USA > Kansas > Wyandotte County > History of Wyandotte County, Kansas, and its people, Vol. I > Part 9
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I told Cyrus that I would walk with Elizabeth and for him to walk with one of the girls. So he said he would make the attempt, but he did not have any better success than I. He had a terrible chase after one, and she got away and went back to the mission. So that only left us two. Matters were not right. We did not know how to proceed but we held a council and it was decided that I should make another ad- vance. It was a forlorn hope, but I had orders and must not show cowardice ; so I made another effort and completely failed. She would pitch out ahead of me and then jump back behind me, and I would charge up to her side. She called me all sorts of names, some .in Indian and some in English. One I remember was 'Skunk.' She went back to the mission, so that only left us one and we did not want to lose her, so concluded not to try to go with her until we returned. We thought that certainly by the time we got back we would have her civilized so we could go with her.
"We finally arrived at the Chontean house and entered. We found two old squaws sitting in the room and neither could speak a word of English, but they soon brought the two daughters in and they invited ns into the Indian parlor. The house was a large, double-room log house with a kitchen shedded to one side. The parlor was neatly furnished. The young ladies were educated at the Methodist Episcopal Mission, South. They were rather good looking and reasonably intelligent, but i.dopted the enstom of white people and made themselves agreeable. We had a pleasant evening and remained quite a while.
"When we started to return the Chouteau girls went a short distance with us. They then bade ns good-bye and started to return to the house. By that time we reached the timber which extended to the Quaker Mission. So the time had now fully arrived to make an effort to break in on our only remaining wild Indian girl. We felt sure we had the cinch on her; she was a long distance from the mission. It was dark and the road was quite lonely and certainly she would accept an escort and bo delighted with the opportunity. Taking all into consideration it gave me great confidence; so I approached her in as gentle a manner as possible and she started to run as fast as she could go, so I could not do anything but run after her. When I would over- take her she would dodge to one side and run back. I gave her several chances and she took to the brush, so she escaped from me and the last [ heard of her she was making the brush crack so I gave up the ehase. We never saw her any more and were afraid she would not be able to make her way back to the mission. We approached, with fear and trembling. But when we got to the house Richard Mendenhall came out meeting us and said with great earnestness: 'Cyrus, what have you and James been doing to the Indian girls?'
"We answered by saying that the object at the mission was to civilize them and teach them the customs of white people and we had
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only been giving them a lesson. He said they had been coming in one at a time ever since we started, and every one had told a bad story about how they had been treated. The one that got away and made her escape, had got in a long time before our arrival.
"I found out later where we had made a mistake. We trespassea on Indian customs. The saying is, 'when you are in Rome do as Rome does.' When a young buck Indian goes with a young squaw he either goes in front of her or behind her. It is bad manners to walk at her side. Indians while traveling on ponies always go single. It shows a lack of sociability, which Indians are much noted for."
THE DELAWARE METHODIST MISSION.
The mission among the Delaware Indians was opened in 1832 by the Reverend William Johnson and the Reverend Thomas Markham, appointed by the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church to take charge. Though the Delawares were advancing in agriculture and their fine prairie lands interspersed with timber were improved, they had but little culture. Many of the elder members of the tribe retained their ancient prejudices against Christianity and, in conse- quence, the membership of the Mission church was never large. But among them were some notable exceptions, such as Moses Grinter and family and the Ketchums who were as "the salt of the earth."
The Mission was erected in 1832 near a spring in a beautiful grove, some of the trees of which are still standing. The church was abont forty by sixty feet and the frame was black walnut. It stood on the high divide on the site of the present town of White Church, facing east. The church was painted white, thus giving the name to the old town, which is about in the center of Wyandotte county. It was destroyed by a tornado on May 11, 1886. A stone memorial church recently was ereeted on the site of the one destroyed, in which are memorial windows for those pioneer missionaries who gave their lives to this great work, and the list ineludes the names of many of these workers. After the inauguration of the mission and school by the Reverend William John- son and the Reverend Thomas B. Markham, E. T. Peery was in charge from 1833 to 1836 inclusive and afterwards at different times served five years. The Reverend Leamer B. Stateler, who came in 1837, served five consecutive years. M. J. Talbot and John Peery each remained one year. N. F. Shaler was sent to the mission eight years. Others who were connected with it were W. D. Collins, J. A. Cummings, J. Barker, N. M. Talbot, D. D. Doffelmeyer, B. H. Russell, the Reverend Nathan Scarrett for whom the Scarrett Bible Training School is named, and the Reverend Paschal Fish.
In the early days a log parsonage was ereeted and a camp ground was laid out in which great camp meetings for the Indians were held.
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These camp meetings were often visited by the bishop and presiding elders of the church. The present Bishop, E. R. Hendrix, who was at the head of the academic department of the Shawnee Manual Labor School, was one of the visiting preachers at the Delaware camp meetings. They were attended by Indians of various tribes, many coming in their blankets. Each tribe had its interpreters to follow the words of the preacher, or exhorter, and translate them into English. The two Ketchums, James and Charles, full-blood Delawares, were interpreters. Joab Spencer, one of the most powerful preachers of the period. onee wrote: "Charles and James Ketchum have both interpreted for me. Charles interpreted a sermon for me at a Delaware camp meeting that resulted in from fifteen to twenty conversions. Ile was a notable Chris- tian character, such as Blue Jacket."
Prominent among the Delawares was Charles Ketchum, for many years a preacher in the Methodist church. Ile was large and portly and of manly appearance. He was illiterate, but a man of good intelleet and a fluent talker. In the separation troubles, in 1845. the Delawares went with their church to the southern branch. But Charles Ketchum adhered to the northern branch. built a church himself and kept the little remnant of the flock together. Ile had a good form, yet he ae- cepted appointment regularly from the Kansas conference.
James Ketehum, a brother of Charles, remained with the southern branch. He was born in 1819 and early became a Christian. He be- gan preaching in the Indian language at White Church. He also preached at Wyandotte, on occasion, to a portion of the Delawares after their removal to the Indian Territory. £ Ile was considered one of the most eloquent orators of the tribe.
Lewis Ketchum, a brother of Charles and James, was still living in 1903, ten miles south of Vinita, Indian Territory, nearly ninety years old and the oldest member of the tribe.
The interpreters for the northern branch were Charles Ketchum, Paschal Fish and Isaac Johnnycake. Those for the southern branch were James Ketchum. Jacob Ketchum and Ben Love. Henry Tiblow was the United States interpreter.
In 1844 the Delaware Indians made an agreement with J. C. Berry- man the superintendent, by which they devoted all of their school fund for the education of their children to the Shawnee Manual Labor School for a term of ten years. The indifference of the Delawares in the matter of sending their children to the school was later a great disap- pointment to the founder of that school, the Rev. Thomas Johnson.
The Delawares were indifferent also about mannal labor education. To encourage them the Methodist Missionary board erected a grist mill as a means of industrial education, but they allowed it to become a complete wreck : and it was the only mill in the Indian country near.
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THE DELAWARE BAPTIST MISSION.
After the Rev. John G. Pratt had labored among the Shawnees seven years he moved, in 1844, to a point four miles south of Fort Leavenworth where a band of Green Bay Indians had settled for a time. Mr. Pratt was waiting for the United States govern- ment to set apart some promised lands for their THE REV. occupancy further south. He here preached to the JOHN G. PRATT. Indians, conducted a school, and continued the pub- PIONEER lishing business. The Green Bays were quite intelli- MISSIONARY. gent, having originated near Stoekbridge, Massaehu- setts, and having come direct from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where they had already been partly civilized. The governor failed to make the promised allotment of land to them, they became discouraged and nearly all moved back to Wisconsin. The mission work among the Green Bays was at an end.
Mr. Pratt chose a location near White Church in Wyandotte county for his mission work among the Delawares. Ile here took charge of a boarding school for the Indians, built, furnished and sustained by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. The Delawares showed that nmieh appreciation of educational advantages, that they requested the governor to set aside a certain part of their annuities for educational purposes, to the amount of twenty-five dollars per year for each pupil in school. This was to clothe, feed and furnish the pupil and sustain the teacher, leaving the deficiency, of course, to be furnished by the mission board. In this school was taught all the elementary branches of an English education, together with algebra, natural philosophy and some of the academic branches.
The result of Mr. Pratt's large experience in teaching and preach- ing among the Indians is the opinion that if taken when young they are susceptible of a high degree of mental and moral culture. The small children were about as apt as white children of the same age, but after they become older, while not wanting in mental capacity, they have not the application necessary to insure rapid progress. From 1864 until 1867, Mr. Pratt acted as United States Indian Agent for both the Dela- wares and Wyandots. He paid the Delawares for their land in Kan- sas, and removed them to the Cherokee Nation in 1867. Mr. Pratt devoted the remaining years of his life to farming and stock raising on his farm not far from the old mission and school which, for so many years, he condueted. But even up to a few months before he died-in 1895-he preached occasionally and conducted a kind of home missionary work on his own aecount.
Mr. Pratt was born in llingham, Massachusetts, September 9, 1814, a son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth Pratt. His father died when he was quite young and, when four years old, he went to live with his grand-
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father, Aaron Pratt, a sea captain living at Cohassett. At the age of fourteen, he entered an academy at South Reading, now called Wake- field, and attended there two years; then matriculated in Andover Seminary, entering the classical department. Ile finished the entire conrse, theological included, and gradnated in the fall of 1836. He was licensed, at Andover, to preach the gospel, and was immediately em- ployed by the Baptist Society, and sent to the Indian country. Mr. Pratt was widely known and universally esteemed for his many excellent qualities of mind and heart. He was a man of fine enlture, and his wife was in every way fitted to be a companion of such a man. Their home in Delaware township near White Church was a model of neatness, taste and refinement. It was always open to the Indians.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ANCIENT WYANDOT NATION.
THE WYANDOTS-EARLY HISTORY OF THE NATION-ROMANCES AND FOLK LORE-WYANDOTS' VERSION OF THE CREATION-THEIR ALLEGIANCE TO THE FRENCH- THEIR WARS AT AN END-BECAME A CIVILIZED NATION.
The Indian word was "Wyandot." The English added another "t" to the end and it became "Wyandott." Then the French taeked on a letter "e" and so it became "Wyandotte."
Three ways there are of spelling the name of the aneient Indian nation that gave its name to our county and to the village of the early days that grew into a city which afterwards lost its identity by merging itself into the metropolis of Kansas, known to the world as Kansas City, Kansas. It is the French version that generally is accepted by people of the twentieth century. Nobody ever thinks of writing it after the English fashion. But there are a few conseientious writers of history, quite a number of the old pioneers and many descendants of the Indians who cling to the simple old Indian way of spelling the name, beeanse of its significance in the history of America, because of old associations, because of memories that make it dear. Are these not reasons, good and sufficient, for perpetuating forever the Indian name, "Wyandot?"
THE WYANDOTS.
The Frenehmen in Canada preferred to eall them Hurons and they were on earth when the shores of New England and Canada were first sighted by white men. They were a powerful nation more than two centuries before Kansas was on the map as a territory or state. They were a dominant factor in the wars along the shores of the Great Lakes for nearly one hundred years before the Deelaration of Independence was framed. They were leaders in the great confederation of Indians that tried in vain to turn back the tide of immigration to their hunting grounds, and for many years they waged war against the Americans to make the Ohio river the boundary between the United States and Canada.
The Wyandots were good warriors, and when they lost they knew how to be good quitters. They accepted the white man's civilization,
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discarded ancient enstoms, and embraced the teachings of the Christian missionaries. They became first and foremost among the civilized Indians of America.
The coming of the Wyandots to this Kansas country, in 1843, brought an end to centuries of Indian savagery. Out of the chaotic conditions of the past came a new order of things. They built houses, erected churches and established schools. They welcomed the white settler, took him into partnership and founded an organized state of society.
The Wyandots brought with them from Ohio a constitution and a stock of ideals of self-government founded on ideas of justice and equity. Here in Wyandotte county they set up the first territorial government Kansas and Nebraska ever had, and they picked a man from their coun- eil to act as governor. They were here at the framing of the Wyandotte constitution, and after they saw the job was finished they helped to adopt it and to bring Kansas into the Union as a state.
As the Wyandots were leaders among the Indians of the east, so they became leaders of the people of the west when Kansas was in the making. Through all of the sixty-eight years that have passed sinee first they came, they, or their descendants, have helped in every stage of the development of Kansas, of Wyandotte county, of its cities and towns and of its people's interests.
Truly the Wyandots, by their conduet and their achievements, present an example of a nation of Indians repaying, with interest many times compounded, every care bestowed on them, every effort made for their uplifting, by their pale face brothers and sisters.
Now, only a little more than fifty years after this great and glorious Indian nation dissolved its tribal relations, the original name has come into disnse. Onr county is called "Wyandotte'"' the French way of spelling. The Indian name has been stricken from the charter of the city that grew up from the old Wyandot village. And with ruthless hand and an absence of feeling it is proposed to destroy the historic old Iluron cemetery in the heart of Kansas City, Kansas, where are buried many of the greatest Indian statesmen and civilians America has ever known.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE NATION.
The Wyandot Indians have a remarkable history. They were of northern origin, descended from a branch of the Iroquois. When first discovered their villages were along the St. Lawrence river in Ontario. Near them were the villages of the Senecas, with whom for many years they were closely allied and on terms of peace. Such relations, however, could not always exist among Indians. There was a falling out and the Senecas waged war against the Wyandots, and in
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this they were joined by others of the Five Tribes, as the Iroquois were known. The country formerly occupied by the Wyandots' ancestors was the north side of the St. Lawrence river down to Coon lake, and thence up the Utiwas. Their name for it was Cu-none-tot-tia. The Senecas occupied the opposite side of the river and the island on which Montreal now stands. They were both large tribes, consisting of many thousands. They were blood relations, claiming each other as cousins.
Joseph Badger, one of the early missionaries in Ohio, who won the confidence of the chiefs and influential men of the nation, relates this story of the falling out of the Wyandots and the Senecas, which led to an almost interminable war between the two tribes. A man of the Wyandots wanted a certain woman for his wife; but she objected, and said he was no warrior. he had never taken any sealps. To accomplish his object, he raised a small war party and in their scout fell upon a party of Seneca hunters, killing and scalping a number of them. This procedure began a war between the two nations, which lasted more than a century, which they supposed was fully a hundred winters before the French came to Quebec. They (the Wyandots) owned they were the first instigators in the war, and were generally beaten in the contest. Both tribes were greatly wasted in the war. They often made peace, but the first opportunity the Senecas conld get an advantage against them they would destroy all they could-men, women and children. The Wyandots, finding they were in danger of becoming exterminated coneluded to leave their country and go far to the west. With their canoes, the whole nation made their escape to the upper lakes and settled in the vieinity of Green Bay, in several villages; but, after a few years, the Senecas made up a war party and followed them to their new settlements; fell on one of their villages, killed a number, and returned. Through this long period they had no instruments but bows, arrows and the war-club.
Soon after this the French came to Quebec, began trading with the Indians, and supplied them with firearms and utensils of various kinds. The Senecas, having been supplied with guns and learned the use of them, made out a second war party against the Wyandots; came upon them in the night, fired into their huts, and seared them exceed- ingly ; they thought at first their enemies were armed with thunder and lightning. But the Senecas did not succeed as well as they intended. After a few years they made out a third party, fell upon the Wyandot villages, and took them nearly all; but it so happened at this time that nearly all the young men of the village had gone to war with the Fox tribe, living on the Mississippi.
Those few that escaped the massacre by the Senecas agreed to give up and go back with them and become one people, but requested of the Senecas to have two days to collect what they had and make ready their canoes and join them on the morning of the third day at a certain
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point, where they had gone to wait for them, and hold a great danee through the night. The Wyandots sent directly to the other villages which the Senecas had not disturbed and got all their old men and women, and such as could fight, to consult on what measures to take. They came to the conclusion to equip themselves in the best manner they could, and go down in perfect stillness so near the enemy as to hear them. They found them engaged in a dance and feasting on two Wyandot men they had killed and roasted, and as they danced they shouted their victory and told how good their "Wyandot beef" was. They continued their dance until the latter part of the night, and, being tired, they all laid down and soon fell into a sound sleep.
A little before day the Wyandot party fell on them and cut them all off ; not one was left to carry back the tidings. This ended the war for a great number of years. Soon after this the Wyandots got guns from the French and began to grow formidable. The Indians who owned the country where they resided for a long time proposed to them to go back to their own country. They agreed to return, and, having prepared themselves as a war party, they returned-came back to where Detroit now stands, and agreed to settle in two villages-one at the place above mentioned, and the other where the British fort, Malden, now stands.
But previous to making any settlement they sent out in canoes the best war party they could, to go down the lake some distance, to see if there was an enemy on that side of the water. They went down to Long Point, landed, and sent three men across to see if they could make any discovery. They found a party of Senecas bending their course around the point, and returned with the intelligence to their party. The head chief ordered his men in each canoe to strike fire, offer some of their tobacco to the Great Spirit, and prepare for action. The chief had his son, a small boy, with him. He covered the boy in the bottom of the canoe. He determined to fight his enemy on the water. They put out into the open lake; the Senecas came on. Both parties took the best advantage they could, and fought with the determination to conquer or sink in the lake. At length the Wyandots saw the last man fall in the Seneca party ; but they had lost a great number of their own men, and were so wounded and cut to pieces that they could take no advantage of the victory, but were only able to gain the shore as soon as possible and leave the enemy's canoes to float or sink among the waves. This ended forever the long war between the two tribes.
THE ROMANCES AND FOLK LORE OF THE WYANDOTS.
This story of their origin and the folk lore of the Wyandots, was once told to the writer by William Elsey Connelley. The tribe of the Wyandots was divided into twelve great clans, each of which bore the
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name of some animal or bird, by which it was always known. These clans were called the Snake, the Deer, the Bear, the Porcupine, the Wolf, the Beaver, the Hawk, the Big Turtle, the Little Turtle, the Prairie Turtle, the Mud Turtle and the Striped Turtle. Of these, however, now remain only the Snake, Deer, Bear, Porcupine, Wolf, Big Turtle and Little Turtle. The others have become extinet. The clan was a great family, and a woman stood at the head of it. Men and women of a certain elan were considered brothers and sisters and marriage was prohibited within the clan. When a warrior took unto himself a spouse he retained his elanship, but the pappooses became members of the mother's elan. The head chieftain of the whole tribe was inherent with the Deer elan until the death of Long Bark, sometimes called Half King, in 1788. He was succeeded by Tarhee of the Porenpine clan, known also as the Crane, and a celebrated Indian of his time. The chieftainship of the tribe continued with the Porcupines until it became elective. The Wolf elan was the mediator and counselor of the tribe. It was a supreme court of the nation and from its decisions in clan counsel there was no appeal. When two clans got into a difficulty which they could not settle between themselves, the Wolf elan was called upon to decide, and all the other clans were sworn to support the decision.
The language of the Wyandots is rich in folk lore, which was handed down from father to son. They had no written language and all records extant are in the English language. In language and folk lore the decadence has been more marked during that time than before. Information on these subjects easily obtainable ten years ago cannot be secured from any of the Wyandots. Connelley said that he had been actuated in his work solely by a desire to preserve the beautiful language and folk lore of this interesting people, now so rapidly passing away. "My work has been in the interest of science," he said, "and from a desire to preserve the true history of a brave and one of the most intelligent of the American races." Mr. Connelly has done some work for the bureau of ethnology at Washington on the language of the Wyandots and Shawnees. Among the folk lore stories he has written, as told him by old Wyandots, is that of the creation, or the genesis of the world, as the Wyandots believed it in the earliest times. Like all primitive people they tried to account for everything. The story is substantially as follows.
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