Gage County, Nebraska - Chapter 7: Flora and Fauna, 1918

Grasses - Fi^owbrs - Forest and Stream - Animae Life - The Bueb'aeo - Eek - An- TEEOPE - Native Birds - Fish - Insect Liee - Grasshoppers - Efeect of Settlement

The native flora of our county, like all the southeastern portion of Nebraska, was characterized by many forms of plant life. The most casual observer could readily divide it into the flora of the prairies and the flora of 'forest and stream. The prairies were clothed with many varieties of grass as well as of plants, some of which were perennial and in their florescence beautiful. The early settlers found bottom land along the streams and other depressions stocked with the blue-stem grass, the uplands with bunch grass and other species of succulent grasses, all of which however ultimately yielded to the blue-stem as the country became settled, the uplands pastured, and the ravages of fire diminished, - - eastern Nebraska thus became clothed with this the most desirable of all our native forage plants.- This process was rapid in Gage county, so much so that within ten years after the first settlements were noade the blue-stem could be cut for hay anywhere on the prairies. Mingled with the grasses, which spread a beautiful carpet of verdure over the earth's surface, were hundreds of flowering plants whose diversity of size, color, and perfume contributed to the beauty and interest of the primitive landscape. The graceful wild rose, representatives of the lily family, buttercups, violets, mallows, primroses, goldenrods, asters, verbenas, morning-glories, and many other well known flowering species bloomed forth over the prairies in their season, - a profusion of delicate colors. In almost no other way have settlement and cultivation wrought such radical changes as in the plant life of the prairies.

The flora of the forest and stream needs but a word. Unlike that of the prairies, which was native in its origin, the larger forms of vegetation in this portion of Nebraska are wholly due to migration. In the southern part of the state the source of forest growth is readily assignable to the nearby forests along the Missouri river. The distribution of tree, vine, and shrub seeds, of all common forests growths in this latitude, has been greatly facilitated by wind, by flood,, by beak and wing, a process which has gone on from primordial times to the present moment." Shut off from germination, by the fine, compact soils of the prairies, such seeds, when transported from near by or from distant forests, have found lodgrnent and favorable conditions of g'rowth in the rich alluvial soils of the streams, thus giving rise to our forests of oak, hickory, elm, hackberry, sycamore, maple, box elder, red bud, locust, willow, cottonwood, and all the other varieties of timber growth that go to make up our groves and forests. Amongst the shrubs are the plum, chokecherry, hazel nut, prickly ash, wahoo bush, red willow, gooseberry, wintergreen, and some other varieties. Of plants and vines the most beautiful and important are the strawberry, the blackberry, raspberry, several varieties of wild grape, bitter-sweet, Virginia creeper, sarsaparilla, and other climbing vines.

stock of forest trees and forest growths by the art and skill of arboriculture, while by excluding fire and other destructive agencies it has greatly increased both the quality of our growing timber and the acreage of our forests.

The animal life of southeastern Nebraska when the white man came was varied and interesting. Nearly every form of wild life common to this latitude, whether of earth, air, or water, was represented here, and, in addition, forms which are associated mainly with wide reaches of open prairies. In vast herds, aggregating many millions, here roamed the shaggy buffalo, while the shy and lordly elk in great bands fed upon the natural meadows. Both species of the American deer were native here, and droves of beautiful antelope roamed the plains. Not long before the advent of the white man, our plains were probably also the range of the caribou, the moose, and the mountain sheep. The wild fox, the sly coyote, and his large relation, the mountain or gray wolf, the lynx, the panther, the bear, the mountain lion, and other representatives of the carnivorous tribe were all at some time no doubt native to our eastern Nebraska. The rodents were widely distributed in forest and plain ; they were the mole, the wood mouse, the ground gopher or ground squirrel, the pocket gopher, the common tree squirrel, the badger, the ground hog, while acres upon acres were included in the villages of the prairie dog. The strictly fur-bearing animals were well represented by the beaver, the otter, the mink, the muskrat, the raccoon, and the skunk. Frogs, toads, and other batracians inhabited the streams and marsh lands, while numerous varieties of snakes, the prairie rattlesnake, the common bull snake, the water moccasin, the puffing adder, and other forms of reptilian life abounded on the prairies and about the woods and streams.

Bird life was in evidence on every hand. The largest species were the wild turkey, goose, brant, crane, duck, and turkey buzzard ; The medium-sized species were the long-billed curlew in vast flocks, the golden plover, the sand piper, several species of hawks, owls, and crows ; the smaller birds and the singers, amongst others, included swallows, wrens, yellow hammers, chickadees, peewees, bluejays, meadow larks, thrush, bluebird, blackbird, and many other prairie, bush, meadow, and grass species of song and plumage birds. The game and food birds aside from water fowl were wild turkeys in occasional flocks, the quail, and millions upon millions of grouse, or prairie chickens as they were commonly called.

The clear waters of the creeks and rivers were well stocked with all varieties of fish common to this portion of North America. In the smaller streams and in the deep holes in large ravines which were fed in part by springs, were found bullheads, perch, chubs, cat, red-horse, and sunfish. In the rivers and larger streams were the buffalo, pike, pickerel, gar-pike, suckers, croppies, and cat fish. In Gage county in the early days as at the present time, the Big Blue river was the one reliable source of the fish supply. In this respect it was a very notable stream, as fish abounded in it and were easily taken, and before the wash from cultivated lands had changed their character its waters were clear, sparkling, beautiful as a' mountain stream - in deep places as blue as the overhanging sky. A river moss, wherever a stony formation supplied points of attachment, spread out over the bottom of the stream, sometimes from shore to shore and several inches thick, covering large areas of the channel, its individual streamers often being many feet in length and all thickly leaved. The swift water imparted a wavy motion to its mass, and its gentle rising and falling was often accelerated by large bufifalo fish and other species preying upon the periwinkle, crawfish, and other small acquatic life found attached to the green moving masses of moss.

and crawling thing native to the north temperate zone finds a natural habitat in eastern Nebraska. Of these native insects the most destructive species are the chinch bug, the army virorm, the Hessian fly, the Colorado potato-beetle, and the codling moth. At varying periods of time, under favorable circumstances, great injury has been done to growing field crops by many of these insects, as well as to orchards and gardens.

But the insect that has caused the greatest and most widespread disaster to crops and vegetation in our county, as well as to the state at large and neighboring states, is the Rocky Mountain locust or grasshopper - a migratory insect, native to the high, dry plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona, the eastern foothills of the Rocky mountains, and the plains of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Nothing in the natural history of the west has excited such widespread interest as the great locust plagues to which the early settlers of our state were frequently subjected and which may again become a menace to our prosperity. Unlike Pharaoh's locusts that came on an east wind, these usually came on a northwest wind, but like them "they covered the face of the whole earth so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees - and there remained not any green thing in the trees or the herbs of the field in all the land of Egypt." [Ex. 8, v. 15.]

It is not known when these pests first appeared in Nebraska. Probably before the coming of the white man they may have been here as a mere incident to wild nature. The first actual visitation known to history occurred in 1857, when they are described by the Brownville Advertiser as "mowing the prairies." No less than seven invasions are known to have occurred in southeastern Nebraska before the last, in 1874. They were much alike. In a few instances the corn crop was far enough advanced to escape total destruction, but in the great invasion of 1874 not a green thing escaped. The leaves on the trees, prairie grass, and herbage of every description were practically laid waste. The first intimation of disaster would be a few rapidly dropping hoppers out of the sky, mere avant couriers of the myriads of destroying locusts. The observer, glancing toward the sun, beheld the air to a depth of half a mile or more thick with the flying insects, moving with the wind and glittering in the sunshine like flakes of snow. A slight change of the high-wafting breeze or a slackening of its force, caused an immediate descent of the whole dense mass to the ground, and the whole earth, as in biblical times, was covered by hopping, flying, creeping, climbing, crawling locusts, and every edible thing perished. Here in Gage county up to July 16, 1874, crops of every description had never held greater promise. Fall wheat and oats were already harvested, or well matured, but on that day a devastating hot wind swept up from the southwest and the corn crop was blasted in a few hours. The grasshopper invasion which followed in the early part of August left the fields practically bare. All Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and the territories of Wyoming, Dakota, and Idaho were involved in the disaster. In most of this territory the crops.

gardens, and orchards were in- flourishing condition; everything was swept away. This invasion marks an era in the history of the states affected and in the lives of all their inhabitants, a never to be forgotten circumstance. It was the same story everywhere - destruction on a tremendous scale. It was the most startling plague of locusts of which we have any account outside of the Bible- Combined with the drought, this scourge was the cause of great destitution in Nebraska. On the 8th day of September, 1874, Governor Robert W. Furnas, by proclamation, appointed twenty prominent Nebraskans as a relief commission to receive and distribute all contributions of money and clothing in aid of those who had been, through no fault of their own, practically reduced to beggary. These gentlemen formed a corporation known in our history as the Nebraska Relief and Aid Society. This society proceeded to organize the work throughout the state. It was estimated in January, 1874, that more than ten thousand people of our commonwealth were in need of aid. In the frontier counties the suffering was acute and often pitiful, but a great many benevolent persons interested themselves in the cause of relief and much was done by private charity to mitigate the poverty and want of the times.

By January 8, 1875, the society was able to report the receipt from various sources of $37,279.73 in money and nearly an equal amount in clothing. Early in 1875 congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars in money to be used in the purchase of food supplies and five times that amount for the purchase of clothing, its beneficences to be distributed to the people of the several states who were sufferers from the grasshopper scourge of 1874. A part of these funds came of course to our state. By far the most practical and noteworthy act within our borders was the passage of a law by the legislature, under date of February 17, 1875, providing for the issuing of state bonds, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, "For the purpose of providing seed for the citizens of counties devastated by grasshoppers during the year 1874."

Most of the counties in the state, including Gage, were beneficiaries of these relief measures, and by these various means thousands of homesteaders w-ere held upon their claims and the state was spared wholesale depopulation in many counties.

Great alarm existed during the winter of 1874-1875, as well as the following spring and early summer, on account of the billions and billions of grasshopper eggs that had been deposited in the ground the previous autumn. The exact facts of the case with respect to the deposition of grasshopper eggs staggers belief. Scarcely an inch of land or a clod of dirt but contained several nests of grasshopper eggs, closely packed in a sealed mass, about an inch in length, numbering probably one hundred eggs to a package, shaped like and about the size of a small ant egg. When hatching time came in the spring, the sight was simply wonderful. Myriads upon multiplied myriads of small, young hoppers appeared everywhere, so thick in places upon the rails of the railway tracks as to impede travel. Words fail to describe adequately the situation. The young hoppers were ravenous. In a large portion of the state every green, edible thing disappeared as if by magic. They matured rapidly and by the 20th of May or a little later the young pests got their wings and shape, after a succession of moultings, and became, by an almost instantaneous transition from a mere rusty hopper, a winged insect capable of prolonged flight. The migration began the moment their wings appeared. The young, wingless insects would begin hopping with a wind from the north, when suddenly with a mighty hop their wings would appear and, spreading them, they would sail away southward on the favoring breeze. In a few days all were gone and the replanting of the corn, oats, and gardens began. But on June 15, 1875, a south wind brought them back. . Pale, anxious, frightened groups of men gathered in the cities and villages to discuss the situation, business came to a standstill, and appalling disaster seemed imminent. But Providence had intervened to avert the threatened ruin. It was soon observed that although they had settled in multiplied billions in the fields and gardens, no depredations were committed. An examination showed that every insect was the victim of more than a single species of parasite, amongst them being a small, yellowish boring beetle, at the base of the wings. None ever again rose in flight. They remained stationary a few hours and perished. Here in Gage county, where comparatively little damage had been done to the growing crops by the young hoppers, a cold rain set in the night of their return, and when it was over there was not a single live grasshopper to be found. Their bodies were washed, by wagon loads, into the draws, frequently damming them and impeding the flow of surface water from the rain. This was the last of the much and justly dreaded grasshopper scourges. More than two score years have elapsed since the final appearance of this strange and destructive migratory insect, and the state of Nebraska has become rich and powerful, but the man who was living in Nebraska in 1874 witnessed a scourge of locusts greater than that of Pharaoh.

"Three years ago that clinging, hopping horde Made the earth crawl. With slobbery mouths, A.11 leafage, woody twig, and grain, and grass, They utterly consumed, leaving the land Abominable. The wind-borne plague rained

As long as the human race was represented in Nebraska by wandering savages who dwelt sparsely in widely separted communities it was possible for every form of wild life to thrive and increase, but when the white man spreads abroad over nature's wide domain, maintaining fixed habitations, he dominates all forms of life. And the settlement of Nebraska by the palef aced race has brought tremendous changes in its primitive forms. Gone are the useful bufifalo, the stately elk, the deer, the antelope, from which the Indian fed and clothed himself and manufactured many of the crude utensils for his own use ; gone the larger felines that preyed upon them; fish, bird, and even insect life have also been notably modified by the presence of the white man. The game birds have almost totally disappeared, with the curlews and the plovers, while the wild goose, brant, crane, and duck are rarely seen except in their long, high, semi-annual pilgrimages to and from their breeding grounds on the Saskatchewan and the far north. The denizens of the streams have been depleted both in quantity and quality, many species having wholly disappeared, as the pike, pickerel, bullhead, sucker, chub, red horse, and perch. The waters of our county no longer abound with the bufifalo fish or the cat, and even the vicious gar-pike has become scarce. While these are taken in limited numbers, , the carp, an alien fish, has largely supplanted them. Even the great Missouri has suffered similar depletions and invasions and the faithful and continuous efforts of the state through its fish commission to restock our streams with desirable edible fish have so far proved of doubtful value.

The beaver and the otter, which once were found in numbers about the water courses of southeastern Nebraska, have almost wholly disappeared. The mink, muskrat, and skunk are still occasionally trapped or shot, but their pursuit is no longer a profitable occupation. The wolves, badgers, mountain lions, and other noxious carnivora have either been driven away or hunted and killed, until only an occasional coyote, bob cat, or badger is

Animal life of the state has been affected too by the additions to it which man has consciously made or which have followed his course. Besides the domestic animals which replaced the buffalo, elk, and deer and made civilization possible on the "Great American Desert," wherever man builds, plants, sows, gathers, or reaps, there is found in its greatest perfection the house fly, the Colorado potatobeetle, the chinch bug, the cut-worm, and other insects that prey upon the roots, stems, and leaves of his fields, gardens, and orchards.