Upon September 29, 1863, we marched to Loup Fork, and camped a half-mile from Columbus. Captain O'Brien was dissatisfied with the shotgun he had bought at Fremont. In fact it was a weak gun, and at Columbus he looked around until he found a man who had a large, powerful duck gun, and the Captain trade d off his old gun for almost nothing, and bought the new one. As the game would be consumed by our mess, we agreed that the cost of all of the Ammunition should be charged up to our officers' mess. It was a gun of the old type, with a wooden ramrod, but it shot well. The Captain was a couple of years older than I, and we together had to manage the company. It was a tough company to manage. The Captain had been in the service for a long while, and had been down South, was in the battle of Perryville, and was a brave and reliable officer. I was on the rolls as a "veteran volunteer," which under the law gave me a sort of preference. We had formed a fast and enduring friendship, and pulled together always in all emergencies. Our First Lieutenant was a white-haired, gray-whiskered, incapable man, of good family and good birth, but without the slightest military ability in the world, and had got his First Lieutenancy on account of political influence. The men had no respect for him, and didn't mind him, or care for what he said.
Our company was composed of fellows who had a natural longing for a fight, and the Captain and I each of us had more than once a personal conflict with some of our men; but the men had got into the habit of minding us when we gave orders. The First Lieutenant was being utilized as a sort of commissary and quartermaster, and was not with us at this particular time. At Columbus there were but few houses; it was entirely a frontier village, and had some wild and frontier characters in it. Among them was a man named North, who was a great Indian fighter, and a great authority on Indians, He was highly esteemed by the Pawnees on account of various acts of bravery. This man North, many years after, went in with "Buffalo Bill" and organized the "Wild West Show," which made fortunes for many. It happened that Captain O'Brien and I ran onto North immediately after our entrance into the village, and formed an acquaintance which lasted forever afterwards. In this narrative of mine, North will be hereafter referred to.
In the little village of columbus was a long, low one-story building which had painted on it in large letters nearly four feet high, "W. W. W." I inquired what it was, and was told that the letters stood for "White Wheat Whisky," and that there was a German there distilling whisky. I went over to take a look and see what sort of place it was, and sure enough, I found some of my men in there loading up their canteens. I had to make them unload, and compelled the distiller to pay back their money which he had received. This was a disagreeable matter, for the boys were about half full, and the man himself was a good deal of a bully. They had paid him for all they had consumed. I thought it best to keep whisky out of the camp; in fact, such were the orders from our superior officers.
The Loup Fork at the time was not a very large river; its name was the French word for "wolf." This was on account of the Pawnee Indians, who had settled at some distance up the stream; "Pawnee," in the Indian language, meaning "wolf." The Pawnees gave the name "Wolf" to the river, which the French, who were the first traders and scouts into the country, translated into "Loup," which has ever since remained.
The night at Columbus was a very eventful night. One of our companies that had preceded us had marched up the Loup River to protect the Pawnees, it being understood that the Sioux were determined to raid them, and the Sioux at that time were an extremely powerful tribe. That night Lieutenant Norris, of the company spoken of, came down to Columbus with some of his men, and having been there in that neighborhood long enough to find out where everything was that was bad, the whole posse got drunk, and the camp was a considerable of a pandemonium. We, however, got the men herded into their tents, and the sober ones guarded the others. Nothing in particular took place except the men shouted, played poker, and shot holes through the top of the tent until after midnight. We were joined by a young man from Ottumwa, Iowa, long since dead, who claimed to have received permission to trade among the friendly Indians along the frontier. He was a very nice young man, who got delightfully and amiably intoxicated on all occasions, was more congenial when drunk than sober, and who played poker with the men for postage stamps, and made himself a general good fellow.
In the morning there came along a paymaster of the United States, with orders from the District headquarters to take escorts wherever he wanted them, and could find them. He presented his credentials to us, and requested that we go with him to the headquarters of the Pawnee tribe up Loup Fork. At that time the Northwestern country was made into a department with headquarters at Fort Leavenworth. This department was divided into districts, and the district which we were in was the District of "Nebraska and the Plains"; it went west into what was then Colorado, and "Idaho Territory" north of it. This district was divided into sub-districts, and the "Eastern sub-district of the District of Nebraska" had headquarters at Fort Kearney, which was then a large live fort with a wide reservation. This paymaster of the army desired us to go with him because he had to pay off the Pawnee Indians, and the employees of the United States at the Pawnee agency, and go from there to Fort Kearney.
On September 30, 1863, we took up our march with the paymaster and went up Loup Fork to the Pawnee agency, which was said to be twenty miles from where we camped. As near as I can now tell the Pawnee agency was near the mouth of Beaver Creek, on the north side of the Loup Fork, in the eastern part of what is now Nance County. It rained very hard during the night before we started, but in the morning the porous sandy soil had soaked the water up, and we got to the agency about noon. There was a Government agent in charge of the Pawnee Indians at that place, and he came to meet us. His name was Lushbaugh. He had brilliant red, fluffy, bunched side-whiskers under his ears, a variety of whiskers that was not entirely uncommon in those days. They differed from the "burnsides" in that they disconnected from the moustache in front. The Burnsides were a very common method of wearing whiskers in those days. They were so called from the manner in which General Burnside of the regular army trimmed his beard. The name was finally transformed into "sideburns." The variety that Lushbaugh wore had several names, but our boys began adopting them after that, and called them "Lushbaughs," and for several years after that in various places in the West I heard that form called "Lushbaugh." This agent, Mr. Lushbaugh, was very fond of ardent spirits, and the moment we got into the agency he proceeded to tank up. He showed us everything -- the Council Chamber, and the little blacksmith shop, and a few things that indicated a fair degree of civilization. A large number of the Indians were out after buffalo, so that there were not very many of the Pawnees in. But the little Indians were around in squads with bows and arrows shooting at marks, and it seemed to be their principal variety of amusement Mr. Lushbaugh said at that time there were 1,400 good capable warriors in the Pawnee tribe. The squaws had raised some corn, potatoes, and a large quantity of pumpkins that summer. The corn was the nubbin-eared corn of the Pawnees.
The pawnees were an agricultural tribe to the extent that they had time out of mind raised corn and pumpkins. We went over the village, looked into the tents, and with an interpreter did some talking with the people. There were a few old men and crones smoking and enjoying the sun. We went down towards the river to see where the crossing was, as we expected to move soon, and we noticed the women in great numbers along the river. They were strong, masculine, animated and chatty, and were giggling all the time. We passed a number of squads where these women were cutting up pumpkins into ringlets, and hanging them up in the trees to dry. We went up and down the river for nearly a mile to select the best crossing, and the trees were all hung full of drying pumpkin-rings. No women in Europe or America of any race ever seemed more lighthearted and happy and talkative than these Pawnee squaws, and they shouted words at us which we, of course, did not understand the meaning of. I had been of the opinion that all Indians were taciturn until this, my first large experience with them. The squaws seemed stout and muscular, and to be superior to their husbands. Those male Indians whom we saw around the village seemed to be inferior in strength, good-nature and appearance to their spouses. And every once in a while we saw an Indian who was considerable of a dandy, and had himself decked out in very artistic Indian costume made of fine tanned deer-skin, elaborately embroidered with beads, and porcupine quills. I don't see where all the porcupines came from for this lavish decoration, and am of the opinion