(25) THE general appearance of the county as viewed by the first settlers was quite different from what it was only a few years later. This difference arose not so much from changes caused by cultivation and the building of houses, as from the prevention of prairie fires. Before the county was settled, and at the time of the first settlement prairie fires prevailed extensively every fall. Sometimes even the Elkhorn River was not effective as a fire-guard, the fire having been known on several occasions during a strong wind to jump across the river and set fire to the grass on the opposite side. This burning over of the prairie in the fall of the year left the grass roots exposed, the ashes and cinders being swept away by the winds and deposited in the ravines and other sheltered places, leaving the ridges and all high lands swept bare and clean. The snow that fell during the winter was blown off the high lands and piled in great drifts on the low grounds. As a consequence, when the snow melted in the spring the water was nearly all carried into the creeks and rivers, and the high lands were left with insufficient moisture. Then when the spring rains came, there being no vegetation left to hold the moisture, it drained off quickly, producing freshets and doing comparatively little good. Evaporation also was rapid, owing to the fact that there was no covering of old grass or other herbage to hold the moisture. As a result, the grass, although consisting of the same kinds found years afterwards, was light of growth and comparatively thin on the ground.

     (26) Owing to these things hay was very scarce the first few years. There were some low tracts of moist meadow along the Elkhorn, an extensive tract of similar meadow land on the Willow, perhaps some small tracts on the Bazile and Clearwater creeks, and also little narrow strips of good hay along the sloping banks of the ravines. Generally speaking, however, grass fit to cut for hay was very scarce. The settlers found out that by keeping out prairie fires this difficulty was soon overcome. By plowing around large tracts and burning fire-guards in the fall, the fires were headed off and kept under control, and large tracts of land were prevented from being burned over. This resulted in holding the snow during the winter, prevented rapid drainage and evaporation of the spring rains, thickened up the grass roots, and caused a much heavier growth of grass. As a consequence, in a few years' time wild blue-stem hay could be had in great abundance, not only on the bottom and valley lands, but upon the high rolling lands as well.

     This keeping out of prairie fires, together with the planting of trees and the cultivation of the soil, has tended to very materially modify the climate, but this subject will be taken up in a future chapter.

     Nothing definitely is known as to just when this country first became known to white men. Probably the earliest authentic account of any definite knowledge is given by Lewis and Clarke in the narrative of their explorations in 1804. Captains Lewis and Clarke camped with their outfit, on the 22d day of July, 1804, on a high and shaded spot not far from the Missouri River and ten miles north of the mouth of the Platte. The narrative of Captain Clarke recites: "The present season is that in which the Indians go out on the prairies to hunt buffalo; but as we discovered some hunters' tracks, and observed the plains on fire in the direction of their villages, we hoped that they might have returned to gather the green Indian corn, and therefore despatched two men to the Ottoe and Pawnee villages, with a present of tobacco and an invitation to the (27) chiefs to visit us. They returned after two days' absence. Their first course was through an open prairie to the south, in which they crossed the Butterfly Creek. They then reached a small and beautiful river called Corne de Cerf, or Elkhorn River, about one hundred yards wide, with clear water and a gravelly channel. It empties a little below the Ottoe village into the Platte, which they crossed and arrived at the town about forty-five miles from our camp." The Butterfly Creek mentioned is now called the Papillion. The course taken by these two men was westerly, across what is now Sarpy County, to the Elkhorn, five or six miles above where it enters the Platte. That the trappers of that day had accurate knowledge of the Elkhorn country is certain. Captain Lewis states in his narrative that one of his Frenchmen attached to the expedition had spent two winters on the Platte. M. Durion, his interpreter, a Canadian Frenchman who had married into the Sioux tribe, evinced accurate knowledge of all the streams tributary to the Missouri in this part of the country.

     The Elkhorn was named by the French Canadians Corne de Cerf or Horn of the Elk, because of its resemblance in form, with its branches, to the horn of an elk. This resemblance is not wholly imaginary; it is real. The main stream corresponds to the main beam of the antler of an elk, while its branches, especially Logan Creek, North Fork, and South Fork, represent the prongs of the horn.

     In the summer of 1838 or 1839 Theophile Brugier, a Canadian of French descent, who had been in the employ of the American Fur Company and who had spent most of his time in trapping on the tributaries of the Missouri and trading with the Indians, passed through what is now Antelope County, on a trip from the mouth of the Verdigris to the Platte River. He crossed the county from north to south on an Indian trail that passed through range 7. This trail, like other Indian trails in a prairie country, was not of a permanent character; before the county had been settled it was nearly or quite obliterated. (28) An Indian trail in a timbered country, or in the mountains, is likely to be permanent, but on a smooth prairie it is different.

     The Indians, in moving their villages from place to place or in going out on the hunt, arrange the lodge poles on both sides of a pony, where they are securely fastened by straps attached to the large ends of the poles, the small ends being allowed to drag behind upon the ground. On these poles are packed the lodge covers and other articles. In traveling through a mountainous, rough, or timbered country, they move in Indian file and make a distinct trail, or road. In traveling over smooth prairie they spread out over the country to a considerable distance, and the trail made does not long show plainly, and is soon overgrown with grass. This trail through range 7 was no doubt used by the Pawnees and Poncas in visiting back and forth, and by the Poncas when going on their annual buffalo hunt.

     In the year 1846 a colony of Mormons on their way to Utah, numbering about twelve thousand, reached the Missouri River in June. Some of them remained on the Iowa side, but others crossed over to Nebraska and located temporarily at Florence, just north of where Omaha now stands. These Mormon colonists built bridges over the Papillion and the Elkhorn preparatory to pushing on west, and a number of them did go that year to a point opposite the Pawnee village on the Platte. Then from the Platte they went northward and wintered on the Niobrara, near its mouth. Afterwards, probably in the spring of 1847, they left their camp on the Niobrara and struck out for Salt Lake, passing through Antelope County. Their trail entered Antelope County a little east of the northwest corner of section a in Bazile township, passed southwesterly through Bazile, and entered Crawford township near the center of the north line of section 5 and entered Ellsworth township on the east line of section 1. It probably passed through the north tier of sections in Ellsworth township, but the plats on file at Lincoln do not show this. It then (29) crossed Royal and Garfield townships, leaving the county near the southwest corner of section 30, Garfield township. Later, probably in 1851, a company of Mormons passed through the county on their way to Salt Lake, by taking the divide between the Elkhorn and the streams running north to the Missouri. This was done because of high water and the difficulty of crossing the Elkhorn and other branches of the Platte. The trail made by this party met the one previously made near the west line of Antelope County. The plats furnished to William B. Lambert by J. V. Wolfe, commissioner of public lands and buildings, show only the first-named trail. These plats also show the Indian trail in Royal township, but the trail was not marked by the government surveyors in any of the other townships, probably because it had disappeared prior to the survey.

     Soon after the discovery of gold in Colorado, probably in 1859 or 1860, a company of men from Dakota County, Nebraska, as told by Judge Thomas L. Griffey, who was with the expedition, went with teams from Dakota City to Pike's Peak. They entered the Elkhorn valley near Norfolk, and passed on up the valley through Antelope County to a point not far above O'Neill in Holt County. There they cut down cottonwood trees and bridged the Elkhorn, thence passing on southwesterly to the Platte valley.

     When the first settlers came here in 1868 none of these roads or trails mentioned were visible, excepting those known as the Mormon trails, which showed plainly in some places. There was no road found by these settlers leading up the Elkhorn, but according to the observations of Allen Hopkins, who located the first homestead within the limits of the county, there were evidences that heavy wagons had passed some years before across a wet tract of land on section 4 in Burnett township.