Omaha daily bee., 1919-09-23
Shimizene, Indian Terror, Killed His Good White
Friend and Boosted of It-Buried Another Man
In Ant Hill-Mountain Businesses Almost I'm
penetrabe.

Cadets at West Point had need
for self-control in the old days.
The West Point of 80 was not the
West Point of today. Today the
barracks are equipped with running
hot and cold water. In Jack Perish
ing's cadet days the only water
came from two faucets out OF doors
in the area of the barracks, and IRON
those faucets, winter and summer,
had to be drawn all the water for
toilet purposes. It does not require
much Imagination to picture the
scenes about those faucets on win
ter mornings when the mercury
lowered close to zero and Arctic
blasts swept down the Hudson
river, winds always piercing and
sometimes snow-laden.
West Point ended at last, though.
Came one of those rare days in the
June Of 1886, such a June day as
perhaps inspired the poet Lowell.
1t was graduation day. Jack Perish
ing ceased to be a cadet. He be-
came Second Lieutenant John
Joseph Pershing of the Sixth
cavalry, United States army!
Dreams All True.
Never at any other time IN his life
not even when, on October f, 1918,
he was given the highest houor the
United States army offers, full
four starred generalship, has a COM
mission meant so much to him.
Dreams of childhood, dreams of
boyhood, dreams of early manhood
all had come true. His, ambition
was realized at last.
How the event was celebrated!
West Point crStom-an unwritten
fiat of the academy-decrees that
the very first affair after gradua-
ton shall be class dinner, Thus
| it was a day or so later found the
entire class Of 198o-all of its II
members, and those II all second
lieutenants-gathered i'll a hotel in
| New York City.
Jack Pershing as president of the
class of 1886, presided. What a
dinneri Into the next morning it
continued-such a dinner as the
class of 1886 had never held before,
such a dinner as the class of 1886
would never hold again.
The Memory of "Suke" Mott.
With the commissions which
West Point, through the War de-
partment, had given to the class of
1885, came orders that her newest
second lieutenants, on this date or
on that date, report to this organ
ization or to that organization, sta
toned in this place or in that place.
And these orders meant, the din
ner ended, that these second lieu
tenants of the class of 1886, after
four years of life together, four
years during which such friendships
had come as only West Point can
engender, must separate and scat
ter to all four points of the COM
pass, some of them, perhaps, never
to meet again. Indeed, there was
one at that '86 dinner, Second Lieu
tenant Seward Mott, or "Suke," as
his classmates affectionately called
him, who was never to attend an
other dinner of '86 men. Only a
few months later, on March 9, 1887
Lieutenant Mott gave his life for
his countryside first man of the
| class of 1886 to die for West Points
shibboleth-"Duty! Honor! Coun-
try!" The young lieutenant was
shot while on duty with his troop
of the Tenth Cavalry, near Nogales
| Ariz., by an Indian named Nah
diz-az, and died the next day.
Pershing Assigned to Apaches.
| Jack Pershing's orders called fol-
him to report September so, 1886
to Troop L of the Sixth cavalry a
Fort Bayard, in Grant county. New
Mexico, 90 miles northwest of Mes
sila. Fort Bayard was in the De
partment of Arizona, and even a:
Jack Pershing received his orders
General Nelson A. Miles, the com
manding general of the department
was leading the campaign agalns
Geronimo and Natchez, the Apache
chiefs, and their bands of renegade
marauding Indians, who for year!