USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I > Part 32
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the mouth of the Blue had moved down the Kansas River by the year 1830. They had established three villages under the government of as many chiefs. Hard Chief had fixed his village, in 1830, about a mile above the mouth of what is now known as Mission Creek, on the south side of the river, from which his people carried their water. He had more than five hundred followers in his town. The American Chief's village was on American Chief Creek (now ealled Mission Creek). It was some two miles from the Kansas River, and on the creek bottom. The town con- sisted of twenty lodges and about one hundred Indians. This village was also established in 1830.5 They were built because Frederick Chou- teau had told American Chief and IIard Chief that he would build a trading-house on the creek which he named American Chief Creek, for the chief who established his village on its banks. He did move there in 1830, and he and these two villages remained there until the removal of the tribe to the reservation at Couneil Grove. The other village established by the inhabitants of the town at the mouth of the Blue was that of Fool Chief. It was the largest, containing more than seven hundred people. It was on the north side of the river about a mile west of Papan's Ferry. The location of this town must be determined by that of the ferry at that time, something difficult to do. The town is said to have been immediately north of the present town of Menoken. That would have put it inside the bounds of the lands belonging to the tribe. White Plume must have settled near the town of the Fool Chief when he moved up from the Agency. But there was another Kansas Village. Little is known of it, and its location is not clear. The only information concerning it is given by Fremont, in 1842, as follows :
The morning of the 18th, [of June] was very pleasant. A fine rain was falling, with cold wind from the north, and mists made the river hills look dark and gloomy. We left our camp at seven, journeying along the foot of the hills which border the Kansas valley, generally about three miles wide, and extremely rich. We halted for dinner, after a mareh of about thirteen miles, on the banks of one of the many little tributaries to the Kansas, which look like trenches in the prairies, and are usually well timbered. After crossing this stream, I rode off some miles to the left, attracted by the appearance of a cluster of huts near the mouth of the Vermillion. It was a large but deserted Kansas village, seattered in an open wood, along the margin of the stream, on a spot chosen with the customary Indian fondness for beauty of scenery. The Pawnees had attacked it in the early spring. Some of the houses were burnt, and others blackened with smoke, and weeds were already getting possession of the cleared places. Riding up the Vermillion river, I reached the ford in time to meet the earts, and, erossing, encamped on its western side.
5 This is stated from what Frederick Chouteau told Judge F. C. Adams. See Vol. I, Kansas Historical Collections, page 287.
In a letter of Mr. Chouteau to W. W. Cone, May 5, 1880, he fixes the date as 1832. See Kansas Historical Collections, Vol. IX, page 196, note 54. These statements are ineorreet. Captain Bonneville found the Agency there in May, 1832.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
On Fremont's map this village is found to be on the Little Vermilion, a creek he delineates. But there is no such stream-and there never was. In what is now Pottawatomie County there is a Vermilion Creek. The Oregon Trail crossed it on what the official survey made seetion 24, town- ship 9, range 10, two and one-half miles east of the present town of Louis- ville. There is where Fremont camped. From that point the Oregon Trail bore away from the Kansas River starting over the uplands for the Blue River. The Indian town was on the Vermilion below the crossing. Long's detachment to visit the village at the month of the Blue crossed the Vermilion. This crossing was on the Indian trail which led up the Kansas River. This village was probably where the Indian trail erossed the Vermilion. Its inhabitants no doubt fled to the lower towns when driven out by the Pawnees.
There is a question as to when the missionaries turned attention to the Kansas Indians. At the Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held at St. Louis, Mo., in 1830, Rev. Thomas Johnson was appointed a missionary to the Shawnees, and his brother, Rev. William Johnson, was appointed missionary to the Kansas Indians. Rev. William Johnson seems to have gone at once to the tribe to which he was appointed. According to one statement of Frederick Choutean the Kansas Agency in what is now Jefferson County was maintained until 1830; and by another statement he fixed the date at 1832. If the Ageney was kept up until 1832. Mr. Johnson spent the first two years of his missionary life there. If Mr. Chouteau moved his trading-house to Mission Creek, in Shawnee County, in 1830, then it was there that Mr. Johnson began his missionary labors. The probability is that it was at the more western location that he established the first Kansas Indian Mission, in 1830. In 1832 he was sent as missionary to the Delawares, where he remained about two years. IIe received then his second appointment to the Kansas Indian Mission, in 1834. Hle arrived on Mission Creek at the Kansas towns early in the summer, and began work on the mission buildings. These were erected on the northwest corner of seetion 33, township 11, range 14 east. The principal building was a hewed-log house thirty-six feet long and cighteen feet wide. It was a two-story structure, having four rooms-two below and two above. There was a huge stone chimney at each end. The kitchen was of logs, and apart from the house. There was a smoke-house and other building.
William Johnson labored at this mission until April, 1842, when he died. He accomplished little, and his hard work bore little fruit in the savage minds and hearts of the Kansas Indians. They could not be pre -. vailed on to labor for their own support. They would not plant and cultivate corn and other grains, nor raise cattle. They went into the settlements by the hundred to beg. Rev. Thomas Johnson, brother to the missionary William, on his way to the Kansas Mission in May, 1837, met four hundred to five hundred of these Indians on their way to the Missouri settlements to beg.
In 1844 the widow of William Johnson was married to Rev. J. T. Peery, who was in that year sent to continue the work of Christianizing
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the Kansas Indians. Nothing of account was accomplished, and the school was discontinued. In 1846 the Kansas Indians were given a reservation at Council Grove. They soon removed to their new home. In 1850 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, put up, at Council Grove, what was the best mission building ever erected in Kansas. It was built by Rev. T. S. Huffaker, who was long connected with the Kansas tribe. It still stands, the finest specimen of the buildings of its time, quaint, massive, silent, a splendid monument to the fine spirit of the Church which labored long, zealously, but in vain to make Christians of intract- able savages.
In 1851, Mr. Huffaker opened his school. As few or no Indian chil- dren would attend, he admitted the children of white settlers, employees of the commerce which rolled over the Santa Fe Trail. It was one of the first schools in Kansas to receive white children. In after years Mr. ITuffaker was constrained to admit that all attempts to educate the Kan- sas Indian children had failed. And these Indians never gave any serious attention the Christian religion.
The Kansas Indians ceded to the United States an immense territory. They did not own so vast a tract. They never had possessed it. Much of it they had never even hunted over. It is very doubtful whether they even claimed some of the land they sold. The Government wished to extinguish the Indian title. Having purchased it from the Kansas Indians, no other tribe could set up a claim.
At St. Louis, on the 3d of June, 1825, the Kansas Indians ceded, by treaty of that date, the tract or territory described as follows :
Beginning at the entrance of the Kansas river into the Missouri; thenee North to the North-West corner of the State of Missouri; from thence Westwardly to the Nodewa river, thirty miles from its entrance into the Missouri; from thenee to the entrance of the big Nemahaw into the Missouri, and with that river to its source; from thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old village Panai Republic to the West ; from thence, on the ridge dividing the waters of the Kansas river from those of the Arkansas, to the Western boundary of the State line of Missouri; and with that line, thirty miles, to the place of beginning.
To understand this cession it must be made plain that at that time the western line of Missouri was a north-and-south line through the mouth of the Kansas River. West of that line, north of the month of the Kan- sas, and east of the Missouri River, lay what are now Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, and Platte counties, Missouri. These com- prise the best body of land in Missouri. It was attached to that state in 1836.
As construed and mapped the treaty conveyed a tract of the best land in Nebraska, reaching from the Missouri to Red Cloud, and extending north at one point something more than forty miles, and including the present towns of Pawnee, Tecumseh, Beatrice, Fairbury, Geneva, Hebron, Nelson and many others.
This prineely domain was ent off at the head of the Solomon, from where it reached down to within twelve miles of the Arkansas, northwest
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of Garden City. Thence it followed the divide to the Missouri line. It was nearly half the State of Kansas.
Out of this cession, however, there was set aside a reservation for the Kansas Indians, the grantors. This reservation was described as follows:
A tract of land to begin twenty leagues up the Kansas river, and to include their village on that river; extending West thirty miles in width, through the land ceded in the first Article.
There were twenty-three allotments to half-breeds, as has been noticed. The east line of this reservation was through the center of range 14, east, of the public survey made later, and nine miles west of the center of Topeka. It extended west three hundred miles and contained nine thousand square miles of the heart of Kansas. It was held by the Kansas Indians until 1846. On the 14th of January of that year they ceded two million acres off the east end of their tract, embracing the full thirty miles in width, and running west for quantity. It was provided that if the residue of their land should not afford sufficient timber for the use of the tribe, the Government should have all the reservation. This lack of timber was found to exist; thereupon the Government took over the entire Kansas reservation, and laid off another tract for the Indians. This traet was at Council Grove, and was about twenty miles square. It was supposed to lie immediately south of the lands of the Shawnees, but when surveyed it was found to encroach on the Shawnee reservation some six miles. To avoid complications, the Shawnees ceded this overlapped part in 1854. In 1859 the Kansas Indians made a treaty retaining a portion of their reservation-nine miles by fourteen miles-intact. The remainder was to be sold by the Government, and the money used for the benefit of the tribe. These lands were sold by acts of Congress, of May 8, 1872, June 23, 1874, July 5, 1876, and March 16, 1880. The tribe had in the meantime moved to a reservation in Oklahoma. The tract nine by fourteen miles was disposed of under the above named acts of Congress, and the money applied to the use of the tribe. And thus were the Kansas Indians divested of the last of their hereditary soil.
THE OSAGES
The Osage tribe is theoretically separated into twenty-one fireplaces. These fireplaces were grouped into three divisions-
1. The Seven Tsi-shu Fireplaces.
2. The Seven Hanka Fireplaces.
3. The Seven Osage Fireplaces (the Wa-sha-she Fireplaces).
Each fireplace is a gens, so the Osage tribe is composed of twenty- one gentes, or clans. When the two "sides" of the tribe were fixed- the War Side and the Peace Side-there were but fourteen gentes in the Nation. At that time the Osage camping circle, or tribal circle was adopted. Positions for the fourteen gentes were provided. The cir- cle is shown as follows:
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1
8
2
9
3
10
PEACE
WAR
4
SIDE
SIDE
11
5
ยท
12
6
13
+
7
14
OSAGE CAMPING CIRCLE
[From Fifteenth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology ]
At some period after the adoption of this camping circle the tribe was enlarged by the admission of the Seven Hanka fireplaces. It was not practicable to enlarge the camping-circle, for it had of necessity, to contain an even number of fireplaces, that it should show an even balance of sides-each side an equal number of fireplaces. In mak- ing the adaptation of the tribe, as enlarged, to the old tribal circle, the seven Hanka gentes were counted as but five, and the seven Osage gentes were reckoned as only two.
In the tribal ceremonies it was the law that each fireplace should have a pipe, or be assigned a pipe, or to be in some way associated with or represented by a pipe. The Ilanka brought in seven such pipes when it joined the tribe. The Wa-sha-she had seven of these pipes- one for each of their fireplaces. For some reason-yet unexplained- the Tsi-shu had no pipes of this nature. To remedy this defect, the Wa-sha-she, or Osage, gave their seventh ceremonial pipe to the Tsi- shu, with authority to the Tsi-shu to make for themselves seven pipes from it. The Wa-sha-she have now but six ceremonial pipes, though the ceremonies for the seventh are still retained.
The fourteen gentes represented in the Osage tribal eircle, with their subgentes, are as follows:
1. Elder Tsi-shu, or Tsi-shu-wearing-a-tail (of hair) -on-the-head.
1. Sun and Comet People.
2. Wolf People.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
2. Buffalo-bull faee.
1. (Not known.)
2. Hide-with-the-hair-on.
3. Sun Carriers. Carry-the-sun (or Buffalo hides) -on-their-baeks.
1. Sun People.
2. Swan People.
4. Tsi-shu Peacemaker, or Villagemaker, or Giver of Life.
1. Touches-no-blood, or Red Eagle.
2. Bald Eagle, or Sycamore People. The principal gens of the left side of the tribal circle.
5. Night People, or Tsi-shu-at-the-end.
1. Night People proper.
2. Black Bear People.
6. Buffalo Bull.
1. Buffalo Bull.
2. Reddish Buffalo. (Corresponds to the Yuqe of the Kansa.)
7. Thunder Being, or Camp-last, or Upper World People, or Mys- terious Male being.
(Subgentes not ascertained.)
8. Elder Osage, or Wa-sha-she Wa-nun. This gens embraees six of the seven Wa-sha-she or Osage Fireplaces. as follows :
1. White Osage.
2. Turtle Carriers.
3. Tall Flags.
4. Deer Lights, or Deer People.
5. Fish People.
6. Turtle People. (Turtle-with-serrated-erest-along-the-shell. Possibly a mythical water monster.)
9. Real Eagle People, or Hanka-apart-from-the-rest. The War Eagle
gens. One of the original Hanka Fireplaces.
The guards, policemen, or soldiers for the right side of the tribal eircle are taken from the eight and ninth gentes.
10. Ponka Peacemaker. This is the principal gens on the right side of the tribe circle. It was one of the original seven Osage Fire- places.
1. Pond Lily.
2. Dark Buffalo.
Or, as some say.
1. Flags.
2. Warrior-come-hither-after-touching-the-foe.
3. Red Cedar.
11. White Eagle People, or Hanka-having-wings.
1. Elder White Eagle People.
2. Those-wearing-four-loeks-of-hair.
These Subgentes were two of the original seven Hanka Fire- plaees.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
12. Having Black Bears.
A. Wearing-a-tail-of-hair-on-the-head.
1. Black Bear.
2. (Meaning not ascertained.)
B. Wearing-four-locks-of-hair. 1. Swan.
2. Dried Pond Lily.
13. Elk.
One of the seven Hanka Fireplaces.
14. Kansa, or Holds-a-firebrand-to-the-saered-pipes-in-order-to-light- them.
Or, South Wind People.
Or, Wind People. Or, Fire People.
Each of the divisions A and B of the twelfth gens were originally a Fireplace of the Hanka.
There are four divisions of the Osages which have not yet been identified, the-
1. Beaver People.
2. Crane People.
3. Owl People.
4. Earth People.
The religious beliefs of the Osages are similar to those of the Kansas and other Sionan tribes. The term Wakanda had almost the same meaning. There were seven great Wakandas-Darkness, the Upper World, the Ground, the Thunder-being, the Sun, the Moon, the Morn- ing Star. The Upper World was perhaps the greatest of the Wakan- das. In some of the tribes it was the supreme Wakanda. There was no set form of worship of Wakanda. Every one thought Wakanda dwelt in some secret place. It was believed that the Wakanda, or some Wakanda was ever present to hear any petition or prayer for help. There were many forms of propitiation, or these may have been sometimes in the nature of invocations, such as the elevation and low- ering of the arms, the presentation of the mouth-piece of the pipe, the emission of the smoke, the burning of cedar needles in the sweat house, the application of the major terms of kinship, ceremonial waiting, sae- rifiee and offerings, and the cutting of the body with knives.
The Osages eall the Sun the "mysterious one of day," and pray to him as "grandfather." Prayer was always made toward the sun with- out regard to its position in the heavens. Here is a prayer.
"Ilo, Mysterious Power, you who are the Sun! Here is tobacco! I wish to follow your course. Grant that it may be so! Cause me to meet whatever is good (i. e., for my advantage) and to give a wide berth to anything that may be to my injury or disadvantage. Throughout this island (the world) yon regulate everything that moves, inelnding human beings. When you decide for one that his last day on earth has
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
come, it is so. It can not be delayed. Therefore, O Mysterious Power, I ask a favor of you."
The Pleiades, the constellation of the Three Deer (Belt of Orion), the Morning Star, the Small Star, the Bowl of the Dipper, are all Wakandas, and they are addressed as "Grandfather." "In the Osage traditions, cedar symbolizes the tree of life. When a woman is initiated into the secret society of the Osages, the officiating man of her gens gives her four sips of water, symbolizing, so they say, the river flow- ing by the tree of life, and then he rubs her from head to foot with
OSAGE INDIAN CHIEF [From Photograph Owned by William E. Connelley ]
cedar needles, three times in front, three times on her back, and three times on each side, twelve times in all, pronouncing the sacred name of Wakanda as he makes each pass."
These instances are given to aid in the formation of a proper con- ception of the Wakanda as regarded by the Osages. In the Siouan tongue "Wakandagi, as a noun, means a subterranean or water mon- ster, a large horned reptile mentioned in the myths, and still supposed to dwell beneath the bluffs along the Missouri river." 6
6 All that is said in this article, as well as much in the article on the Kansa, when not otherwise indicated, is taken from the writings of
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KANSAS AND KAANSANS
Mueh eoneerning the early history of the Osages has already been told in the account of Pike's expedition and the history of the Kansas. They ealled themselves Wa-zha-zhe. This name the French Traders corrupted to the present Osage. In historie times the tribe was divided into three bands-
1. Pahatsi, or Great Osages.
2. Utsehta, or Little Osages.
3. Santsukhdhi, or the Arkansas Band.
There are different accounts as to how the tribe became separated into the two principal bands-Great and Little Osages. Some insist that the division oeeurred in primal times. The Osages then dwelt about a great mountain, an immense mound, or a big hill. One part of the tribe lived on the mountain, the remainder on the plain. Those on the elevation eame to be ealled there the Great Osages, and those living in the plain were the Little Osages. It has been suggested that the names represented a social difference or some tribal distinetion long forgotten by even the Osages themselves. In all probability there is no foundation for any of these explanations. Isaae MeCoy, in his History of Baptist Indian Missions says the division was the result of some fault of the early traders among them. There were then two towns on the Missouri belonging to the Osages. The one above became known as the Upper town, and the people dwelling there as the Upper People. In like manner, those at the town below were the Lower Peo- ple. Each town had its chief and separate local government. The white people, having an imperfect knowledge of the language and eon- ditions of the Osages, supposed that the names of the towns signified that all the tall or large people of the tribe lived at the Upper settle- ment, and that all the short or small people lived in the Lower settle- ment. There eame to be told among the white people in pioneer times the story that the tribe had made an arrangement whereby all the tall people should be in one band and live in one town, while all the short men should dwell together in another town. Intelligent travel- ers never did mention that there was any difference in the stature of the Great and Little Osages. The terms may not have originated as MeCoy says. They may have grown out of the relative size of their two towns in early times. Or in some other way not now remembered by the Osages themselves.
The origin of the Arkansas Band is known. About 1796 Manuel Lisa seeured from the then government of Louisiana a monopoly to trade with all the Indians en the waters of the Missouri River. This, of course, included the Osages. Previous to that time the trade went to trad- ers in competition, among these the Chouteaus. The monopoly of Lisa east out the Chouteaus. Pierre Chouteau had at one time enjoyed a monopoly of the Osage trade. When he was superseded as agent of the tribe by Lisa, he sought some means of continuing his profitable
J. Owen Dorsey, in the Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology. Ile is the best authority, and often the only authority.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
business relations with the tribe. He determined to divide it, and to settle a part of it beyond the jurisdiction of Lisa. He induced the best hunters of the tribe to go with him to the Lower Verdigris. This stream is a branch of the Arkansas River, none of the waters of which were included in the graut to Lisa. Chouteau took only young men and their families, and they were from both the Great and Little Osages. They built towns near the mouth of the Verdigris River. Later they went to the Arkansas and had towns both above and below the mouth
INDIAN BABY IN BABY-FRAME [From Photograph Owned by William E. Connelley ]
of the Verdigris. By the French they were known as Osage des Chenes (Osage of the Oaks). Des Chenes was corrupted into a number of terms, of which Chancers was one. The date of the formation of this band and its migration to the Verdigris is given as about 1803 by Lewis and Clark, Dr. Sibley and Mr. Dunbar, in their report published in 1806. They say nearly one-half the Osage nation followed Chouteau. Also, that "The Little Osage formerly resided on the S. W. side of the Missouri, near the mouth of the Grand River; but being reduced by continual warfare with their neighbors, were compelled to seek the protection of the Great Osage, near whom they now reside." Their village was set up, on their
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
return, where Pike found it when he aseended the Osage on his way to the Pawnee country.
Fort Osage, afterwards Fort Clark, where Sibley, Mo., now is, was established in October, 1808, as a protection to the Osage Indians, as eited in the preamble of the treaty of November 10, 1808, with the tribe. But the Government dealt unfairly in that matter. The fort and trading- post had been promised in 1804 and in 1806. In less than a month after it was built, Pierre Chouteau appeared at the fort with the treaty of the 10th of November already written out. It had been prepared without any consultation with a single Osage. Chouteau had the treaty read and explained to the assembled chiefs and warriors. Then he announced that those who signed it would be considered friends of the United States and treated accordingly, and those who refused to sign would be regarded as enemies. The chief, White Hair, protested, but acknowledged the help- lessness of the Indians. He signed the treaty, and fear of being counted enemies of the United States eaused all present to sign. This treaty exacted a large traet of land as the price of building Fort Osage. The land was thus deseribed in the treaty :
Beginning at Fort Clark (Fort Osage) on the Missouri, five miles above Fire Prairie, and running thenee a due south course to the river Arkansaw and down the same to the Mississippi.
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