A person can imagine having the paranormal power of predicting the future if he reads old newspaper accounts dated prior to the event. Take the death of Ulysses S. Grant for instance. The February 17, 1885 edition of the Sheldon newspaper carried this: Poor old General Grant, the hero of Shiloh, the Wilderness, and so many other great battles, the boy who used to take pride in riding unbroken colts is now dying; yes, he is dying and in his death the United States loses one of the most honored men who ever lived. He died July 23, 1885.
Some one should have told the Indians I write of next who were reported in early May. Five Indians, well armed and carrying two canoes, were seen making a beeline northward yesterday. Going to join Riel? Only a couple weeks later, May 18, 1885 the paper carried this bit: Riel captured, the rebel leader now in the hands of the Dominion government. Riel was a resistance leader of the Metis people, that is half-breeds, in what is now Manitoba.
An article especially interested me since I've done a lot of reading on this topic: Thousands of head of cattle have been bought in Northwestern Iowa in the last few weeks to be taken to the large ranches in Dakota and Montana for fattening purposes. In a couple of weeks the paper reported this: Theodore Roosevelt, the prominent New York politician, has arrived at his ranch on the Elkhorn in the western part of Dakota where he expects to spend the summer. It was just a year later that history recorded that the harsh winter of 1886-87 killed hundreds of thousands of cattle and marked the end of the open range. The famous picture painted by the western artist Charley Russell was one he painted in a letter to a friend to describe how bad the winter really was.
