Читать книгу The Overland Trail онлайн

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I say no more. The best one can do is tell the story of various groups on the Trail. Then if you don’t take your hat off in reverence to hero Pioneers, and feel the tears choke your throat over the lonely graves, or the blood rush to your head in fury at the brutality of some thugs, both red and white, it is because you have lost the zest of real living. These people lived and died to create the West.

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There is no mistaking the appropriateness of the Indian names from now on, “Omaha—Above the Waters,” “Nebraska—Shallow Waters,” and “the Platte—Flat-Muddy-Bottoms.” You realize that whether you go on from Kansas City over the Overland Trail by rail or motor; and Council Bluffs hardly needs its name explained. There, under the self-same oaks where Lewis and Clark spread their awning and met the Indian chiefs of a dozen tribes a hundred years ago, you can park your car below the high bluffs and think about the past and the future of the two cities on the heights above the flats. The rivers, themselves, here, are not wide, but from ledge to ledge where the cities stand, it is about eight miles. As in the Kansas Cities, the dividing state line between Iowa East and Nebraska West is right on the viaduct highway.