USA > Kansas > Wyandotte County > History of Wyandotte County, Kansas, and its people, Vol. I > Part 6
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A CHIEF WHO WAS A WARRIOR.
Peg-gah-hosh-she was the first chief to rule at Big John village. Ife was a brother of Hard Chief and Speckled Eye, and one of the three big chiefs who came with the tribe from their home on the Kaw. He belonged to the old dynasty, the old crowd, and was a man of much force, stubborn and set in his ruling. Of the three chiefs he was considered the most skilled and trusted warrior of the three brothers. Ile died about 1870, and was succeeded by his nephew, Wah-ti-an-ga, a son of Speckled Eye.
Wah-ti-an-ga was a cunning and rather tricky fellow, and was given to the use of liquor, much to his disgrace and the safety of those around him. Under one of these spells caused by pie-ge-ne (whisky) he fol- lowed Mr. Iluffaker around all one afternoon, seeming to want to keep
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right at his side. Mr. Huffaker suspicioned nothing, but a friend by the name of Ching-gah-was-see (Handsome Bird) did a handsome thing by watching his chance and telling Mr. Huffaker that the drunken chief had made his boasts that he would not leave town till he had taken the life of Tah-poo-skah, that being the Indian name of Mr. Huffaker, meaning teacher. Wah-ti-an-ga elaimed that it would be a great deed to kill so important a personage. It was fortunate that Handsome Bird informed him, for it is never safe to trust an Indian erazed or foolish with liquor, for sometimes they will kill their best friend. Wah-ti- an-ga was still a chief when the tribe went to the Territory, where he lived for a long time. Ching-gah-was-see was a good Indian and noted brave, and had the honor of having a spring named for him. This spring is a few miles north of the eity of Marion and is noted for its medicinal qualities.
AT WAR WITH THEIR BROTHERS.
The Kansas and Osages were of the same nation and their govern- ment, customs and language were almost similar, yet these two tribes were almost constantly at war with each other from the time they were first known, until Captain Pike and Lieutenant Wilkinson brought them together on terms of peace. It was in a grand eouneil held September 28, 1806. at the village of the Pawnee Republie, in which the chiefs of the Kansas and Osages prepared the treaty of peace which follows:
"In council held by the subscribers, at the village of the Pawnee Republic, appeared Wahonsongay with eight principal soldiers of the Kansas nation on the one part, and Shin-ga-wasa, a chief of the Osage nation, with four of the warriors of the Grand and Little Osage villages on the other part. After having smoked the pipe of peace and buried past animosities, they individually and jointly bound themselves in behalf of and for their respective nations to observe a friendly intercourse and keep a permanent peace, and mutually pledge themselves to use every influence to further the commands and wishes of their great father. We, therefore, American chiefs, do require of each nation a strict observance of the above treaty, as they value the good will of the great father, the President of the United States. Done at our council fire, at the Pawnee Republican village, the 28th day of September. 1806, and the thirty-first year of American Indepen- dence.
(Signed.) Z. M. PIKE. .J. B. WILKINSON."
This treaty was never broken by either of the Indian nations. The common hostility of the Kansas and Osages was henceforth directed mainly to the Pawnees and marauding tribes that infested the west- ern plains.
THE DEPREDATIONS OF TIIE KANSAS.
It was not many years after the visit of Captain Pike that the Kansas Indians made trouble for the traders and explorers who eame
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among them. They caused much annoyance both to those who sought to pass up the Missouri river and those who desired to cross the plains, as Pike did, to the Rocky Mountains. Their depredations became serious. In 1819 they fired on an Indian agent and attacked and plundered soldiers attached to the command of Captain Martin, who was sent up the Missouri river with a detachment the preceding autumn and was obliged to camp and hunt on their ground during the winter. Major O'Fallen, the Indian agent who had been attacked, to prevent a recurrence of troubles, summoned the chiefs and principal men of the Kansas nation to a conneil which was to be held on an island in the Missouri river near Atchison, August 18, 1819. The Indians were absent on a hunting expedition when a messenger arrived at their vil- lage on the Kansas river. But they appeared at the council which was held on the 24th of that month at the place designated. At this
council were one hundred and sixty-one Kansas and thirteen Osages, including Na-he-da-ba, or Long Neck, one of the principal chiefs of the Kansas. Ka-he-ga-wa-la-ning-na, Little Chief, was second in rank. Shen-ga-ne-ga, an ex-chief; Wa-ha-chera, Big Knife, a war chief; and Wom-pa-wa-ra, or White Plume, were among them. Major O'Fallen had with him the officers of the garrison and some of the members of Major Long's exploring expedition. Hle set forth plainly the griev- ances of the white men, telling of the Indian attacks and the depreda- tions. He convinced the Indians of the error of their ways. A promise of reconciliation and forgiveness was held out to them, condi- tioned on future good behavior. The chiefs recognized the justice of the charges against them and gladly they accepted the terms of peace. Then the old cannon belched forth a blast of powder and shell, flags were hoisted, and the Indians for once in their lives saw a military demonstration that caused them to sneak back to their village qnaking with fear and resolved to be good Indians ever afterward.
THE KANSAS TREATIES.
For more than two centuries explorers had been coming and going. but the Kansas Indians were not disturbed. The acquisition by the United States of the Louisiana territory, however, meant a change of conditions along the banks of the Kansas river. The expeditions of Lewis and Clark, of Pike and of Long, gave the government at Washington some idea of the extent and value of the newly acquired territory. All the lands east of the Mississippi river were rapidly passing into the possession of the white people, and settlers then were beginning to cross the Mississippi river.
A policy of removing the Indian tribes from the middle states to the territory west of the Mississippi river, to a country they could call their own, was adopted by the United States government, The Kansas
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Indians saw what was coming. Claiming to have been victorious in their interminable wars with the Pawnees and entitled to the lands, they were ready to make treaties with the United States government for the sale of their lands.
The first treaty was concluded in 1815 between Ninian Edwards and August Chouteau, commissioners for the United States, and certain chiefs and warriors of the Kansas tribe. It was a treaty of peace in which the past was forgiven and friendly relations were established. The Indians accepted the assurance of the protection offered and swore allegiance to the United States.
The treaty by which the Kansas Indians parted with a large part of their hunting grounds, however, was made June 3, 1825, in St. Louis. General Clarke, superintendent of Indian affairs, without previous au- thority of the government, but on the advice of Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, concluded the treaty, which was duly ratified by the United States senate. The treaty described the lands that were sold in this language: "Beginning at the entrance of the Kansas river into the Missouri river; thence north to the northwest corner of the state of Missouri ; thence westerly to the Nodaway river, thirty miles from its entrance into the Missouri river; thence to the entrance of the Nemeha into the Missouri river, and with that river (the Nemeha) to its source ; thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old vil- lage of the Pania (Pawnee) Republic to the west; thence on the ridge dividing the waters of the Kansas river from those of the Arkansas, to the western boundary line of the state of Missouri; and with that line thirty miles to the place of beginning." This treaty reserved for the use of the Kansas nation, a tract of land to begin twenty leagnes up the Kansas river, and to include the village on that river. IIere, a few miles west of North Topeka, they lived more than twenty years, receiv- ing their annuities from the United States, usually paid at the mouth of the Kansas river.
ABANDONED THE KANSAS RIVER.
On January 14, 1846, the Kansas Indians ceded to the United States "two million acres of land on the east part of their country embracing the entire width and running west for quantity." By this treaty they abandoned forever their home on the Kansas river. They then moved to a new reservation in the Neosho valley near Council Grove. HIere they lived until 1873, when they departed for the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. During their early history the Kansas were a power- ful tribe, both in numbers and in influence. But their race had run its course. Five years ago there were fewer than two hundred of the Kansas Indians left, and of these less than one hundred were full bloods.
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THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA.
The Shawnees and the Delawares came to dwell in the lands that formerly were occupied by the Kansas tribe. The wars and conquests, victories, defeats and the romances of these two tribes fill many pages of the history of North America. They were much further advanced in civilization than were their predecessors who, when they moved away from Kansas, as Noble Prentis onee wrote, "left nothing except mounds of earth, rings on the sod, fragments of pottery, rude weapons and ruder implements."
The coming of the Delawares and Shawnees was the beginning of a new era. It was the beginning of Kansas. The Delawares were given the lands west of the Missouri river and on the north side of the Kansas river, the lands of the Shawnees were on the south side of the Kansas river, including the lower part of Wyandotte county and John- son county, reaching out into Kansas.
CHAPTER III.
THE SHAWNEES, FIRST EMIGRANTS
THEIR WARS AND WANDERINGS- THEIR LAST STAND- THE DEATH OF TECUMSEH-THEIR COMING TO KANSAS- THE SHAWNEE PROPHET- THIE GREAT CHIEF, BLUE JACKET-CAPTAIN JOSEPH PARKS-CLUNG TO OLD CUSTOMS-FAREWELL TO KANSAS.
Most remarkable in many particulars among the tribes of the North American Indians were the Shawnees. They represented one of the eleven or twelve branches of the extensive and powerful Indian family, the Algonquins, which included also the Delewares, Ottawas, Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Chippewas, Pattawatomies, Powhatans, Mohegans, Nar- ragansetts, and Pequods, all speaking different languages. These Al- gonquin Indians, in the early period of American history, occupied the territory stretching from New England west to the Mississippi river and south to the Gulf of Mexico. In the early part of the century preceding this one they were nearly all located in the territory lying east of the Mississippi river. Their bitter foes, with whom they were in constant warfare, were the Iroquois or Five Tribes, embracing the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks, to which after- wards was added a sixth tribe, the Tuscarawas .. The tribes of the Iroquois occupied Canada, Upper New York and the south shore of Lake Erie.
THEIR WARS AND WANDERINGS.
The Shawnees were the most warlike of all the Algonquin tribes. From them sprang many of the most noted warriors and chiefs known in the annals of the North American Indians. From their wanderings through centuries and the difficulty of identification they seem to have had no fixed habitat. They were seen almost everywhere, always turn- ing up in unexpected places. Writers have referred to them as "Gyp- sies, " or as "Bedouins of the American Wilderness." They were with the Delawares in the treaty with William Penn. Later they were driven westward across the Allegheny mountains by the fierce and relentless Iroquois. They wandered farther south than any others of the Algon- quin tribes, venturing even to the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes they were designated as "southerners." At another time they were found in the
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Cumberland valley and along the Upper Savannah river in South Caro- lina. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century they were in Ohio, at war with the whites. First they aided the French, but later the British won them over. Always they were warring against the white settlers who were coming to take their lands, their homes and their hunting grounds.
THEIR LAST STAND.
Aronsed to a frenzy by the "land greed" of the white settlers, as the Indians called it, and fired with both real and fancied wrongs, only leaders were needed to cause an uprising. And those leaders were found among the Shawnees, the great chief Tecumseh, and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet. Tecumseh. in 1805, planned the formation of a great confederacy of the tribes of Indians of the west and south that he hoped might be strong enough to resist further eneroaehments on the part of the white settlers. At the same time the Prophet went among them, arousing their religious enthusiasm and appealing to their passions and prejudices by his mysterious charms and his sacred strings of beans, to forever put down the whites. The poison of British influence also was manifested and the Indians were found in full sympathy with the English against the Americans. On the morning of November 7, 1811, the Americans were fiercely attacked and many were massacred by the Indians assembled at Prophettown on the banks of the Wabash near the mouth of the Tippecanoe. In their savage hatred for the white settlers the months of those who were stain were stuffed with elay as evidence of the real canse of the Indians' displeasure. Governor Harrison, however quickly rallied his forces of American soldiers and the Indians were eom- pletely routed.
The battle of Tippecanoe was the most important that ever took place on Indiana soil. Through the victory for the Americans, the future of the northwest was assured. The spirit of the confederacy of Indians was broken and the great scheme of Tecumseh was over- thrown. The warrior himself was absent at the time visiting tribes in the south. It is recorded that he became angry with his brother, the Prophet, for bringing on the engagement prematurely.
THE DEATH OF TECUMSEH.
Filled with sorrow because his braves had thus been forced into battle before they were ready and realizing that his plans had been frus- trated. Tecumseh joined the British with his faithful followers. In the battle of the Thames in Canada, October 5, 1813, not far from the city of Detroit, Tecumseh, "Shooting Star," as his name indicated, fell. And the most illustrious Indian statesman and warrior that ever battled for the rights of his people and for the lands they held dear, passed from the stage of action at the most dramatic period of American his- tory.
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The Shawnees were scattered like leaves of the forest before an autumn wind. No longer were they to hold out against the white set- tlers. One band, given lands by Baron de Carondelet, located in Mis- souri near Cape Girardeau. Only a remnant of the once great tribe remained in Ohio.
THEIR COMING TO KANSAS.
In 1825 the Missouri band of the Shawnees moved to Kansas, and six years later they were joined by the Ohio band. But always the Shawnees were seeking new homes. In 1854 a treaty was signed dis- posing of all their lands except 200,000 acres which was allotted to mem- bers of the tribe, and it was "move on" for the last time. The Shaw- nees that then found refuge in the Cherokee conntry in the Indian Territory, now Ohlahoma, had been reduced to a very small band.
Descendants of a long line of mighty warriors, reaching back cen- turies almost to the time of Columbus, came to Kansas with the Shawnees. But the white man's civilization was at work among them. The fight was all gone out of them. One of their chiefs was Charles Blue Jacket, descended from the great Blue Jacket who with Little Turtle, the Miami chief, led the Indians against the whites in 1790 in the great uprising.
THE SHAWNEE PROPHET.
And then the Prophet, brother to the warrior Tecumseh, strangest of all strange characters in In- dian history. George Catlin, the artist, saw him here in Wyandotte county at Prophettown on the south side of the Kansas river, while making a tour of the Indian tribes. He painted the Prophet's pieture and it now hangs in the famous Catlin Indian gallery. It is Catlin who gives us a clear insight into the eharac- ter and personality of the Prophet and tells us how,
THE SHAWNEE PROPHET. with his sacred string of beans, he tempted thousands of warriors of other tribes to join his brother, Tecumseh, in a war for the extermination of the whites. The sketch appears in the Smithsonian Institution reports under date of July, 1885, and is as follows :
"Ten-squat-a-way (The Open Door), called the Shawnee Prophet. is perhaps one of the most remarkable men who has flourished on these frontiers for some time past. This man is a brother of the famous Tecumseh, and quite equal in his medicines or mysteries to what his brother was in arms; he was blind in his left eye, and in his right hand he was holding his medicine fire and his saered string of beans in the other. With these mysteries he made his way through most of the northwestern tribes, enlisting warriors wherever he went to assist Tecumseh in effecting his great scheme of forming a confederacy of all the In-
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dians on the frontier to drive back the whites and defend the Indians' rights, which he told them could never in any other way be protected. Ilis plan was certainly a correct one, if not a very great one, and his brother, the Prophet, exercised his astonishing influence in raising men for him to fight his battles and carry out his plans. For this purpose he started upon an embassy to various tribes on the upper Missouri, nearly all of which he visited with astonishing sue- cess; exhibiting his mystery fire, and using his sacred string of beans, which every young man who was willing to go to war was to touch, thereby taking the solemn oath to start when called upon, and not to turn back.
"In this most surprising manner this ingenious man entered the village of most of his inveterate enemies, and of others who had never heard of the name of his tribe, and maneuvered in so successful a way as to make his medicine a safe passport for him to all their villages; and also the means of enlisting in the different tribes some eight or ten thousand warriors, who had solemnly sworn to return with him on his way back and to assist in the wars that Tecumseh was to wage against the whites on the frontier. I found, on my visit to the Sioux, to the Puncahs, to the Ricarres, and the Mandans, that he had been there, and even to the Blackfeet; and everywhere told them of the potency of his mysteries, and assured them that if they allowed the fire to go out in their wigwams, it would prove fatal to them in every case.
"He carried with him into every wigwam that he visited the image of a dead person of the size of life, which was made ingeniously of some light material, and always kept concealed under the bandages of thin white muslin cloths and not to be opened; of this he made great mystery, and got his recruits to swear by touching a sacred string of white beans, which he had attached to its neck or some other way secreted about it. In this way, by his extraordinary cunning, he had carried terror into the country as far as he went, and had actually enlisted some eight or ten thousand men, who were sworn to follow him home; and in a few days would have been on their way with him, had not a couple of his political enemies in his own tribe followed on his track, even to those remote tribes and defeated his plans by pronouncing him an imposter and all of his forms and plans an imposition upon them, which they would be fools to listen to.
"In this manner this great recruiting-officer was defeated in his plans for raising an army to fight his brother's battles; and to save his life he discharged his medicine as suddenly as possible, and secretly traveled his way home, over those vast regions, to his own tribe, where the death of Tecumseh and the oppo- sition of enemies killed all his splendid prospects and doomed him to live the rest of his days in silence and a sort of disgrace, like all men in Indian communities who pretend to great medicine, in any way, and fail, as they all think such failure an evidence of the displeasure of the Great Spirit, who always judges right.
"This, no doubt, has been a very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him, as they have many other great men before him; and he now lives respected, but silent and melancholy in his tribe. I conversed with him a great deal about his brother Tecumseh, of whom he spoke frankly, and seemingly with great pleasure; but of himself and his own great schemes he would say nothing. He told me that Tecumseh 's plans were to embody all the Indian tribes in a grand confederacy, from the province of Mexico to the Great Lakes, to unite their forces in an army that would be able to meet and drive back the white people, who were continually advancing on the Indian tribes and forcing them from from their lands towards the Rocky mountains; that Tecumseh was a great general, and that nothing but his premature death defeated his grand plan.
"The Prophet possessed neither the talents nor the frankness of his brother. As a speaker he was fluent, smooth and plausible, and was pronounced by Governor Harrison the most graceful and accomplished orator he had seen amongst the In-
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dians: but he was sensual, cruel, weak and timid. He never spoke when Tecum- seh was present. At the council at Vincennes, in 1810, the Prophet stood unmoved while his brother Tecumseh objected to a former land treaty, saying: 'What! Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children ?' "
How HE BECAME A PROPHET.
The first mention in history of the Prophet was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, about 1808. The reservation in which he and his distinguished brother ruled was a Meeca to which discontented red men made pilgrimages. By some means he had come into possession of astronomical predictions of the eclipses of that year. He boldly an- nounced the great eclipse of the sun that year, and offered to give the untutored Indians proof of his supernatural powers by bringing dark- ness over the earth at midday. When the day and the hour arrived the eclipse occurred just as foretold. The Prophet, standing in the gloom of darkness surrounded by his followers, who were stricken with fear, said to them: "Did I not prophesy truly ? Behold darkness has shrouded the sun." The eclipse prodneed a strong impression on the minds of the Indians. It increased their belief in the sacred character of the Prophet.
The Prophet spent his last days in a house that stood on the side of the hill overlooking the beautiful valley of the Kansas river near the western part of the city of Argentine which now is a district of Kansas City, Kansas. The old man, ill and enfeebled, who had lived a life of seclusion after his charms had failed, desired not to be disturbed by the noise of the children in Prophettown. The Reverend Isaac MeCoy, who went from the Shawnee Baptist mission visited him just before his death. Mr. McCoy writes: "I went accompanied by an interpreter who con- dueted me by a winding path through the woods till we deseended a hill at the bottom of which, secluded apparently from all the world, was the Prophet's town. A few huts built in the ordinary Indian style consti- tuted the entire settlement. The house of the Prophet was not distin- guished at all from the others. A low portico, covered with bark, under which we were obliged to stoop in passing in. was erected before it, and a half starved dog greeted us with a growl as we entered. The interior of the house which was lighted only by a half open door showed at first view the taste of one who hated civilization. I involuntarily stopped for a minute to view in silence the spectaele of a man whose word was as a law to numerous tribes, now lying on a miserable pallet, dying in poverty, neglected by all but his own family. 'Ile that exalt- eth himself shall be abased.' I approached him. He drew aside his blanket and disclosed a form emaciated in the extreme. but the broad proportions of which indicated that it had once been the seat of great Vol. I-3
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strength. His countenance was sunken and haggard, but appeared-it might have been a fancy-to exhibit something of the soul within. I thought I could discover, spite of the guards of hypocrisy, something of the marks which pride, ambition and the workings of the dark, designing mind had stamped there. 1 inquired of him his symptoms, which he related particularly. I then proposed to do something for his relief. He replied that he was willing to submit to medical treatment, but just then was engaged in contemplation, or 'study,' as the interpreter ealled it, and he feared the operation of medicine might interfere with his train of reflection. He said his 'study' would continue three days longer, after which he would be glad to see me again. Accordingly, in three days I again repaired to his cabin, but it was too late. He was speechless, and evidently beyond the reach of human assistanee. The same day he died."
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