The
first actual settlers of Gage County
were the Otoe and Missouri tribes of
Indians.
The
Otoe were a small group of people. Early
travelers estimated them at 1,000. The
first count
made
by
the Indian bureau in 1843 showed 931
persons.
Their
principal town and seat of government
in Nebraska was for many years about
ten miles
north
of Ashland on the south bank of the
Platte.
A
great level plain slopes north to the
top of a high hill. From this
hilltop on our clear
Nebraska
days might be seen a surrounding landscape
thirty miles in diameter, the valleys
of
the Platte, the Elkhorn, the Wahoo,
and Salt Creek, the lower tableland
and prairie.
No
enemy could approach without being seen.
Along
the Platte River front of the village
were several hundred acres of black
alluvium,
subirrigated,
good insurance for a corn crop in a
dry season.
The
village was built of earth lodges, two
hundred or more in number. Each earth
lodge was
thirty
or forty feet in diameter. The council
lodge was much larger. The ruins of
these lodges
today
cover a half section of land. The lodges
fronted the black land and the Platte
River,
each
lodge with its garden in view.
On
the opposite side of the villages,
the Otoe herd of ponies ranged. Timber
covered the
islands
of the Platte River and the north slopes
of the hills.
From
their village north of Ashland the Otoe
tribe removed in 1835 to a new
site, eight miles
west
of Bellevue in order to be near their
mission and trading post, and to escape
the ravages
of
the Dakota.
In
1840 the Otoe village was moved south
of the Platte west of the present city
of Plattsmouth.
Here,
for a few more years, at the gateway
of the Platte Valley the tribe struggled
against its fate.
The
white man was already pounding at the
gate.
The
Nebraska-Kansas bill woke the echoes
in the halls of congress. The conflict
between
slavery
and freedom for the prairies of the
west rolled onward toward its climax
and the
Otoe
tribe, which once had helped the Pawnee
rescue Nebraska from the Spaniard, was
a
helpless
bystander.
In
March, 1854, the Otoe chiefs were hurried
to Washington and there signed a treaty
selling
all
their Nebraska lands, except a reserve
ten by twenty-five miles on the Big
Blue in Gage
County.
On
December 9, 1854, they were assembled
at Nebraska City and there signed a new treaty
slightly
changing the location of their reserve.
On May 30, 1854, President Pierce signed the Nebraska-Kansas Bill.
Soon
after the first great white wave rolled
across the Missouri River upon Otoe
land. Those
curious
“pieces of paper which talk,” put out
by the whites had much to say about
the presence
of
the Otoe in the settlements along the
Missouri River.
The
tribe moved from the old camps upon
the Platte to the narrow tract in Gage
County.
Then
came another and another wave of white
migration from the east. Soon white
men were
settled
all around the little Otoe reserve on
the Big Blue River.
Again
came the complaints against the Otoe.
Again came the demands for his removal.
In
those years the Otoe chiefs still followed
up and down the valley of the Blue,
trapping for
beaver.
Often their camp was upon the corner
of the author's home farm in the West
Blue
Valley.
Once the Pawnee, on a buffalo hunt,
had camped there by the hundreds. But
the
Pawnee
were gone to Oklahoma. The white man
wanted their land in Nebraska and the
Government
moved them on.
Only
a few Otoe now camped in the bend of
the river, making their tepees the center
of
childhood
interest. Finally the word came from
Washington.
The treaty
under
which all their lands were ceded to the
United States, except their reservation
on the Big
Blue
River, was made March 15, 1854, and
became immediately effective.
Section
2 of the treaty requied the Indians
to vacate the ceded lands and remove
to their new
reservation
"as soon after the United States
shall make the necessary provisions
for fullfilling
the
stipulations of this agreement as they
can conveniently arrange their affairs,
and not exceeding
one
year ater such provisions is made".
In 1855, they occupied their
reservation, it included 250 square miles of the finest land in
Nebraska.
The
report of George Heppner, the government
agent for these Indians, to the Indian
Bureau
at
Washington, under date of November 1,
1855, conveys the information that there
were
then
living on the new reservation, land
that afterward became Gage County. There
were
reported
to be approximately 600 Indians on the
reservation.
This
reservation comprised a fine body of
land, ten miles north and south and
twenty-five miles
east and west.
It
extended two miles south of the state
line in full length, into Washington
and Marshall Counties, Kansas.
North
of the state line it extended two and three-fourths miles into Jefferson County.
That
portion of it which lay in Gage County was a strip eight miles in width and
twenty-two and
one-half miles in length, east and west.
Glenwood,
Paddock, and Barneston Townships lay
wholly within the reservation, also
the
greater
part of Liberty Township. It included
the two southern tiers of sections in
Elm,
Sicily,
Wymore, and Island Grove Townships to
within two and one-quarter miles of
the
county
line on the east.
These Indians never gave the early settlers any
trouble
other than
pilfering.
Ar-ke-kee-tah was the grand chief,
and was the
one
most instrumental
in making the terms of the
treaty.
He was the
most generous and high-minded of
the tribe.
He was well known by the settlers and was
universally respected by
them.
Source:
Nebraska, The Land and the People,
Vol. 1
