There is another department of our history which I will dignify with the title of military. For we have had our little "wars and rumors of wars."

The memorable words of Logan the eloquent chief--Know, O white man, that there is enmity between me and thee--have been the standing motto of all Redmen.

The Pawnees were never at any time, the avowed and open enemy of the white man of Nebraska. But in the early day when they were strong and we were weak, they begged and stole, insulted and threatened, until their insolvence become insufferable, and the Governor of the Territory called upon the militia to chastise them. Platte county furnished more than 50 of the little army of 300 that pursued the fugitive tribe and overtook them at a creek afterward called Battle Creek, in memory of the event. Without a battle however, the Reds succumbed, and were permitted, on promise of good behavior, to return to their home below Fremont. This "Pawnee war" occurred in July 1857.

A number of little parleys occurred during the next few years after the tribe occupied their new quarters on the Loup. Such was that, for illustration, when Quinn, six miles below Columbus shot an Indian dead whom he caught the third time after warning him, in the act of stealing grain. The Reds rushed down from Genoa in large numbers, armed to the death, and demanded the slayer. But Columbus and the big road rushed down too, armed in like manner and refused to deliver Quinn. The matter was finally adjusted by the sacrifice to Pawnee justice of a pony and six sacks of flour.

A similar affair occurred at Barnum's. Not Barnum himself but some one in his employ was the slayer. When the avengers came, Barnum was not immediately at hand, and the terrified family and neighbors, present only in small numbers, were about delivering over not the slayer but a whole cart load of flour and other goods, when suddenly Barnum appeared on the scene and with thunderbolts of rage from his lips and a club in his hands drove the Reds from his premises.

By degrees the Pawnees came to realize the situation, and as early as 1862 one brave white woman could drive a dozen Pawnee men from her presence with only a whip.

But in 1864 a new foe threatened us from the unknown abodes of the Sioux in the North and West. A story of terrors properly goes before my account but must be omitted. The horrors of the West and South--some of them as near to us as Kearney and the Blue--had for weeks filled our valley with painful apprehensions. But not until the "Looking Glass meadow massacre" had we realized the possibilities of our situation. Then pillage, wounds and death opened our eyes. Pat Murrey had a hay-making camp on the Looking Glass near Genoa. Mrs. Murrey accompanied her husband and they tented on the meadow. One evening when Pat was absent at his farm, at the sunset hour, there rode down from the hills a squad of 25 Sioux into the camp. They entered peaceably and asked for food and Mrs. Murrey supplied them. This done, they began to untie the teams from their fastenings. The men resisting, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, their deadly weapons were in play. An old man was instantly brained and scalped. Adam Smith, Murrey's brother-in-law, fell pierced with eight arrows; others in like manner yielded to the fatal poisoned arrows. Mrs. Murrey with hay fork in hand defending the property received the barbed arrows but not in any vital organ. Only one escaped--a boy who hid underneath a pile of hay. The report of the distress being heard at a distant farm, parties came in the darkness and carried away the dead and dying. Mrs. Murrey had crawled away a distance into the tall damp grass and spent the lonely night in agony of pain and horror. She yet lives and is here to-day, but she will never fully recover from the shock of that hour or the poison of those arrows.

As to the Reds they got away with $2500 worth of valuable property, and though pursued next day by the military then stationed at Genoa, they were never overtaken.

The alarm which this tragedy created had partially abated when Frank Becher took from the wire one day a message from Gen. Mitchell at Cottonwood in the West, ordering troops to Columbus to protect the country against an invading band of Yanktons. About the same time, a stranger passing through informed us that he had discovered a band of forty Sioux concealed in a thicket between the rivers opposite town. This caused a general panic.

The whole Valley from Kearney to Omaha was world with alarm. Nearly the whole population left their homes with their live stock and more valuable effects: many between Kearney and Columbus left for the season and halted at Elkhorn City. At Grand Island, Columbus and Elkhorn, the people made a stand and built stockades--J. L. Martin, now of Merrick county, very characteristically of Pap Martin, but very unmilitarily, named these stockades. Grand Island was Ft. Sauer Kraut, Columbus was Ft. Sock-it-to-'em, and Elkhorn was Ft. Skedaddle. We have to submit to the unchangeable names of history: But Columbus can stand it if the others can.

For two weeks, most of Platte county--people and beasts--were within the stockade. And may Heaven hide such sight from our eyes and such experience from our lives, forever thereafter.

A Home Guard was organized, with J. S. Taylor Captain, E. W. Arnold 1st Lieutenant, J. A. Baker 2nd Lieutenant, and J. B. Beebe Orderly Sargeant. A guard stood watch during the nights and patrols swept the prairie during the days.

But no Indians came. Perhaps our movements saved us, for Indians, more than civilized warriors know at a distance, the situation of the enemy. And this was the last "Indian scare" we have had.