Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 7ITHIN the recollection of a few living citizens Omaha began being built. The plateau between the river and the bluffs had been used since 1850 as a camping ground for companies intending to cross the plains toward California as gold seekers. The Indians were jealous of their rights and would not permit white men permanently to settle and make homes on their soil. Soon after the treaty of June 2ist, 1854, between the United States and the aborigines, the level land of the plateau was laid out in lots, which to this date comprises the original City plat, and sales were made at once and buildings erected during the summer and fall. The place was immediately known abroad, and already had a name from its having been visited by so many on their way to the Pacific coast, and from its location on the Missouri which was traversed by steamers carrying passengers and freight to almost every landing on its margin. Learning of the commencement of a town, the wide-awake itinerant was soon on the spot to open a preaching place to which he might invite the people. There is a claim made, however, that a sermon had been preached on the site of the village before the land was purchased from the Indians, and the dictum comes from high authority,but is as yet without authentication from any other source. Bishop Simpson, in his Cyclopaedia Of Methodism, states that William Simpson, of the Iowa Conference, who was deputed to do missionary work on the western slope of that State, in 1851 came across the river and preached at Omaha to a few people at the foot of the bluffs. If this be correct, these people must have been stragglers from the caravans on their way to California, and were bivouacked temporarily at this place. In the event of establishing the fac...