QUIVERA

THE HISTORY AND LEGENDS OF AN ANCIENT AMERICAN

WH

KINGDOM

By E. E. BLACKMAN

V

HILE the earliest white explorers do not tell us of a city at the junction of the Platte and Loup rivers, there are evidences to be found there to-day more marked than can be seen at any of the sites of the villages of which these early explorers do tell us. Being desirous of proving things found in the old Spanish manuscripts, I made a journey to Columbus and Fullerton and explored the ground once occupied by Quivera. The most interesting relics left by the people who once dwelt there are the shards of pottery above referred to, which I found strewn thickly along the bluffs of the Loup River even as far upstream as Fullerton, in Nance county.

Some earthenware pots were in the possession of the natives found here by the early explorers, but not a single writer attributes to them the power of making pottery. It was a lost art among them even when the whites first knew them. I sent a specimen which I found to the Smithsonian Institution, and in their reply they state that it is similar to the specimens found along the Missouri Valley, and that the age of it is not determined-that it may be not even preColumbian, but made within two hundred years. No one has ever seen Indians making such pottery in Nebraska; so, as it was quite abundant, it must have been made by the ancestors of some of these Indian tribes. No specimens of

entire vessels have yet been found in the State. Few people have been interested enough in this part of our history to preserve the early specimens, and most of the ground has been tilled until one can scarcely hope to find, at this late date, all the fragments of a vessel.

The caves scattered over the State are interesting. There are at least six which have been described by explorers. Two are near the site of old Belvieu, not far from Omaha ; one is in the suburbs of the city of Lincoln; one is near Columbus; one near "The Leap," just out of the town of Fullerton, and one is on an island in the Platte River, above Columbus. This last-named cave, according to Greley, who wrote of the Indians in Nebraska at an early date, is probably the most important. It has been lost; that is, no one at the present time knows its location. Whether or not the drifting, shifting sands of this broad and shallow stream have buried it where human eyes may never scan, is uncertain. This cave was probably never seen by white menGreley wrote of it only from tradition. The caves near Belvieu have been explored many times. The one near Lincoln is, like most of the others, cut out of a peculiar soft sand-rock.

Some years ago a band of Indians camped on the flat northwest of the present site of the penitentiary buildings and made their way, as soon as it was dark, to the mouth of the cave. They did not need to inquire the way, for every Indian knew where to find these council caves. At the mouth of this cave they began their peculiar dance and ceremonies. Their camp-fires were kept burning, and from time to time a few Indians would leave the circle of the dance and enter the cave. The ceremonies were continued nearly all night, and as soon as it was light, the firebrands were scattered, they mounted their ponies, and rode away. This ceremony occurred when Lincoln was but a village-the exact date is not at hand, as I got the story from an old settler who had heard it told time and again by the people living near.

This is the last time the cave was ever used; but once, at a later date, after Lincoln had grown large enough to support a brewery, and this cave had become a cellar in which to store beer, and had its mouth covered and a large building near it, a band of Indians, similar to the former band, camped at the same site. They seemed to be searching for something, but were disappointed, and rode away in the early morning without being able to use the cave.

Tradition tells us that these caves were used in the secret trials of chiefs and in the last crowning ceremony in making a great chief.

Here, too, the victim received his sentence of death in cases where a chief or other high official had committed some crime for which he must die. The crime was usually that of cowardice. It seemed that this alone was punishable by death. Judgment was passed upon the culprit by a company of chiefs who were in every way his peers. This resembles our jury trial. The victim was either slain in the cave or in some secret place, never publicly. Such scenes were enacted but seldom. His grave, if the poor victim was given the honor of a burial, was in a low place and known only to the one who executed the sentence of the high court. His property and wives became the inheritance of the one who took his place. However, the goods and chattels of these people were held in common and used alike by all the tribe, but their family relations were sacred and their marriage ceremonies rigidly followed. No one but the highest officials practiced polygamy, and they only in

rare cases.

The other ceremony for which these caves were used brings to mind the use which was made of the caves beneath the pyramids of Egypt, where the high priests instructed the newly-crowned Pharaohs in the highest mysteries of life and the secret love of the nation. Every hidden thing was revealed to the newly-crowned king by the head of the priesthood, for he alone knew these mysteries. It was here that

Moses heard for the first time that he was not the son of the king's daughter, except by adoption, but was really a Hebrew, and it was then that the nobility of his character showed forth in such dazzling light. Although already crowned King of Egypt-a real Pharaoh-upon hearing the mysteries of his life he relinquished his high honors and, amid the tears and entreaties of his foster mother, he refused to wear a usurper's crown, devoting the remainder of his life to the emancipation of his oppressed brethren, suffering not only the hardships of his self-chosen lot but the censure of those for whom he was denying himself and for whom he gave the best years of his grand and noble life. One cannot fail to note the similarity of this last use of these caves to the use for which the secret chambers of the pyramids were constructed.

Is there anything beyond a mere coincidence in the above fact? Is there a connecting link somewhere in the buried antiquities between these so-called barbarous people of the plains and the shepherd kings of Egypt. A great work lies before the student of archæology, either to prove that these bits of similarity are mere coincidences or to trace the analogy between the peoples.

No white man has ever witnessed this crowning ceremony of the Indians, nor, in fact, any of their secret ceremonies of the caves; but enough has been gathered to prove that the ceremony is an imposing one, and also that we may know for a certainty the uses to which these caves were put. The one near "The Leap," at Fullerton, has been lost for a number of years, but was rediscovered not long since by W. A. Brown, of that place. This cave is not so large as the one near Lincoln or the ones near Omaha, and is excavated, not from sand-rock, as none is found there, but from the earth. Its location and surroundings make the cave an interesting relic.

Cedar Creek flows into the Loup at this point, and about a mile from the junction of the two streams the banks

which border Cedar Creek are very steep and high. In one place, known as "The Leap," there is a sheer precipice of nearly two hundred feet. There are no rocks here, but the soil is a light, yellow clay. About half a mile farther up-stream is a natural amphitheater; the sides of the ravine are steep but not perpendicular as at "The Leap." They are even now similar in appearance to seats in a circus tent, and have about the same slant. The ravine is nearly a half-circle, being a little deeper than it is wide. There is a level tract, or arena, of about one acre in the center, while to inclose this arena there is a bank of earth at least twenty rods long in the form of a half-moon, with the points of the crescent touching the banks on either side of the ravine. This crescent is, at the present time, about twelve feet wide at the very top, with evenly sloping sides and an average height of six or eight feet. In the center of the crescent, where it is the widest, there is an opening twenty feet wide into the arena. By dig. ging in the crescent we find it to be earth which has been moved, as the texture of the soil plainly shows.

As one stands on the crescent, facing the arena encircled by this massive amphitheater with a seating capacity of at least a hundred thousand in its balconies and galleries which tower to a height of at least one hundred and sixty feet on all sides, with a long floor-space of more than an acre, he may look to the right and almost half-way up the side of the almost perpendicular edge of the amphitheater and see the entrance to the secret council cave. All this ground I have described is covered by a growth of small trees and underbrush, with a few large trees scattered here and there. Much timber has been removed, and old settlers say it has always been covered with timber.

This amphitheater is situated on the reservation occupied by the Pawnee Indians until their removal to Oklahoma in 1872. It is less than half a mile from the site of an ancient village. In a field on the high points of the bluffs overlooking the Loup River one may easily trace the outlines of an