TRACK-LAYERS FOUGHT REDSKINS.
When the Union Pacific Railroad was being built the Indians were wild
and hostile. The appearance of the locomotive was unwelcome. Surveyors,
track-layers, bridge-builders and others if not properly guarded by
details of United States troops were attacked from ambush and often
killed.
It was indeed an adventurous calling to be a railroader in those days,
no matter in what capacity; for if it wasn't Indians it was something
else that made it so in the then wilderness. Towns were built in a day
along the South Platte River and the populations were first made up
largely by the scum of the earth, consisting of criminals of all kinds
from all quarters of the globe, either engaged in gambling, highway
robbery or running saloons that were the toughest ever known in America.
Dance halls and dives followed the work of railroad building from Omaha
to Ogden, and if the earth could speak it would tell a story of murder
that would make one shudder. Hundreds of men were shot either in brawls
or by robbers and their bodies buried in unmarked graves.
At Julesburg alone, the story was told, after the temporary terminus
was moved on west 100 miles, there were 417 graves in one sidehill, and
among the lot not one grave in the so-called cemetery was filled by a
man who died a natural death. This may be an exaggeration--perhaps it
is--but it was not an uncommon thing for a man to be shot and killed in
a brawl while a dance was in progress without for a moment stopping the
festivities.
But the "noble" Indian, so often represented in heroic portraits--and
always called a "brave" by writers who never saw an Indian of that
period--was not there, at least not numerously. He was a sneaking
sniper, hiding behind a sand hill or concealed in a clump of bushes in a
creek or river bottom, with a good chance to get away if attacked. He
seldom came out into the open to fight even a lone surveying party, but
waited for the cover of night, hid behind a rock and took a pot shot and
then rode his horse at top speed to a safe distance. He was a miserable
coward, and dirty. Perhaps the next day he would come meekly into some
camp where there were several hundred men, begging for sugar or bacon.
Artists have painted him in all his glory in sight of his enemy
discharging his arrows or his gun. Don't believe it. He didn't do it
more than a half dozen times, and when he outnumbered the white from 50
or 100 to 1. It is too bad, I know, to destroy such beautiful fiction;
but it is necessary in order to keep these chronicles straight.
However, it is the truth that a crew engaged in track-laying in the
vicinity of North Platte was one day almost overwhelmed by a band of
Comanches that came up from the south following a herd of buffalo across
the Republican River. There were less than fifty men in the gang,
including a locomotive engineer, fireman, conductor, foreman and
track-layers, among the rest two Chinese cooks. The Indians had come
upon the crew unexpectedly, for the buffalo herd, in passing near at
hand, kicked up such a cloud of dust that the crew was unseen until it
was too late for the Comanches to retreat without a fight.
The buffaloes rushed on past the right-of-way of the road, and when the
Indians followed the first they knew of the locomotive was when the
engineer sounded his whistle to bring the scattered crew to the shelter
afforded by a train of flat cars and the engine. The country all about
was flat. The Indians scattered in a circle and at a distance of perhaps
500 yards began to shoot. The crew was well supplied with guns and
ammunition and the battle lasted for half an hour, resulting in the
death of one Indian and the wounding of not one white man. Still it had
all the elements of a movie show, and would have made a fine reel. In
another hour track-laying proceeded as usual.
Outside of a few clashes of this kind the U. P. went its glorious way
without open battle with so-called redskins. Indians look good in
pictures, and they are picturesque--in pictures and paintings; but when
you were near them in those days you found them nearly always
good-for-nothing, insect-infested, diseased, hungry and cowardly, with
less nerve than a regular tramp.
When the U. P. was building it should be remembered the Indians had been
seeing the pioneer going across the plains with wagons for many years.
The pony express rider, the bullwhacker and the California and Utah
emigrant had been his almost daily companion; therefore he had learned
to be circumspect. Those hardy people had shot straight and to kill, and
by the time track-laying began the Indian was about as cautious as a
mountain sheep. He knew the range of the white man's gun, the fleetness
of his big American horse, and he governed himself accordingly, devoting
all his time, when doing anything at all, to impede the progress of
railroad building, to pure and unadulterated murder from ambush.