Trails of Yesterday

Book excerpt: Trails of Yesterday, first published in 1921, is ranked with the best firsthand accounts of ranching on the northern Great Plains in the 1870s and 1880s. This classic of cow-country literature is rich in authentic frontier history. Born in England in 1842, John Bratt came to America when he was twenty-two, and in 1866 he joined a wagon train traveling from Nebraska City to Fort Phil Kearny. Bratt gives a vivid view of the country along the Great Platte River Road, reporting on the condition of the trail, meetings with Indians such as Dull Knife, and encounters with buffalo herds. There are splendid descriptions of the few forts then protecting the long trail—Forts Kearny, McPherson, Mitchell, and Sedgwick—and of the road ranches of John Burke and the notorious Jack Morrow, among others. Bratt was a cattle rancher for more than two decades and was instrumental in the settlement of North Platte, Nebraska.