PERSHING, Gen. John Joseph,

Famous in World War.

John Joseph Pershing was born in Laclede, Linn county, Missouri, September 13, 1860. He is the son of John F. and Anna E. (Thompson) Pershing. His early education was obtained at the public schools, and, having earned the funds for his tuition by teaching school, he entered the normal school located at Kirksville, Missouri, graduating in 1880. From this institution, after a competitive examination, which was won by a single point, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Six years were spent in that ideal military training school, which, in the eighties and nineties, produced such fighting men as Wood and Scott, Lawton and Chaffee, and gave Pershing his first taste of military life.

There were, during this period, a series of Indian uprisings, and it was an accident that turned Pershing's career as a lawyer to that of a military character. He became a cavalryman and rose to his present rank in the army by sheer merit. With the fire and vigor of his nature he was ever at hand when there was strenu

ous work to be done, whether it consisted in fighting Crees and Apaches in New Mexico and Arizona, in subduing the Sioux in the Dakotas, or in clashes with the turbulent whites of the mining town, the grading camp and the round-up.

On his graduation from West Point he received the rank of senior cadet captain, the highest honor that academy confers. We find him, in 1887, at the age of twenty-seven years, helping to chase

the wily Geronimo over the same ground he afterwards traversed in pursuit of Villa. In his first campaign the young lieutenant caught the eye of General Miles, his commander, who complimented him "for marching his troop and pack train over rough country, 140 miles in 46 hours, bringing in every man and animal in good condition." This was rare praise

with such officers as Lawton and Chaffee in the saddle, and in a country where every man was a horseman. Two years later, without firing a shot, he rescued a party of horse-thieves and cowboys, and was highly "recommended for discretion" by General Carr. In the winter of 1891-92, after the subjugation of the southwestern Indians, he was assigned to the Dakotas, and at the head of a division of Indian scouts took part in the battle of Wounded Knee, which broke the power of the Sioux in that country. Then came a breathing spell of four years, after which he was attached as military instructor to the University of Nebraska, where he completed his law studies, but in 1896 was again called to his old occupation of Indian fighting, and in the Cree campaign gained from his commander "especial recommendation for judgment and discretion."

Ten years of Indian fighting and desert trailing had toughened his frame and sharpened his faculties, and Pershing emerged a typical product of the southwest and of the plains-tall, deep-chested, slim-waisted and graceful from life in the saddle-fully prepared for the more difficult work which awaited him in Cuba, the Philippines and finally in Mexico and France.

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