know, I do know that there are weeds that could kill you though I just wondered if they found berries other other other ways to survive besides the meat you know I haven't really looked into that but I can see easily where people went into the country well, I think that back there was one officer when Chester came into Nebraska the first time why put the clicker was his name a lot of times if you're alcoholic keeping lead to some kind of delirium and he actually shot himself in a drunken delirium I think they called but he just went so much when he was drinking and he actually killed himself I don't think because he was in the Nebraska any other questions when they were instructing the highways across the rest, did they find these graves going across to the interstate or highway 30 I'm sure they'll add to that I haven't looked into in the 50s and 60s I'm starting to build the interstate I certainly did a lot of times I think they probably think they were in being grazed thinking of whiteberries as well they really weren't buried in that really and so if animals just nature itself had exposed the graves I'm sure they had them when they were found you know I kind of wonder sometimes if they would even bother to say anything yeah yeah yeah are you researching something now researching now the next book comes out in December if you like I've got a preview of the next one, a little bit of that sure the next book is called The Great Plains Guide to Pester it's going to be the first travel guide to all of the spots that Pester visited on The Great Plains I was a little apprehensive about Nebraska because I thought well there's not going to be a lot of things that he did in Nebraska but I was astounded when I started thinking everybody knows about Custer's last stamp Custer's first stamp was in Nebraska his very first battle with Indians was in Nebraska and of course this is where he did the Great Buffalo Hunt with Grand Duke Alexis and Phil Sheridan and the Buffalo Hill County he spent maybe about a month in the state in two visits but the things that he did especially in the tour that he took of Omaha in 1872 it's kind of a Chamber of Commerce tour but there's really exciting things happening in the city back then and he went to see them this is one of the things that I had to do was to hike up the mountain in Indian Cara George Custer was right there and I had to walk in his footsteps for the book because I want to go where Custer went I want to show people where Custer went so I got to climb this mountain and that was Indian Cara which is located as part of the Black Hills but it's actually outside of the South Dakota part the main part, it's in Wyoming and of course George Custer came down here on the 7th of February in 1874 they were looking for a site to build a fort but also wanted to check out the rumors of gold in the Black Hills so they came down to Fort Abraham Lincoln and passed this way and decided to climb Indian Cara because that came to that as a conservation point for the Black Hills they were looking for an entrance to the Black Hills it's always legendary but it was kind of a fortress there wasn't an easily recognizable passage into the Black Hills so he went to get the high ground to try to find that and of course I wanted to see the site as well I'm going to start out this is my buddy Randy when I go on my road trips if I'm going to like a state park or a historic festival I bring my wife if I'm going out for research or to take photographs I go by myself usually if I'm going to some place where I might break a leg that's the right key that's what I'm talking about but the thing about Indian Cara it's publicly held as part of the Forest Service but all of the land surrounding it is privately held it's all private ranches there so you have to check in with the Forest Service office and they'll tip you off about who's okay with you parking on their land and so if you make the hike so we found a very nice couple willing to help us and this is at the start of our hike and he's suggesting to where our approach is going to be we're going to go up this grassy slope and get up on the thing here the thing I tell you about Indian Cara the Indians describe it as a mountain within a mountain it's part of the big three mountains that the Indians held holy Devil's Tower Bear Butte and the Black Hills and the Indian Cara but it's described as a mountain within a mountain because the outside rim is kind of horseshoe shaped and then you got to get up on that rim and inside that is the peak for the mountain itself so it's really kind of tricky and I'll show you that a bit but I thought this would be the easiest part of the hike here I got about right here I'm dying here what's he pointing at I mean you know it's just a nice grass you're going at least to the 30 degree angle there and the grass is fairly heavy and it was fairly wet that morning too you can't even see the top of Indian Cara from the fog there and for a flat lander I mean this is probably 1,000 elevation right here and we're going to climb up to 6600 elevation so I was already starting to get a little excited but I said ok I'll make it there so we made up this way and got made the hike and this is Randy and his expeditionary pose we're on the horseshoe right here and there's the peak of Indian Cara and what we have to do we have to walk around the horseshoe and try to find the saddle that would get us over to the peak I gotta tell you with the trees here you can't see anything really the trees are very thick and then all along the top of the rim here this is the top of the horseshoe you've got this volcanic rock it's all sharp and there's plenty of it there's no really stable trail there's no signs or anything it's kind of weird though we couldn't see any animals either this is kind of like a dead smoke there was just really kind of crumpled but somewhere off to the right there we didn't really see that it's the only thing we used to get very known so we just kept following the horseshoe and kept looking to the outside for reference points that we had seen when we were outside of that and then finally here's where we had walked all along this line and then we finally found the saddle we've gone too far and realized that we weren't going to be impressed so we got back and found a little valley there and started making the final piece of rocks that's the undeadly saddle created by the same time and this is preparing for our final assault with the ravens going down into the little valley there and then we got to make the climate similar rocks to this and get to the top you know, George Custer came up here with five other guys and a horse the SPCA would know I cannot see how a horse could possibly get up this thing how long did that keep you? it took us two and a half hours to get to the summit really? that's amazing it seemed like it you know, in the whole course of things there's been scenes for that but okay, here's me at the top and this is what I'm looking for underneath the rocks here I'm pulling away the rocks they didn't use to cover it up with rocks but people started to do that and I'm glad they had it where in 74 George Custer had had his name carved in and you can't see it too well so I used some drinking water to outline the letters that's the 74 G. Custer and he either had the engineer for the 7th Cavalry or some other gentleman he didn't carve it himself but he supervised it and the generals didn't have to do that sort of thing but he put his name into it and I said I have to see this because I'm going to have a fairly thorough travel guide travel guide I have to deal with Custer a lot and I tell you the views of them it was it was incredibly well and this wasn't a clear day if the day wasn't clear you can see Dennis Power it's about 40 miles away but you had just an outstanding view and this is the other end of the horseshoe one end of the horseshoe over here but but people hiked up there they do it fairly regularly in fact I found the Tupperware Container people put their names in and there's actually the program of a wedding party they had at least 10 people there so I hope they tip the river and very well because this is murder I would never go up there by myself because very easily you could take a spill and break it when easily and it would be a long hard climb to get back down it took us two and a half hours to get down as well you think gravity would be on your side but it's not it's just forcing you down as fast as possible because the horseshoe is at a 45 degree angle and you kind of almost have to run into trees to stop yourself did you check yourself? yeah there was so the government really hasn't done anything about that because you're more if you signed in the yeah exactly because I was doing some research before and the people were talking about how difficult it was to find that taking about an hour to find that and as soon as we got up to the top we figured out where it was just by seeing Karen the rocks up on it of course then we covered that up again and I had to raise my custer flag but it was such a I told Ray, I'm never going to do this again but I wouldn't trade anything for having to do that but yeah, I'd probably go up again but talking about self in fact I ruined my cell phone up there because the moisture in the air this is display of my phone was just so corrupted I never could get it back but that was one of the highlights of the book actually ended covering about 35 different spots from Louisiana to a little big one for the book this this is my proposal for the cover I don't know if that's what Stackpole is going to give me this is my suggestion because the last cover I thought was kind of flat I'd have liked to have seen a little more depth to it or something so I sent them this and they said we'll send us the photos and we'll see when we come up they got artists on staff and everything so they do what they want to do so well that's the preview what's next? we're waiting for it thank you