Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/285

268 388 SSStfElCA, VKUAHii OOlTNTY. BCAWaAS. >/., ■■**■, ...i Dow"'ih@' Pawnees begin to meet them, for runners have carried the news of the approach of the party. It is quite eariy in the morning of the fourth day out of Manhattan when they reach the present location of Senieca, Nemaha county, and where the great orer- ' land route is crossed. Speaking of this great high- way brings many incidents to mind; for instance, it was In the year 1842, it is claimed, that the first antii- ori/ied Government expedition passed through tfaa county. Ife-was Fremont, who was south of Sabethii> l^ence west to Baker's Ford nine miles north of Sen- eca, then northwest to the northwest comer of the county. Two years after Fremont passed Idiron^ the Mormon pioneers took the same route on their. way from Nauvoo, Hancock county, IUin<»8, whidi city the Mormons founded in the year 1838. Tbia city now has about 2,000 population. The causeof the Mormons desiring to get away from everybody was the fact of the bad treatment of the "roughs," who hung Joseph Smith in 1844. It was in February, 1846, when a large party crossed the ice-bound Mississippi inloWa, but in July, 1847, Brigham Young himself reached Salt Lake City, and the next year the exodus of the balance of the people took place. In 1854, men now living settled near Seneca, and it has been handed down as perfectly authentic that a numerous party of Mormons camped on the largest lake in Nemaha county,, or for that matter anywhere else near, it containing thirty to forty acres, and ow- ing to there being an epidemic among them they drained the Murpliy Lake to get the fish, and to this clay the ditch where they dug ean be plainly traced.