When possible, early settlers would build their homes as near as possible to their neighbors for protection. Water and fuel were also important items.

One incident is told of an Indian scare when a white man spread the warning that "Indians are coming." John Lucht took his wife and children to the John Tiedgen home where more of the settlers had gathered but he returned to his sod shanty to guard his possessions. He feared thievery by this white man more than he feared the Indians.

Another story is told of the Indians helping a widowed settler, Mrs. Rosina Ketterman, who later became Mrs. John Lucht. After Michael Ketterman's death the Indians would bring her venison, wild duck and other food.

The late Herman Bierman related this story: One day his mother, Mrs. William Bierman, who with her husband homesteaded on the Elkhorn River north of Battle Creek, was at home alone with her baby, now Mrs. Minnie Prauner. An Indian came to the home begging for food. When she offered him food, he said, "Me no dog, me eat in house." She had to let him in. While eating his meal, he kept looking at the white baby in its cradle as if fascinated by its white skin. Mrs. Bierman was terribly frightened, but when he finished eating, he left without molesting Mrs. Bierman or her baby.

For years after the settlers came, the Indians would still come back to their old camping grounds. Though the buffalo were gone, they would come back to gather and dry wild fruit growing along the creek and river.

Philip Sheets of Meadow Grove, who came with his parents to settle in Deer Creek precinct near the Yellow Banks, told of seeing several hundred Indians camped near Battle Creek on about the same spot where Sam Thatch told that they were camped when Territorial Governor Black and General Thayer and his troops met them in 1859.

Nebraska Territory was formed in 1854 with Francis Burt as Territorial Governor appointed by President Franklin Pierce. Early in 1867, Congress passed a Nebraska Statehood bill which President Andrew Johnson vetoed as the bill had in it a section proposing that the State's constitution provide suffrage only to free white males, to which he objected.

Three weeks later, the Congress passed the bill over President Johnson's veto and Nebraska was organized as a state on March 1, 1867. It should be noted that the first known settler came to the Battle Creek area in January, 1867, the second and third came in March, 1867.

The Homestead law was enacted on May 20, 1862, which provided for disposition of public lands to homemakers without requiring compensation except the mere act of residence, cultivation and improvement. Any person being the head of a family

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