1878

 “Could anyone expect less?”

In the Annual Report of the General of the U.S. Army Gen. Phil Sheridan admits, in reference to the Native American tribes of the Great Plains: “We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could anyone expect less? Then, why wonder at Indian difficulties?”

Hunting buffalo, painting by George Catlin.

Listening to the hum of a telegraph wire.

Progress for one race meant disaster for another.

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Plagued by violence, Dodge City, Kansas has on its books laws requiring all cowboys and others to turn in place their weapons on racks provided for the purpose, while visiting town. Only peace officers were allowed to carry guns. (article by Peter Lyon, previously referenced).

 

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An outbreak of yellow fever kills 4,000 in Memphis, Tennessee. (Finley, 129)

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A traveler named Samuel Manning, describes the plague of locusts or grasshoppers he had seen in Kansas: 

In many places they covered the soil with a moving mass, and filled the air like snowflakes on a snowy day. At a roadside station, the train was not able to start till they had been swept from the track. The growing crops were cut off, the trees stripped of their leaves, and the cattle were starving for want of food. The alarming extension of this insect pest, which has ravaged Kansas, Nebraska, and the neighboring states for the last two or three years, is plausibly explained by the destruction of winged game on the prairies. 100/357