Seward County, Nebraska - Chapter 16, 1916

Chapter 16

Man can talk and write of the hardships and trials of the first settlers upon the wild prairies of the west, but the trials, hardships and never ending toils of the unrewarded dumb beasts passes unremmembered into unwritten history. But the fact that their share ot the burdens and deprivations were fully as great as those of their human companions, if not greater, cannot be denied and should not be forgotten. While the latter looked forward to a future reward the poor domestic animals were scantly rewarded with sufficient food to maintain strength to perform the tasks required of them. Food for work animals was, to a great extent, food for men and in times of scarcity of supplies the dumb pioneers' privations were augmented by the appropriating of the food by their more favored and intelligent associates. And many times they performed their labor without food excepting such as they could pick upon the prairie. We have seen animals engaged in the heavy task ol breaking prairie with no other food than that which nature had produced in a short growth of prairie grass, and we have seen those starved bodies grow so thin in a short time that they would scarcely make shadows in the sunlight. And after the work animals had completed the seasons heavy burdens they stood during the the cold and stormy season in pole pens, surrounded and covered with straw, the water leaking down upon their unprotected backs while they rested their weary limbs in mud and water every time it rained. And many times those pole pens were unprovided with doors to shut out the winter

Flesh and blood could have done no more for the comfort, welfare and future prosperity of the homesteaders than was done by the pioneer "horses, mules and work cattle." And flesh and blood could not have made greater, and more unselfish sacrifices to animate the most discouraging period of pioneer life and bring the county of Seward as well as the state of Nebraska to its present unparlelled prosperity than was made by those domestic animals. Many of those fathful friends to humanity passed from time to eternity without receiving a reward from their owners of kind treatment or even kind words and the time may come when manv will be required to answer the queston "what hast thou done for me?"

Among our kindest friends of pioneer days, long since passed to rest, we hold in memory a pair of obedient horses, Jim and Charley. A glance back into the dim past reveals to us the shining coats, curling mains, elevated heads and kindly eyes of Jim and Charley. And again we see them in many difficult performances of duty, straining every nerve and muscle to accomplish the purpose required of them and we again look back in vain to see the reward we gave and sigh for lost oppotunities. It was not only the labor of a fsithful pair of horses or of one horse or other animal, but also their companionship that is to be remembered with gratitude. We well remember a dismal ride of eighteen miles from Sewad to our home north-west of Beaver Crossing when the night was so dark we could not see the horses with no companion but Jim and Charley, they performing the duty of guide and conveyors. From the start upon that never to be forgotten trip we gave up all thoughts of guiding our companions and wrapping the lines around the standard on t'hc front endgate, gathered our garments around us as closely as possible, sat down in the wind and rain and trusting in the intelligence and care of those horses, silently waited until they came to a halt within ten feet of our door.

George T. Angell, the great advocate of the rights of those who cannot speak tor themselves m a short article in his paper, "Our Dumb Animals," savs: "Among the very best society in this world we count good horses, good dogs and good cats, and we are quite sure that four-legged donkeys are much better society than two-legged ones."

The Grasshoppers

Here is neither an animal, bird nor insect that Mr. Geo. T. Angell could call "good society." They belong to that class ot living things of which there are none good excepting the dead ones and there is no faithful service they could perform for humanity but to turn over and die. While they are not birds they can fly perhaps farther without eating than any other winged bird or insect. Thev will emigrate clear across the United States and into the frozen zones of the north with one meal stowed away in their stomachs. We had our first experience with the immigratory breed in Harrison county, Iowa in 1 869. For many weeks during the summer a glance with the naked eye towards the sun on any and every clear day would disclose seeming millions of the winged pests flying towards the north-west. Thev did not travel in single tiers but in masses extending from about one hundred feet above the earth to an almost invisible distance towards the sun. Where they all came from and were going to was a difficult problem to solve, but it is probable that they hatched in the southern sand banks along the southern coasts and immediatly commenced a flight to death in the frozen north. Their mission seemed to be a continuous flight and there are but few instances recorded where thev have halted in anv civilized country and those halts have borne unmistakeable evidence of having been forced by hunger. In that year of our first experience with the pests, along in August when the corn had about passed out of the roasting ear state and began to dent a few millions of that great continuous army got hungry and concluded to take a meal out of the Iowa corn fields and they came down in such great hosts that the earth seemed to be a living mass of creeping insects. Hard as the corn was they eat a lot of :t and chewed the weather beaten wood off from the siding on houses and barns and the boards on fences. The wells of Harrison county were the dug by hand kind and generally stood open and the hoppers fell into them in such immense numbers that they were ruined for some time.

This same continuous stream of flying hoppers was known to be riving over Seward count v, Nebraska, every summer from 1869 to 1876, making their first descent upon the fields of Kansas and Nebraska in August 1874. There was scarcely a day in summer seasons during that period of seven vears when those flying pests could not be seen in motion like a stream of drifting snow by looking towards the sun. Their 1874 raid upon this state and Kansas was undoubtedly due to a general desire among them for something to eat. And whether they got as much as they wanted or not they were guests, feasting upon the drouth stricken fields of Seward county corn, potatoes, cabbage, onions, tobacco and the decayed sides of log houses obout two hours and having eaten up everything eatable they rose into the air in such numbers as to appear like black clouds of smoke. Wheat, oats and other small grain was about all harvested and was too hard for the hoppers' teeth. The corn crop of Seward county was almost a failure if the hoppers had not touched it, but the short time it required for those grsshopper to change the appearance of the fields of corn and make them resemble fields of fishing rods furnished good grounds

Two years after this raid, a little later in the season of 1876 the second and last visit of the flying breed of grasshoppers was made to the drouth stricken corn fields of Seward county. But they found the fields which bore any corn at all too hard for their <_rrinders and left without dointr any mac> en mj terial damage. On this occasion they deposited a few of their eggs in the earth in different localities which hatched out the next spring, but the young ones followed their natural inclination to fly and left as soon as their wings grew without doing any damage.

It has been said that "it is no worse to kill than to scare a person to death." The grasshoppers did not kill anybody, but they scared some people "nigh unto death." A few seemed to think that by the loss of a little sod corn and parched cornfields that would not have made ten bushels of corn to the acre worth ten cents a bushel, life had become so miserable it was not worth living especially in a country subject to grasshoppers. And many of them abandoned their homesteads in short order and fled out of range of the great scourge, carrying with them harrowing tales of the suffering calamity in Kansas and Nebraska. The story spread with rapidity and enlargements all over the United States and a portion of Europe, sinking deep in the sympathetic hearts of the people and a well defined system of aid for the sufferers was shortly inaugurated. Old clothes, old shoes, salt meats, lard, beans, corn meal and everything immaginable was sent into Seward county to relieve the needs of the destitute.

We had rented a farm in L precinct and moved onto it in the fall of that first grasshopper disaster and in a few days a neighbor called at our house, - it was his first call - and surprised us by stating that he had entered our name at the aid headquarters in Seward as grasshopper sufferers for two tons of coal, some lard and corn meal. We told him that we were doing all right without any aid - perhaps as well as we ever had since settling in Nebraska - that we would be very much pleased if he would withdraw the request for us. He undoubtedly did so as we never heard any more about it. This man was undoubtedly a kind hearted neighbor, but he was unnecessarily alarmed the same as those who were scared out of the state. Undoubtedly he would have joined in the flight of nonsense if he had not had so much Nebraska products to carry - about a dozen head of cows and young cattle, a good team of horses, several hogs, his bins full of wheat and oats and was on the list for aid. Added to the wild rumors of the grasshopper calamity put afloat throughout the nation by such exagerating people the Nebraska state legislature placed another advertisement in support of it by appropriating fifty thousand dollars to aid in buying food and seed grain for the hopper sufferers. As to who, among the real sufferers, got any aid from the appropriation after the distributing and other "red tape" officials got through with it is not definatly known. But the state got the benefit of a name for charity to its citizens if it did blight many of its brigter attainments and blessings.

Of course the hoppers did a lot of damage, but the settlers had faced more difficult prepositions and prospects and lived through it without any aid. Since the grasshopper scare we have witnessed several almost entire failures of the corn crop and no aid has been offered or thought of. It was a little unfortunate that a little hopper excitement was not mingled in with those failures to facilitate the tumbling in of a few car loads of aid. But the grasshoppers are dead.

Some idea of the immense numbers of the flying: erasshoppers may be gained from the hosts that dropped down upon the earth on the three occasions we have mentioned. They were not of a special gathering, but just the number composing the regular ranks that almost constantly winged their way across the country. And in support of our theory that in this flight they were committing suicide, we submit the following facts: In the first place there was a vast and unlimited number of them continually going one direction, and no information had ever been received by civilized people as to any stopping place while their journey must end somewhere. Again their numbers were so great that had they stopped anywhere short of eternity to feed and live upon the grain and vegetable producing area of the world they would have starved humanity and depopulated the earth. Those that did stop and feed upon grain fields and then rise and fly away were never heard of again. If they did not go into the ocean or frozen north they would have made a record somewhere. The last but not least reason to consider in the matter is that their breed has become extinct. The rear guard of that great flying army passed beyond view soon after their last visit to Seward county. To briefly state the fact, they are dead and if they did not kill themselves by indulging in their natural inclination to fly, it is difficult to determine what did end their existance. God is the only power outside of their own that could have destroyed their lives and saved the human race, and it may be that he in his wisdom provided their self destroying nature.