USA > Kansas > Kansas; a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence, Voilume I > Part 109
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Independence, one of the important cities of southeastern Kansas, and from a manufacturing standpoint, one of the most important in the state, is located in the central part of Montgomery county, of which it is the judicial seat. It is on the Verdigris river in the midst of the great natural gas and oil fields, and the gas, which is furnished for commercial purposes for 3 cents per 1,000 feet, has been a great factor in developing the local mineral deposits. Coal, limestone, cement stone, clay shale and sand for glass are found in considerable quantities in the immediate vicinity. The manufacturing establishments include a rubber factory, 3 glass factories, 2 ice factories, 2 iron plants, vitrified brick plant, paper mill, cracker factory, cotton twine factory, shirt fac- tory, machine shops, foundries, candy factory, several oil refineries, extensive cement works and an electric light plant. The city is one of the best equipped in the state so far as public improvements are concerned. It has a good system of waterworks, a $50,000 opera house, more miles of paved streets than any other city in the gas belt, a fine sewerage and drainage system, a $25,000 Carnegie library, and an auditorium seating 3,000 people. It claims to have the best band and the finest high school building in the state. All the business houses are of brick and stone with plate glass fronts, and some of the finest lodge buildings in the state are located here. There are 4 banks, 2 daily and 2 weekly newspapers, flour mills and elevators. A hospital and nurses training school is maintained in a building erected for the purpose at an expense of $20,000. Independence is connected with Cherryvale and Coffeyville by interurban electric railway. It is sup- plied with telegraph and express offices, and has an international money order postoffice with seven rural routes. The population, according to the census of 1910, was 10,480.
The site of Independence was bought from the Indians by George A. Brown in Sept., 1869, before the land had been acquired by the government. The town was promoted by Oswego men, and a paper was started in Oswego called the "Independence Pioneer," through which the new town was extensively advertised. In October the first colony, consisting of 18 families from Indiana, settled on the town
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site. They built temporary huts of prairie hay, and it is said that no less than 40 hay huts stood on the Independence town site that winter. The next spring building began. The town company erected a hotel called the Judson House. The first store was opened in Oct., 1869, by E. E. Wilson and F. D. Irwin. In May, 1870, Independence became the county seat, and in July the postoffice was established. A gov- ernment land office was established there in 1872. In January of that year the branch railway called "Bunker's Plug" was completed. At this time over 200 houses had been built, the population numbered 2,300, mills had been put up and other business enterprises established. Independence now became a city of the second class, having been first organized as a village in July, 1870, and made a city of the third class in November of that year. The trustees of the village were: J. H. Pugh, J. E. DonLavy, E. E. Wilson, R. F. Hall and O. P. Smart. The first officers elected after the incorporation as a city of the third class were: Mayor, J. B. Craig; clerk, C. M. Ralstine; treasurer, J. E. DonLavy; councilmen, Thomas Stevenson, A. Waldtschmidt, W. T. Bishop, G. H. Brodie and F. D. Irwin. Independence was made a city of the second class March 20, 1872.
The first school was taught by Miss Mary Walker in 1870. The first religious services were held in the hay-shed residence of Mrs. McClurg in 1869. The south Kansas Tribune, which is still published, was the first newspaper and was established in 1871 by L. U. Humphrey & W. T. Yoe. The first banking house, known as Hull's Banking company, was established in Dec., 1871. It was the only one that continued in business during the subsequent hard years. In 1881 a company was organized to mine coal. The discovery of gas and oil followed.
Independent Churches .- Under this head are presented the religious organizations which are not identified with any ecclestical body and which have no affiliation with other churches that would entitle them to be included under a specific name. There is no general classifica- tion but certain distinct types appear. First, there are the churches which call themselves independent or unassociated, which originally were missions established in newly settled or outlying districts by people belonging to different denominations. The second class are churches that use a denominational name, but decline to have ecclesias- tical connection with any denominational body. The third class are union churches where members of two or more denominations have united to hold service but refuse to become identified with any of the regular religious body. The fourth class includes a number of religious organizations generally known as Holiness churches. They represent a definite church life but no denominational organization.
Independent churches were established in Kansas in the '8os. In 1890 there were 2 in Cherokee county, 2 in Wyandotte county and one each in Johnson, Miami, Montgomery, Riley and Shawnee counties, having a total membership of 271. During the next fifteen years the
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Independent churches more than doubled, as there were 28 organiza- tions reported in 1906, with a total membership of 685.
Indianola, a discontinued postoffice in Butler county, is located 12 miles southwest of Eldorado, the county seat, and 8 miles northwest of Augusta, the usual shipping point and the postoffice from which its mail is distributed by rural route.
Indians .- At the time Columbus discovered America, the continent north of Mexico was inhabited by four great groups of aborigines, to whom was given the general name of "Indians," the discoverers believ- ing they had circumnavigated the earth and arrived at the eastern border of India. In the extreme north were the Eskimo tribes, who have never played a conspicuous part in the country's history. The Algonquin group, probably the most important of the four, inhabited a triangle which may be roughly described by a line drawn from the mouth of the St. Lawrence river to the Rocky mountains, thence by a line from that point to the Atlantic coast near the Neuse river, and up the coast to the place of beginning. Also within this triangle lived the Iroquoian group, whose habitat was along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, extending to the lower Susquehanna and westward into Illinois. South and east of the triangle were the tribes of the Muskhogean stock, the Creeks, Choctaws, etc. West of all these lay the Siouan group.
When the first white men visited the region now comprising the State of Kansas, they found it inhabited by four tribes of Indians: the Kansa or Kaw, which occupied the northeastern and central part of the State (Morehouse, Kansas Historical Collections, vol. X, p. 327, says they owned the larger part of Kansas) ; the Osage, located south of the Kansa; the Pawnee, whose country lay west and north of the Kansa; and the Padouca or Comanche, whose hunting grounds were in the western part of the state.
A hand-book issued by the bureau of American Ethnology in 1907 defines the Kansa as "A southwestern Siouan tribe; one of five, accord- ing to Dorsey's arrangement, of the Dhegiha group. Their linguistic relations are closest with the Osage, and are close with the Quapaw. In the traditional migration of the group, after the Quapaw had first separated therefrom, the main body divided at the mouth of the Osage river, the Osage moving up that stream and the Omaha and Ponca crossing the Missouri river and proceeding northward, while the Kansa ascended the Missouri on the south side to the mouth of the Kansas river."
The 15th annual report of the bureau (p. 191) says: "According to tribal traditions collected by Dorsey, the ancestors of the Omaha, Ponka, Kwapa, Osage and Kansa were originally one people dwelling on the Ohio and Wabash rivers, but gradually working westward. The first separation took place .at the mouth of the Ohio. Those going down the Mississippi became the Kwapa or 'down stream people,' those who went up became the Omaha or 'up stream people.'"
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KANSAS HISTORY
After the Kansa separated from the Omaha and Ponka and estab- lished themselves at the mouth of the Kansas river, they gradually extended their domain to the present northern boundary of Kansas, where they were met and driven back by the Iowa and Sauk tribes, who had already come in contact with the white traders from whom they had received fire arms. The Kansa, being without these superior weapons, were forced back to the Kansas river. Here they were visited by the "Big Knives," as they called the white men, who per- suaded them to go farther west. The tribe then successively occupied some twenty villages along the Kansas valley before they were set- tled at Council Grove, whence they were finally removed to the Indian Territory in 1873.
Probably the first white man to acquire a knowledge of the Kansa Indians was Juan de Oñate, who met them on his expedition in 1601, and who refers to them as the "Escansaques." In this connection it is well to note that the name of the tribe is spelled in various ways. Morehouse, in the article already alluded to, says: "In the 9th volume of the Kansas Historical Collections Prof. Hay's article on the name Kansas, prepared in 1882, gives 24 ways of spelling the word. The editors of volume 9, in a footnote, add some 20 additional forms, and for several years past I have been gathering similar data coupled with authority for the same. At present (1907) I have all of the 44 forms mentioned and twice as many besides, or, in all, over 125 ways used in the past to spell the name designating this tribe of Indians, the verbal forerunners of the word Kansas."
Although Marquette's map of 1673 showed the location of the Kansa Indians, the French did not actually come in contact with the tribe until 1750, when, according to Stoddard, the French explorers and traders ascended the Missouri "to the mouth of the Kansas river, where they met with a welcome reception from the Indians. Their success in this quarter obliterated from their minds the reverses they had experienced on the upper Mississippi as likewise the very existence of the copper mines."
These early Frenchmen gave the tribe the name of Kah or Kaw, which, according to the story of an old Osage warrior, was a term of derision, meaning coward, and was given to the Kansa by the Osage because they refused to join in a war against the Cherokees. Another Frenchman, Bourgmont (q. v.), who visited the tribe in 1724, called them the "Canzes," and reported that they had two villages on the Missouri, one about 40 miles above the mouth of the Kansas and the other farther up the river, both on the right bank. These villages were also mentioned by Lewis and Clark nearly a century later. As the Lewis and Clark expedition ascended the Missouri a daily journal was kept, in which were recorded the events of each day as they proceeded. On June 28, 1804, referring to the Kansas river, the journal states that :
"This river receives its name from a Nation which dwells at this
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time on its banks & (has) 2 villages one about 20 leagues and the other 40 leagues up, those Indians are not verry noumerous at this time, reduced by war with their neighbors, &c. they formerly lived on the south banks of the Missourie 24 leagues above this river in an open and butifull plain, and were verry noumerous at the time the french first Settled the Illinois."
The journal for July 2 says : "We camped after dark on the S. Side above the Island and opposit the Ist old village of the Kanzes, which was Situated in the valley, between two points of high Land, and immediately on the river bank, back of the village and on a rise- ing ground at about one mile." Two days later (July 4) the journal contains this entry: "The right fork of Creek Independence meander- ing thro the Middle of the Plain a point of high Land near the river givs an ellivated Situation. at this place the Kanzas formerly lived, this Town appears to have cov'd a large space, the Nation must have been noumerous at the time they lived here, the Cause of their moveing to the Kansas River, I have never heard, nor can I learn," etc.
On Sept. 14, 1806, as the expedition was returning, the journal tells of a custom of the tribe to rob boats passing up the river. "We have every reason," says the narrator, "to expect to meet with them, and agreeably to their common custom of examining every thing in the perogues and takeing what they want out of them, it is probable they may wish to take those liberties with us, which we are deturmined not to allow of and for the Smallest insult we shall fire on them."
George J. Remsburg, who is regarded as an authority on matters relating to the Kansa Indians, says the grand village of the tribe, the one visited by Bourgmont in 1724, was located where the town of Doniphan now stands, and was known as "the village of the Twenty- four." After the Big Knives induced them to remove farther west the principal village of the tribe was near the southwest corner of Pot- tawatomie county. In the spring of 1880 Franklin G. Adams, secretary of the Kansas Historical Society, had the site of this village surveyed. In his report he states that the old village was "about two miles east of Manhattan, on a neck of land between the Kansas and Big Blue rivers. The rivers here by their course embrace a peninsular tract of about two miles in length, extending east and west. At the point where the village was situated the neck between the two rivers is about one- half mile wide, and the village stretched from the banks of the Kan- sas northward for the greater part of the distance across toward the Blue."
The 15th annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology says there was a Kansa village at the mouth of the Saline river, and that the first treaty between them and the United States was concluded there. After the treaty of 1825 the tribes moved east again and in 1830 had two villages near the mouth of Mission creek a short distance west of Topeka. The village of American Chief, containing some 20 lodges and 100 followers, was on the west side of the creek
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about two miles from the Kansas river. Hard Chief's village, nearer the river, had some 500 or 600 inhabitants, and a third village, that of Fool Chief, was located on the north side of the Kansas, not far from the present station of Menoken on the Union Pacific railroad.
In 1847 the several remnants of the tribe were ordered to what was known as the "diminished reserve" at Council Grove. Concerning this movement on the part of the government of the United States, More- house says: "It was not only a blunder, but it was criminal after cheating them out of their Kansas valley homes, to remove them to Council Grove. Here they were placed near a trading center on the Santa Fe trail, where their contact with piejene (fire-water), the whisky of the whites, and other vices, proved far more injurious than any knowledge of civilization received could overcome. Here they were totally neglected in a religious way, and only experiments of a brief nature undertaken for their education."
Among the Kansa the gentile system prevailed. Dorsey reports seven phratries or tribal subdivisions, and these were still further divided into sixteen clans or gentes, viz .: Manyinka (earth lodge), Ta (deer), Panka (Ponca), Kanze (Kanza), Wasabe (black bear), Wanaghe (ghost), Kekin (carries a turtle on his back), Minkin (carries the sun on his back), Upan (elk), Khuga (white eagle), Han (night), Ibache (holds the firebrand to the sacred pipe), Hangatanga (large Hanga), Chedunga (buffalo bull), Chizhuwashtage (peacemaker), Lunikashinga (thundering people).
Ethnologically the Osage were closely allied to the Kansa. Geo- graphically they were divided into three bands-Pahatsi (great), Utsehta (little), and the Santsukhdi band which lived in Arkansas. Dorsey thinks these divisions were comparatively modern in their origin. Marquette's map of 1675 showed the tribe located on a stream believed to be the Osage river, and other explorers and writers locate them in the same place. In 1686 Donay made mention of 17 villages of the Osage, but Father Jaques Gravier eight years later wrote from the Illinois mission that the tribe had but one village, the other 16 being · mere hunting camps occupied only at intervals. Iberville, in 1701, gave an account of a tribe of some 1,500 families living in the region of the Arkansas river, near the Kansas and Missouri, and like them speaking a language that he took to be Quapaw. La Harpe says the Osage were a warlike tribe which kept the Caddoan tribes in a state of terror, also the Illinois Indians, though once when the latter were driven across the Mississippi by the Iroquois they found shelter with the Osage nation. Friendly relations must have been established between the Osage and Illinois in the 18th century, as Charlevoix met some Osages at Kaskaskia in 1721, and Bossu reports some at Cahokia in 1756.
Early in the 18th century French traders visited the Osage and suc- ceeded in making peace treaties with the tribe that lasted for years. In 1714 some of the Osage warriors assisted the French against the
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Fox Indians at Detroit, and in 1806 a Little Osage chief named Chtoka (Wet Stone) told Lieut. Pike that he was at the defeat of Gen. Brad- dock in 1755, with all the warriors of his tribe that could be spared from the village. It is said that some of the Kansa Indians also marched. to the assistance of the French on that occasion, but did not arrive in time to take part in the action. When Dutisne (q. v.) visited the. tribe in 1719 he found on the Osage river a village consisting of about 100 cabins and 200 warriors, while southwest, on the Little Osage was. another village. Dutisne's account was the first mention of the Osage tribe in the white man's history of America.
Mention has been made of Dorsey's belief that the Osage nation was. originally one people, and that the division into three bands happened in at a comparatively recent period. According to Lewis and Clark about one-half of the Great Osage, under a chief named Big Track, migrated to the Arkansas river about 1802 and laid the foundation of the Santsukhdi band. Two years after this separation Lewis and Clark found the Great Osage, numbering 500 warriors, in a village on the south side of the Osage river, and the Little Osage, numbering 250 or 300 warriors, about 6 miles distant on the Arkansas river and one of its tributaries called the Vermilion river. The present Osage reservation was established in 1870.
The Indian name of the tribe was Wazhaze, which was corrupted by the French into Osage. A tribal tradition relates that originally the nation consisted of two tribes-the Tsishu or peace people, and the Waz- haze or true Osage. The former lived on a vegetarian diet and kept to the left, while the latter, being a war people, ate meat and kept to the right. After a time the two tribes began to trade with each other. The Tsishu came into possession of four kinds of corn and four kinds of pumpkins, which were dropped from the left hind legs of as many dif- ferent buffalo, and this increased their importance as a tribe. Subse- quently they met a warlike people called the "Hangda-utadhantse," with whom they made peace, and all three were then united under the- general name of Wazhaze. After the consolidation the tribe was divided into 14 gentes-7 of the former Tsishu, 5 of the Hangda, and 2 of the Wazhaze, so that the number of gentes of the peace people and the war people were equal. In forming their camps it was the custom to locate the entrance on the east side, to the left of which were the gentes of the peace people, while the gentes of the war people were on the right, in harmony with the old tradition.
The Pawnee nation was a confederacy of tribes belonging to the Cad- doan family, and called themselves Chahiksichahiks, "men of men." As- the Caddoan tribes moved northeast the Pawnees separated from the- main body somewhere near the Platte river in Nebraska, where their traditions say they acquired a territory by conquest, and where they were subsequently found by the Siouan tribes.
There is some question with regard to the origin of the name "Paw. nee." The word Pani, which has become synonymous with Pawnee,.
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means slave. As it was from this tribe that the Algonquin tribes about the great lakes obtained their slaves, some writers maintain that the word Pawnee is equivalent to the word slave, and that the tribal name- resulted from the fact that so many members of it were subjected to a_
FULL-BLOOD PAWNEE INDIANS-FATHER AND SON.
state of bondage. Hamilton says: "As most of the Indian slaves be -. longed to the nation of Panis (English Pawnees), the name Pani was .. given in the 18th century to every Indian reduced to servitude." Others,. among whom is Prof. John B. Dunbar, think the name Pawnee was.
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probably derived from "pariki" (a horn), a term used to describe their manner of dressing the scalp lock, which they stiffened with paint and grease and bent it into a shape resembling a horn.
. The tribal organization of the Pawnees was based on the village communities, which represented subdivisions of the tribe. Each village had its name, its hereditary chiefs, a shrine, priests, etc. The dominat- ing power in their religion was Tirawa (father), whose messengers were the winds, thunder, lightning and rain. Pawnee lodges were of two types-the common form of skins stretched over a framework of poles, and the earth lodge. The latter was circular in form, from 30 to 60 feet in diameter, partly under ground, and its construction was usually accompanied with elaborate religious ceremonies. Among the men, the only essential articles of wearing apparel were the breechcloth and moccasins, though these were supplemented by a robe and leggings in cold weather or on state occasions. After marriage a man went to live with his wife's family, though polygamy was not uncommon.
Juan de Oñate, in his account of his expedition in 1601, says the Escansaques and Quivirans were hereditary enemies, and Prof. Dun- bar has demonstrated almost to an absolute certainty that the Quivirans mentioned by Oñate were the Pawnees, who were also the inhabitants of the ancient Indian province of Harahey. The first Pawnee to come in contact with the white man was the one whom the Spaniards of Coronado's expedition (q. v.) called "the Turk." Soon after the expedi- tion of Oñate the Spanish settlers of New Mexico became acquainted with Pawnees through their raids into the white settlements for horses, and for two centuries the Spaniards tried to establish peaceful relations with the tribe, but with only partial success. Consequently the Pawnee villages in the 17th and 18th centuries were so remote from the white settlements that they escaped the influences generally so fatal to the aborigines.
In 1702 Iberville estimated the Pawnee population at 2,000 families. When Louisiana was purchased from France by the United States a century later the Pawnee country was south of the Niobrara river in Nebraska, extending southward into Kansas. On the west were the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, on the east were the Omahas, and south were the Otoes and Kansa. Soon after the Louisiana purchase, the Pawnees came in contact with white traders from St. Louis. In Sept., 1806, at the Pawnee village in what is now Republic county, Kan., Lieut. Pike lowered the Spanish flag and raised the flag of the United States. (See Pike's Expedition.) In 1838 the number of Pawnees was estimated at 10,000, but in 1849 the tribe was reduced to about 4,500 by a cholera epidemic. Five years before this, however, they ceded to the United States their lands south of the Platte and were removed from Kansas. Between the years 1873 and 1875 what remained of the tribe were set- tled upon a reservation in the Indian Territory. At that time there were about 1,000, representing four tribes of what was once the great Pawnee confederacy.
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The Comanches or Padoucas, who inhabited western Kansas in the early part of the 18th century, were an offshoot of the Shoshoni of Wyo- ming, as shown by their language and traditions. The Siouan name was · Padouca, by which they were called in the accounts of the early French explorers, notably Bourgmont, who visited the tribe in 1724. As late as 1805 the North Platte river was known as the Padouca fork. At that time the Comanche roamed over the country about the headwaters of the Arkansas, Red, Trinity and Brazos rivers in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. According to a Kiowa tradition, when that tribe moved southward from the country about the Black-hills, the Arkansas river formed the northern boundary of the Comanche country. The hand-book of the Bureau of American Ethnology says: "It must be remembered that from 500 to 800 miles was an ordinary range for a prairie tribe, and that the Comanche were equally at home on the Platte and in the Bolson de Mapimi of Chihuahua."
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