The dangers attendant during the Indian wars, the thrilling experiences of emigrants and pony express riders, and the overland stage, and the later inspiration of the cowmen, each have important parts ; and in the evolution of the past, the homesteaders of twenty-five to thirty-five years ago, and the people of the later periods, each have been history makers. The slow process of irrigation, has been another epoch in our little world, and the fullness of its glory is not yet nearly reached. But fur trailers and trappers came into this primitive wilderness, largely for the love of adventure, and they built campfires that burned so brightly for a time which now have faded and smoldered, and are lost into the receding past.

The Latin races have always been pioneers

ration and enterprise. The Cross of

Christ, and the Sword of the Spanish Conquerer, have gone hand in hand over the great southwest, and it was in the early centuries that Spanish pilgrims wandered into the northwest, and many of them never returned.

Foremost among the fur-traders, came Manuel Lisa. He organized the Missouri Fur Company about 1807, and sent out trappers and pushed boats up the Missouri and the Yellowstone. The fierce competition waged by the Hudson Bay company, on the upper Missouri river and its tributaries, effected a change of base. We find no record of Lisa visiting this section of the state, but his mark is stamped indelibly on this land. A number of writers seem to think he was here about 1809, but no real record has been found. Manuel Lisa and his wife were the first white people to set up housekeeping in Nebraska, they establishing a home near the mouth of the Platte about 1809.