Merrick County, Nebraska - Chapter 16: -'the Grasshopper Years., 1898

mERRICK County has twice suffered heavily from the grass¬ hopper plague - once in 1874, and again in 1875. From the Lone Tree Courier of July 23rd, 1874, we gain the following information concerning their first coming:

Among the new arrivals at this place are Mr. and Mrs. G. Hopper and family. In some respects this family is the most remarkable one we ever saw or heard of. In number, its members are like unto the sands of the sea shore, and their voracity is equal to that of the ever hungry and never satisfied Pawnee, than which there is no stronger form of comparison. Though evidently hungry, they appear to be quite fastidious in their tastes, manifesting a decided liking and preference for green corn, oats, young beets and other choice and valuble vege¬ tables. They arrived early in the forenoon day before yesterday, but failing to register, and being very reticent about their past and intended movements, we have been unable to ascertain whence they came or whither they are going. It is our opinion, fiowever, that they came either from Minnesota or Arizona, and that their destination is - but no matter. One thing is certain - they have "traveled;" are very free and easy in their manners, and from the cool and cheeky manner in which they appropriate our choicest eatables are evidently determined to make themselves quite at home while they remain with us. Our citizens are paying them every attention, and yesterday got up a demonstration in their honor, build¬ ing bonfires and exerting themselves in other ways to show their appreciation of them. But it is possible for the most distinguished visitors to wear their welcome out, and our people would be only too glad to say good-bye to this family tomor¬ row. It is to be hoped they will take this hint and depart forwith.

Mr. and Mrs. G. Hopper took their departure for the south last Saturday evening. They took passage on a regular, first-class gale of wind from the north, and when last seen were crossing the line between Merrick and Hamilton Counties, going at the rate of about seventy miles an hour. Notwithstanding the fury of the wind which was blowing, flying dust, and the general threatening aspect of the weather, most of our citizens, turned out to see the visitors off and wish them a long, never ending journey, and we are sure many felt they would like to hei ve after them, not only old slippers and shoes, but brick bats, flat irons, or anything that yould be likely to make an impression upon them or accelerate their speed. We think we can safely say that nothing which has occurred here during the last year has been witnessed with so much real, pure delight and satisfaction as was the departure of this numerous, and in some respects interesting, family.

From the versatile pen of "Dick" Steele we are favored with the following account of his experiences in and subsequent to the second season of the great plague:

I arrived in Lone Tree one day in February, 1875, and put up at a hotel then conducted by Homer N. Bryant. The next day I went out onto the street and saw a large number of meu drawing "relief' in the shape of government rations, army blue overcoats, "pants," blouses, and government socks. They told me these people had been stripped of all their crops by the ravages of grasshoppers the previous season. Some of these people are now the wealthiest and most influential men in Merrick County, while others became discouraged and drifted away, some into Iowa, Missouri, and other states, some into the penitentiary, and still others into the legislature. All this was the result of the original grass¬ hopper raid of 1874 in Nebraska With this one I had nothing to do, and was in no wise responsible for it. I only participated in the second one, a year or two later. It is true that there has been considerable lying about grasshoppers, but I think.it all comes about in this way. One tells the truth about grasshoppers, but eastern people insist that he is lying and then the relator becomes discouraged and^oesto work lyiug in real earnest. Let me illustrate: I told people in Chicago, and others from the east - New York and New England, - that when grasshoppers rose to fly away the sound was like thunder or the beating of giant waves on a stern and rock-bound coast. I told them that they darkened the suu at noouday, aud that at night one could hear them eating in a cornfield. I told them that so vast was the number they actually stopped railroad trains, not by holding the trains up and assaulting the passengers, but by forming in swarms on the track, so that the drive wheels of the engine could not secure traction on the rails even by the aid of the largest sand boxes. . All this was true, and will be vouched for by old residents of Merrick County.

Then I got mad and did a little lying on my own account. I told them that I had often sat on the top rail of a barbed wire fence and killed grasshoppers by millions, simply by switchiug a lath back and forth. I told them that one day ex-Sheriff Letcher aud I went out hunting chickens - prairie chickens, not tame ones - and when a covey was flushed, Letcher would bring down his bird, while I could only kill about nineteen tons of grasshoppers. The reason for this was that Letcher was using a chokebore gun, while I was shooting with a open caliber gun that scattered the shot. I told them that grasshoppers were used as an article of diet for several years by Nebraskans, and that pickled hoppers were quoted on the market *iu Omaha. They seemed to believe these stories more readily than the truth, which fact has often led me to question the oldtime assertion that "honesty is the best policy."

Still, these grasshopper invasions of twenty-odd years ago did uot intimidate men of grit, patience and endurance. Those who remained reaped their reward; The uext day after witnessing the distributing of government aid to the destitute, I bought a half interest in the Lone Tree Courier and never had occasion to regret it.

Mr. N. R. Persitiger, who was secretary of the relief committee which the visits of the "hoppers" necessitated, has furnished us with the following account of their second coming and going:

To us from eastern homes, who had known grasshoppers only as a kind of after-harvest crop, it was a wonderful experience to see them flying through the air, looking like snow flakes, thistle down, or cottonwood seeds, and so compact that for a whole day the sun shone hazily, as if shining through smoke. The wind was from a little west of north, but later changed so that it came directly from the south, and then the cloud descended and lighted upon the earth in unnumbered billions. They covered the ground so nearly that their red legs ga\e a reddish tint to the surface of the earth. As a person walked along, in their efforts to keep away from him the grasshoppers flew up and away, keeping a circle around him, those in front fising and circling around and lighting behind the moving .person. If by any chance a grasshopper was injured, cannibal-like the other hoppers pounced upon him and soon ate him up. They seemed especially fond of the tender com blades and all kinds of vines and vegetables. In the com fields they gathered on the stalks and blades until every hill of com looked as if loaded down with a swarm of bees, and in less than half a day a field of thrifty com would be denuded of every blade and shoot, and only the bare stalk be left standing. They would eat the wheat, oat and barley straw off just below the head, and strip every blade from the stalk. The evening of the day following their falling down upon us witnessed cultivated fields despoiled of all promise of harvest. It seemed strange, awful, mysterious to us, but not for some time did we fully realize the awful calamity that had come upon us. The county was new; nearly all of our people were beginners in life, and had staked their all upon the raising of a crop, while many had gone into debt for their farming implements and even for their living. To be left with nothing to pay their debts, or even to live upon until another crop could be raised, was a serious matter and it required great courage, economy and faith to live through it. I will not comment upon the disposition of the charity that was so wonderfully shown to our people, but the memory of it brings the warm blood rushing into our hearts even to this day.

We will close the account of the grasshopper years with a final quotation from Mr. Steele, as found in the July 8th, 1875, issue of the Courier whose purchase Mr. Steele "never had occasion to regret." It is in the nature of a farewell ode, and reads as follows: