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35. Effect of Mexican Revolution .- The Mexican revolution, which began in 1811 and triumphed in 1821, broke down the non-intercourse rule, and in 1824 the first wagon train passed over the road from the Missouri to Santa Fe. There had been a Santa Fe trail before, but it had been made by caravans, small trains of pack animals, burros and mules, but with the passage of this wagon train came
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
the real Santa Fe trail, the first broad mark made by civili- zation across the face of Kansas. It was a great road, 700 miles long, of which 400 miles were in Kansas, a hard, smooth thoroughfare from sixty to 100 feet wide, it had not a bridge in its whole length, was the best natural road of its length ever known in the world, and in token that it had "come to stay," the broad-faced yellow sunflower, since chosen by Kansas people as the emblem of their State, sprang up on either side where the wheels had broken the soil, from end to end.
36. Eastern Terminus of Santa Fe Trail. - The eastern starting point of the Santa Fe traffic was, at first, Franklin, Mo., on the Missouri river, which years ago undermined and swept the town away. Later the seat of the trade was removed to Independence, Mo., which, as early as 1832, was recognized as the great outfitting point for the Santa Fe traders, and of the great fur companies. In time the business was divided with Westport, a newer town built on or near the line of Kansas. From the Missouri river landing for Westport has since grown Kansas City.
37. Opening of Trail Through Kansas .- After the laying out of this highway, Kansas was no longer a solitude. Kansas had been set apart for Indians, the Act of Congress of May 26, 1830, formally defined Kansas as part of the Indian Territory. The opening of the Santa Fe trail was like the dedication of a business street through a wilderness.
38. Fires Gleam Nightly Along Road .- A stream of human life was, as it were, set to flowing through the country. Trains going and coming in, over the long road, were seldom out of sight of each other, or of the gleam of the nightly fires. Millions of dollars' worth of property
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THE GREAT HIGHWAY.
were transported by the pack trains and wagon trains. An army of men was employed to drive and care for a host of animals. This army included, beside Americans, many Mexicans as teamsters and "packers," an art in which they stood unrivaled, and the dark features and soot-black hair of the "greaser" were made familiar from the Missouri to the mountains. The Spanish words incorporated in the English, as spoken in Kansas at this day, date back to the days of the Santa Fe trail.
39. Route Branches at Great Bend .- Taking the his- tory of the Santa Fe trail as part of the history of Kansas, it furnishes a long and exciting chapter. Leaving the Missouri line, the trail led a little south of west to Council Grove, long a meeting place of whites and Indians, and then across the country to strike the Arkansas at the center of the arc of the Great Bend, where one road continued to follow the river into what is now Colorado, while at the Cimarron crossing a shorter road bore off to the southwest to the Cimarron river and to New Mexico.
) 40. Pawnee Rock a Dangerous Point .- The traveler who now follows the trail by railroad, reaches the once dark and bloody ground at the bend of the Arkansas, where is now the town of Great Bend; thence west every mile has witnessed conflicts between the Indians and the caravans of traders, or between different tribes of Indians. At Pawnee Rock station are seen the now scarcely visible remains of the Rock, once a landmark known from one end of the trail to the other, and considered one of the most dangerous points on the long and perilous road. The railroad bridge, says Inman, crosses the Pawnee Fork at the pre- cise spot where the old trail did, and here was a favorite
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
battle ground between the tribes themselves, and the savages and all passers-by, the traders, the overland coaches, and every thing that attempted to ford the stream. On an island near Larned, according to Major Inman, the latest historian of the trail, occurred a savage battle between the Pawnèes and Cheyennes, in which the latter were severely defeated, and so on through scenes of blood to where once was old Fort Aubrey. It may be said that the four hundred miles of the Santa Fe trail in Kansas, in the more than forty years that it was traversed by all classes of travelers, from the soli- tary horseman of story to Pawnee Rock. marching armies, witnessed the display of all the great human qualities, patience, fortitude, and the most heroic courage, as contrasted with the darkest treachery and the most cowardly ferocity.
41. Oregon Trail .- The Santa Fe trail while, perhaps, the most important, was not the only great highway existing in Kansas before it was recognized as a white man's country. The Oregon trail was a great thoroughfare, leading to the valley of the Platte in Nebraska. There was the road made through what became the northern tier of Kansas counties to the crossing of the Blue at Marysville, by which a great emigration moved on to California. The river valleys, as
Caravan Attacked by Indians.
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
the Smoky Hill, served as road beds. It has been said that the valleys of the Kansas river and of the Arkansas were the first to be used as thoroughfares by civilized men in Kansas. But the great geographical truth was early dis- covered that Kansas was in the center of the great highway from the valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri to the Mountains and the Pacific.
42. A Trail from the South .- In the days of the Cali- fornia emigration a road, long visible after it ceased to be used, was that coming from Fayetteville, Ark., northwest- ward, and joining the Santa Fe trail at Turkey creek, in McPherson county.
43. Dog Trail became "White Man's Road."-The faintest trail made, and perhaps the earliest, was that by the Indian dog dragging lodge poles from place to place; then came the first "white man's road," the trace of the packers' loaded horses, mules, and burros; then the wide roads made by the traders' trains and the army wagons. All these left their mark in Kansas in the years while it was not an undiscovered country, but lying open and void, waiting for the rising of the Star of Empire.
SUMMARY.
1. American rule permitted the settlement of the territory, which would not have been allowed by Spain.
2. The Santa Fe trail was a well-traveled, natural road, some sixty feet wide, and 700 miles long, lined on either side with sun- flowers, and its main branch extending from Independence, Mo., directly across the territory to the Great Bend of the Arkansas; thence by two branches, one by way of the Rocky Mountains, the other directly to Santa Fe, N. M.
CHAPTER V.
THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
44. Occupied by Four Tribes .- The oldest authorities, Marquette and others, represent the country now called Kansas as occupied principally by four great tribes of Indians, the Osages, the Pawnees, the Kansas, and a tribe that no longer exists, and, in fact, has not been heard of since the first quarter of the 18th century, the Padoucas. These tribes seem to have claimed Kansas among them, and to have extended widely beyond its present limits. The story of their wars, and huntings, and migrations, has little interest to civilized people. When they moved away from Kansas and from the earth, they left nothing except mounds of earth, rings on the sod, fragments of pottery, rude weapons and ruder implements. They fought each other, disputed possession with · the wild beasts, were stricken down with fell diseases, but their history Typical Indian. never became of interest or importance to the world, because they did nothing for the world.
45. The Removal Policy .- As early as 1824, the United States Government had entered upon a policy of removing the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi, to a country which
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
should be their own, and where they should cultivate the habits of civilized life and live happily ever afterward.
The Osages ceded nearly all their land in Missouri in 1808, and were all located in Kansas by 1825, and the Shawnees removed to Kansas in the same year.
War Dance in the Interior of a Kanza Lodge.
The general removal of Indians to the West was deter- mined by the Act of Congress of May 26, 1830, by which an Indian Territory, with the following metes and bounds, was organized: Beginning on the Red river east of the Mexican boundary, and as far west as the country is habit- able, thence down the Red river eastwardly to Arkansas Territory; thence northwardly along the line of Arkansas Territory to the State of Missouri; thence north along its
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THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
westwardly line to the Missouri river; thence up the Mis- souri river to Puncah river; thence westwardly as far as country is habitable; thence southwardly to place of beginning. This gave a country 600 miles north and south approximately, and 200 miles east and west, as the country was not considered habitable over 200 miles west of the Missouri line, on account of the absence of timber.
46. Indians Assured Permanent Homes .- These limits included the present State of Kansas, and from the passage of this Act of May 26, 1830, for twenty-four years after- ward, Kansas was a part of the Indian Territory. In this Act of 1830 the In- dians were assured, in almost affectionate language, that these lands which weregiven in exchange for those they were already occupying, should be theirs forever, and that the United States would give them patents for them if they so desired. Indian Peace Medals, 1837.
47. Northern Part of Territory Occupied .- In 1832 the Cherokees and other southern tribes, from Georgia and other States, were removed to the present Indian Territory, and the movement to fill the northern part of the Territory began. The Kansas Indians, whose name was later given to the State, once lived on the banks of the Missouri, where Lewis and Clark saw the remains of their villages, but they were driven westward to the Blue. Their former territory
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
was occupied by the immigrating Indians. In 1831 the Delawares came from- the James Fork of White river, in Missouri, and occupied their afterwards famous reserve in Kansas. In 1836 the Ottawas removed from Ohio to their Kansas reservation, watered by the Marais des Cygnes. In 1842 the Wyandottes sold their lands in Ohio and removed to the forks of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. In 1837 the Pottawatomies began to gather in the Indian Ter- ritory, and in 1847 a tract of 576,000 acres lying in the present counties of Shawnee, Pottawatomie, Wabaun- see and Jackson was occupied by them. Here they were reinforeed by Col. Henry Leavenworth. Michigan Pottawatomies in 1850. The years 1846 and 1847 saw the location of the Miamis of the Wabash valley, in the limits of the Kansas county that now bears their name. In 1836 the Saes and Foxes removed from the Missouri to the Kansas side of the river. The year 1832 saw the removal of the Kickapoos from the Osage river in Missouri to the neighborhood of Fort Leavenworth. The Cherokees were granted lands in Kansas, but never occupied them in force. Several small tribes, the Weas and the Piankeshaws, the Iowas and the Muncies, the Peorias and the Kaskaskias, and a small band of Chippewas, were granted lands in Kansas. ,
48. Forts Established .- In consequence of the presence of the Indians, Fort Leavenworth was established as Cantonment Leavenworth, in 1827, by a detachment of the Third United States Infantry, and named in honor of Col.
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THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
Henry Leavenworth, of that regiment. Fort Scott was located in 1842, and named in 1843. Fort Riley, the third important post in Kansas, was not established till 1853, and was named for Gen. Bennett Riley, who guarded the Santa Fe trail and fought in Mexico. 1692874
Baptist Mission, established in 1831. Here Meeker's printing press was first set np in 1833.
49. Degrees of Tribal Civilization .- In the days between 1830 and 1854, the principal figures in Kansas were the regular army officer, the Indian trader, and the mis- sionary. All these had important business with the Indian, and seem to have been kind to him. In the Indian tribes residing in the Territory there were great differences in con- dition and character. The Wyandottes, the Shawnees, the Delawares, and the Ottawas were far advanced on the road to civilization; at least, that was the opinion of their
1
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
enthusiastic friends, the missionaries. The Pottawatomies had long been neighbors of the white people, and many bore French names and showed French blood. In Kansas they divided, those desiring to live as civilized people settling about the Missions, those who preferred the old ways going apart as the Prairie band. Other tribes af- fected but a shabby civilization, which was readily dissolved and dissipated in whisky; many individual Indians re- mained, to the last, uncaring barbarians. But for all Kansas Indians the govern- ment farmer ploughed, the government blacksmith heated his forge, the mis- Rev. Maurice Gailland, S. J. sionary preached in English and Indian, and sang and prayed, and printed and taught.
50. Pioneer Missionary Work .- The first Catholic baptisms of Kansas Indians were admin- istered by Father Charles La Croix, who had labored with the Missouri Osages, and who eame to the Osages on the Neosho in Kansas, where the Presby- terians had already established their Harmony Mission, was given by them a room for a chapel, and baptized several Osage children. Later came to the Neosho the Rev. John Schoenmakers, with several other missionaries and Father John Schoenmakers. Sisters of Loretto, and began what proved for him a life- time of labor for the spiritual and temporal benefit of the Osages, Both these objects were sought at all missions,
-
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THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
Protestant and Catholic. At the Mission were, beside the chapel and the school, a saw mill and a grist mill. However little the Indian may have cared, the labor in his behalf was incessant. There is in the annals of Kansas no story of more utter devotion than that of Rev. Jotham Meeker, who was aided in all his labors by his wife. Mr. Meeker, called by the Indians, "He that speaks good words," labored first in Michigan with the Ottawas and Chippewas. He came to the Shawnees, in Indian Territory, 1833, and later went to the Ottawas, in Franklin county, Kan. He was a practical printer, and brought to Kansas the first printing press and type. Rev. Jotham Meeker.
He printed the first book in Kansas, and published an Indian newspaper and many books in the Ottawa language. Mr. Meeker, largely assisted by one of his converts, Mr. J. T. "Tawa" Jones, gathered a church, a school, and opened a fine farm. After years of patient labor, Jotham Meeker died in 1854, and was followed in two years by his wife, and both rest where they fell in the cause of religion and civili- zation.
51. St. Mary's Mission .- While the Protestant mission- aries established their centres, the Catholic missionaries established their principal headquarters at St. Mary's, on the Kansas river, and thence missionary priests visited the different tribes while they remained. In Doniphan county, Rev. Samuel M. Irvin began a Presbyterian Mission among the Iowas in 1837, erected substantial buildings, and wrote a grammar of the Iowa language. A daughter of Missionary Irvin is believed to have been the first white girl born in
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
Kansas, as a son of Missionary Thomas Johnson, Alexander S. Johnson, was the first white boy. With Mr. Irvin in the labor of the Mission was associated Rev. Wm. Hamilton. 52. McCoy's Advanced Explorations. - On the mis- sionary roll of honor no name is to be written above that of Isaac McCoy. He began his work among the Miamis in Indiana, in 1817, continued it among the Pottawatomies near Fort Wayne, and fol- lowed that tribe to Michigan, where he also labored with Mr. Meeker and Dr. Lykins at the Ottawa Mission. Mr. MeCoy was the effective advocate of the Act of Isaac McCoy. 1830, for the removal of the Indians to the West. He preceded the Indians to Kansas and explored and surveyed their reservations. He was known to all the tribes. He firmly believed in the possibility of the elevation of the Indian, and worked to that end to the close of his life, which came at Louis- ville, Ky., in 1846.
53. Shawnee Mission School .- The Wyandottes attracted the good offices of the Friends as long ago as the date of their treaty with William Penn, and among the religious teachers of these people, Henry Mrs. Christina McCoy. Harvey was honorably distinguished both in Ohio and Kansas. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt at mission building in Kansas, in the pre-territorial period, was the erection, in 1839, of the Shawnee Mission Manual Labor School, two miles from Westport, Mo. This was the work of Rev. Thomas Johnson, who, with his wife, had
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THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
taught the Shawnees of the neighborhood since 1829. This Mission became famous as the meeting place of the first Territorial Legislature, Mr. Johnson himself being President of the first Ter- ritorial Council. The fine Kansas county of Johnson was named in his honor.
54. Indian Language Written .- But there were many names which should be kept in honor-of Chapman and Vinall, and Robert Simerwell and his wife; Rev. Thomas Johnson. Francis Barker and Ira D. Blanchard, and Mrs. Webster and Miss Harriet H. Morse, and Rev. Moses Merrill and wife; the Hadleys, father and son; the Rev. E. T. Peery and Mrs. Peery; John G. Pratt, who was the printer of the Shawnees and the Delawares; and of Father Gailland, long at the head of the Mission at St. Mary's.
Robert Simerwell.
Mrs. Robert Simerwell.
All these and many more labored for the Indians. They invented phonetic alphabets, they created written languages. Father Gailland wrote a Pottawatomie dictionary; Father Hoeken published a Pottawatomie prayer book; Father Ponzilione wrote an Osage prayer book.
The first church-going bell that ever sounded in Kansas was a Mission bell. It was brought to the Baptist Mission near the present Mount
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
Muncie Cemetery, Leavenworth, and hung in the fork of a tree. 1
SUMMARY.
1. Kansas was originally occupied by four great tribes of Indians: the Osages, the Pawnees, the Kansas, and the Padoucas or Comanches.
2. The Government adopts the policy of removing the eastern and southern tribes to the Territory.
3. Fort Leavenworth was established 1827, Fort Scott 1842, and Fort Riley 1853, to afford protection to the frontier.
4. Missionaries aid in the advance of civilization by reducing the Indian languages to writing.
5. St. Mary's was founded by the Catholics, and Shawnee Mission by Protestants.
Implements and Ornaments of Kansas Aborigines.
CHAPTER VI.
THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT.
55. Population Centres .- At the opening of the year 1853, the white population of Kansas was, as it had been for twenty years, concentrated about the forts, trading posts, missions, and reservations, from the Missouri to Council Grove. The population of these centres ranged from ten upwards, the largest number probably being located in and around Uniontown, in what is now Shawnee county. The population was small, scattered, and uninterested in public affairs.
56. Delegate not Received .- There were, from 1852, occasional feeble attempts to induce action at Washington, and, in 1853, Abelard Guthrie was nominated as delegate in Congress by a convention at Wyandotte, while Rev. Thomas Johnson was put in nomination at the Kickapoo village. The latter was elected and went to Washington, but was not received.
57. Douglas' Bill .- The crisis came with the report, on January 24, 1854, from the Committee on Territories, by its chairman, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, of an amended bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, afterward to be known in history as the Kansas- Nebraska Act, though, at the time of its introduction, it was commonly called the Nebraska Bill.
The main feature of this long bill of thirty-eight sections, was, that it abrogated the agreement of the Missouri Com-
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
promise of 1820, prohibiting (as the price of the admission of Missouri as a Slave State) slavery north of the line 36° 30', and, in place of pro- hibiting, left the question of slavery or no slavery to USTA the people of the respective SELECT HEMNS, Territories when they should come to frame their State THE OTTAWA LANGUAGE. Constitutions. This bill was discussed in Congress for JOTHAM MEEKER, four months, and passed the Senate at four o'clock on the Kil prin tz Engl all ye heathen morning of March 4, 1854, and the House at midnight PRESS OF A MER. BAPTIST BOARD OF FOR. of May 22d, by a vote of 113 MISSIONS, BHA WANOR IND, PER to 100, and was signed by J845. President Franklin Pierce on the 30th of May-since A Meeker Title Page. chosen as Decoration Day with all its memories.
58. Opposition to Bill .- The passage of the bill was fought at every step, and its triumph was received throughout the North with demonstrations of grief and anger, because a great number of American citizens, after the experiences of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Dred Scott decision, and the Compromise of 1850, did not believe that the bill meant an honest submission of the question of slavery to the bona fide settlers of Kansas, or meant anything except a determined purpose to force slavery upon Kansas, and upon every Territory of the United States.
59. Author's Motive .- Senator Douglas, himself a native of Vermont, and a Senator from the great Free State
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THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT.
of Illinois, disclaimed this as a purpose, and declared that his main desire was to take from Congress the decision of a local domestie question, and leave it to the people vitally interested. For himself he declared that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down. If the pur- pose of the enactment was to quiet the agitation of the slavery question, it signally failed. The direct result of the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to bring on a discussion more violent and widespread than had ever been before known in the country. As far as the conflict affected the Nation at large, the details belong to the general political history of the United States. The centre and most perilous spot in the field was soon transferred to Kansas Territory.
60. Derivation of "Kansas."-The Kansas-Nebraska Act defined the boundaries of the new Territory, and gave to it the name of Kansas. The spelling and definition of the word Kansas have been the cause of much discussion. Prof. Dunbar, formerly of Kansas, a most accomplished Indian linguist, states that the name of the Kansas river is derived from the Kansas Indian word Kanza, meaning "swift."
61. Kansas Boundary .- The following are the limits of the Territory as given in the act:
Beginning at a point on the western boundary of Missouri, where the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude crosses the same; thence west on said parallel to the eastern boundary of New Mexico; thence north on boundary to lati- tude thirty-eight north latitude, thence following said boundary westward to the east boundary of the Territory of Utah, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains; thence northward on said summit to the fortieth parallel of lati- tude; thence east on said parallel to the western boundary
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HISTORY OF KANSAS.
of the State of Missouri, thence south with the western boundary of said State to the place of beginning.
The south line was not made to conform with the line of the Missouri Compromise, 36° 30', but was fixed at the thirty-seventh parallel, the boundary between the reserva- tions of the Cherokees and the Osages. The fortieth parallel,
金非
Catholic Church at Osage Mission, built in 1847.
the north line, was established in 1853, the meridian point . being fixed at the Missouri river by Capt. Thomas J. Lee, United States Engineers, and the line westward surveyed by Mr. John P. Johnson, for many years, and until his death, an honored citizen of Highland, Doniphan county, Kan.
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THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT.
62. Indian Land Opened to Settlers .- For months prior to the passage of the Nebraska Act, the Government of the United States had been engaged in securing the cession of the lands of various Indian tribes in Kansas. The tract purchased of the Shawnees alone amounted to 1,600,000 acres.
On the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act the lands acquired by the Government became open to public settlement and hundreds of persons from Missouri crossed over and staked claims, some to remain as bona fide settlers, more to return at once to Missouri. These squatter claims became a sufficient source of difficulty among claimants, had there been no other.
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