Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1880-11-06
'FORTY.NINE.

tice-Rude hut Tender Merey---Chss airy.
WHILE the real Argonauts of 1913
were wandering among the hills and
gulches that flank the western slope of
the Sierra Nevada, armed with pan,
spoon and butcher-knife, testing the
scope and capabilities of the gold
mines. the news of the discovery was
speeding on its way to the Eastern
States by two routes simultaneously. 1t
reached the frontier of Missouri and
Iowa by the Mormon scouts and rowing
trappers about the same time that YES
sells sailing round Cape Horn took it to
New York and Boston; which was in
the late autumn of 1913. The first re-
ports, repeatedly confirmed and en-
larged upon, threw the whole country
into the widest excitement. In the
City of New York and the extreme
Western States the fever was hottest.
The year 1S49 was in some other re-
spects the most remarkable year of the
present century. 1t found France a
Republic, with a Bonaparte President
by popular election. All Germany was
in armed revolt against kingcraft.
Hungary was in rebellion against the
Austrian Emperor. There was revolt
in Lombardy against the Austrian yoke;
in Naples and Palermo against the
King Of the two Sicilies. The people
forced the rulers of Tuscany, Modena
and Parma to grant Constitutions.
There was rank revolution in Ireland
under the lead of Smith O'Brien,
Mitchell and Meagher. The Chartists
were seriously moving in England for
universal suffrage. Fierce war ragged
in Northern Italy between the Italians
and Austria; and the year opened with
storm clouds, social and political, WISH
BILE all over the Old World. Cholera.
that frightful contribution of Asia to
modern Europe, more terrible than the
ancient plague, was raging on the con-
tinent and advancing toward America,
where the terrors it inspired in 1928
were soon to be redoubled in grand
harvest of death and desolation through
out the cities and towns of the Missis-
sippi Valley. and all along the thorough
fares (as yet hardly explored), to the
shores of the Pacific. The extreme
western limit of the white settlements
in 1S49 was the States of Missouri. Iowa
and the Territory of Minnesota. Beyond
that there lay terra incognitG known
as missouri Territory" and the I'm
dian Territory" south of it. Between
the lines of Iowa and Missouri and the
Rocky Mountains there were not, all
told, over five hundred whites. What
few there were included missionaries
among the Delawares and Shawnees,
Wyandottes, POttowattOmies. Senecas,
Osages, and Indian agents with their as
sistants and servants at the various
agencies. The Pawnees were still q
formidable tribe. The wigwams of the
Sioux and the hunting camps of the
Comanches lined the Platte, Arkansas,
Missouri and their tributary streams for
hundreds of miles in what is now the
richest and most productive agricultural
regions of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa,
and Dakota, with its population of more
than two millions.
The people of the frontier States
were in that happiest of all earthly
conditions = without wealth, without
poverty-a community of small farmers
and traders. There were then no large
towns. st. Louis was place of So, 900.
Chicago was of less importance than
Sacramento or Omaha now. and Kan
sas City contained few log huts and
some 800 population. The National
census, completed a year later, gave |
Iowa less than 200. 900 and Minnesota
but 5000 white inhabitants. Twenty
miles out from Council Bluffs and forty
from Independence brought the hunter |
to the buffalo range. Beyond that to-
ward the setting sun stretched limit |