"It was about eleven, a. m., on the 28th day of May, 1870, that I, with my family and nephew, made our entry by wagon into the little burg of Columbus. All my possessions were in two covered wagons, with the exception of three yoke of oxen and six cows, but myself and family were blessed with strong constitutions and bright hopes for the future.

"We made our first stop about where the Union Pacific depot now stands, and in a few minutes several of the sturdy pioneers of the town gathered around our wagon to give hearty greetings to the newcomer. It was then that I first made the acquaintance of James E. North, Charley Speice, Charley Bremer, M. K. Turner, H. P. Coolidge, John Rickley, Doc Stillman and last, but not least, my old friend, Hugh Hughes. H. P. Coolidge looked into one of my wagons and noticed a new cook stove that I had purchased while coming through Omaha. He asked what it cost me, I told him, and he replied that he was selling them for two dollars cheaper than the price I named. My feelings could not be expressed on paper, as I thought I was taken in by the Omaha man, who told me it was impossible to purchase any household furniture farther west than Omaha, and to find, after hauling the stove over a hundred miles over rough roads that I could have bought it cheaper at the end of my journey.



"The evening shadows were beginning to fall, when I left Columbus and pressed onward over the hills in the direction of Shell Creek valley. We camped at the home of the late Edward Hays, a man of jovial disposition and a heart as big as an ox, where I remained for a few days, so I could look around the county before making any filings on land. "I took my first claim about one mile below the present site of Lindsay on the fifth of June, 1870. My nearest neighbors on the south were Joseph Burrows, his son James and son-in-law, George Lamb, Robert Lewis and David Joseph, on the north side of the creek, and Robert Jonas and William Lewis, on the south side of the stream, about six miles distant. On the north there were three entries made about 8 miles up the creek and near the present site of Newman Grove. The three men who had taken these claims were Lou Warren, Billy Menice and John Smoker.
"Warren and Menice did not live on their claims, as they had horse teams and worked for the government on the Pawnee reservation around the Indian school at Genoa. They did not think themselves safe on their claims on account of the Sioux Indians, who were rather numerous along the valley in those days. Johnny Smoker lived in a hole in the bank of the creek like a hermit or a beaver, and he always claimed that the Indians were his best friends. This was proven by facts, as the Indians were always friendly to him, but later on, after selling his claim, he was murdered by a Norwegian for his money. The man buried Smoker in an old well, and did not confess his crime until he was on his deathbed in the old country.

"Billy Menice came from the Indian school to stop a night or two on his claim and one morning he stepped out to lariat his horse in a new place and while he was attending to his animal two Sioux bucks, who were lurking in the banks of the creek nearby, ran to his cabin and secured his rifle and two revolvers. When Billy saw this it took him only a second to cut the lariat, mount his horse and take a short cut to the settlement for help, but when he came back with reinforcements the miscreants had disappeared."



"The Indians never bothered us much, with the exception of begging provisions for a few times, but for two years after our coming to Nebraska we were constantly on the watch for them. While chopping down trees along the little branch that runs into Shell Creek near Lindsay, every time the axe struck the tree, I would look around, expecting to see an Indian in sight and we always imagined to see Indians in every waving branch and big sunflower. "One day, while breaking prairie, I saw two bucks on ponies cross the creek about eighty rods below my place and go to the shack that Pat Ducey had built on his claim for shelter. Pat was also breaking prairie and when he saw them enter his place without invitation, he left the plow and ran to protect his property. When he got there the bucks were just coming out with twenty pounds of smoked bacon that Pat had purchased of J. P. Becker, of Columbus, a day or two before. Pat saw it was a case of live or die with him, so he took hold of one end of the bacon while the bucks held on to the other. Pat evidently thought that half a loaf was better than no bread, for he grabbed his butcher knife and, in a twinkling, cut the piece of bacon in two. I always said that Pat's courage on that occasion was proof of his ability as a frontiersman. About the same time two Pawnees tried to purchase my dog Towser, a faithful old dog I had brought from Iowa, and which was as fat as a seal. The Indians were disappointed about their prospective dinner, as I refused to sell the dog and kept a close watch to see that they did not steal him. These were the last Indians seen on Shell Creek, until years later when a number of Sioux tribes were taken down to the Territory by Captain Walker and Colonel Merritt.



"The Indian scares being over and the settlement growing stronger, the settlers now looked for better times. But there was still another enemy left lurking around in great numbers, and that was the dreaded prairie rattle snake. One day in the month of July, 1871, I saw in the distance a team standing in the prairie dog village, which was afterwards a part of Peter Galligan's farm, and by observing closely, I saw a man busily engaged in an encounter with some thing. Hearing many discharges from his shotgun and revolvers, my curiosity overcame my fear and I went over to see what the fuss was about. I found it to be Lou Warren and he was kicking and dancing around a monstrous dog hill, and when he saw me he called me to come and see the result of the battle. I counted seventy-nine dead rattlers, four little owls and three prairie dogs. In those days killing rattle snakes was play for the farmers and their sons, as the snakes were so plentiful as to be a constant menace to the farmers and their livestock.



"Lou Warren was a comical fellow. One night while on his way home from Columbus, he put up at my sod castle and during the night, as he lay on his buffalo robe, in front of the fire, he said: "If Brigham Young gets hold of me he will hang me." I asked him why and he said, because he was a "Josephite" and didn't believe in the plurality of wives. However, before Lou died, he managed, at different times, to become the husband of eleven women but he preserved his Josephite scruples to the end and only lived with one at a time.



"Between snakes, floods, prairie fires, and grasshoppers, the early settlers had to keep on the alert, if they wanted to keep from going to bed hungry. My first five acres of wheat raised on sod I threshed out with a flail, my threshing floor being a piece of ground about sixteen feet square, which I had levelled (sic) off and flooded with water and let freeze. If not as complete as Aaron's floor, it sufficed and I threshed out my five acres of wheat, working at night by moonlight when it was fifteen below zero. It took me a week to finish my threshing and I had fifty bushels of wheat out of my five acres. While waiting for a fair wind to blow until I could get my wheat cleaned, I had to stand guard to keep the jackrabbits from cleaning it for me. I used to crawl into the straw pile with my flail and would wait for the jacks to make their appearance and when they would be sitting in a row on their hind legs devouring the grain, my flail would descend with lightning speed. Once I broke the necks of three with one blow.



"After the grain was threshed the next question was how to get it to the mill. The nearest mill was that of J. P. Becker and Jonas Welch, thirty miles from my place, in Colfax County. My first trip there I made with Wm. Connelly. We started out early in the morning, I with what was called in those days a "jumper", or homemade sleigh, hitched to my team of oxen, and loaded with four sacks of grain. Connelly's sleigh was also of home manufacture and was made from a forked stick like a bootjack from an elm tree. He also had an ox team and a small grist of wheat. The troubles of that journey would take hours to relate. Before reaching Pat Murray's, Mr. Connelly decided that he would go there and trade his grain to Murray for flour instead of going to the mill, so I proceeded on my way alone. While at the mill, waiting for my turn to come, one of the blizzards that Nebraska was famous for in the early days came on, and for several days myself and thirty others, some from as far west as Grand Island, were, after our provisions were all gone, thrown upon the generosity of Mr. Welsh. We were allowed to sleep in the bran in the mill and the men were certainly a sight, when they pulled themselves out of the bran in the morning. About a week after leaving home I returned with scarcely enough flour to last a week and was welcomed as one back from the dead.



"The first two years I was in Nebraska, the antelope was as plentiful as quail. Herds of fifty and sixty could be seen most every day and the largest herd of deer I ever saw came into the valley through the big ravine north of Lindsay, in the month of August, 1871. They had come into the valley to get water and after quenching their thirst, scampered back to the hills. I had often seen large herds of deer in Texas, but there seemed to be a hundred head in this one. "Our experiences with coyotes were amusing until we got used to their wily ways. One of their tricks was for part of the pack to lure the man of the house with his dog and gun away from the premises and then the rest of them would rob his hen roosts, or take anything in the line of eatables that they were able to carry away. One night a detachment of them got Towser and me to follow them for about half a mile, and, when I returned, it was to find out that three hens we had setting had mysteriously disappeared.