Funeral Attendees Scramble to Stake Gold Claims

This article comes from the Charleston Mercury, Charleston, SC on November 21, 1860:

An Incident of Life In the Gold Regions.-- Among the deep defiles[?] of the Rocky Mountains, lately, a small company of men stood around the new made grave of a dead companion.  With heads uncovered, they listened attentively to the words of the preacher as he offered up a prayer.  While in the midst of it, one of the company discovered "the color" in the earth at his feet thrown up to make room for the remains of the deceased.  In a loud whisper he communicated the rather exciting intelligence to his companion.  All heard it, even the clergy man, who, suspending his prayer, opened his eyes to see his auditory scatter in every direction to stake off gold claims.  Calling in a loud voice to them to stake him off a "claim," her re-closed his eyes, hastily concluded his prayer, and started off in a run to join his fellows in securing a claim.

Miscellaneous Anecdotes No. 2

From the Daily Public Ledger of Maysville, KY on July 27, 1899:

Used Some Choice Epithets

VANCEBURG, Ky., July 28.--Mrs. Martha Sparks has been sent to jail in default of the payment of a $5 fine assessed by Squire Hays.  She was arrested on complaint of John Morris, who proved that Mrs. Sparks had called him a bald-headed scorpion and a bow-legged rhinoceros.

---

From the Southern Banner of Athens, GA on April 10, 1861:

A fellow out West being asked whether the liquor he was drinking was a good article, replied: "Wal, I don't know, I guess so.  There is only one queer thing about it.  Whenever I wipe my mouth, I burn a hole in my shirt sleeve."

----

From the Marietta Journal of Marietta, GA on June 15, 1877:

A minister was riding through a section of the State of South Carolina, where custom forbade innkeepers to take pay from the clergy who stayed with them.  The minister in question took supper without prayer and ate his breakfast without prayer grace and was about to take departure when mine host presented his bill. "Ah, sir, said he, I am a clergyman."  "That may be," responded Boniface; "but you came here, smoked like a sinner, and ate and drank like a sinner, and you slept like a sinner; and now, sir, you shall pay like a sinner." 

---

From the Daily Evening Traveller, Boston, MA on August 11, 1860:

If wooden heads were as serviceable in war as wooden walls, England would have no occasion to fear France.

.

The Challenge of Reporting on Bleeding Kansas, 1856

I like these articles about the conflict in the Kansas Territory from the Tuesday, Sept 16, 1856, issue of the New York Tribune for several reasons, hardly the least of which is that they are highly entertaining to read. That is, if you enjoy reading antiquated insults aimed at politicians.  Another reason I like them is because they illustrate that people at the time were often confused about what was happening in Kansas, something I believe has persisted in historical treatments of the topic.  Although the author complains about the border-ruffian bias of the news reports coming out of Kansas, I think the free-state bias expressed in this article is relatively moderate and fair given its chronological proximity to the events at hand.

From the New-York Daily Tribune on Tuesday, September 16, 1856:

It would be absurd to look to the drunkard Atchison, to the drunkard Shannon, or to the drunken rabble of Missouri, or even to the miserable President Pierce, who, perhaps, can scarcely be held more accountable than they—it would be absurd to look to any of these as the really responsible parties for the atrocious crimes against both public and private rights, the rights of citizens as well as the ordinary rights of humanity, of which Kansas is now the scene.  Neither the ruffians of Missouri, nor President Pierce, heartless and soulless demagogue and doughface as he is, would have dared to venture, would have ever thought even of venturing upon such unheard-of atrocities, had they not been instigated to it, and encouraged and supported in it, by persons of vastly more social and political consequence and influence than themselves.  That which has been done is now doing in Kansas, is briefly this: A Missouri mob takes violent possession of the polls, elects a pretended Legislature, and through the medium of that pretended Legislature enacts a bloody and atrocious code; and that same mob are now in Kansas with arms and torches in their hands, murdering the Free-State men, burning down their towns and houses, and driving them, stripped of all their property, from the Territory, under pretense of enforcing order, sustaining the authority of the United States, and putting in execution the laws of the Territory! 

Now, admitting that the first violation of the rights of the people of Kansas, by driving them from the polls and returning as elected a body of the bogus legislators, was solely the idea and act of the Border Ruffians themselves, without any encouragement or instigation from Washington or elsewhere—which is more, we fear, than the truth of the facts will warrant—yet other persons, by upholding and sustaining as a legal body the bogus Legislature thus infamously imposed upon Kansas, and their infamous laws as a binding code, have made themselves the responsible parties for all the subsequent outrages.  And who are the parties who have thus taken upon themselves this terrible responsibility—a responsibility to which the people of these United States will most strictly hold them?  These responsible parties, these indorsers of the Missouri invaders and their bogus Legislature, are the Cabinet of President Pierce, the Border-Ruffian majority in the Senate of the United States, and, to a still greater degree than either of these, the Cincinnati Convention and the politicians who support the nominee and the platform of that Convention.  It is only the confidence of being sustained by, and the hope of giving pleasure and satisfaction to, these influential parties, that have emboldened the Border Ruffians of Missouri to enter upon the ferocious, bloody work in which they are now engaged.  They are but re-acting the part of the servants of Henry II., who, in the hope of pleasing their King and master, waylaid and murdered Thomas a Becket; and the politicians, to please and gratify whom murders and other outrages are now being perpetrated in Kansas, may rest assured that before they ever again can be recognized as Christians or political leaders, the same humble, barefooted penance which the proud and powerful Henry II. was obliged to pay at the shrine and grave of St. Thomas a Becket to purge his conscience of that murder, the people of the United States will force them to pay at the graves of the martyrs of Kansas. 

The Cabinet at Washington, the Senate of the United States, the Cincinnati Convention, and the politicians that support the Platform and the candidate of that Convention, will each and all, and every individual of them, be held responsible for the horrible deeds lately done and now being done in Kansas; but there are four individuals, all northern men and all doughfaces, upon whom the force of the public indignation may be expected to fall with a weight peculiarly crushing.  These four persons are, Marcy and Cushing of the Cabinet, Douglas of the Senate, and Buchanan, the nominee of the Cincinnati Convention—no longer (as he himself declares) the man James Buchanan, but a walking, writing, speaking automaton, to which the Cincinnati Platform serves as intellect and conscience, and which has neither wish, hope, intention, or sentiment beyond those embodied in that document. 

Pierce may be let off on the score of imbecility, natural or superinduced; but these four able men cannot set up the excuse of folly.  They have gone into this Kansas business with their eyes open; and, let them be assured, they will be held to a responsibility at which bolder men than they might well tremble. 

--------- 

Our readers have already been reminded that Missouri and the Border Ruffians lie directly between us and Kansas, so that the first tidings of all conflicts or outrages in that devoted Territory emanate from Pro-Slavery sources, and reach us through Pro-Slavery channels.  Even The Missouri Democrat forms no exception to this remark, since, though its correspondents mean to be fair and its editors just, yet their telegraphic news is mainly made up of the stories set afloat by the Ruffians in Kansas or hovering on her border.  Under such circumstances, we have no alternative but to publish the accounts as they reach us, fully believing that our dispatches and Missouri bulletins which are calculated to discredit the Free-State men, will in due time be corrected by more authentic advises, including the letters of our own correspondents.  It is hard to be obliged to give the falsehoods of the Ruffians ten or twelve days’ start of the truth, but we see no practicable alternative. 

The journals and politicians in vogue with the Ruffians pursue a different course.  They print the first Pro-Slavery bulletins, and carefully suppress those of the Free-State men; and when the former are proved false in any respect, they use this circumstance to discredit the true advices from Kansas and induce a belief that there is little or no trouble there—thus making the falsehoods or mistakes of their Missouri confederates do double duty.  Thus The New-London Star says: 

“Old Brown and young Brown, who were so badly ‘killed’ in Kansas lately, per telegraph, by the ‘Pro Slavery’ party have both turned up ‘alive.’ They were not in the ‘battle’ at all.  The people are beginning to appreciate these Kansas lies, and, as Dr. Olds said the Ohio Republican editor told him, he wouldn’t give a d---n a yard for them.” 

Now “Old Brown” and one or more of his sons were engaged in the defense of Osawattamie against a ten-fold force of Border Ruffians, who routed the Free-State men, killed several, wounded more, and sacked and burnt the town.  The victors reported that they had killed “Old Brown” and one of his sons; but it seems that they were mistaken—at least with regard to the former.  He probably lost his hat in fleeing across he Osage, which gave the Ruffians the impression that he had been shot and had sunk, leaving his hat floating on the stream.  His son, the last reports say, was killed, but the father appears to have been unaware of the fact when he wrote to his wife from Lawrence on the 2d inst.  No Free-State dispatch or letter has reported his death; yet The Star would fain improve this Border Ruffian mistake to the discredit even of the fact that there was a conflict at Osawattamie at all! 

--So The Albany Argus seizes on the fact that lawyer Phillips of Leavenworth, recently murdered in his own house for the crime of being a Free-State man, was in one dispatch termed a correspondent of The Tribune—a very natural mistake, since hundreds in Kansas and Western Missouri know that one of our Kansas correspondents is named Phillips, is a warm Free-State man, and has, in this discharge of his duties, spent considerable time in Leavenworth—to discredit all accounts of outrage and murder in Kansas—as if it made any difference, as to this, whether the Mr. Phillips killed by the Ruffians at Leavenworth were or were not our correspondent.  We exposed the error of the telegraphic dispatch on this point simultaneously with its appearance in the journals of the Atlantic States. 

--So Mr. Ely Moore (Indian Agent) took advantage of the fact that another Eli Moore had been reported guilty of an outrageous assault on a Free-State man in Kansas (see Investigating Committee's Report, page 963,) to deny most pompously that he had committed any such outrage, to assert that The Tribune had no correspondent stationed at Lecompton (where no known correspondent of this paper could live a week), and to assert that the Kansas correspondence of this and other Eastern papers was manufactured in their own offices! Comment would seem superfluous. 

--The Buchaneers are sweeping the votes of Missouri and all the South on the strength of what they are doing and confidently expected to do to make Kansas a Slave State.  We concede them the vote of every State south of Chesapeake Bay, knowing why they get them.  Now if they can make the North believe that there is no such region as Kansas, no effort to subjugate it to Slavery, and no violence, outrage or murder committed on its Free-State settlers, they may secure votes enough from the Free States to elect their men.  Let us see how they do it. 

--------- 

The Charleston Standard has a letter from Atchison, Kansas, which shows the purpose with which the invaders of that Territory from Carolina, Georgia and Missouri have entered upon the last foray against the Free-State settlers.  We quote: 

“We are ordered to march to-morrow, and I think will be stationed on the Nebraska line.  Reports have reached us to-day of a fight in that direction, in which fifty Abolitionists were killed and the rest driven back.  This is almost too good to be true.  

“Gov. Shannon has resigned (his successor not having arrived yet), and Hon. Woodson is now Governor pro tem.  By reliable information we hear that he has said hat, as soon as a sufficient force can be collected to warrant the move, he, as Governor, will issue a proclamation declaring the Territory in a state of insurrection, and take the field.  The United States troops are stationed at Lecompton to protect the Government property, but will not interfere in the fight.  Col.  Titus has not been killed, but was badly wounded, and a prisoner.  His ransom was obtained by the restoration of a piece of cannon, taken by the Palmetta Rifles at Lawrence.  Reinforcements are daily arriving, and I do not think 'twould be advisable for us to take the field with less than two thousand men.  We are very badly supplied with cannon, having only a few six-pounders, and the enemy have a greater number and larger pieces.  Our only chance will be to take their's from them.  

"We are regularly in for it now, and in a few days will actually be engaged in a civil war--which will, I presume, result in a dissolution of the Union." 

The writer clearly shows that the invaders of Kansas anticipate the dissolution of the Union as the result of the civil war which they delight to find themselves "regularly in for," and that Woodson, the acting Governor of the Territory, is an accomplice with the in the conspiracy.  In other words, the power of the Federal Government in Kansas is used with a view to destroy the Union.  That, however, is but a small part of the crimes of which the Pierce Administration and the "Democratic" party are guilty.

Ten Paces From An Open Grave

From The Times of Richmond, Virginia on Friday, March 3, 1899:

FOUGHT BESIDE AN OPEN GRAVE. 

A Tenderfoot Who Was Not Terrorized by a Border Ruffian. 

THE DUEL A BLOODLESS ONE. 

The Calmness of the Intended Victim Was Too Much for His Would Be Slayer, Who Apologized Most Abjectly. 

Captain Jacob Matthews died recently near Sidney, Neb.  He was a principal in one of the most singular, if bloodless duels ever fought in the West.  He emigrated from Pennsylvania early in the 60's, and settled at Omaha, where he began as a small merchant.  Of Quaker stock and peace-loving, he frequently declared he had fired a pistol only once in his life.  His title was entirely complimentary. 

The duel in which he engaged took place shortly after his arrival at Omaha City, when he aroused the animosity of Bull Tomey, a blackleg and an expert with the pistol.  Matthews refused to sell goods to Tomey on credit, whereupon the latter promptly challenged the young merchant to a duel.  As Tomey had participated in a dozen or more such affairs and had always come off victorious, great was the surprise and alarm of Matthews' friends when he promptly accepted the challenge. 

"I have never had a pistol in my hands in my life," said Matthews, "but I mean to meet him, though neither of us will be hit." 

The next day Matthews and Tomey met in a field south of the town.  The news of an impending duel had been well circulated and friends of both assembled, although the general conviction was that Matthews was as good as dead. 

A YAWNING GRAVE. 

To the amazement of the spectators, as well as Tomey and his second, when they reached the field they found a newly dug grave yawning for him who should fall in the duel.  Tomey made it the butt of his coarse wit. 

"That feller Matthews is a thoughtful one, he said to the crowd.  He comes out here to get me to pop him off and has his own grave ready, so we can hold the funeral without waste of time."

"On the contrary," answered Matthews, "I have that grave dug for you." 

John Brown's Son Reminisces About Antebellum Kansas, 1903

From the Wichita Daily Eagle of Wichita, Kansas on September 20, 1903.

----

FIGHT FOUGHT OVER. 

John Brown's Son Talks of Border Warfare. 

BATTLE OF BLACK JACK 

How Little Band Routed Missouri Raiders. 

The famous old Kansas border fighters who fought under the man whose body lies a mouldering in the grave, but whose soul goes marching on, greated one another in Portland yesterday after many years, says the Portland Oregonian. One was Solomon Brown, one of the twenty children of the celebrated abolitionist; the other was August Bondi, a wiry little old man, with the dark eyes and expressive face of the people of his native city, Venice.  Mr. Bondi,  a prominent citizen of Salina, Kan., is a veteran of the civil war, visiting Portland from the late San Francisco Grand Army encampment.  He was first sergeant, Company K, Fifth Kansas, and is now 70 years old.  An adventurous old man, inspired by the character of Kossuth and his compatriots under whom he fought for Hungarian liberty, he had come to Kansas in early days and at once thrown his aid to the cause of the Free State party. 

Solomon Brown is a gigantic chip of[f] the old block in appearance.  His resemblance to John Brown's portrait is striking.  A man of low voice and unassuming manners, he impresses one as of the genuine old fighting stock to which he belongs.  He is said to have been a man of enormous physical strength in his prime, though now he is crippled in the right leg from being thrown from a horse some years ago. 

In company with Mr. Bondi, an Oregonian reporter they visited Solomon Brown yesterday at his residence, 353 Grant street, and listened to the story of his famous battle of Black Jack in the old Kansas border days. 

"The battle of Black Jack was the first battle of the war between the north and the south," said Solomon Brown. 

"Yes," said August Bondi, "and its result forecasted the result of the war.  That was on the second day of June, 1856.  Lord! how hungry we were!" 

"That was 47 years ago," said Solomon Brown. "You tell the young man the story, Bondi, if he wants it." 

Out came the reporter's pencil, and August Bondi began: 

"There has been fighting in Kansas, you know, for many months, but when Wilson Shannon was appointed governor of that state by Franklin Pierce the day was looking dark for the freesoilers.  The border ruffian invasion was on, legalized by Shannon, who armed the pro-slavery forces with guns from the United States arsenal at Liberty, Clay county, Missouri." 

"Old Jim Lane afterward burned the town," said Solomon Brown. 

"The Kansans," continued the other, "were all new settlers and poor; their seed grain, their horses and cattle were their only dependence for the future, and these were taken from them by force or destroyed, while many men, the support of those struggling families, were murdered in cold blood.  But old John Brown went marching on.  With eleven of us for a nucleus, he prepared to gather a force to repel the border ruffians. 

"The little company made up of John Brown, Jr., captain; four of his sons--Owen, Solomon, Fred and Oliveu; Charles Kaiser, Theodore Wiener, August Bondi, George Townsley, Ben Cochrane, and Henry Thompson, brother-in-law of John Brown, Sr." 

"We were guided by a settler, Howard Carpenter, to a secure hiding place in the virgin forest of eastern Kansas, on Tauy Creek, near the Douglas county line.  There was a reward out for each of our heads, but nobody was trying to earn it." 

"Why?" asked the reporter. 

The Tragedy of the American Buffalo

Very large pile of American buffalo skulls, photo taken 1870.  Source: Wikipedia.

The word "pile" seems a hopelessly inadequate description for this image.

The American Buffalo almost went extinct in the nineteenth century due to people over-hunting them for food, clothing, and sport.  Only a few small herds managed to escape the extermination, creating a severe genetic bottleneck.  Worse, scientists have recently discovered that the genetic makeup of the majority of these herds are contaminated with cattle DNA.  (Unlike the progeny of donkeys and horses, the offspring of cattle and buffalo are generally fertile.)

The following is from the second chapter of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root, published in 1901.   This chapter is actually about the Prairie ("the Great American Desert", as he refers to it), but talks in great detail about buffalo, which I have excerpted and arranged here.  Root was in Kansas Territory in the 1850s and '60s and drove overland stagecoaches during that time, and his book recounts many of his firsthand experiences.  You can view the book on google books for free if you wish to read this chapter, or the book, in its entirety.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT, HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 

The first buffaloes I ever saw were in the streets of Atchison.  It was in the early '60s, during the war; but after that I saw them on several occasions.  These were domesticated and yoked together, having been driven in by a ranchman from the Republican valley, hauling produce to the Atchison market.  They attracted considerable attention from the business men.  They seemed to travel all right, were extremely gentle, and, under the yoke, appeared to work quite as nicely as the patient ox.  Nothing particularly strange was thought about the matter at the time, when there were immense herds of buffalo roaming wild on the plains of western Kansas; but I never, after that year, saw any of the shaggy animals yoked and doing the work of oxen. 

The number of buffalo in the great West less than half a century ago was roughly estimated at from ten to twenty millions. Careful authorities put the number at fifteen millions.  They once existed in New York, a number of buffaloes having been killed in the western part of that state, near where the bustling commercial city of Buffalo is built, which will perpetuate the name of the now practically extinct American animal.  In western Pennsylvania, near the salt-licks, a number of buffaloes were found; and according to an early explorer, a few head were found in ... large numbers in Virginia.  According to early writers, they were found in the Carolinas and along the northeast coast of Georgia, the only record known of their existence on the Atlantic seaboard.  East of the Mississippi, they ranged south as far as northern Alabama and were found in places throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.  Large numbers abounded in Texas.  They were also found in the northern provinces of Mexico, New Mexico, a portion of Utah, and also in Idaho, Washington, and in the arctic circle as far north as Great Slave Lake.  ...   

A HERD OF BUFFALO ON THE PLAINS IN WESTERN KANSAS
Pg 26 of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root (pub 1901)

History informs us they were found by Coronado on his march northward from Mexico as early as 1585, between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains; later they were found by Lewis and Clarke, Zebulon M. Pike, and Long, in the early part of the present century; still later by Fremont and others, who made tours of exploration through the great West.  Often they were seen by tourists and hunters in immense herds, numbering hundreds of thousands. ... 

... Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky hunter, once found a herd of buffaloes in his state which numbered 1000 head.  That was then believed to be a big herd but it was not then known that there were herds numbering millions of buffalo grazing on the plains embraced in the region known as the "Great American Desert," lying between the Missouri and the Rockies. 

The pioneers of Kansas, particularly a number who settled on the frontier--along the upper valley of the Smoky Hill, Republican, Solomon and Saline rivers--practically owed their lives to the existence of the buffalo.  For years in the '60s a goodly portion of the meat consumed by those early settlers was cut from the carcass of the noble, shaggy animal which so long existed as monarch of the plains.  Thousands of people who at an early day went overland to Utah, Oregon and California drew their supply of meat from the buffalo.  Where this life-preserver was found, it was known that, by following their paths, nearby water would be found.  The principal article of fuel found on the frontier for cooking the meat of the buffalo was the dried excrement of the animal, known in early Kansas and Nebraska parlance as "buffalo-chips."  The buffalo was one of the noblest of all animals.  It seemed indispensable.  It furnished man with an abundance of the most wholesome meat; the hide was made into shoes and garments worn during the day, and it made a comfortable bed and supplied warm covering in or out of doors at night. 

The building of the Pacific railroad was made possible at so early a day simply because the buffalo existed.  From the mighty herds the vast army of railroad builders drew their daily supply of fresh meat, and thousands of the animals were annually slaughtered for food while pushing to completion, in the '60s, the great transcontinental line.  For a few years in the '70s the railways did an enormous business carrying East train loads of hides and buffalo bones, these for a number of years being the principal articles of commerce gathered from the plains.  For years the great West resembled a charnel-house. Losing their crops, the pioneer settlers gathered up the bleached bones that covered the land, and they were shipped to the carbon works in the East, for the sale of which enough was realized to enable them to pull through another season. ... 

... The last herd of buffalo I ever saw in the wild, native state was in the fall of 1870.  It was along the Kansas Pacific railroad, near the head waters of the Smoky Hill river.  The railroad had just been built, and the animals seemed terribly frightened at the cars.  In their mad race westward along the railroad, they actually kept up with the passenger-train, which was moving along from fifteen to eighteen miles an hour.  The race became exciting, and all the passengers--many of whom had never before seen a buffalo--held their breath in suspense.  It was noticed that the animals never changed their course, but kept steadily coming nearer the train, apparently determined to cross the track at the curve a short distance beyond.  Not caring for a collision which might possibly derail the train, the engineer gave up the race and whistled "down brakes," stopping within a few rods of the animals to let them cross.  A parting salute was given by some of the passengers, who emptied the chambers of their six-shooters among the beasts, but which they did not appear to mind any more than a blast from a toy pop-gun.  While these animals used to cover the prairies and plains of western Kansas and Nebraska in countless millions, hardly one of them is now left to remind us of the once noble and powerful herds originally known in the great West as "crooked-back oxen." 

The best meat we used to get on the frontier in the early days was buffalo.  The markets at Atchison, Leavenworth, Topeka and a number of other Kansas towns, as early as 1857 and for some years following, were often supplied with buffalo meat, brought in from central Kansas.  No beef, it was said, could excel, even if it could equal, that of the buffalo; especially the hump upon the shoulders, which was invariably spoken of as a choice morsel."  Rich, juicy buffalo steaks and superb roasts were as common in the '60s on the plains as were other fresh meats in the best of well-regulated city markets. ... 

... What a shame, what an outrage on civilization! that the buffalo ... was so ruthlessly slaughtered.  Millions of the shaggy beasts were indiscriminately shot down by the white man in the '60s and '70s apparently just for the "fun of the thing." 

I remember well in the early '60s, while residing at Atchison, when long ox trains, loaded exclusively with buffalo hides, frequently were brought in from the plains by freighters.  The wagons were unloaded on the levee and the skins shipped on board steamboats down the Missouri river for St. Louis and Cincinnati.  Later, I saw hundreds of wagon-loads of these skins on the plains, in 1863-'65, when riding on the overland stage along the Platte and Little Blue rivers.  Several years afterward such trains were frequent sights at various towns on the Missouri.  Most of the wagon trains bearing the cargoes of untanned robes from the "Great American Desert" were from the Platte valley; some bound for Omaha, some for Nebraska City, some for St. Joseph, and most of the balance for Atchison and Leavenworth.  Hundreds of wagon-loads of the skins from the plains went into Kansas City from the "Old Santa Fe Trail." ... 

... According to a writer in Harper's Magazine a few years ago, Fort Benton--a military post about 2500 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis--in 1876 along sent 80,000 buffalo hides to market.  Toward the close of their career on the plains the animals had divided into two great herds--the southern and northern.  The great southern herd, however, was the first to go, being practically extinct at the close of 1872.  A few straggling herds only, after that date, were to be found.  The early '80s was about the last seen of the wild buffalo of the plains, which a quarter of a century or more before was so numerous between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains.  The greatest slaughter of the beasts was in 1872-'74, when, it was estimated, the number slain ran up into the millions. 

Hundreds of the best shots from all over this country and Europe, in the early '70s, were on hand to take a farewell hung before the shaggy bison became extinct.  Scores of noted Nimrods came from England, Scotland, Russia, and Germany--in fact, from almost every part of Europe.  The Grand Duke Alexis, youngest son of Emperor Alexander, of Russia, with quite a numerous retinue, came with a party from St. Petersburg, and went on a tour through "Buffalo Land" in the winter of 1871-'72. ...  

... During the immense overland traffic in the early '60s, portions of the plains were fairly white with bones of the buffalo.  The animals had first been killed by the Indians for their food and robes, and later, millions of the shaggy beasts had been indiscriminately slaughtered by the white man just for sport, their carcasses left a prey for the wolves, and their bones to bleach by the wayside.  In the '50s and '60's their bones were scattered promiscuously in center localities for hundreds of miles in central and western Kansas, and between Fort Kearney and Julesburg along the Platte, as far back from the river as the eye could reach.  

No one seeing the apparently endless mass of bones even dreamed that any use would ever be made of them; but after the completion of the Union Pacific railway and its branches across the "Great American Desert," and, later, the building of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line into the Southwest, an immense new industry was early inaugurated in Kansas.  Kansas was the natural home of the buffalo, and, during the '70s, hundreds of merchants in the western part of the state had a regular trade established and did a lively business buying and shipping buffalo bones to Eastern markets.

Landmarking the Oregon Trail

From the University Missourian, Columbia, MO., January 3, 1911

RAISE $500 TO MARK SITE OF LONE TREE

Nebraskans Would Perpetuate Memory of Oregon Trail Landmark 

MOVEMENT IS NATIONAL 

Pioneer’s Retracing of Old Highway Results in Congressional Bill

Lincoln, Neb.—The county commissioners of Merrick county have recently decided to raise $500 to mark the site of the “Old Lone Tree,” that famous landmark of the old Oregon trail, near the site of Central City, Neb.  This tree was a huge cottonwood, remarkable not only for its size, but for the fact that it was the only tree on the north side of the Platte in any direction.  The grateful shade of the “Old Lone Tree” made this spot a favorite resting place for the occupants of the white-topped prairie schooners traversing the dusty plains.  This action in Merrick county is another indication of the rising tide of interest in marking the historic spots of the west.  Nebraska has already begun to take its place among those states which have already marked the famous historic sites within their borders. 

Was Much Used Route. 

During the years that followed the finding of the Oregon trail pathway to the northwest, traders, trappers, goldseekers, soldiers, missionaries and colonists plodded over the long road by hundreds and thousands.  Along it, surged for years the advance tide of a nation’s traffic, but with the building of the railroads the old highway, no longer used, became obliterated, and in a few short years its very whereabouts will be forgotten and its course a subject of unending disputes.

Four years ago, an old man of more than eighty years began a movement for permanently marking the route of the Oregon trail, and since that time the matter has grown into a national affair.

This old man was named Ezra Meeker, well-known to many Nebraskans, who have been interested in the work and hopeful of its results.  He started from his home in Payallup, Washington, in January, 1906, and retraced, in a prairie schooner drawn by a yoke of oxen, the journey that he had made from the Missouri river over the Oregon Trail in 1852.  He spent a year on the road.  Everywhere he stopped and urged the people whose fathers and grandfathers had followed the Oregon Trail as pioneers, to erect monuments and markers so that all memory of the greatest historic highway in the world might not be lost in oblivion.  When he reached Independence, Mo., he did not end his journey there, but, still driving his oxen, and his quaint old-fashioned wagon, part of which passed over the long road so many years before, he slowly marked his way on to Washington, D.C., to place his plan before congress.

Frontier Woman's Trials in Nome, Alaska

From The Times Dispatch, Richmond, VA

November 4, 1906 

Woman's Trials in Nome, Alaska

Suffered Years of Hardships.  Nursed Strangers and is Repaid With Interest. 

LOS ANGELES, November 2--In a store window at Fourth Street and Central Avenue is a collection of Alaskan curios that are the property of a little woman who also possesses piercing blue eyes and chin that denotes fierceness and determination.  She is Mrs. Marie Riedselle, the first white woman to brave the hardships of the Klondike in the search for gold. 

Eight years ago Mrs. Riedselle made her first trip to Alaska.  She was an osteopathic physician, living in New York, when she first decided to try her luck at mining.  From there she went to Seattle and purchased a miner's outfit.  Eskimo dogs and the few bare necessities.  For two years she lived at Dawson City, nursing, doctoring and studying, but without getting nearer to the gold mine. 

"I determined that I must get to Nome at all costs," she said in recounting her experience.  "I got to Nome, and there my chance came.  I heard of a young fellow who was supposed to be dying with pneumonia.  His partner had done all he could for him, but had failed to relieve his suffering.  I arrived just in time, and together we nursed him back to health. 

"Out of gratitude they took me into partnership in a claim they had just staked out in Eldorado, sixty miles from Nome. 

"The hardships of that winter were terrible.  Many times we had nothing to eat for days at a time.  One partner was sick and the other far away from us most of the time.  We had years of hard work, but we found a rich claim, and I am back in civilization for a time.  My visit here is to be brief, as one has to fight always for that which he would keep in Alaska, and some of my property is now in litigation." 

The dogs are splendid animals, and Mrs. Riedselle's constant companions.  For weeks at a time she has depended solely upon them for friendship.  In the collection in a suit which she treasures as the finest ever seen in Alaska.  It consists of a long coat, or "parka," made of reindeer skin, with hood and cuffs of longer fur and a border of tiny squares of light and dark furs, forming an Indian pattern, and a pair of deerskin trousers and matelocks made in Siberia from finest skin.

1882 Article About the Life of Jesse James

The Bourbon News 

Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky: Tuesday, April 18, 1882.  

[Picture] Jesse James, The Bandit.  From the last photograph he had taken.  

The cut of Jesse James in this issue, was kindly loaned us by James J. Burns, editor of the Flemingsburg Democrat, who is not only a sprightly editor, but an accomplished wood engraver.  He copied it from a cut in the life of Jesse James published some two years ago.  The original photo was taken while the bandit was a guest at one of the principal Long Branch hotels, about the year 1870. 

The Dead Bandit. 

Jesse James was the son of a Baptist preacher of prominence and eloquence in his day.  The father was a native of Logan county, this state, and the mother, whose maiden name Zerelda Cole, was born in Woodford county, about half way between Versailles and Lexington, where her father kept a hostelry known as “Cole’s Tavern.”  On the death of her father the widow removed to the neighborhood of Stamping Ground, in Scott county, among her relatives, and there the future mother of the greatest bandit of modern times grew from childhood into girlhood, and from girlhood into womanhood, and there was married, in 1840, to Rev. Robert J. James.  In the subsequent year their first child, Frank, was born in Scott county.  In 1843 the Jameses removed to Missouri, setting in Clay county, where Jesse was born in 1845.  Mrs. James was a handsome, vivacious, devil-may-care girl, careless of good or evil report.  Tall, large-framed, and full of animal life, she was a universal favorite among those of the opposite sex, and her marriage to a clergyman was one of those surprises she was fond of indulging in.  Her hair was black as the raven’s wing, her eyes black and piercing.  Her temper was quick and fiery, her tongue sharp and cutting, and her enimity deadly and enduring.  She was constant and faithful in her friendships, and her hatreds were hot and undying.  She is now an exceedingly large woman, her hair sprinkled with gray, her eyes still keen and piercing, her temper as ungovernable as ever, and in all her ways, walks and talks, a fitting dam for such ferocious cubs as her two sons.  Her husband was a meek and humble-minded man and she made his life a hell, from which he finally fled to California, where he found the peace of death in 1851.  A few years afterwards the widow was married to Robert Mimms, whom she speedily harassed into the grave, and was succeeded in the connubial harness by Dr. Samuels, a prominent physician of Clay county.  To her is attributed the evil life led by her sons.  She upheld them in their career of crime, applauded their dare-devil deeds, and at all times extended them succor and protection.  All the affection in her nature is centered in them, and, while hard, and cruel, and vindictive toward others, she was ever the soft, loving, indulgent mother toward her children.  They inherited her own fearless spirit, and she gloried in them.  Deeds that filled the world with horror and heaped upon their names denunciation and detestation, she hailed as heroic and worthy of songs of praise and the hero’s wreath.

Engraving "Crossing the Plains," 1853

Below is a scan of an etching called "Crossing The Plains: Views Drawn From Nature, In 1853, By George H. Baker" which I found folded up in an old book.  It contains illustrations of wagon trains, indians, and famous rock formations in the American West.  I googled the copyright listed at the bottom of the sheet, and found that the Online Archive of California has the same engraving on their website, but in a slightly worse condition. 

Click to enlarge: