WPA  (CONT)

One time a runner came by our place shouting 'the Indians are coming, thousands of them.' All through the night I lay awake and when Mother started snoring, I thought we were surrounded. But in the dawn it proved to be a few Mexicans with a herd of range feeder cattle.

We never hear much about how schools were started in pioneer days. Well the settlers around a certain district just got together and arranged to build a sod (usually) school house and find a teacher, who as a rule was a part educated son or daughter, of the community. If necessary they would take turns boarding the teacher and sometimes pay them $15.00 a month. Every body was more or lose poor so in our district in James County as we called it we voted for a tax to be paid direct an personal property, since there was no real estate to tax at the time.

The Early church in James or Furnas County was organized by way of prayer meetings at settlers log or sod houses. We used to take the oxen and go in the evening, sometimes seven or eight miles. Coming back we would go to sleep and the oxen would find their way home. Later a traveling minister came in and held Sunday Meetings, sometimes in the homes and then in school houses, finally in a newly built church.

One time we had a kind of 4th of July church picnic along the Beaver Creek. The minister was there. A herd of buffalo came along and we made a rush at them and caught a calf. The minister seemed to be in a playful mood and he took the struggling protesting calf into the creek and baptised it 'in the name of the virgin Mary.'
We also had Literary and I helped write a Literary paper called 'Hit 'em and Run.'

A singing school was also organized I think we just had four notes 'do' 'so''[n?]' 'do' with long meter, short meter, and common meter. In church it was the custom to sing [metered?] psalms. We just had those old 'buckwheat' notes then. But when the meter was called some good sister or leader would start off with a certain time in the proper meter.

For the occasion of our church picnic on the Fourth of July, we had no flags and had to make them up out of colored blankets. No body seemed to know for sure whether the stripes were red, white and blue or just white and red. So we made it up with red, white and blue stripes, and since 36 stars were too many to put in we used just one big star.

At that time in those Pioneer days there was very little law and order and the settlers organized vigilance committees. My father was the captain of the [organisation?] in our neighborhood! Horse stealing was worse than murder and crimes against women were about in the same class. They were given their choice of the rope or the whip where it wasn't too serious. But the only trouble with this, they were too hasty to think the accused was guilty and some innocent people might be punished because of man's unreasoning prejudice. Today it is not much different even with [organised?] trial by law. Human prejudice is hard to overcome and if a person is openly accused of a crime, many think they are guilty. It's just the way.

The cowboys of the day were never what you would call lawless[;?] they were rough and ready and all that and would go into a settlers cabin to stop a while or eat but never would they take a nite more than the prevailing custom allowed them, and which was food, rest, fire and water.

When some one died they were usually buried by a tree or some land mark, an cemetaries were not much in order. I've made many a coffin, out of white soft pine, and lined and decorated it for less than $6.00. I even made two here in Lincoln or College View for people who were too poor to afford a regular commercial one.

Out near our homestead on the Beaver I came along one day and where the creek had out into a bank md fat as streams always do in filling and building up their bed, I saw a rough box sticking out of the sand and dirt. It looked rather like It had been there a long time so I got a shovel and dug it out. It was buried six feet or more and was full of dirt which I suppose the mater had washed into its space through a hole. Its contents were a bunch of bones and some rotten cloth and a two edged knife or bayonet nearly four feet long. I reburied the bones and kept the [steel?] (very fine) bayonet. It was to the best of my knowledge, a spaniard who had died here several centuries before. There was some signs that they had stopped here for the winter.

Hastings was the end terminal of the railroad south of the Platte. We used to go there to trade, except occasional trips to Kearney. Ordinarily we sold all our grain to new settlers for seed and feed but now and then we would take a load to Kearney. One time I would have taken 50 ¢ a bushel for a load of weedy wheat and imagine my surprise when the man offered me 80 ¢ a bushel.