Editorial note — Chapter II · AGAINST THE WATERS[16]
Reading edition
In the sixties the price of wheat was at times so low in Iowa that farmers could not pay their taxes. Many men engaged in freighting flour and bacon from Iowa to Denver, Colorado, via Council Bluffs and the route up the Platte valley, then a part of the buffalo range and a favorite hunting-ground of the Sioux and Pawnees. The father of the writer made such a trading-trip in 1860.