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The Text Content on Page 8 of Nevada State Journal , January 2, 1927 is:

NEVADA STATE JOURNAL I OND RENO NEVADA SUNDAY JANUARY 2 1927 Oliver P Wiggins Trail Pal Of Kit Carson Frontiersman of Days Gone Rests in Denver Tribute Paid Pioneers By JACK BELL It Is but a short cry back to the of trail blazing Indian warfare pioneering and the canvas-covered schooner with bull the days when the great prairies were covered with tall buffalo grass when the antelope in immense roamed the great plains when the plains rattler and foot bull snake were part of the day's danger on and on like an ocean in gentle swells the Im- mense herds of buffalo wended their way on known trails from north to south and south to north to feeding grounds Then followed the thousands thousands of cattle herds in movement along the wide expanses of roads As far as trie eye could reach were the waving nourishing grasses All gone now Gone are the vestiges of buffalo grassl gone are the herds of antelope and the trails of cattle movements are no longer even faint across the hundreds of miles north to south and from south to north Bad Men Gene The frontier have blossomed into great cities The days of the whiskered bad and the other frontier characters have passed In their passing nothing is left but the memories of the few that had the real luck and opportunity to know many of these men whose names are in- Into far western can history The names of these men forgotten unknown for by the new generations that have had their being and with no thoughts of the men that made the way to their fortunes and ful pursuits who now lie here and there along the steel ribbons that were nettles of constant death The pioneer is never heard of any more No is ever given him The hurly hurly of making and a thousand and one intrigues leave no place for the men that cleared the way into the west such are to found In cycle of life The magnificent specimens of manhood riding exploring are gone forever These men were men of ted and sinews Indiana and met on prairie and on Mountain fastness On screen drama trying to de- pict the early men of the border merely makes a burlesque of the nobleness gentleness and isms of the true man of long The gunfighter of this movie farce is a sodden as compared with the quickness and deadly curacy of the trail blazers of the long ago When men depended on their cap and ball frontier Colt 45 Then came the revolving Colt 45 and kept marching on to and into the screen made by these old men of the open where peace and safety was a tainty The women that had the trails in the covered wagons drawn by bull teams the women who kled the men of the following of red-blooded pathfinders These women who were responsible for the peopling of the of the years with the majority of comparison can be likened unto a watery-eyed fuzzy lap dog and the dale No mich women live today and never will again Their part of the peopling and settlement of the great west must be of a fifty-fifty centage stalwart men of the long ago On the list near the head of the small army of adventurers and ex- comes one whose name is closely linked with that ot tho out- standing front man Kit this man Oliver P all man man hunter explorer Indian er forever live in the minds and hearts of those who first came into the wilds of Colorado Oliver P Wiggins frontiersman Oliver P Wiggins was buried in Denver December 1 1913 with all the pomp and ceremony given to by the Pioneer Societies Military and Civic bodies lie was the last the very last the old guard that made history As he lay in state at his grand niece's home at 3419 Larimer street one could visualize the early years spent amid danger and hardship On the body were many scars of tomahawk obsidian arrow and musket balls Six feet four he stood in his stocking feet and was as straight as a proverbial lanco shaft Reticent Always reticent about his early experiences and about the work of explorations with Kit Carson he went into the great beyond With thrilling dangerous episodes in his life a sealed book To a very few he at tanea recounted deeds of daring so Interesting that It held one spellbound and breathless with the imagination fired with the adventure of it all Scout Wiggins was the very last of Kit Carson's Indian fighters Like all of the real lovable iously honest men of the time he absolutely refused to have any ptu t in self-aggrandizement Why he would say the country was full of men those days wore the bucksHin and the coonskin cap Men had no fear of their Maker The I have read about as happening in new towns weio all bosh Men were ing for settlement New land Mines It's true that we all lived off the country Meat and fish were ful Of course the Indians were bad Now isn't it reasonable that they resented having their hunting grounds depleted It was their own God-given estate The government said differently so we came When a party of emigrants were wiped out the Indians soon learned that twice as many followed and that their punishment for rapine and massacre had to be paid for ten fold The awful things that ed to women and children through their agencies created the men that scouted the guided and demanded reparation to the full Men that in a day turned from their peaceful pursuits and into demons of ance This made the noted crack shots keen trailers and instincts were sharpened by the danger met on hand Most of thp bad men one rends about were the sort that killed the unoffending to gam a reputation as a bad man When a scout or as we wero called Indian fighter came within his vision he made off and hid out We never stood for any foolishness from these characters A Strange Life The actual life history of Oliver P Wiggins reads liWa strange and wonderful fiction He was closely associated for ten years with the illustrious Kit Carson Ho was part and parcel of the hardships many victories of that wonderful Pathfinder With Carson he met the immortal Fremont and with Carson was urged to accompany the party to the unexplored west 11.6 helped build the very first house that was constructed in Denver He rived out the shingles from that remain to this day upon the roof of that historic little ing in Denver He was a scout for General Heath and the experiences that he had in the wilds of braska would fill many volumes He was with Carson and the Texas Rangers in the Mexican war and was wounded at Monterey The of the life nnd of this last of the old guard of Indian fighters and will be assembled and young and the old will be thrilled with the stirring scenes of years ago The many exciting gerous episodes that took place in those The ground over which men fought and died is now thickly settled communities and as far re- moved from the days of warfare as were the olden villages in Europe But they will all be re- cognized At places where victims of Indian vengeance were tortured and scalped and burned at stake remnants today may be found of the wagon trains that were sacked and partly destroyed and I so the early history goes There was no sameness Every day thing new developed some new angle shown where brawn and guts met treachery and native cunning All gone all gone forgotten Even the men that made the trails into the land of the great west are no more mentioned than are the heroes of the Civil war Nevada Left There is but one primal west left and that is in the land of Nevada However peace reigns dim roads can be found Trails nre made and marked by the forest service and the counties throughout the great commonwealth but unpeopled Many of the towns and small camps are still primal although civilized and modern in tho full meaning of the word Nevertheless this try is the very of the old Many of the later still live In Nevada No dangers no hardships no Indians everybody friendly everybody one meets ing to lend a hand However tho population compared to the fast peopling of Nebraska Kansas and Colorado and tho other western states is compared to and parallel to the conditions of tho olden days ot the border But this is a brief sketch of the Scout a few days before his Among many of the laws of the Indians that stands out relative to the country in the early days is best told by the words of the famous Death For It Is true that the death penalty awaited any Indian who stalled forest or prairie fire in the olden days Should it happen that any Indian failed to help fight either a forest or prairie fire he was before the Council of Chiefs and forever banished from the tions of men never again permitted to carry i bow or warrior para- and condemned to do work and labor of the squaws Their ons idea was to prevent of nature's gifts and to tuate them Wiggins up to the of his demise was proud of the fact that he had never men nnd cattle arrived at the foot met defeat m either fistic or ing bouts Thin was one of the many popular sports of the border day He would recount with every of pleasure how he met and that unbeaten wonder of the ferent border towns His prowess was undeniable and it was a ure to listen to the details of the halt to one hour struggles with worthy opponents with the bearded urging them on Ileal sport primal battles that were free from taint or malice or grudge or ney the battle of the strong friends always victor and vanquished alike Denver's very first town meeting was held in front ot Wiggins house under tlie cottonwood trees Has Carton Rifle In 1886 while talking with the famous and frontiersman it developed that he possessed the beautifully chased rifle that Kit Caison had used and hod to his companion It was a tucky arm beautifully chased In the stock were any number of tack heads Small indentations denoted of Indians taken The com- record of Kit Carson and Scout Wiggins He was upon to present the rifle to the Society of Colorado and there this souvenir now re- poses in state in Colorado's building Perry Wiggins was born at Grand Island New 22 1823 He was elrlest of a family of nine When ho was an infant the family moved to Gainsborough Canada After a short there they again trekked to agara where Wiggins remained un- til ho was years of age About this time stories of Kit Carson who had been out west tor about six years began to trickle through the settlements over the continent Thrilling fights with the His wonderful success at trapping tor the valuable furs and the richness of the gold discoveries In tho vicinity of Pike's Peak led Wiggins to follow the bent of his adventuresome spirit and start west By the time he was fifteen he had managed to save the sum of nine With this sum and the indomitable courage of his pioneer forebears he started on his tramp across the continent By working his way he managed to obtain passage on a small ship sailing down Lake Erie He landed at De- troit then a struggling village and from there made his way to Missouri the trip taking ever a month At Independence he of men who were to start weft driving a herd of sore-footed cattle for the Santa Fe railroad Wiggins joined this party and in another six weeks the of Peak Kit Carton It was here that Wiggins met Kit Carson had become the leading Industry at this time and Wiggins Kit Carson and about forty white men trailed down to Animus then In Arkansas now Pueblo Colorado and began ing grain the winter this party would hunt buffalo deer trap and prospect for precious minerals In tho summer they would take the dangerous trail and go to fit Joe Missouri where they would rest and give out the flowing formation of the new nnd productive territory where they were engaged in business Something like a year after gins Had been the west Carson received a commission from thq government to enlist a group of men familiar with known and unknown and go after the Indians who had been committing dations along the frontier Wiggins had gained un enviable reputation as a buffalo hunter and crack shot and an all-around good man and was recommended by Carson ns the possible man to have Unimportant raids by Indians wore of dally occurrence He maintained trapping and hunting business and raised grain which sold at 0 cents bushel During this lime IIP was becoming a man of rich wan the word used In those days In 1844 he crossed tho mas Pueblo whore a of white men nnd two women up roster Mru the third while In that of border habitation Indian wow taking place In Montana nnd Camon went north to lake part In cleaning tip the country for safety to plains nnd went back to Niagara that were and married his childhood heart Martha For a few months the young couple lived on a farm near Niagara but the tures of the great wont were now firmly implanted In the blood of Wiggins He up and with wagon and horses started for the great unknown Squaw Is At this there wero no white women In Las Carson had the great try These two Indomitable were then sent by the novel to Santa Fo where the ern tribes were raiding tho Santa trains which making two trips the continent it tho time In the of the f h n gold rush to California detailed to lead a wagon u tin to California Afraid for tho of lim wife and child In tho married a a Chief's daughter Kome ho font hpr hack to her known for ther beauty Wiggins home in left his wife In St Joseph Missouri where she remained with her ther and a Mrs Chamberlain whoso husband was a borderman Wiggins first child was born here nnd was named Amanda Wiggins was gone scouting for two years and did not know he was a father until his return to St Joseph HP took his charge of the men in his locality family and trailed buck to Uis Guide For Tram Wiggins tooK charge of tho train at fit us guide and loader Covering the roar of tho lino of schooners by thoi clow moving oxen was a named Ben Goldstein While Inn tho Rookies Wiggins durum a Continued on Pane 4 Column 4