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In the summer of 1850 Mr. Green Russell and his adventurous companions discovered gold on a tributary of the Platte. The report spread so rapidly that the greatest excitement at once developed on the frontier of Missouri, which was then the boundary between civilization and the unknown Far West. In the following spring the exodus to the gold fields began.
They took the Sioux to an island on the Platte, below the ranch, and there, tying them to a tree, gathered a pile of wood and set it on fire. Here follows a description of the unspeakable tortures which the unfortunate prisoners suffered, and which are too horrible to be told in these pages.
Still following the North Platte for some considerable distance, the trail crossed this river at old Richard's Bridge, and followed it up to the celebrated Red Buttes crossing the Willow creeks to the Sweet Water, passing the great Independence Rock and the Devil's gate, up to the Three Crossings of the Sweet Water, thence past the Cold Springs, where, three feet under the sod, on the hottest day of summer, ice can be found; thence to the Hot Springs and the Rocky Ridge, and through the Rocky Mountains and Echo Cañon, and thence on to the Great Salt Lake valley.
In May, 1857, I started for Salt Lake City with a herd of beef cattle, in charge of Frank and Bill McCarthy, for General Albert Sidney Johnston's army, which was then being sent across the plains to fight the Mormons. Nothing occurred to interrupt our journey until we reached Plum Creek, on the South Platte River, thirty-five miles west of old Fort Kearny.
Beneath us lay the hamlet; but our eyes were concentrated beyond the narrow Platte valley on a dust-cloud which hung midway down the farther slope. As we watched, an occasional breeze wafted the dust aside, and the sinuous outline of a herd creeping forward greeted our vision.
Among the more famous riders was Jim Moore who later became a ranchman in the South Platte Valley, Nebraska. Moore made his greatest ride on June 8, 1860. He happened to be at Midway Station, half way between the Missouri River and Denver, when the west-bound messenger arrived with important Government dispatches to California.
It was fast going from the neighboring mountains, too both the streams told plainly of that, for while the Platte rolled along in great, swift surges under the Engineer Bridge, its smaller tributary the "Larmie," as the soldiers called it came brawling and foaming down its stony bed and sweeping around the back of the fort with a wild vehemence that made some of the denizens of the south end decidedly nervous.
Two days before, Burleigh said it was as bad as murder to order a paymaster or disbursing officer to the Hills with anything less than a battalion to escort him, and yet within four hours after he was put in possession of nearly all the paper currency in the local bank a secret order was issued sending Lieutenant Dean with ten picked men to slip through the passes to the Platte, away from the beaten road, and up to ten P.M. Dean himself was kept in ignorance of his further destination or the purpose of his going.
By the time the third decade of the nineteenth century was fairly begun the trappers were crossing in considerable numbers from the headwaters of the Missouri and the Platte into the valley of the Colorado and the Columbia, and as early as 1824 one of the most brilliant figures of this epoch, General Ashley,* having previously organised a fur-trading company in St.
Some companies of neighbors said the entire train should wait for the military escort; others declared they would not go further west, but would turn back and settle here, where the soil was so good. Still others said they all should lie here, with good grass and water, until further word came from the Platte Valley train and until they had more fully decided what to do.
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