Gage County, Nebraska - Chapter 1: The Discoverers, 1918

Nothing in human history exceeds in romantic interest the discovery and settlement of the New World. The first voyage of Columbus from the shores of Spain across the unknown waters of the Atlantic ocean, which the superstition of the times invested with every sort of mystery and danger, must always appeal to the imagination as an act of superlative daring - an event of first importance in the progress and happiness of mankind - for he, by adventuring where others dared not venture, by a single act revealed to the astonished gaze of Europe the existence of new lands of wonderful beauty and promise, where none were believed to exist; and, at a blow, dispelled forever the ignorance and fear which hithertb had enslaved the mind and paralyzed the endeavor of the most favored and most intelligent portion of the globe.

Columbus set sail from the port of Palos on the 3d day of August,. 1492, with a fleet of three small vessels, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the Nina. He was accompanied by the tears and lamentations of the entire population of that small port, most of whom had relatives abroad the ships, and who, as the winding. of the shore hid the little fleet from sight, abandoned all hope of ever again seeing the adventurous mariners alive. On board those small caravels the crews themselves, as the distance from the shores of Spain daily incrrased, were seized with fear and unrest, which greatly endangered the success of the expedition. But the confident Admiral held firmly to his course and pointed the prow of his flag ship steadily toward the west. The sea was smooth, the air soft and refreshing, nature herself seemed unusually propitious toward this momentous and daring enterprise. Soon the frail vessels came within the course of the trade winds and, with a constant and favoring breeze, the little squadron made rapid headway. Occasionally the crews sighted floating weeds and other objects which seemed to indicate the near presence of land and which served to cheer their spirits and invigorate their flagging zeal. On, on, on they sailed, day and night, always toward the west. Uneventful weeks passed without sight of land, but on the night of October 11, 1492, Columbus, who was stationed on the high cabin of the Santa Maria, saw at a distance across the water a faintly gleaming, uncertain light. Few of his crew were encouraged by this sign, though Columbus himself regarded it as a certain proof of the vicinity of land. At two o'clock on the morning of the 12th day of October, 1492, the little Pinta, which from her superior sailing ability was leading the other vessels, fired a gun, the agreed signal in case any of the ships should in the night time discover certain indications of land. The. little squadron instantly lay to, eagerly awaiting the dawn. At last daylight slowly broke, and at a short distance the voyagers beheld a green and marvelously beautiful island, lying in a sapphire sea. It was San Salvador, the outpost of a newly discovered world. To their intense surprise, the Spaniards found this island densely populated by perfectly naked savages,' so kindly disposed and unsuspicious as to regard the newcomers as gods whom they were indined to worship. Accompanied by the principal persons of his expedition, Columbus, richly attired, was rowed to the shore. Falling upon their faces, the party kissed the earth and gave thanks to Almighty God. Then unfurling the banner of Spain over this patch of land, Columbus took possession in the name of his sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. A few days were spent in sailing the waters about this island, and having gathered from the natives that, toward the southwest, gold was to be found in lands of yet more surpassing beauty, Columbus, on the 24th day of October, 1492, turned his prows in that direction. On the fourth day of his voyage he beheld the noble shores of Hispaniola, now Cuba, rising out of the ocean before him. Charmed to ecstacy by the mildness of the climate, the beauty of the scenery, the gorgeous plumage of birds, the docility and intelligence of the natives, and the sunlit sea in which Cuba rests, queen of the waves, the soul of the great Admiral glowed with pride and satisfied ambition. He gave Up his days to the luxury of his surroundings and to exploring the northern coast of the island, and on the 5th day of December, 1492, having passed the eastern extremity of Cuba, he saw toward the southeast, looming out of the ocean, a new island - high and mountainous, Hayti, the most beautiful and most unfortunate of all the West Indian islands. Here, freed by the softness of the climate and the wonderful fertility of the soil, from toilsome labor, he found a native population that passed its days in indolence and repose. Having lost the Santa Maria by an accident of the sea and being deserted by the Pinta, commanded by Pinzon, Columbus now resolved to begin his homeward voyage. Departing from Hayti January 4, 1493, after a most perilous voyage, guided by the hand of Providence, on the ISth day of March following, he again cast anchor in the little harbor of Palos. He left Spain poor and unknown, he returned rich with honors, having gained the right to have his name forever first on the roll of discoverers, as well as that of those who by greatly daring, greatly achieve.

Columbus carried with him to Spain several natives of the islands, together with products of the soils of these new lands, notably tobacco, coffee, and potatoes, with fruits and spices, as evidence of his discoveries. The great and unusual honors bestowed upon him by the proudest and most powerful court of the world, with the graphic report which he was able to make to his sovereigns of his wonderful voyage and the marvelous possibilities suggested by his discoveries, electrified every portion of the globe where civilization had obtained the slightest foothold. Fired partly by religious zeal, partly by love of adventure and thirst for fame, and partly by the commercial incentive to discover and open an all-water route for trade between Europe and the East Indies, the maritime nations of western Europe joined enthusiastically in voyages of discovery to the western hemisphere.

Columbus himself continued in the great work of discovery till he had added to the memorable voyage of 1492 three others to the New World. Island after island rose out of the depths of the ocean before him. But in none of his voyages did the great discoverer touch either of the American continents. Ignorant of the vast extent of the ocean, he imagined that he had reached only the threshold of India and that he was upon the point of realizing his lifelong dream of an open, all-water i-oute to Cathay - land of jewels and spices. With feverish energy he sought the one factor which alone, as he supposed, could give value to his priceless discoveries. But gold was rare in those islands, fanned by the great trade winds, and yielding only bloom and fruitage, heaped as by magic upon the bosom of the Atlantic.

On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus came upon the large island of Trinidad, which lies ofi- the coast of South America, near the mouth of the Orinoco river. Cruising about this island, he found to his surprise that the waters of the narrow strait that separates it from the main land were sweet and fresh, and gazing westward he beheld what he conceived to be the low-lying lands of a yet larger island extending twenty leagues or more along the coast. Never dreaming that these fresh, sweet waters were those of a mighty river that drained a continent and tlie low-lying lands the eastern edge of that continent, he sailed away to Hayti to visit a colony which he had founded there on his second voyage, in 1496. From this visit he was sent to Spain a prisoner in chains, and he died at Valladolid, May 20, 1516, poor and neglected, old and broken, at sixty years of age, already robbed by Americus Vespucci, an obscure adventurer, of the honor due to his memory, of bestowing his own name on the great New World which his genius and faith had disclosed to mankind.

In a material sense, the net result of his four voyages of discovery was to add to the known portions of the earth those groups of archipelagoes in the western Atlantic which are collectively known as the West Indies, and which, sweeping in a wide curve from Florida to the mouth of the Orinoco, screen the Caribbean sea from the gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean - islands of ravishing beauty, marvelous fertility, delightful climate, teeming with the products of nature.

But who shall ever be able rightly to weigh the tremendous influence of this simple-hearted man upon the physical and mental horizon of the world? The people of all western Europe by the middle of the fifteenth century had so far emerged from the "Dark Ages" as to be measurably free from the forms of government which had characterized the feudal system, and for the first time since modern Europe had arisen from the fragments of the Roman empire its governments were in the hands of able rulers, while national policies had displaced government by individual whim or caprice. It was the age of the Renaissance and the revival of learning. The world was undergoing the process of a new birth. The foolish superstitions and practices which had prevailed for centuries under the forms and guise of religion were rapidly passing away. A universal activity and zeal for the cause of learning had aroused mankind to a sense of its needs. France, England, Spain, Portugal, were rapidly assuming the dignity and selfimportance of empire. In the very midst of this tremendous activity and of these vague longings and dreams of national aggrandizement, came Columbus home from the voyage into the unknown, with almost incredible tales of golden islands beyond the furthest rim of the western sea. The vast evolution which was rapidly bringing freedom to mankind throughout western Europe had already prepared maritime nations to a large extent for the discovery of a new world, and, as if by the intervention of Providence itself, this great event was made to serve as an outlet for their highest ambitions.

It is foreign to the aim and purpose of this history to narrate in detail the great work of discovery, exploration, and colonization of America which followed its discovery by Columbus. We know that for years Spain led the other nations in the number, extent, and value of her enterprises. In less than forty years after the death o£ the great Admiral, she had established her hold on the West Indies by right of discovery, and had grasped by the bloody hand of conquest Mexico, Central America, the isthmus of Panama, the isthmus of Darien, and the continent of South America - a domain which in natural resources rivalled continental Europe, and which for unbroken centuries poured a golden stream into her national treasury. In addition to all this, she claimed Florida by right of its discovery, on Easter Day, 1512, by the aged cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon. saihng in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, and she laid claim also to the basin of the Mississippi, on account of the discovery of that historic stream by Hernando de Soto, in 1541, and its exploration in part by him and the wandering remnant of his followers after he had sunk to rest in its mighty flood. With more or less definiteness, Spain asserted for centuries proprietary rights in the whole of North America, on account of the achievements of Columbus and those Spanish navigators who followed him.

But her rivals, and particularly England and France, were quick to perceive the tremendous possibilities involved in the possession of lands in the western hemisphere, where, at almost a single bound and at a trifling cost in money and life, national wealth, national resources, and territorial dominion might be immeasurably increased.

Thus it came about that in 1498, when Columbus, looking westward from the island of Trinidad, saw the shores of South America, Sebastian Cabot, sailing under a commission from Henry VII of England, discovered and explored the eastern portion of North America from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, thereby affording ground for England's claim to all portions of the continent of North America from the middle shore of the Atlantic ocean to the crest of the Alleghany mountains.

Francis I, King of France, early in the sixteenth century, turned his attention to discovery, exploration, and colonization in the New World. In 1524 John Varrazani, a Florentine, in the service of France, sailed from the shores of Europe with four vessels, in search of an all-water route to Asia. Directing his course nearly to the west, on the 7th of March he discovered the main land of the continent, in the latitude of Wilmington, North Carolina. He explored this coast from one hundred and fifty miles south of Wilmington to the remotest point of New England, reaching Newfoundland in the latter part of May. In July he returned to France and published an account of his wonderful voyage, which attracted wide attention, but ten years were suffered to elapse before another effort was made to repeat his experiment. Beginning with 1534, French navigators, aided by their government, flocked across the Atlantic, explored the eastern coast of the great northern continent, ciixumnavigated Newfoundland, entered the gulf of St. Lawrence and ascended the noble St. Lawrence river. They founded scores of towns, including Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), Quebec, and Montreal. French adventurers, trappers, hunters, penetrated the wilderness to the Great Lakes ; black-robed French missionaries preached the gospel over wide areas to savage tribes by lake and stream far into the interior. No fairer pages of history can be found than those which record the exploration and settlement of New France, as the French possessions in North America came to be known. From the early part of the sixteenth century to the latter part of the seventeenth century, this work went continually forward. It was closed by the rediscovery of the Mississippi river by Joliet and his companian, the heroic Jesuit missionary. Father Marqette, in 1673. and by the exploration of that mighty stream from the Illinois to its mouth by La Salle, in 1682.

The name of Robert Cavalier de La Salle will be forever spoken with respect by every man who is at all conversant with his daring and adventurous achievements. No more conspicuous name adorns the annals of colonial history in North America. Amidst the vacillating and shifting policy of Louis XIV and his ministers with respect to the French possessions in the New World, where much was promised and little done, La Salle, with the prevision of genius and great statesmanship, saw more clearly than any other man of his race that the road to empire for France lay in the lakes, rivers, savannahs, and wildernesses of North America. Not only was the prevision of empire his but he possessed also the imagination to conceive and the power and will to put into execution the plans which should have been the colonial policy of France from the first. La Salle was a Norman, bom at Rouen in 1643 ; he was educated by the Jesuits, with whom he spent ten years as a student and from whom he acquired a habit of rigorous abstraction. Abnormally reticent about himself and his work, he made few close friends and many bitter enemies. He was persistent, active, determined, and brave to a fault. In 1660 he left France for Canada. By that time the French possessions in North America had become known to the world as New France and comprised the entire basin of the St. Lawrence river, the Great Lakes region, Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and that part of Maine lying in the basin of the St. Lawrence. To the vain and licentious Louis XIV New France offered but a small and unpromising field for the display of- his glory and power and the gratification of his ambitions. It cost money to colonize, defend, and develop the distant province, and Louis was wasting his resources and exhausting the nation in desolating wars with England and the Holy Alliance. He had at last been prevailed upon to send to New France, in 1672, the ablest and most disinterestedly patriotic of all French governors. Count Louis de Frontenac, who, like La Salle, foresaw the approaching struggle for the continent between Protestant England and Catholic France, and was, like him, gifted with the prevision of empire in the New World.

On arriving in Canada, La Salle settled on an estate nine miles below Montreal, on the St. Lawrence. Here he came in contact with roving bands of Iroquois, who told him of a mighty river, far to the west, which rose in their country, flowed westward and he who followed its course for nine months, entered a wide sea. They called this river Ohio, meaning probably to include with it the Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to the gulf. La Salle pondered this important information. Like other explorers, he was imbued with the idea of discovering an all-water route to India; and he argued that the discovery of this stream might enable him to reach the Pacific, whose waves he knew in their far course broke on the distant shores of Cathay. With a few Franciscan monks, known as seminar)' priests, and some men at arms, with the aid of Frontenac, he organized an expedition to explore the region of country west of the AUeghanies, drained, as he believed, by the river described by the Iroquois. Little is known of this venture into the wilderness beyond the fact that the expedition reached the Ohio and descended its course as far at least as Louisville, Kentucky. In 1670 we hear of La Salle again wandering amongst the forests that border the Illinois and exploring the region drained by that stream, but again he stopped short of the great river.

Fort Frontenac had been erected near the outlet of Lake Ontario, on its northern shore, and here in 1678, La Salle was in command of this, the most advanced military outpost of

New France. In this environment this remarkably grave, solitary, thoughtful man ruled with absolute authority over a wide region of country. His days were spent amongst the Indians, half-breeds, traders, trappers, voyageurs, and couriers de bois (rangers of the woods), barkening to their strange tales of the wilderness and prairies, of river and lakes, Indian tribes, and the wild life of the woods and plains. Slowly, slowly, he matured the great design of uniting by a bold stroke these unknown and unexplored wilderneses to New France, thereby laying the foundation for a French empire in the New World. La Salle knew that Joliet and the black-robed priest Marquette had in 1673 rediscovered the Mississippi river under Indian guidance, by following the course of the Wisconsin, and had paddled down the great river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, leaving the question of its ultimate termination still in doubt. By some of his associates it was thought that the Mississippi flowed into the Pacific ocean, others that it discharged its waters into the Atlantic, and some that the gulf of Mexico received its mighty flood. The determination of this vital question was in La Salle's mind the first step toward empire. Resigning his command at Fort Frontenac, he applied for a commission from the king to explore the vast unknown region lying south and west of Canada and the Great Lakes, but such were the difficulties and hardships which he encountered that four years expired after receipt of his commission before he was able to undertake the great adventure. In February, 1682, with a small fleet of canoes, and accompanied by about thirty Frenchmen and a band of Indians from western Canada, La Salle descended the tranquil lUinois. His course was impeded at first by floating ice, but at Peoria lake he struck clear water, and on the 6th day of February, 1682, the small flotilla of canoes issued upon the bosom of the mighty Mississippi.

Without a moment's hesitation, the canoes were pointed with the swift current and the momentous voyage which was to detemiine the course of the Mississippi was begun. The party floated and paddled rapidly down its current, traveling only by daylight. Day by day they drifted swiftly, almost silently, to- Avard unknown destinies. Slowly the mysteries of the New World unrolled before them like a scroll. The winter passed into spring, and in the bright sunlight and drowsy atmosphere they saw the tender foliage clothe again the wilderness. They passed numerous Indian villages, some of which they visited, and where they occasionally spent the night. Not infrequently they encountered Indians in huge w^ar canoes, but, avoiding all hostile encounters, they drifted on and on toward their objective - the mouth of the Mississippi. They noted the steady trend of the river, through dense forests, swampy cane-brakes, wild-rice fields that lay along the shore, ever toward the south. Doubt finally dissolved into certainty; they knew that it led on through semi-tropical lands to the heaving billows of the gulf of Mexico. On the 6th day of April, 1682, exactly two calendar months since they had embarked on the river, they reached its delta, where its mighty flood divides into three channels. Directing D'Autray to follow the eastmost channel with some of the canoes, the Count Henry Tonty the middle channel. La Salle himself descended the western passage. Slowly paddling down these waterways, they noted soon the odor of brine in the freshening breeze and suddenly before these keeneyed voyageurs the tumbling billows of the gulf of Mexico came into view.

Proceeding along the marshy shore, La Salle picked up one after another the canoes of his party and, assembling his followers on a dry spot of land a short distance above the mouth of the river, he caused a column of wood to be made on which he inscribed the following:

Then marshaling his men at arms, amidst the fire of musketry, the shouts of "Vive le Roy" and the chanting of the Te Deum by the priests, while the Indian braves, and their squaws looked wonderingly on. La Salle planted the column in its place. Standing near it

In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and victorious prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God king of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I this ninth day of April, one thousand six hundred eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of his majesty which I hold in my hand and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken and do now take, in the name of his majesty and of his successors to the crown, possession of this country of Louisian.\, the seas, harbors, bays, ports, adjacent straits and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers within the extent of the said LouisiAN..\.

Thus the great basin of the Mississippi river came under the scepter of Louis XIV, the most dissolute monarch of Europe, and thus at the word of a single daring explorer, standing on the lonely delta of that great river, the territory of Louisiana, out of which came Nebraska, was called into existence, a territory which comprised vast and unknown regions of dense forests, rich savannahs, sunbaked plains, apparently limitless prairie, watered b)'' a thousand streams, peopled only by savage Indian tribes, the abode of buffalo and other wild denizens of the forest and plain; a territory which stretched from the pure springs of the far north whose confluent streams form the source of the mighty Father of Waters, to the hot marshy borders of the gulf of MexicO', and from the low-wooded crests of the Alleghanies on the east to the river of palms, the bold, naked peaks of the Rocky mountains and the sources of the Missouri of the west.

The New France of Robert Cavalier de La Salle and of Frontenac, comprising Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the region of the Great Lakes and the territory of Louisiana, has long since been lost to its founders, , but the memory of that glorious empire planted in the wilderness of North America, with incredible hardships and labors which only men of heroic mold could have endured, still survives to animate the souls of the thoughtful and the hearts of the daring.