[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
Conquerors sweep thru a nation or state bent only on conquest; traders
camp on its borders intent only on immediate gains; missionaries kneel
on its soil with the welfare of souls in mind; pioneers break the sod
for the purpose of putting four walls around their families, bread in
their mouths. It falls to the historian to follow after these men of one
purpose, to gather up the fragments; to keep alive, in words at least,
the spark struck off by fleeing hoof or flintlock or ringing ax.
Musing with half-closed eyes one can see a throng of people entering
Nebraska, spreading out over it in patterns interesting and intricate.
One can see a giant, colorful picture painted on the plains, even hear
the throng moving to simple slow strains of music—and realize how
literature, painting, music, are born of movements of people, individual
or en masse.
There is no lack of romance in the building of Nebraska, beginning with
its Indians—ships with adventurers and settlers sailing far up the
rivers; the Mormon migration; the underground railroad (slaves were sold
on the block in southeast Nebraska in the early sixties); the fight for
the capital, the building of the railroads (which reminds us of Building
of the Union Pacific, given by the Ballet Russe in Lincoln several years
ago); Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Middleton and their brother bandits; the
struggle between homesteaders and cow men in the north and west of the
state.
The State Historical Society, state capitol (Dr. A. E. Sheldon,
superintendent) has all this locked in drawer and file and safe—except
for interesting exhibits spread on its walls. The picture above, drawn
at Omaha for Leslie’s Sept. 26, 1860, depicts the arrival in that
pioneer village of the Jennie Brown, bound for Fort Benton, Mont. It is
one of over thirty thousand pictures filed by the librarian, Martha
Turner, pertaining to the history of the state.