USA > Kansas > Reno County > History of Reno County, Kansas; its people, industries and institutions, Vol I > Part 4
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The Little Arkansas cuts off a part of the county in the northeast corner. 'While an interesting stream, it only touches the county in such a way that it becomes a stream of minor importance in a history of the county.
One of the most beautiful streams anywhere to be found is Cow creek, which in early days was a marvel to all who saw it. It heads up in the (4)
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hard land of Rice and Russell counties and threads its way through the bot- tom lands-two miles of creek to one as the crow flies. It appears on Sibley's map made in 1824 as "Cold Water" or "Cow Creek"-the latter name has clung to the stream.
Who named Cow creek? What a name for such a stream. The water as clear as crystal. The stones in the bed of the stream as plainly visible as if no water ran over them. Imagine how the first white man felt as he saw that stream. Riding over the hot, short buffalo grass of the prairie, his horse plunged into the tall blue stem that grew in the low bottom land that bordered the bank of the stream. He saw no water until within ten feet of the bank of the creek. A little way ahead, it emerged from the tall grass as it came around a bend, and a little way below it disappeared out of sight in the same way. It was an original discovery to every stranger who crossed it. Standing fifty feet from its banks in the rank growth of blue stem, there was nothing to indicate the existence of such a stream. It seemed super- natural. It came from the Unknown and went on to the Unknown. The traveler hesitated to turn away. He wanted to taste of the stream. He wanted to touch his hands in its cooling waters and let his feet rest on its shining sand and its glistening pebbles. When was this marvelous creation planned? How long has it been moving its way to the sea-along the unknown and silent pathway? What eons has it carried away the volcanic salts and alkalis that the changing seasons have leached from the soil to pre- pare the land for the tillage of the coming man? How many billion tons of granite, quartz, limestone and prophyry have the summer torrents of the Arkansas brought from the mountains and unloaded along its route till its water channel was seventeen feet above the waters of the creek, four miles above the townsite? How long since this beautiful stream began its mean- dering over the surface of the canyon filled with sand and water which we call the Arkansas valley? Who named Cow creek? If it were possible to see into the future, would there be an exercise of the police power of the city to prevent the contamination of the stream from its source to its mouth that there might be for all time a stream of water that for purity. for the health of the city, has no equal. Who named Cow creek?
Cow creek has had three disastrous floods. In normal times it does not look like a stream that wouldl do much damage, by overflowing its banks. It has its source in the hard lands of Rice and Ellsworth counties and when the heavy rains fall in that territory the channel is unable to carry away the excess waters. When the Santa Fe railroad was built through this county their engineers knew but little of the country. The underlying
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stratum of sand and water makes deep channels impossible. To the first railroad engineer there was no warning of any danger from overflow. There was no driftwood because of the entire absence of timber along the stream and even the little wash of grass and weeds were gone, burned by the annual prairie fire that swept the country. So when the Santa Fe engi- neers built their bridge across Cow creek, west of town, they put in a beam bridge, with abutments built of stone and a bridge only forty feet long. The railroad was about a foot above the level of the ground, just as little as they could get along with. When the first flood that occurred after the settlers came into the county, on May 7, 1877, the water soon piled up around the bridge and in a short time the flood had undermined the stone masonry abutment and the east abutment rolled over into the water. The sand had washed from under the stone abutment and the bridge was gone. But the . volume of water could not find an adequate outlet in the creek channel and it spread over the railroad tracks. It followed the track to Main street, ran across Main street to First avenue, filling all the low places and finally made its way back to the channel of the creek. There was about two feet of water over the town, the deepest place being on Main street and First avenue east. The water stayed on the street and over the town for abont two weeks.
In an effort to avoid any further floods the city at once began to raise the grade of Main street. This was done by hauling dirt and other material and piling it in the street. The intention was to raise the grade of the street for two feet. To do this required that all houses be raised two feet. There were no brick buildings then, only frame structures, and after considerable time all of the buildings were stuck up on stilts. The sidewalks were also put up and the city had its first damage suit as the result of these elevated walks. Taylor Flick, a resident of Kinsley, walked off of one of these stilted sidewalks one night and was injured. He sued the city for five thousand dollars damages. The jury gave him two hundred and fifty dollars.
The railroad likewise had to raise its grade to make sure that future floods would not wash out its tracks. They extended the bridge, making it more than double the length of the first one and, instead of using masonry abutments, they drove down piling and built the bridge on them. The piling went far enough into the ground that no trouble was ever experienced after that with washed-out bridges in Cow creek.
In addition to raising the grade of Main street, the city did another thing that greatly helped it, not only in later floods, but in times when there was more than the normal amount of water to be carried down the chan-
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nel of the stream. That was the straightening of Cow creek through the town. The many bends in the creek greatly retarded the flow of water. W. E. Hutchinson made a proposition to the city, which was accepted. He agreed to straighten Cow creek through the city, making a channel that was just half the length of the bed of Cow creek through the city. The city paid ten thousand dollars for this work and in the subsequent periods of high water demonstrated its value. It not only cut the distance the water had to travel, but it increased the velocity of the water so that the creek's carrying capacity was increased four-fold. There have been several occasions when the low lands above town were covered with water and yet the creek was able to carry the water through town and not tax the channel to its capacity to carry the extra volume of water away.
The second flood of Cow creek was in June, 1886. The water was not as high as it was in 1877, but it was harder to get off of the town, because Main street, having been raised, held back the water and, while the west part of town suffered more than it did at the first flood, the eastern part of the city did not experience nearly the loss that it did in the first high water.
The principal damage in all of the floods has been to grass and lawns. No property loss of any great amount has ever been occasioned. The flood of 1903 did perhaps more actual damage than either of the others, as it came up very unexpectedly and merchants were not able to get their stock of goods off the floors. This last flood occurred on May 30, 1903. Heavy rains in Rice and Ellsworth counties for over a week had poured a volume of water into Cow creek that was more than it could carry. The water stood about two feet deep over Main street and covered perhaps two-thirds of the town site. There was considerable damage done by this flood. Merchants lost goods that they were unable to get off the floors before the water reached them. Some foundations of buildings were undermined and some buildings that were made of soft brick were damaged by the water. Gardens and lawns were covered with a coating of mud where the water stood, but no great loss occurred from the flood.
The city, shortly after the flood, dug a drainage canal from Cow creek to the river, west of town. This cost over thirty thousand dollars and into it a greater portion of Cow creek water is diverted. Whether it will pre- vent the floods from getting over the city when the water becomes as high as it was in 1903 is a matter of conjecture. It doubtless will keep off a great amount, but the test of its capacity is yet to be made. While the loss to the city by reason of the high water in Cow creek has been considerable,
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the loss to the farmers above town and likewise those below town has been greater than the loss in the city. Both of the last two floods have occurred in the growing months of the year. Crops were spoiled and in some places the soil was washed by the high water. These losses, however, are such as come to the low lands, the best land being of course in the bottoms. But while the loss of crops is an item of considerable moment to those affected, vet it is not always a complete loss, as the deposit of soil left on the lands is worth considerable in added strength to the soil.
The north fork of the Ninnescah waters the western and southern part of the county. It heads in the eastern part of Stafford county, but has its principal feeders from the western and northwestern part of Reno county. Its name means "sweet water." On the early maps it was uniformly spelled "Nenescah," but the later spelling changes the "e" to "i". It has low banks, seldom ever runs dry and is a great stream for watering stock. There is fine bottom land on both sides of the stream and in the early days of cattle driving the Ninnescah afforded a splendid place to water and feed the cattle. There were several camping grounds for stock on the stream and it was a source of great pleasure for the tired and thirsty cattle owners to reach this rich bottom land with their stock in the long drives from Texas north- ward. The Ninnescah empties into the Arkansas river at Oxford in Sumner county.
Salt creek heads in the northwest corner of Kiowa county. Its old name was "Turkey Creek." It probably derives its present name from the salty, brackish taste of the water. It empties into the Arkansas river six miles west of Hutchinson. It was, like the Ninnescah, a watering point for Texas stock, the country round it affording good pasturage for the cattle.
Looking at it from the standpoint of its value to the stock men, it is not strange now that they fought so vigorously the attempt to shut the cattle business out of the county, and it is not strange the cattle men resisted so strenuously the effort to drive them farther west, as the natural conditions favored equally the raising of stock or the growing of grain. The abundance of water made it an especially valuable field for stock raising.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE OSAGE INDIANS.
The early settlers of Reno county never had any experience with the Indians of any consequence outside of a raid on some cattle in an early day and an occasional begging band of Osages that drifted into the country; with these exceptions, the settlers of this county never saw the Indian. Like the buffalo, he had passed on westward. His depredations were centered on wagon trains along the Santa Fe trail and his vengeance was taken on hunters who, as the Indian thought, were forcing him off the ground he and his forefathers had held for centuries, and they were also killing off the buffalo and depriving him of his means of support. There were a couple of Indian "scares," almost entirely without foundation, after the settlers came to Reno county, and which amounted to almost a frenzy the last time in 1878. But the Indian never was a source of annoyance to the early settlers in this county.
The territory of which Reno county is a part belonged originally to the Osage Indians. Just how they happened to possess this valley and this part of the country perhaps cannot be known. When the white man came to this country he found various tribes of Indians scattered over the land- whether they settled their boundary lines by force or by argument cannot be known, but they lived in fairly well defined areas. According to School- craft, the Osages, in an early day lived east of the Mississippi river. Meet- ing severe opposition from the stronger Eastern and Northern tribes, they came west, crossing the Mississippi at the mouth of the Missouri. Here they divided into two bands, the Quawpaws and the Ugmahaws. The Quaw- paws, or the older of the Indians, liked the softer climate of that region and stayed at the mouth of the Missouri. The Ugmahaws, or the younger or more vigorous of the tribe, pushed up northward along the Missouri river as far as Omaha, which was named for this band of Osages, their name signifying the "Up Stream" Indian.
The Osages laid claim to all the country north of the Arkansas river to the Meramac river in Missouri and westward to an indefinite line, that included nearly the entire state of Kansas. West of the Osages, the Arapa-
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hoes and Cheyennes claimed the land. Reno county was in the territory covered by the treaties of the Osages with the United States government, but lack of knowledge of the country caused an error in the treaty, by which the Osages received pay for some land claimed by the Arapahoes and Cheyennes and the territory immediately in the vicinity of this county was part of the doubtful territory and was a sort of neutral ground between the Osages and Arapahoes and Cheyennes. However, as the treaties for this territory were made with the Osages, they must be considered as the original holders of the soil.
THE OSAGE TREATIES.
The first treaty with the Osages by the United States was made on June 2, 1825, at St. Louis. This treaty was the result of the report by Major Stephen A. Long, who made a trip through the territory in 1821-1822, which will be referred to in a subsequent chapter. Major Long's report covered the questions for which the trip was organized, namely, to ascertain the tribe of Indians that held possession of the land and other items that would enable the government to deal intelligently with the inhabitants of the territory acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase .- At this time the govern- ment's policy was to meet the chiefs and sub-chiefs of each tribe and enter into a "treaty" or agreement with them for the acquisition of their land. While the government had bought it once from the French, yet a certain possessory right of the Indian was also recognized. The "treaty" that was made with the Indian tribes was largely in the nature of a barter and trade rather than the formal method that is used in the dealings of one sovereign nation with another. These treaties were effective between the United States and the Indian tribes only after they had been approved by the Senate of the United States.
There were present at the forming of this treaty with the Osages all the chiefs of the Great and Little Osage tribes. The government recognized the two divisions of this tribe that they had themselves created. By the terms of this treaty, these two divisions of the Osages ceded to the United States "all the land west of the state of Missouri and the territory of Arkan- sas, and west of the Red river, south of the Kansas river and west to a line to be drawn from the headwaters of the Kansas river southwest to the Rock Saline." According to the map and survey of J. C. McCoy, the "Rock Saline" was on the headwaters of Salt creek and is now township 18 north, range 12 west, near the north fork of the Canadian river. Owing to the fact that at the time the treaty was made the "headwaters of the Kansas river"
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were not accurately known, but the men who made this treaty supposed these "headwaters" to be much farther east than what the later surveys showed to be correct, owing to the misapprehension of the western boundary of the Osage nation, this treaty included land lying in the western part of the terri- tory thought to be conveyed to the United States that was claimed also by the Arapahoes and Cheyennes and this is the explanation of the "neutral strip" referred to in early part of this chapter.
In consideration, the United States agreed to pay the Osages the sum of seven thousand dollars a year for twenty years, payment to be made at "the village of St. Louis." In addition to this annual payment, the United States was to give to the Osages six hundred head of cattle, six hundred hogs, one thousand domestic fowls, ten yoke of oxen, six carts and such farming implements as the agent of the government thought was necessary; also a blacksmith shop to repair farm implements and tools. Likewise the United States was to pay the Delaware Indians one thousand dollars, which the Osages owed them, and one thousand dollars each to Pierre Chotean, Paul Balio and William S. Williams, the three latter being Indian agents with whom the Indians had been doing business and who had helped the govern- ment to negotiate this treaty.
From the character of the consideration for the land, the purpose of the government was evident, namely, to get the Indians to settle down to farming and quit their nomadic life. The gift of oxen and plows was for the purpose of seeing if the Indian could not be made self-supporting and induced to quit the chase as his only method of making a living. The fact that more than sixty years elapsed before the Indian gave up his early habits, took his land in severalty and began to farm, is evidence of the deep- seated love the Indian had for his old habits. While it is doubtful if the six hundred hogs and the thousand chickens, the ten yoke of oxen and the blacksmith shop had much effect on the men of the Osage tribe of that day, yet it was the beginning of the end of Indian occupancy of this sort, and marked the beginning of homesteads and the "school sections," the timber claim, the pre-emption, also the beginning of the land grant to railroads and the general dispossession of these lands by the government.
The second treaty with the Osages was made on August 10, 1825. This treaty was also an outgrowth of Long's expedition and in furtherance of the policy of Congress to promote direct commercial relations with Mexico. As a part of this policy, Congress authorized the President to cause a road to be marked out from the western frontier of Missouri to New Mexico. This second treaty was made at Council Grove, on the Neosho river. The name
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INDIAN TREATY OF 1867, CONCERNING OSAGE TRUST LANDS
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of the place was derived from the fact that the meeting place was held in a well-known grove and the word "Council" was added to the "Grove" to mark the place where the treaty was made It is the name of the present county seat of Morris county and was a stopping place for travelers who later went over the trail that was afterwards established across the state and on out to Santa Fe, New Mexico. By this treaty the Osages agreed to allow the United States to mark out the contemplated road and they further agreed to be friendly with all who traveled over that road. After the route was established and travel started, how well the Indians kept their faith with the government is shown by the fact that it became necessary to establish two forts along the line, one at Ft. Zarah and one at Ft. Dodge, to protect the travelers over the route. Even with these troops, the wagon trains were often raided and robbed and the teamsters killed. The government paid the Osages five hundred dollars as a consideration of their friendliness. The result of the treaty was the establishment of the Santa Fe trail. This was a great highway of travel for forty years. Its purpose was purely commer- cial. It was so important that it can only be referred to here, leaving it for a subsequent chapter. It was the first, and perhaps the most important, out- come of this second treaty made with the Osages.
The third treaty with the Osage Indians included some land that is a part of Reno county. It covered the territory known as the "Osage trust lands." It was a strip of land two hundred and fifty miles long from west to cast and twenty miles wide from north to south. It was located directly south of the land obtained in the first treaty with the Indians. Its western boundary extended about five miles west of Dodge City and its eastern boundary was about fifteen miles east of Fredonia. It covered about three and a half million acres of land. One row of sections is in Reno county, extending the full width of the county on the south border. This treaty was made on September 29, 1865. General Miles, General Sheridan and others represented the United States and the chiefs and sub-chiefs of the Osages were present. As payment for this land, the United States agreed to pay the Osages three hundred thousand dollars. The government was to sell the land at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre and after the pur- chase price had been paid by the sale of the land, with five per cent. interest. the balance of the fund was to be placed in a fund to be called "The Civili- zation Fund." This treaty had a clause in it that looked like a joker when the treaty was made, but which subsequently had a far-reaching effect on the history and development, not only of Reno county, but of the entire South-
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west. This matter will be spoken of later. as it affected the building of the Santa Fe railroad and the locating of the city of Hutchinson.
INDIAN HABITS AND CUSTOMS.
In appearance, the Osages were mainly good looking, stout of limb, and erratic in their mode of life, living part of the year in fixed villages and roving with their families in search of game the remainder of the time. The squaws cultivated the soil in a small way and perhaps it was to meet the demands of the squaws that the provision for the hogs and chickens and farm implements was inserted in the first treaty they made with the govern- ment. Major Hudson found at the mouth of the Little river, when he reached that place in his trip down the Arkansas river in 1821, a deserted Indian camp. It was the middle of August and all of the Indians were out on the hunt preparing their winter's meat. At the camp was a small field of corn. poorly tended. weedy and neglected, also some watermelons "although the melons were not ripe." Said the Major in his description of this place, "We ate them nevertheless and the green corn was greatly appre- ciated by the party, which had lived principally on meat for months." The Osages showed much skill in their negotiations with the United States agents, not only in the making of their treaties, but in their subsequent dealings with the Indian agents. They had a bold, direct manner and used large phrases and forms of thought, apparently for the purpose of impressing their opponents with their mental ability. Their lodges were arranged in a symmetrical manner. Their wigwams were built in a circle, one line within another, with the chief's tent conspicuously located at the head of each encampment. In the center of their camp they erected their scaffolds for drying their meat. Schoolcraft says that their name is of French origin, a corruption of "Ossingiguis," or "Bone Indian." They called themselves "Wabeshaus." They had the reputation with the other Indian tribes of being thieves and plunderers. Perhaps, realizing their reputation, they proceeded to realize on it. When they agreed to be friendly with the white man, it was for the consideration that was always a part of the contract.
CHAPTER V.
THE BUFFALO.
The buffalo, or bison, differs somewhat from the animal that bears that name found in other countries. He has one pair of ribs more than the buffalo of other countries and two pairs of ribs more than the domestic ox. The first description of the American buffalo is to be found in the records of the carly Spanish explorers, who saw the buffalo first in the southwestern part of the United States, as the expedition of Coronado was marching north- ward in search of the "Seven Cities of Gold." The Spanish knew not what name to give to the big shaggy animals that crossed the plains and, for want of a better name, they called them "the crooked backed oxen."
The buffalo range was a very extensive one before he was disturbed by the white man. He was found all the way from the Columbia river to the Rio Grande, from Saskatchewan to Ottawa in the northern ranges. He was also an inhabitant of the regions about the Great Lakes. He was found in Alabama and down on the Brazos. He was as familiar a sight on the Atlan- tic as he was on the Pacific seaboard. Catesby, the early historian of South Carolina, says that in 1712 the buffalo were abundant within thirty miles of Charleston, South Carolina. However, the principal range of the buffalo, the ground on which he finally made his last stand, his last fight for his existence, was in Kansas, between the Arkansas and the Republican rivers.
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