by Norman Reese

I was born in 1840 in Dane County, Wisconsin. In 1858 my father leased me to the Great Venabury Consolidated Shows for two years, in my 18th year. I was with another boy of my own age. We played together as horizontal bar performers as the Postering Brothers. Our parents received $75.00 per month during our traveling season of five months and $25.00 per month while in winter quarters. My father had been studying medicine in the University College at Madison, and received his diploma in 1858. In 1860 my father, who did not own a home, decided to go into the far west. He purchased two wagons with heavy canvas coverings and a tent, a stove, break plow, and a few tools that we would need in a new country, with two yokes of oxen, one yoke of cows, household effects, provisions to last over the journey, and a supply of drugs and medicines to last for a period of two years, and we started out. The first week we made about six miles of progress a day. We never saw a mile of railroad after leaving the capital of Wisconsin until the Union Pacific went through Nebraska in

August 1866. When we came to the Loup River near Columbus we found but a few dwellings at Columbus. Incidentally when we arrived, the man who conducted the ferry was on a spree, and wanted $5.00 to take us across, and this was more than my father had. He was, therefore, obliged to go 15 miles up the Loup River to the Genoa crossing. There at the Pawnee Reservation we saw the Pawnee tribe, the first Indians with which we came in contact. The man here ferried us across for $2.00. There was a company of United States soldiers protecting the reservation against hostile Sioux, Cheyennes, and Comanches, which tribes were on the war path against the Pawnees. When we reached Eagle Island, the stage station, a band of Pawneees [sic] were on the other side of the Platte River after a heard of antelope, and a band of Sioux attacked them and stole them from them. The Pawnees came upon us just as we were camping, and impudently surrounded our little caravan and relieved us of our provisions. A little later two Pike's Peak gold seekers joined our company, camped with us, and gave us the first Buffalo meat we ever ate.