USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. I > Part 13
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There were pretty lively times along the Little Arkansas after the Wichitas came. The Osages were here part of the time. Parties of Kaw Indians occasionally came. The plains Indians came here visiting their friends, the Wichitas. The writer met here Black Kettle, the Cheyenne chief who was killed at the Washita fight; Satanta, the great war chief of the Comanches, and Heap of Bears, the great medicine man and warrior of the Arapahoes. Col. J. H. Leavenworth was sent to this point by the government to arrange with the wild Indians for a treaty of peace, as we could communicate with them at all times, and to him in a large measure should be given the credit for the success of the treaty of 1865.
The most influential man among these Indians was Jesse Chisholm, a Cherokee, who was beloved of all the Indians. He in his younger days had bought captive Mexican children from the Comanches and raised them as members of his family. They were entirely devoted to him, became expert in all the lore of the plains, and were excellent guides and interpreters, as they could speak or understand all languages of the plains, including the sign language which was in universal use. Of these most faith- ful and devoted men, I remember the names of Jackson, Caboon
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and Yonitob. They were very handy to have along when we ran into a war party of Indians, strangers to us, as happened the writer a number of times. Chisholm laid out the trail bear- ing his name, from the Little Arkansas south to the north fork of the Canadian, and the stream running through Wichita was named for him, as he was the first person to build a house on it.
The Treaty of the Little Arkansas was held on the east bank of the Little Arkansas, about six miles above its mouth, in the middle of October, 1865. The commissioners on the part of the United States were William S. Harney, Kit Carson, John B. San- born, William W. Bent, Jesse H. Leavenworth, Thomas Murphy, and James Steel. The Indians were represented by Moke-ta- ve-to (Black Kettle), Oh-to-ah-ne-so-to-wheo (Seven Bulls), Oh- has-tee (Little Raven), Oh-hah-mah-hah (Storm), and other chiefs and head men on the part of the Indians.
The Indians, several hundred in number, camped along the river, on either side, as did the one or two companies of soldiers who were present. The Wichita, Waco, Caddo, Ioneye, Towa- kony, Kechi, and other Indians, some 1,500 in number, were liv- ing here at the time, and were scattered along down the river to the junction. They had cultivated extensive gardens, and had scaffolds covered with sliced pumpkins, beans and corn, drying for winter use, with plenty of melons in their gardens, which were a feast to visiting brethren.
Kit Carson came down the Arkansas river from New Mexico with an officer's ambulance and army wagons, with teamsters, cook and an escort of six soldiers, and was well equipped with tents, provisions, etc. Colonel Bent came down from his fort on the big river, up towards the mountains. General Harney and Kit Carson were the most noted persons present. The former, a noted Indian fighter and athlete, was as slim as our former senior senator, six foot four in his moccasins, his luxuriant hair as white as snow. He was a famous story teller. Kit Carson was his opposite in everything but fighting qualities. He was short- legged, standing, I should think, about five feet five or six, stoutly built, short, arms, round body, ruddy face, red eyes with rays running from the pupils like the spokes in a wheel, his silky flaxen hair reaching almost to his shoulders. He was a man of fierce, determined countenance. With a kind, reticent and unas- suming disposition, he combined the courage and tenacity of a bulldog. His prominent characteristic seemed to be instant deci-
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sion and action. Carson and Bent were much together. The latter was a famous Indian trader, dark, almost, as an Indian, with jet-black hair and eyes. By invitation, I camped with Car- son while the treaty was in progress and heard from his lips some of his adventures on the plains and mountains.
Carson died at Fort Lyon; Colonel Bent, at Westport, Mo., I believe, and General Harney in Louisiana. Black Kettle was killed by Custer's men in the battle of the Washita, and most of the other participants in the treaty, both white and Indian, have long since gone to their long home.
All kinds of rumors were floating about during the progress of the treaty, and there was considerable uncertainty and anxiety as to its success. The Indians were friendly, but very independ- ent and indifferent, and reluctant to relinquish their rights to all of their country north of the Arkansas and much of that to the southwest. They justified their depredations and cruelties by the wanton slaughter of their women and children by white men at Sand creek a year before.
While the treaty was in progress, a rumor came that a party of Indians coming down from the North to the treaty had been attacked by soldiers on the Santa Fe trail, and thirteen of them killed. At once the camp was in an uproar. A runner came into the tent where I was sitting witli Carson and Charley Rath, and told of the rumor. Instantly Carson said, emphatically : "I don't believe a word of it; those Indians could not possibly have been there at that time," and, turning to me, said: "If that rumor is true, the treaty is gone to hell. I had six soldiers coming down, and would need a hundred going back."
I asked him about some of his adventures of former years, of which I had read in the papers. He replied: "Some of these newspaper fellows know a damn sight more about my affairs than I do." The origin of one story he told as follows: "When I was a young man I was going out to Santa Fe with a pack-train of mules. We camped at Pawnee Rock and were all asleep in our blankets in the grass, when a party of Indians rode over us in the dark, yelling to stampede our stock. I jumped up and fired my rifle in the direction they had gone, and shot one of my best mules through the heart."
About rattlesnake bites on man or animals, he said: "I cut the bite open and flash powder in it three times, and it is all right. One of my men was once bitten on the hand by a big
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rattler. I cut it open, flashed powder in it three times, and that afternoon he killed and scalped two Injuns."
The next year-1866-Grierson and Custer, with the famous Seventh Cavalry, were stationed at the Santa Fe crossing on the Little Arkansas, where there was a stone corral, and built a log stockade. The crossing was a noted place on the trail, as run- ning water was always present and timber for fuel abundant, as well as fine grass for grazing. In 1867 a detachment of the Fifth United States Infantry, under command of Col. Thomas F. Barr, was stationed near the mouth of the river, by the Indian village, where Wichita now stands. These troops brought the cholera with them, and many Indians and about a dozen settlers of Butler county died, including one of the writer's household.
The cholera spread all over the plains. As the Wichita In- dians were returning to their former homes on the Washita, in the fall of 1867, so many of them died that at one creek they were unable to bury their dead, and we gave the name of Skele- ton creek to that stream.
In the summer of 1867 the Indians were said to be on the war path, but we traveled over the plains as usual, unmolested.
Why a company of infantry should be sent to this point, we were never able to learn. In the previous years we had been coming and going over these plains with no protection whatever, and all had been peace and quiet in this part of the state. A company of infantry would not have been effective beyond a half-mile of their camp. None but well mounted horsemen, trained to plains life, could have protected an extended frontier.
General Sheridan came out and organized a winter campaign in October, 1868. The Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry was ordered to proceed across the country to the junction of Beaver creek and the North Fork of the Canadian, via Camp Beecher, at the mouth of the Little Arkansas. The writer, by chance, met the command going into camp on the South Fork of the Cottonwood-a splen- did body of men and horses, under an able and honored com- mander, whom I well knew, and was invited into his tent. On asking the colonel where he was going, he replied that he was not allowed to say, but from inquiries he made as to the country beyond, I soon learned his destination. I then said: "Colonel, you cannot get through that country at this season of the year unless you know just where to go; it is exceedingly broken and difficult." I asked to see his guides. He sent an orderly out,
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who brought in two young men, neither of whom I had seen before. I knew they were never in that part of the country, or I should have known them. They were absolutely ignorant of the country they were attempting to guide a regiment through. One of them was Jack Stillwell, who knew the country north of the Arkansas well enough. They soon went out. When I told the colonel that he never would get through with those men as guides, and offered to furnish him guides who knew the country, as for several years we had sent teams over the same route in winter and summer, trading with the Comanches, who wintered in the vicinity of his destination, our outfits always returning safely, the colonel replied, in language too forcible to repeat, that Sheridan had furnished him these guides, and they had to take him through; that he had no authority or money to employ other guides.
The command reached Camp Beecher, at the mouth of the Little Arkansas, on the 12th of November. From there to Camp Supply, their destination, was about 160 miles by our route. For ninety miles, to the junction of Medicine Lodge and Salt Fork, there was a plain trail over a level country; Camp Supply was three days' march beyond, over a good route if one knew where to go. It was a six-day trip from the Little Arkansas to Camp Supply ; a good horseman could ride it in three days, with ease. The command left Camp Beecher November 14 and reached Camp Supply November 28. It should have made the trip in six days and arrived safely at the destination two days before the terrible snow storm of the afternoon of the 22d, which came near destroying the command and caused untold suffering and loss. My only apology for writing of this stupendous blunder is that it is properly a part of the history of the Little Arkansas.
The writer is not one of those who believe that only dead Indians are good Indians. During the five years' residence of the Wichita Indians on the Little Arkansas, I knew of but one crime committed in the country. Jack Lawton, in charge of my trading post between the rivers, was killed by a renegade white man. In the first five or six years after the Indians had left, and the country was open for settlement, I have a record of some twenty men who came to a sudden and violent death. Most of these were no special loss to the country.
In the summer and fall of 1867 white horse thieves were en- gaged in running off the Indians' horses, going in the direction
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of Fall river and the Cottonwood. In retaliation, just before their departure, the Wichitas took some horses from those rivers.
With the survey of the country in 1867, and its opening to settlement, there drifted into the country some of the most vicious and lawless characters to be found in the West. Very soon we found it was necessary to lock our doors at night and take indoors any loose property we might have-something we were unaccustomed to do during the Indian occupation. Prohibi- tion prevailed, in fact as well as in name, on the Little Arkansas until the white man came.
Briefly, I have written something of the freedom, beauty and chivalry of the country as it was, and the fascination of those times and scenes lingers in my mind like the memory of pleasant dreams; but gone are the Indians, the bison, and the beaver, and in their haunts along the little river are the gardens, fields, orchards, homes, cities, and villages of thousands of prosperous people.
It is my prayer that in the happy hunting grounds of the Great Spirit I may again meet some of my faithful friends of those early days, both red and white.
CHAPTER XV. A LAWYER'S REVERIES OF THE TIMES WHEN WICHITA WAS IN THE GRISTLE.
By KOS HARRIS.
In the attic of memory, long disused, almost forgot, crum- bling to decay, I ran afoul some old yarns, which it hath pleased me to weave into a patchwork fabric of mine own fancy for amusement.
PREFATORY.
The past is a rose-covered walk as we travel in recollection; invested with a hazy, dim outline that gives to retrospect a view of pleasurable facts, shading the bitter past until it, like a ship at sea, recedes gradually from sight till lost from view, and all becomes waste the future a hope, the past a dream, the present only filled with gloomy forebodings, doubts, apprehensions and fears. Each year the past has a new charm, a richer coloring, not noted nor recalled before, that lends additional interest to the mind-painting, even as "Robinson county twenty-year-old" jugs take on added strength, beauty and aroma with the flight of time, proving that age, covered with dust and cobwebs, yet can conjure bright fantasies that the "still" of the present ne'er can rival.
The labor of the receding vision, like a prairie sunset, seems to give its softest picture as the golden ball sinks low in the horizon ; seems a delightful playground whereon merry boys and girls were wont to play; the labor of the present is simply drudgery, and hateful. Our past, as we dream it over, is as the first circus, our present an unpaid packing-house subscription. When Senator Ingalls was first elected; when "Subsidy" Pome- roy was under a cloud, which as yet has never rolled away ; when the fraudulent bond issue of Harper, Barber and Kingman was
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disclosed; when the Winner and MeNutt cremation on North Main street was fresh; when the Harvey county bond fight was ripe; when the batch of horse thieves were hanged at Douglas; when Texas cattlemen were legitimate prey of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, and cattle were commerce; when the United States land office was at the corner of Main and Second streets; when Madame Sage ran a billiard parlor opposite the Occidental; when it was a mile, almost, from civilization, through a forest of sunflowers, to the home of the "Eagle"; when the Eagle Block and the old State National Bank Building (now the National Bank of Commerce corner) were the cynosures of Doug- las avenue; when Steele & Levy had an office where Sam Houck's store now is, and a circus pitched its tent where the "Eagle" office now is; when the dance houses across on the West Side were in the zenith of immoral splendor, and one of the presiding goddesses excused herself the night her husband was shot, with a hope that the guests would not think her absence from the room, on such a trying occasion, a breach of etiquette; when the saloons were not only gorgeous but magnificent, not only fash- ionable but quasi-respectable; when at midnight, throughout the summer, the gentle winds carried the familiar tones o'er the silent town, of 49, 85, 76, 32, 91 and 74, "Keno!" from the second floor of an old frame building then situated where the Citizens' Bank Building now stands; when the old "Tremont," then the "Empire," Hotel stood on the corner of Main and Central-when all these things were fresh, and many other things of less and greater note were living facts, 'twas then the writer hereof became a Kansan, a citizen of the city of Wichita, and a member of that body of whom the poet hath said, "War is its jest," and which body some carrion-minded wretch hath derided by saying that the law of "self-defense is understood because no lawyer had any hand in making it."
The people of Wichita, at that date, did not send away for 'counsel to try cases, as some other counties did, when matters of mighty and deep import were on hand. The bar of Wichita has ever had the confidence of the people, notwithstanding that a few sturdy "blackbucks" have got into the legal flock. Law, religion, education, journalism, physic and politics were ably represented, but other pens may do justice to other vocations, and my humble task, and pleasure, is to collect the withered roses that have fallen in my path in the days that are no more, and to recall in retro-
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spect some of the deeds of the happy days of the years that have sped, as seen from a law office, the interior of which was plain even to poverty, and the patrons of which, "in the old days," were not much given to style.
I am not writing history, for history must exist before it is written. It is the biography of the active brain of a place, local- ity or country, and though that brain is here, a recognized un- known entity, it so far has not, in science or profession, legisla- tive hall or pulpit, made the world's noisy tongue proclaim to the gaping thousands our greatness. That we have in our midst some great unrecognized "purring" brain that will carry the name "Wichita" to the portals of far-off time, there is no reason- able doubt.
History teaches us that we are dependent on great vice or virtue to be long remembered; hamlets that would ere this have been lost to history are preserved to us, until there is a romantic halo thrown round their very pigsties, and we are as familiar with their history as if it was today instead of the yesterday of piled-up and moss-grown centuries-aye, even villages whose his- tory comes to us thundering adown the highways, aisles and boulevards of the misty, dusty, past have withstood the ebb and flow of the waters of oblivion, either by reason of some mighty virtuous intellect whose pen as burnished gold shines on the world through the lapse of ages; some warrior whose Damascus blade has blazed a track through the forests of mythical lore, patri- archal legend, ancient, medieval and modern history, yet is today bright and shining as the disk of the moon in full-orbed splendor ; or some one matriculated in the very genius of infamy, some savant in crime's belles lettres, whose sin-stained and blackened hand has left the print on history's page, and the foul blot seems to be a fresh-struck coin from the historical mint, rather than an abrased coin of a time that runs almost beyond the grasp of intellect, almost baffling the research of the historian as he gropes in agony to find a virtuous act worthy of record, and turns in disgust and immortalizes a town by the record of a crime.
Thus, if Wichita thwarts the ravages of Time's gnawing rav- enous and destructive touch, it must be through amarinthine infamy or imperishable virtue.
"What shall the harvest be?" I but feebly recall visions of swift flown hours; endeavor but to rescue from quick oblivion a few withered wild flowers strewn along the river's brim, give
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unto them the counterfeit of life, pluck a nosegay and bind them together with memory's slender thread to preserve them a little longer from the ocean of "time, whose waves are years," which hath swallowed the archives of centuries and blurred, erased and obliterated the records of those whose monumental shafts, reared against "the tooth of time and razure of oblivion," are but as the ashes of the things they were vainly intended to commemo- rate. I string a string of colored beads to amuse, not instruct, the grown-up babies of Wichita.
That Wichita shall be saved the humiliation of being buried underneath the dust which will eventually hide most towns in Kansas, there is no doubt, and there is just as little doubt that we have in our midst, though unknown, a Webster, a Lincoln, a Grant, a Bentham, a Mansfield, a Beecher, an Edison, and that some unborn chronicler of events will, when we are all dust or ashes, embalm in never-dying prose or poesy the memory of some Wichitan, even as Gray immortalized, in verse :
Some village Hampden that, with dauntless breast. The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest ; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
CHAPTER I.
At the time of my advent in Wichita, the legal profession was not as well dressed, well booked, or finely officed as at present. There was a "Tog-haired" commonness in the dress, conduct and tout ensemble of the profession, which did not comport with the assumed dignity of some of the modern Hortensiuses of Wich- ita. To the new immigrant it seemed as if the profession had adopted the ways of the country, "homesteaded" or "pre-empted" all the clients, and regarded the new man as a "claim-jumper." In fact, the right hand of fellowship was extended in such manner that you felt as though a "wet-elm club" was handy-i. e., the cordiality was about such a welcome as you give a fellow who called at your girl's home after you had pre-empted the "parlor" and were getting down to business.
To a legal tenderfoot with eighteen dollars in money-two dol- lars of which went for a copy of the Statutes of Kansas, five dol-
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lars for a copy of Swan and Plumb's (Senator Plumb's) "Justice Practices," and four dollars for a row of wet-pine shelves, the outlook was promising-in fact, it was-
Eating the air, on promise of supply, Flattering himself in project of power.
Though there was no fear of becoming dry, There was not provender to last a fleeting hour.
I can truly say to those who came after me :
If sorrow can admit of society, Tell o'er your sorrows by viewing mine;
If ancient sorrow be most revered, Give mine the benefit of seniory.
Judge William P. Campbell (our own sweet William) was then Lord Chancellor, Master of the Rolls, Chief Baron, Chief Justice Archon, Mafti, Kadi, Rhadamanthus, over Sedgwick, Sumner, Cowley, Butler, Greenwood and Howard (Elk and Chautauqua) counties. Campbell was a fearless judge.
Edward B. Jewett (our own former postmaster) was justice of the peace and police judge, and, as McCarthy says of the "House of Hanover," having the gift of inheritance, Edward seemeth to be possessed of the gift of continuous office tenure.
William C. Little (our own North Lawrence Avenue Presby- terian deacon) was probate judge.
Judge Henry C. Sluss was county attorney, and at the head of the legal profession. Since which Henri has drawn a salary as judge on Mexican claims.
Judge MeCollough was elected city attorney in the spring of A. D. 1874, to succeed Judge William Baldwin. McCollough was a spendthrift, and owned a building rented for saloon purposes at $1,000 per year, and, it was said, never drew a cent of rent. He was presented with a silk hat the night he was elected city attor- ney, and he paid a fifty-dollar bar bill ere
"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn"
roused the slumbering town from repose. Mccullough had not died if Keeley had proclaimed his famous cure in the year A. D. 1874. He was a jolly Scotchman, a liberal-hearted man, free from guile, and as easily imposed on as a child. He once loaned the author five dollars, without chattel mortgage security, and, in
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fact, it was a great business disadvantage and personal injury to me when Jim McCullough died.
It could not be said of Mccullough, as it was said of another member of the bar (now gone to a better land-i. e., Indian Ter- ritory), that if he had known a little law he would have known something of everything. Mccullough was a brevet lawyer and cared nothing for law, save as it entitled him to respect and stand- ing. He was, at that date, too rich to become a lawyer. He was one of the men David Dudley Field had in mind when he said, "It was as hard for a rich man to become a lawyer as it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." There is a legend that when Jim McCullough died he bequeathed the unexpired term of his office to the gentleman who was appointed to fill the vacancy. This may have been in Jim's Scotch education, and he may have thought it was his office, and not the public's, but those who wanted the place, then as now, spent their time "cussing" the "power" who made the appointment. It is observable that the position of city attorney in Wichita has been filled by able counselors from the beginning. It has been sought by lawyers and has grown in favor as a position, while that of police judge has tended to drawf and injure rather than elevate men. This, in a less degree, seems to be the fate of the probate judge's office, but the opinions of men differ concerning these things.
But, returning to our muttons. I wormed myself into M. W. Levy's good graces, metaphorically speaking, at the side of Mc- Cullough's deathbed, in a room on the second floor at the north- east corner of Douglas avenue and Main street, torn down by Henry Schweiter in May, A. D. 1910, and was thereby enabled to replace the loss of Mccullough by inaugurating a business of rediscounting small personal law library chattel mortgage paper with Levy. Levy at that date was a political Machiavelli, and tradition saith he gave Zach Chandler et al. pointers on counting out at elections. He was secretary of the senatorial convention in ' 1874 (composed of all that part of Kansas lying west of Newton, running west to Sundown and south to the Red river), when it was hinted that Henry Booth, of Larned, was the real nominee of the convention. No one ever believed the report, but, like Henry Ward Beecher's "damned hot day" remark, it, like the "scent of the rose," still lingers.
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