USA > Kansas > Johnson County > History of Johnson County, Kansas > Part 2
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CORN DANCE
No one was allowed to use any corn, even from his own field, until the proper authority was given. When the corn was sufficiently advanced for use the one who had the authority fixed the date for the corn feast and dance. On this occasion great quantities of roasting- ears were prepared, and all ate as freely as they desired. After this feast all could have what they wished from the fields. This was prob- ably the most highly esteemed peace festival. Very properly it might be called the feast of the first fruits. Another feast was held, but prob- ably not so universally, in the fall, a feast of in-gathering, and one in the spring.
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL.
Bluejacket is authority for the statement that the ancient custom was to keep a fire burning for three nights at the head of one who had just died. A small opening was made from the mouth of the deceased to the surface of the ground by inserting a long rod through the newly filled grave, then withdrawing it. Provisions were also kept at the head of the grave for three nights. They explained this custom by saying it took three days and nights for the spirit to reach the Spirit Land.
CHIEF BLUEJACKET.
It seems to have dropped out of the memory of the present genera- tion of men, if indeed it was ever generally known that Bluejacket is a white man. He was a Virginian by birth, one of a numerous family
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
of brothers and sisters, many of whom settled in Ohio and Kentucky at an early day and many decendents of whom still reside in Ohio. His name was Marmaduke Van Swerangen. He had brothers, John, Vance, Thomas, Joseph, Steel and Charles, and one sister, Sarah, and perhaps more. Marmaduke was captured by the Shawnee Indians, when out with a younger brother on a hunting expedition, sometime during the revolutionary war .. IIe was about seventeen years of age when taken, and was a stout healthy, well developed, active youth, and became a model of manly activity, strength and symetry when of full age. He and a younger brother were together when captured, and he agreed to go with his captors and become naturalized among them, pro- vided they would allow his brother to come home in safety. This pro- posal was agreed to by his captors and carried out in good faith by both parties. When captured Marmaduke or "Duke," as he was familarily called, was dressed in a blue linsey blouse or hunting shirt from which garment he took his name of Bluejacket. During his boyhood he had formed a strong taste for the free savage life of the American Indian, and frequently expressed his determination that when he attained man- hood he would take up his abode with some Indian tribe. It is tra- ditionally understood that Marmaduke was taken by the Indians about three years before the marriage of his sister Sarah, who was a grand- mother of Mrs. Sally Gore, daughter of the late Rev. Charles Bluejacket, of Bluejacket, Okla. Sarah was married in the year 1781. Although we have no positive information of the fact, it is believed that the band or tribe with which Bluejacket took up his residence, lived at that time on the Sciota river in Ohio somewhere between Chillocothe and Circle- ville. After arriving at his new adopted home Marmaduke, or Blue- jacket, entered with much alacrity and cheerfulness into all the habits, sports and labors of his associates and he soon became popular among them. At the age of twenty-five years he was chosen chief of his tribe and as such took part in all the councils and campaigns of his time. He took a wife of the Shawnees, and reared several children, but only one son. This son was called Jimi Bluejack and was rather disipated, a wild and reckless fellow who was quite well-known on the upper Miami river during and after the war of 1812. He left a family of seven sons and daughters, among them Charles Bluejacket, who was with the Shawnee Indians at the time of their removal from Ohio in 1832. He was well educated, intelligent and highly intellectual in all respects, feature, voice, contour and movement, and except as to his dark color, was the exact facsimile of the Van Swerangens. Charles Bluejacket moved from Kansas to the Indian Territory in 1871, and died there October 29, 1897, aged eighty-one years.
EARLY TRAPPERS AND TRADERS.
The early history of Johnson county is linked with the Choteau's early trappers and traders of the Mississippi valley. Frederick Choteau
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
was born in 1810, at St. Louis, Mo., He could speak fluently in English, French, Shawnee, and Kaw, and occasionally acted as in- terpreter for the agents of the Government in dealing with the Indians. His brothers, Ciprian and Francis, had a license from the gov- ernment to trade with the Shawnees, Delaware's and Kaws, and after- wards the Weas, Peorias and Peynkeshaws. Frederick Choteau in 1828 located on the south side of the Kaw river, and established what was then known as the French Trading Post. Up to that date there was no wagon roads here, and all articles were transported on pack horses by the way of trails cut through the brush. The Indians raised small patches of corn, which they dried in September, put in sacks made of hides, buried. After this work was done they went west for their annual hunt, sometimes not returning until the next spring.
The Choteaus bought all the hides and pelts the Indians brought them from these trips. They paid for beaver skins $5 each per pound ; deer skins, twenty-five cents per pound, otters, $5; wolf skins, $1; badger and coons, fifty cents each. The trade of the Choteaus with these Indian tribes amounted to as much as $100,000 annually.
In 1830 Frederick Choteau established the Kaw river trading post, about one hundred miles from the mouth of the Kansas river and goods were taken up the Kaw river in keel boats. In 1840 he returned to what is now Johnson county, locating on Mill creek, and made some fine improvements, but the flood of 1844 destroyed all his property, including house, hogs and some cattle. He saved his horses by swim- ming them to the shore. He had just finished the barn and house when this flood came. According to Mr. Miller, who ran the old mill established by the Government, it rained for sixty days and nights. This mill was carried away by the flood, also. Three days after Cho- teau lost his property he completed a double log house on the highlands, near, and moved his family into it. In 1854 he bought from Henry Bluejacket, for $1,200, a log house and out buildings, on his farm at Shawnee. He was married four times and was the father of eleven children
KANSAS LEGISLATURE MET HERE IN 1855,
SHAWNEE MISSION BUILDING, BUILT IN 1839 BY REV. THOMAS JOHNSON,
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CHAPTER II.
INDIAN MISSIONS.
Establishment of Methodist Mission-Founding of Manuel Training School-Location and Opening of School-Influence of School- Rev. Thomas Johnson and Other Missionaries-Charles Bluejacket -Capt. Joseph Park-Mission Abandoned-Murder or Thomas Johnson-Col. Alexander Soule Johnson-William Johnson and His Recollections-Baptist Mission-Quaker Mission-Memories of Missions.
INDIAN MISSIONS-ESTABLISHMENT OF METHODIST
MISSIONS.
Johnson county is conspicuous in the history of Kansas Indian missions. One of the important Methodist Shawnee missions west. of the Mississippi was established within the borders of what is now Johnson county. The Baptist and the Friend also had permanent mis- sions among the Shawnees of this county.
The missionaries were among the heroic pioneers of the early days. They were men devoted to their calling and sincere in their efforts to show the Indian the better way and the higher life. They sacrificed friend and home and endured sufferings and hardships and in many instances were the victims of savage cruelty. They were the contem- poraries of the soldiers of the frontier forts, the attache of the early Indian agencies and the hunter and trapper who followed the trail of the adventurous explorer.
The members of the Missouri Methodist Conference, at St. Louis, Mo., September 16, 1830, considering the great necessity for missionary exertions and feeling a willingness to aid in the great work of sending the Gospel among all people, formed themselves into a missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal church.
This was not a missionary society supported by the entire church ; but the men of the Missouri conference, some of whom received less than $40 dollars a year, resolved to contribute a part of their very limited means toward sending the Gospel to those who were in still greater need. The call to mission work among the Indians was heard and answered, and the devoted brothers, Thomas and William Johnson, entered what became their life-work among the Indians. The Missouri conference at this date contained but twenty-nine members.
The missionary appointments for the year 1830 read: "Shawnee
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
Mission, Thomas Johnson ; Kanzas or Kaw Mission, William Johnson." For the years 1832 and 1833 there were four Indian missions in Kansas, comprising the Indian missionary district. In 1833 and 1834 it was called the north Indian mission district.
The Shawnee Mission was the most ambitious attempt of the Meth- odist church to care for the Indians of Kansas, and this mission, by reason of its location at the entrance to the territory for emigrants from the East and the part it played in the territorial history, became a place of peculiar interest.
The Shawnee reservation embraced a tract of 1,600,000 acres, described in the treaty of May 10, 1854, as follows :
"Beginning at a point in the western boundary of the State of Mis- souri, three miles south of where said boundary crosses the mouth of Kansas river; thence continuing south and coinciding with said boundary for twenty-five miles ; thence due west 120 miles; thence due north, until said line shall intersect the southern boundary of the Kansas reservation, to the termination thereof; thence due north, coinciding with the eastern boundary of said reservation, to the southern shore of the Kansas river; thence along said southern shore of said river to where a line from the place of beginning drawn due west shall intersect the same-estimated to contain sixteen hundred thousand acres, more or less."
The tribe resided on the northeast corner of this vast tract, near Missouri and near the Kansas river. These lands lying in the vic- inity of the larger streams, afforded considerable bodies of good timber, interspersed with fertile prairies. This reservation had been assigned to the Shawnees by the treaty of 1825, and it would seem that the larger part of the tribe had congregated here by 1830, their most populous settlement being in Wyandotte county, south of the Kansas river. Among the earliest comers appears to have been The Prophet, brother of the great Tecumseh, who made his home near the present town of Turner.
In the year 1835 the Rev. Isaac McCoy describes the condition of the Shawnees as follows :
"Generally their dwellings are neat, hewed log cabins, erected with their own hands, and within them a small amount of furniture. Their fields are closed with rail fences; are sufficently large to yield them corn and culinary vegetables plentifully. They keep cattle and swine, work oxen, and use horses for draught; and own some plows, wagons, and carts."
It was to the vicinity of The Prophet's town that the Rev. Thomas Johnson followed the Indians, built a log house, and began his work as a missionary among the sons of the forest in 1830. The following letter, addressed to the Rev. Jesse Greene, presiding elder of the Mis-
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
souri district, by Indian Agent Vashon, tells something of the inception of our first Indian mission in Kansas :
Indian Agency, near Kansas, 1830.
"Rev. Sir: I have the pleasure now to make the communication which I promised when I had the happiness of conversing with you at my office on the subject of establishing a mission for the instruction of the children of the hapless portion of the human family entrusted to my care in this part of my agency. I have been informed by Rev. Mr. Dodge, whom I had the pleasure to meet with a few days ago, at Harmony Mission, that the American Board of Foreign Missions will not have it in their power to comply with the application which I made through him for a missionary establishment at or near this place in less time probably than two or three years, as they have a great many more applications than they can possibly comply with, and he therefore solicited me to request your earnest attention to the subject without delay ; and I now have the pleasure to inform you that I have this day been requested by Fish, a Shawnee chief, also William Jackson, a white man, raised with the Shawnees, to make application for the establish- ment of a mission among them for the education of their children, and I most earnestly solicit your attention to the subject.
"Fish, the Shawnee chief, has a son by the name of Paschal, who was put to school when he was a boy. He can speak English very well. He is a sober, steady, moral, good man. He has an Indian family and is industriously employed in farming, and I think he would make the most efficient male interpreter that could be procured. Captain Shane, the Shawnee interpreter, has a stepdaughter by the name of Nancy. who is a widow with one child. She speaks English very well, and is a woman of most excellent character, and, I think, much disposed to be pious. She has been brought up in the habits of civilized life entirely from her infancy, and I think better qualified for all the various duties of a female interpreter than any other that I know of and, if I am not greatly mistaken, will devoutly rejoice to have an opportunity of living once more under the influence of the Gospel. Captain Shane also has 'a son, who has been six months at the Choctaw academy in Kentucky, where I expect he will be again sent.
"The vicinity of the smith shop, I think, would be the most judi- cious location that could be selected for the establishment of the mis- sionaries. Mr. Harmon Davis, the smith for the Indians, is a man of most excellent moral character ; he is a member of the church, and has a large and amiable family. His children are mostly daughters and nearly grown. I feel convinced that no other situation in the country possesses as many advantages. I therefore recommend it, in the strong- est possible light, as the most judicious location that can be selected. "George Vashon.'
Of the first mission, established on the bluffs of the Kansas river,
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
we have been able to learn little. Joseph S. Chick, one of the prom- inent business men of Kansas City, Mo., and a son of Col. Wm. M. Chick, one of the pioneers of Kanasas City, in a recent letter to Rev. Joab Spencer, of Slater, Mo., says :
"I was at the old Shawnee Mission about three weeks, but failing to have school I went home. The building, as I remember, was a two-story double log house, with rooms about twenty feet square, with outhouses, smokehouse, chicken-house, etc. There was no teacher there at that time. There was a man by the name of Waugh that had been a teacher, and was staying there at the time, but I do not recall any, other."
Rev. Lorenzo Waugh was appointed as missionary to the Shawnees, with Rev. Thomas Johnson, for the years 1837 and 1838; so this was about the time that Mr. Chick was at the old Shawnee Mission school. It was at the old Shawnee Mission that the late Col. Alexander S. Johnson was born, July II, 1832. His father, Rev. Thomas Johnson, was born in Virginia exactly thirty years before, July II, 1802.
At the conference of 1832 the first fruits of the two missions were reported by the Johnsons, nine white and thirty-one Indian members, which was considered an encouraging beginning; so that the sum of $4,800 was appropriated that year to the Indian missions within the bounds of the conference.
In the month of August, 1833, Bishop Soule had, on his way to the Missouri conference, held at Cane Hill, Ark., visited our Indian mis- sions among the Delawares and Shawnees. The bishop spent a few days with Thomas and William Johnson in surveying the ground, with a view of extending the mission work, and as a result he determined to establish two additional stations, one among the Peorias and the other among the Kickapoos. The conference report for the year 1834 shows a total of eleven white and 380 Indian church members, in the four Indian missions in Kansas-the Shawnee, Delaware, Peoria and Kickapoo. The report of the missionary society for 1834 has this to say of the Shawnees :
"Some of the leading men who had considerable opposition to the Gospel are now cordially united in the work of reformation and the prospect is truly flattering. Upwards of sixty church members, some of whom are able to instruct their brethren in the things of God. School prospering."
The following letter, written by Rev. Thomas Johnson to Rev. Jesse Greene, is full of encouragement :
"Shawnee Mission, February 17, 1834.
"Dear Brother Greene: We have great excitement in the Indian country ; some of the leading men of the Shawnee nation have lately surrendered their prejudices; twelve or fourteen have lately joined our society. The Peoria nation has submitted to the yoke of Christ; forty
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
of them joined last Sabbath week. Write to us and let us know when you will come to see us. I will try to be at home.
"Yours in haste,
"Thomas Johnson."
At the conference of 1832 the Kansas Indian missions were formed into a separate district, called the Indian Mission district, and Thomas Johnson appointed superintendent, which position he held till 1841, when he was compelled to resign because of ill health. Up to 1836 the appointment of the missionary was to "mission and school," and he had charge of both religious and educational work, under the direc- tion of the superintendent. When the manual-labor school was opened a minister was placed in separate charge of that institution. At the conference of 1842 the office of "superintendent" gave way to that of "presiding elder." Prior to the establishment of the manual-labor school mission schools were conducted in each tribe. The salary of the mis- sionary was the regular disciplinary allowance of $100 per annum for himself, and the same for his wife, and there was very little money with which to equip the station. Rev. Joab Spencer, surviving mis- sionary to the Shawnees, writes that in the early days Rev. Thomas Johnson received a call from one of the church officials, and that Mrs. Johnson desired a better equipment for her table than they had ordi- narily, but Mr. Johnson said that the official must put up with their plain fare. So he, like the rest, ate from a tin plate. Mr. Johnson had no horse, and sometimes in making his trips had to ride an ox instead.
The church building belonging to the Shawnee Mission was located in a beautiful grove on a country road leading from Westport into the Indian country, and was about four miles west of the manual-labor school, and about six miles southwest of Kansas City. The manual- labor school was not erected on the old mission premises, but was four miles south of the original site of Turner. The church building was constructed of hewn logs, and was about 20x40 feet, plain and old- fashioned, and faced to the north, a door in the south end of the building opening on the camp-ground and cemetery. The date of its erection was about 1840, services before this having been held at private houses. Love feasts were held in connection with quarterly meetings and camp- meetings, the latter being held annually on the grounds near the church, and were attended by Methodists from other tribes. A parsonage was connected with the church. This historic old meeting-house stood till the latter part of the war, when it was torn down and used for fuel. A part of the time it was loopholed and used by the Kansas militia as a fort. Nothing is left but the little reservation of five acres used for a burying-gground.
The conference of 1835 appointed Rev. William Ketron as missionary to the Shawnees. Mr. Ketron was a Southerner, having joined the Holston conference on trial in 1825, and was transferred to the Missouri
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
conference in 1829. He served but one year in the Indian mission in Kansas. His assistants in the school and mission were Mrs. Ketron, his wife, Mrs. Miller, Rev. David G. Gregory, and Mrs. Gregory. They had thirty-four scholars under their instruction, who were instructed in English gratuitously. Nineteen of the pupils were supported by the mission and lived in the mission family; the others received one meal a day at the mission house, and were otherwise supported by their parents. It seems that the industrial feature which Mr. Johnson inaugu- rated upon such a large scale a few years later was introduced at this time, as five of the boys were learning cabinet-making and two shoe- making. The missionaries taught some of the Shawnees to read in their native language, and some of these in time became teachers of others. Instruction in Indian was placed under the immediate notice of native class-leaders of the church. A small book in the Shawnee language on religious subjects, and some hymns, was published by the missionaries and introduced among the people with good effect. Some of the native church members, who numbered 105 at this time, took active part in public religious exercises, and had prayer in their families. The next year, 1836, Rev. Thomas Johnson was assisted by Mrs. John- son, Rev. N. T. Shaler, Rev. D. G. Gregory, and a Mr. Holland.
FOUNDING OF MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
The year 1838 dates a new era in the history of the Methodist Indian missions in Kansas-the establishment of the Shawnee manual-labor school. This meant the discontinuance of the separate Methodist schools among the tribes and the education of the children at this central institution. At the general conference of 1836 Rev. Thomas Johnson induced that body to vote $75,000 for the establishment of the Indian manual-labor school, and the Government at Washington granted him 2,400 acres of the finest land for his Indian mission.
From the records of the board of managers of the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal church :
"April 13, 1838: It was mentioned that Brother Johnson, presiding elder and superintendent of the Shawnee Mission, with an Indian of that nation, would attend our anniversary. A committee was ordered to be appointed to take charge of the missionary lyceum: Nathan Bangs, David M. Reese and George Coler constitute the committee."
"May 16, 1838: Certain documents from the Shawnee Mission having been read, they were on motion referred to a committee of five, viz .: Rev. Dr. Bangs, Rev. Dr. Luckey, Joseph Smith, Stephen Dando and B. Disbrow."
"May 30, 1838: Doctor Bangs, from the committee appointed at the last meeting, made the following report which was adopted :
"The committee appointed to take into consideration certain docu-
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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS
ments presented to the board of managers respecting the necessity and expediency of establishing a large central school for the benefit of Indian children and youth north of the Cherokee line, southwest of the Missouri river, and east of the Rocky mountains, have had the same under consideration, and beg leave to present the following as the result of their deliberations :
".For several years past our missionaries have had schools upon a small scale among the Shawnees and other tribes of Indians in that re- gion of country who have become in part Christianized ; and though these schools have exerted a salutary influence upon those who have attended them, yet being small, and divided among so many distant tribes, they are necessarily limited to their inflence, expensive in their support, as well as difficult of management.
"'It appears, moreover, that this being a part of the country ceded by the United States to the Indians for the perpetual possession, other tribes are moving into the neighborhood, to whom it is desirable to impart the benefits of religious, moral and intellectual, as well as mechanical and agricultural instruction, that they may in due time be exalted to the benefits and immunities of a Christian and civilized com- munity, and this is most likely to be accomplished by the employment of suitable and efficient means for the education of their children and youth.
"'From the humane policy of the general Government of the United States, in the efforts they made to rescue the savages of our wilder- nesses from their state of barbarism, by means of schools, we have reason to believe, if it be determined to establish a school of a character contemplated in the documents above referred to, that pecuniary means may be obtained from the Government to carry the plan into effect, and also an annuity for its support from year to year.
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