22 Spirit Fall 2020 Edition The Russian prince arrived by train at North Platte on Jan. 13, 1872. With Sheridan and Maj. Gen. George A. Custer also present, the hunting party of about 500 spent Jan. 13-15 at Camp Alexis — a period that included the grand duke’s 22nd birthday on Jan. 14. Alexis, with assistance from Cody, celebrated his birthday by downing a bison after several shots. Brulé Lakota leader Spotted Tail and about 100 of his people demonstrated their dances and hunting techniques. Modern motorists have to take county roads to reach the event’s marker, which sits about one mile south of Alexis’ camp and seven miles northeast of Hayes Center. Cornfields, cylindrical hay bales and leafed-out tree groves define the site in warm weather. As winter sets in, however, visitors can more easily imagine what Alexis saw. Dull Knife’s flight Much the same can be said for the Keith County surroundings of one of the state’s newer monuments to a heartbreaking chapter of the Indian Wars. More than 300 Northern Cheyenne, banished from their Montana homeland to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, set out in September 1878 to return home. Their leaders, known to their people as Morning Star and Little Coyote, are better known to history as Dull Knife and Little Wolf, the names given them by their Lakota allies. They crossed the South Platte River and Union Pacific Railroad on Oct. 4, 1878, near the marker put up in 2018 along U.S. Highway 30 west of Roscoe (originally called Alkali Station). The Cheyenne split up in the Sandhills, with Little Wolf ’s band reaching Montana. Dull Knife’s party surrendered and were held at Fort Robinson, from which they escaped in the “Cheyenne Outbreak” of Jan. 9, 1879. Army troops from the fort recaptured or killed most of them, but Dull Knife and part of his family found refuge with Oglala Lakota leader Red Cloud at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Agency (now Pine Ridge Indian Reservation). In time, Dull Knife and his One of the newer Nebraska historical markers, along U.S. Highway 30 west of Roscoe, marks the 1878 flight of some 300 Northern Cheyenne from a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. Led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife, they crossed the South Platte River and Union Pacific Railroad near the marker’s location and escaped into the Sandhills (the edge of which sits in the background) before U.S. Army troops could cut them off. Todd von Kampen/The North Platte Telegraph
approximately 80-person remnant were allowed to rejoin Little Wolf ’s band on a new Northern Cheyenne reservation in southern Montana. The reservation remains there today.
Settlement echoes All throughout Nebraska, historical markers pay tribute to early settlements or towns that flourished for a time but withered after the 19th century gave way to the 20th. One such town was Ingham in southern Lincoln County, whose tale is told by a marker along Nebraska Highway 23 just across the county line in Frontier County. The town was born about 3½ miles to the northwest in 1886, when the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad built its “highline” from Holdrege through Elwood, Eustis, Farnam, Curtis, Maywood, Wellfleet, Wallace and Grant to Sterling, Colorado. Ingham did well for about 30 years, benefiting from a nearby silica mill as well as nearby dryland farms and ranches. But it faded away after World War I, disappearing by the 1950s. Gothenburg, 35 miles east of North Platte, permanently recalls the Swedes who settled western Dawson County. But so does a tiny pioneer cemetery and state historical marker 2 miles north and 2 miles west of the city. The sole occupants of the “Swedish Crosses Cemetery” are the This Nebraska historical marker off Nebraska Highway 23 along the Frontier-Lincoln county line commemorates Ingham, a now-vanished town in the latter county about 3½ miles northwest along Deer Creek Road. Established in 1886 as a station on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad “highline,” it began to decline after World War I and was gone by the 1950s. The marker sits about 3½ miles west of Farnam. Todd von Kampen/The North Platte Telegraph
The quiet rolling countryside of extreme western Dawson County surrounds the “Swedish Crosses Cemetery,” about four miles northwest of Gothenburg, where the resting places of Singne, Carl and Gustave Berg rest below steel crosses made by their grandfather, Benjamin Palm. Todd von Kampen/The North Platte Telegraph
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