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Mustangs on Pumpkin Creek

Long before scholars of the written language began to record the history of the Great Plains there was the oral history of the Native Americans who roamed the region. Pawnee legend tells of a young brave who captured many fine horses in the area now known as the Pumpkin Creek Valley. In similar oral traditions the Min-ne-con-jou Sioux tell of a long ago leader, Lone Horn, who was the first of all the Sioux to bring his band of followers to the Platte River Valley. It is told that he did not come to live but came to hunt the abundant game and to capture the wild mustangs that roamed in great numbers throughout the valley and the adjoining territories.

On the southern banks of the North Platte, upstream from the Blue Water, near Ash Hollow, early settlers of the Nebraska Panhandle told of small remnants of the once huge herds of buffalo. And although the buffalo herds were considerably diminished, there were many droves of wild horses whose free-roaming leaders would steal the domesticated horses and keep them from returning. The loss of domesticated horses became so critical that all out war was waged against the wild horses. Several miles to the northeast of present day Oshkosh, a high hill was used as a relay station for fresh horses while hunting down the wild ones. From the hilltop the hunters could see for long distances and could easily spot the herds being pursued. Today the place is known as Wild Horse Hill. In the canyons to the south is a steep sloped box canyon that forms a natural corral where the wild ones were trapped and captured. It is, of course, called Wild Horse Corral.

More recently, though still a distant memory, when Harrisburg was known as Centropolis and Kimball was a boxcar depot named Antelopeville, abundant herds of wild horses roamed the plains between the Pumpkin and Lodgepole Creeks. In that vast area blacktail deer were plentiful and untold scores of antelope flashed gold and white across the plains in the shimmering waves of heat that rose from the prairie floor while bighorn sheep scaled the rocky ledges of Scotts Bluff and Castle Rock.

It was to this area that 15 year-old James Robert Jacobsen began his short but eventful career as cowboy, wild horse hunter, teamster and drifter. The Jacobsen family had inched their way westward from Ohio to Illinois and finally to a homestead on the Big Blue River of eastern Nebraska Territory in the 1860s. Young Robert was about 9 or 10 years of age when the family settled on the Big Blue at the end of the American Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Texas beef began to make its way north to the railheads of Kansas and Nebraska and Texas cowboys made their way into the imaginations of young boys all the way from New York City to the gold fields of California and every remote farmstead in-between. And so it was that Robert (Bob) Jacobsen wanted to be a cowboy.

With his fathers' reluctant consent, around the year 1871, Bob left home at 15 years of age. It appears that he was given a good saddle horse a few meager essentials and perhaps a small amount of spending money to carry him through until he found work. Bob packed his saddlebags with a few mementoes of home, a photo, a certificate of merit from his teacher in Saline County and a couple of small account books. It is from these books, where Bob penciled in some few small details, that we are able to briefly glimpse into the days of a "Mustanger." Although his entries cover a period of less than a year, they do contribute a unique and personal page in the history of the Plains.

It is not unlikely that Bob rode westward with intentions of stopping in Ogallala. Already a major shipping point for Texas beef, this would have been the place to mingle with the Texas cowboys and land a job. Ogallala was the Nebraska hub of the cattle industry with the expansive grasslands of the sand hills to the north and the plains of western Nebraska, northern Colorado and eastern Wyoming rapidly developing into some of the largest free-range cattle ranches in the west. It was here that Bob learned that the hard work and realities of cowboy life were somewhat different than his boyhood imaginings.

By 1879 Bob had nearly 8 years of experience in range riding and fall gathers, spring brandings and winters spent in a cold and drafty bunkhouse, but his record book showed no bankroll. So, in the early spring of 1879 Bob was working on the Sidney to Deadwood trail as a herdsman for a small shotgun outfit, hauling freight from the Sidney railhead to the gold fields in the Black Hills. No self-respecting cowboy would be caught dead driving an ox-team but night herding a bunch of cattle was respectable work and so Bob herded the teams at night, kept them on grass and made sure they were ready for work in the mornings. Bob earned $30 a month plus an extra 25 cents every other night and recorded his daily earnings, by noting the date, camp and amount of pay: 'Mar 24, Platte bottom...1.25: Mar 25, Pumpkin Creek...1.25: Mar 26, Greenwood...1.00'. On April 5th, 1879 Bob wrote, "Bad Luck, Good Luck, Failure, Disappointment."

Easter dinner on April 13 at the Pole Creek bull camp consisted of bread and coffee. The entry for April 21 reads, "Got [sprayed] on by a skunk. Stink too bad to go to town..." It sounds like April was one of his 'bad luck' months for his entries include the following: "Got up in the evening and went out on herd. Could not find the bulls. Bummed around town [Sidney] all night." "Left town in the morning, gathered bulls. Hunted my colt, could not find her." "Hunted my colt all day. Could not find her." "Hunted colt on foot..."

However, the doldrums' of April found new adventure in May when Bob wrote, "On the 13th of May four stout hearted frontiersmen started from the town of Sidney with two good saddle horses and equipment for (?) months campaign against the numerous mustangs that roam over the plains to the [north] west of that place. They arrived at their destination without accident and succeeded in capturing 8 head of wild horses."

The four stouthearted frontiersmen were himself, F.B. (Frank) Ferguson, T. (Thad) Ferguson, and Billy C. Livingston. Their area of operation was from the headwaters of Pumpkin Creek as far west as Willow Creek with the Wildcat Range just to their north. Their initial venture met with promising success as recorded by Bob. "Billy C. sold a wild stallion for $200 to E.S. Newman, grocer in Sidney..." On June 29th Bob wrote, "the wind was not blowing, strange to tell."

Catching wild horses was a relatively simple feat if one was a good, strong horseman, could ride non-stop for most of a day or night, survive on very little sleep and had the patience of Job. The process involved locating a herd of wild horses and then "walking" them down by keeping them on the move for several days. The men would take turns, riding in large circles, pushing the wild ones ahead without letting them stop for food or water. Eventually the horses would weaken to the point of offering little if any resistance, at which time they would be run into a corral, hobbled or broke to lead, then driven to town for sale.

The trade in wild horses was good business and many trips were made to Sidney to deliver the captured mustangs for sale. One entry in Bob's record book stated, " ...horses catched Lee cattle camp, forty-five in camp today." However, the temptations of Sidney apparently resulted in very little long-term accumulation of capital, even though the hearty frontiersmen kept at the game for nearly five months.

On October 5, 1879, without any record of proceeds, number of horses captured or further fanfare, Bob wrote the final journal entry, "Settling up and got ready to go to Deadwood." There are some random calculations on other pages in the journal which are no doubt the reflections of an overly optimistic and disenchanted young man, "621,948,268 wild horses multiplied by $33... $29,616,473, 621,948, 268 cash received for wild horses by James Jacobsen, poor fool."

In 1880 the Chicago and Northwestern pushed track to Pierre, South Dakota and the Sidney to Deadwood trail began to sprout grass in the beaten tracks of oxen and wagon wheels. Robert Jacobsen headed to Montana where hardworking and adventurous cowboys could find horseback work and there he stayed.

In 1885 Bob suffered an injury that took his life at the age of 29 years. E. M. Gardner of Bozeman, Montana handled Bob's affairs and sent a trunk of Bob's personal belongings to his father in eastern Nebraska. Those items included the two journals that Bob had kept during his short ventures on the Sidney–Deadwood trail, and wild horse hunting in western Nebraska. Bob's net worth was $7.50, the amount that Mr. E. M. Gardner said he could get by selling Bob's chaps.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. To contact Tim, email: [email protected]

 

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