BY E. P. M'CORMICK, OF CAVE CREEK, ARIZONA

     (202) THE honorable secretary of our Pioneer Association has greatly honored me by assigning to me the preparation of one or two chapters of the proposed history of Antelope County. He has accurately sounded my heart; he knows that though I have been bodily absent from that county for many years that my heart, my affections, have remained there, to yet cling to old-time associates. Our pioneer experiences were the golden ones of the lives of all of us. In our several ways we did about our best, and now that peace and rest which God giveth to His beloved is reflected on the evening twilight of our lives.

     It is my recollection that most of us who settled in Antelope County in the early seventies and before, were veterans of the Civil War. And I include among such veterans those who had not borne arms, but had stifled personal ambitions and dispositions for war, to remain at home to engage in the indispensable duties of protecting the homes of us as of them; to cultivate the fertile farms, and thus raise food for the armies, and to engage in the resolute defense of the government against the Copperhead element whose penchant for murders and rapacious anarchy was not palliated by the soldierly magnanimity of the rebels in the field. Indeed, our brothers who remained at home for the above purposes were as brave and as devoted as we were out in the front, and when the war closed and these stay-at-home fighters had accomplished and discharged their pledges we were more than willing to divide honors with them.

     The services of these home guards put the same grim, martial stamp on their faces as that on ours, powder-smoked. (203) It is my recollection that these veterans came mostly out of the besieged homes and indomitable commands of Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. There were veterans also from other states, but Iowa furnished the most of them, and then some less the other states above named. I recall them as I first came in contact with them, as strong, heavily bearded men, calm in manner and indomitable in purpose. Then these veterans but vaguely suspected that which later they knew, that when they migrated from their Iowa and Wisconsin homes to Nebraska and to Antelope County, they thus re-enlisted in a war of conquest of empire that for them would end only with their lives. After a while those veteran immigrants realized what a solemn thing it was to be specially set apart for lifelong fighting in a conquest of empire.

     When first they came from their eastern homes they were calm, silent, taciturn, and resolute in mood, but after inhaling that intoxicating ozone of the plains for a few years their manners changed; they became easily excited and almost insanely enterprising and altogether too venturesome. The intoxication of that prairie ozone was exhilarating, but not bestially inebriating; enthusiastic, but not depraving. It made us too enthusiastic in community and county and municipal enterprises and too neglectful of private interests. There was a daring disposition to contract debt because the ordinary processes of industry and economy were too slow. God seemed to goad all of them to their utmost capacity, mental and physical. Thus they did in one year more than their sires did in five; and more than their brothers left in Iowa could do in three years.

     As to the pioneer women, they had to have level heads. The Lord had no more reliable material out of which to provide brakes and restraints on the delirious enthusiasm of the husbands and fathers. No wonder the home women of Nebraska declined the right of suffrage; it was all they could do to control the votes of their husbands and sons. I clearly realized after I had been here in Arizona a few (204) years that God never especially needed my advice as to running the world, that my departure and leaving the "Old King" and the venerable judges Decamp and Thornton as Antelope County's representatives in the celestial cabinet thereafter, enabled heaven and earth to move along more smoothly. For years I have not in the least offered advice to the Almighty.

     But while I lay back in the super-calm enjoyment of this climatic paradise my appreciation of the almost superhuman capacity of pioneer associations increases with each passing year, and I come near worshiping the restless heroism of the pioneer women.

     The entrance of most of us veteran pioneers into Nebraska was more or less dramatic; mine was tragic; and why not relate it here and thus clear up some old-time mysteries?

     During the holiday week, 1876, I was laboring afoot on the seventy miles intervening between Columbus and Oakdale. As I left Columbus I was inexpressibly wretched. I felt myself not only an outcast from human habitations, but God-forsaken. Then I knew the agony of the soul dropped quick into hopeless perdition where the soul, crying out, "Oh, my God! my God! grant but once in a century of time one instant of thy kindly consideration," is answered only with mocking echoes. That was not only a via doloroso but a sheer drop from the higher trail through purgatory deep in black perdition. I was a ruin, physical, mental, and moral, and no other hand than that of God could lift me up. What an experience was that! To realize while one's feet sank deep in snow the flames of hell leaped from his head and soul. No wonder that I was meditating suicide. But just then I looked up and to my left saw the little Catholic church of the Shell Creek Gleason settlement. Not my will but something else led me off that road towards that church. I found it unlocked; I went in and fell prone upon my face before the altar. I cried out, "Oh, my God, behold me a human sparrow fluttering wounded on the earth. Is another chance for me possible, even to Thee!" For a half-hour revolving only (205) that thought in my mind I lay face downward; my attitude was a prayer. At last I felt a beatific assurance suffusing my entire being, and stood up to gaze on the image of the crucified Christ reflecting the rays of the setting sun. I knew that some angelic presence was there and I felt (not heard) this, "Go forth now, for after a while complete renovation will be yours." And I knew that ere long some rehabilitation would come to me; as it did in a way that I had not dreamed of. The whole thing seemed supernatural. Robert and Mrs. Wilson can recite how suddenly success and glory enveloped a wretchedness and misery that was unspeakable. But I gained then that worth beyond Rockefeller's capacity to buy. A realization that God is, and that that grand originator of this era of time was indeed and in truth a materialization, a phase of the Godhead. Having attained to such faith and such fruit of the cross I had that immeasurably, by any standard of this life. A life eventful and romantic makes a basis for pleasing reading, but, Oh, my God, it is an awful one to live. I am glad that mine is now in its evening twilight.

     I wish that I had space to mention by name all the pioneers as one by one I came on them, but even the names are becoming elusive as I grow old. The first I came on near the county line was Hosea B. Thornton and wife, and they fed me, almost exhausted by hunger and fatigue. Then next the Fields brothers, Motter and son, the Palmers and Krygers. I need not mention more in and about Oakdale. The next to encounter were A. J. Leach and sons, Eggleston, Inman, and Swett. Next I met the Perry brothers and Clark brothers of Taylor valley; John Story and others of the Willow; the Contois and Patras of Frenchtown and Uncle Wilyum, then Duke of Neligh.

     Let me make a brief special mention of a few old pioneer notables. Lambert, a lovable and universally popular man, has been some years with God. Uncle Wilyum is still living and I presume as much averse, as in old time, to me being mentioned as his nephew. I am thinking now of a day when the county clerk's office was on the first (206) floor of Taylor's brick block of Oakdale, and Sol King's office was just above. Sol got up to thump, thump that wooden leg of his on the floor. For a moment Robert Wilson clawed nervously at his bald head and then murmured, "How can I stand that!" And then he exclaimed, "Help, Lord!" Next, as Sol came down the stairway like a load of brick, he called out, "Here I come Robert! What do you want?"

     A few years ago I got a letter from Sol, who was then at Rodondo Beach, not far from Los Angeles. He wanted to know of me if southern Arizona climate might help or increase his rheumatic ailments. I replied, "Sol, I love you, but aren't you forgetting that I am in -- well, Arizona is hot in midsummer and I don't want to share my misery with you. You be content to play seven-up with Doctor Cox awhile longer." And I am recollecting how Putney used to haul his grists past the Oakdale mill on the way to the Neligh mill and James Crum hauling his grists past Neligh down to the Oakdale mill.

     Then there were Judge Decamp and Lambert who never did seem to appreciate the fact that they were fathers to two of the handsomest young women in Nebraska. Those girls were types of the femininity that that climate could mature. The Nebraska girl has an intellectual beauty that shines through a perfect complexion. The Spanish type of this region, ripe and luscious at too tender an age, soon fades, but the beauty of such Nebraska belles does not begin to fade until middle age, and at thirty is in full bloom, while the Arizona Spanish at twenty is rapidly fading. Our sons and daughters reared in that climate, I think, will be in many respects superior to us.

     Some persons reviewing as I am now the reckless debt contracting and real estate mortgaging of too many of these Antelope County pioneers, might condemn, and indulge in moralizing that is offered too late in life. But I am not condemning; for it seems to me that when those veteran pioneers enlisted in the Civil War, that they got a training in those unconquerable regiments of Iowa, (207) Wisconsin, etc., that shaped their very souls for lifelong fighting; and they died fighters, and some yet survivors are no less fighters now. I claim that God set them apart to make conquest of that Plains Empire, and that no other sort of men had such indomitable courage and restless energy to ignore privation while engaging in a struggle with inimicable climatic conditions. The latest chapters of Mr. Leach's history give some idea of the unconquerable spirit of those pioneers. Young men, our sons, as you look on the pinched, deeply lined faces and gray heads of those surviving Antelope County pioneers, consider that God's hands were laid on those gray heads. Thanks be to God, they are all now close to the sleep which God giveth to his beloved and honored. Treat Grandma with studied kindness and veneration for she, like the mother of our Lord, was set apart by the Holy Spirit to do all that women can do; and on each recurring Decoration Day lay lilies by handfuls on her tomb. During her life few and short were her periods of rest, and she had next to none of the adorning trifles which the heart of woman craves; but now, dozing in her rocker, she dreams happy dreams, or passed out and into the other life she, reclining in the bosom of Divine Providence, smiles down on us her eternal contentment. Oh, blessed, blessed forevermore be the memory of Grandma, the Antelope county pioneer.