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 111
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In Jan., 1838, several New York tribes were granted reservations in Kansas, but they refused to occupy the lands, only 32 Indians coming from New York to the newly established Indian territory. Some 10,000 acres were allotted to these 32 Indians in the northern part of Bourbon county. In 1857 the Tonawanda band of Senecas relinquished their claim to the Kansas reservations, and in 1873 the government ordered all the lands sold to the whites, including the 10,000 acres in Bourbon county, because the Indians had failed to occupy them permanently.
By the treaty of New Echota, Ga., Dec. 29, 1835, the Cherokee nation ceded the lands formerly occupied by the tribe east of the Mississippi and received a reservation in southeastern Kansas. The tribe never as- sumed an important status in Kansas affairs, and in 1866 the land was ceded back to the United States. (See Neutral Lands.) The Cherokee tribe was detached from the Iroquois at an early day and for at least three centuries inhabited Tennessee, Georgia, southwestern Virginia, the Carolinas and northeastern Alabama. They were found by De Soto in the southern Alleghany region in 1540, and were among the most intelligent of Indian tribes.
Last but not least of the Indian tribes that dwelt in Kansas at some period or other were the Wyandots, or Wyandot-Iroquois, who were the successors to the power of the ancient Hurons. Champlain says the habitat of the Hurons was on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. About the middle of the 18th century the Huron chief Orontony, or Nicholas, removed from the Detroit river to the lowlands about San- dusky bay. Nicholas hated the French and organized a movement for the destruction of their posts and settlements, but a Huron woman divulged the plan. The hand-book of the Bureau of Ethnology says: "After this trouble the Hurons seem to have returned to Detroit and Sandusky, where they became known as Wyandots and gradually ac- quired a paramount influence in the Ohio valley and the lake region."
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During the French and Indian war the tribe was allied with the French, and in the Revolutionary war they fought with the British against the colonies. For a long time the tribe stood at the head of a great Indian confederacy and was recognized as such by the United States government in making treaties in the old Northwest 'Territory. At one time they claimed the greater part of Ohio, and the Shawnee and Delaware tribes settled there with Wyandot consent. In March, 1842, they relinquished their title to lands in Ohio and Michigan and agreed to remove west of the Mississippi. On Dec. 14, 1843, they acquired by purchase 39 square miles of the east end of the Delaware reserve in Kan- sas. Connelley says: "They brought with them from Ohio a well organized Methodist church, a Free Masons' lodge, a civil government, a code of written laws which provided for an elective council of chiefs, the punishment of crime and the maintenance of social and public order."
Soon after the Wyandots came to Kansas efforts were made in Con- gress to organize the Territory of Nebraska, to include a large part of the Indian country. The Indians realized that if the territory was organized it meant they would have to sell their lands, notwithstanding the treaty promises of the government that they should never be dis- turbed in their possessions, and that their lands should never be incor- porated in any state or territory. A congress of the Kansas tribes met at Fort Leavenworth in Oct., 1848, and reorganized the old confederacy with the Wyandots at the head. At the session of Congress in the winter of 1851-52 a petition asking for the organization of a territorial govern- ment was presented, but no action was taken. The people then con- cluded to act for themselves, and on Oct. 12, 1852, Abelard Guthrie was elected a delegate to Congress, although no territorial government existed west of the Missouri. At a convention on July 26, 1853, which had been called in the interest of the central route of the proposed Pacific railroad, a series of resolutions were adopted which became the basis of a provisional territorial government, with William Walker, a Wyandot Indian, as governor. (See Connelley's Provisional Govern- ment of Nebraska Territory.)
On Jan. 31, 1855, tribal relations among the Wyandots were dissolved and they became citizens of the United States. At the same time the 39 sections purchased in 1843 were ceded to the government, with the understanding that a new survey was to be made and the lands conveyed to the Wyandots as individuals, the reservees to be permitted to locate on any government land west of Missouri and Iowa.
In the social organization of the Wyandots four groups were recog- nized-the family, the gens, the phratry and the tribe. A family con- sisted of all who occupied one lodge, at the head of which was a woman. The gens included all the blood relations in a given female line. At the time the tribe removed to Kansas it was made up of eleven gentes which were divided into four phratries. The first phratry included the bear, deer and striped turtle gentes; the second was composed of the black turtle, mud turtle and smooth large turtle gentes; the third
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included the gentes of the hawk, beaver and wolf, and the fourth had but two gentes-the sea snake and the porcupine.
Mooney says the Wyandots were "the most influential tribe of the Ohio region, the keepers of the great wampum belt of union and the lighters of the council fire of the allied tribes." But, like the other great tribes that once inhabited the central region of North America, the Wyandots have faded away before the civilization of the pale-face. The wigwam has given way to the school house, the old trail has been supplanted by the railroad, and in a few generations more the Indian will be little more than a memory.
(Works consulted: Beach's Indian Miscellany, Brinton's Aboriginal American Literature, Cutler's, Hazelrigg's and Prentis' Histories of Kansas, Kansas Historical Collections, Drake's North American In- dians, Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, Lewis and Clark's Journal, Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Brownell's Indian Races, etc.)
Indian Brigade .- Although the United States government had not always treated the western Indians fairly, at the breaking out of the Civil war in 1861 most of them promptly took sides with the North. On Jan. 15, 1862, a party of Union Indians was defeated in the Indian Territory and driven across the line into Kansas. They encamped on Fall river and later in the year these refugee Indians, with some of those living in Kansas, were organized into the "Indian Brigade," or, as it was some- times called, the "Indian Home Guard."
The First Indian regiment was organized at Leroy on May 22, 1862. The Second and Third were organized on Big Creek and Five-mile creek in June and July, and the three regiments were then organized into a brigade, which was commanded successively by William A. Phillips, A. Engleman, C. W. Adams and John Edwards. A fourth regiment was commenced, but was never completed, the men enlisting for service in it being distributed among the other regiments.
The brigade served in the Departments of Kansas, Missouri and Ar- kansas, and in the Army of the Frontier. It participated in the opera- tions about Fort Gibson, Fort Blount and old Fort Wayne; was at Cane Hill and the Boston Mountain engagements in Arkansas; fought at Newtonia and Honey Springs, and in a number of minor actions, and about 500 of the Indians were with Col. James M. Williams and his First Kansas colored regiment at Cabin creek. Much of their service consisted of scouting, in which they were particularly adept, and throughout their entire term of service the Indians proved themselves to be good soldiers. The brigade was mustered out on May 31, 1865.
Indian Floats .- (See Floats.)
Indian Treaties .- Prior to the beginning of the 19th century, when the white settlements were few in number and scattered over a wide expanse of country, the pressure of the white race upon the domain of the native population was so slight that the question of land acquisition was hardly considered. While Kansas was a part of the province of
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Louisiana, the French and Spanish authorities found it expedient to enter into more or less formal agreements with the various tribes with which they came in contact, but these early treaties were merely for the purpose of establishing friendly relations with the natives, the question of land cession rarely, if ever, entering into the negotiations. Treaties of this character were made by Iberville, Bienville and Cadillac as gover- nors of the colony, and by such early explorers as Dutisne and Bourg- mont, but in many instances the records regarding these treaties are incomplete.
East of the Mississippi river, it was the policy of the British govern- ment, especially after the peace of 1763, to prohibit the whites from settling on the Indian lands, and after the Revolution the same policy was pursued by the United States for several years, the Federal govern- ment during this time recognizing the several tribes and confederacies as quasi-nationalities, devoid of sovereignty, but having a right to the soil, with power to dispose of the same, etc. But almost immediately after the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States the government began the inauguration of a different policy, looking to the removal of some of the eastern tribes west of the Mississippi. The act of 1804, which divided Louisiana into two territories, provided for the removal of those tribes that could be persuaded to make the change, but made no provision for defraying the expenses of such removals. A few of the weaker tribes accepted the invitation and removed to their new domain, but it was not until some thirty years later that the removal policy assumed any considerable proportions. By the act of Congress of May 20, 1834, a large territory, extending from the Platte and Mis- souri rivers to the Mexican possessions and estimated to contain over I32,000,000 acres, was set apart for the exclusive occupancy of the Indians. The house committee, in reporting this bill, said :
"The territory is to be dedicated to the use of the Indian tribes for- ever by a guaranty, the most sacred known among civilized com- munities-the faith of the nation. Our inability to perform our treaty guarantee [heretofore] arose from the conflicts between the rights of the states and the United States. Nor is it surprising that questions arising out of such a conflict, which have bewildered wiser heads, should not be readily comprehended or appreciated by the unlettered Indians."
Some removals had been effected before the passage of this act, but after it became a law the transfer of the Indians was more rapid, and by 1837 over 50,000 Indians had been located in the domain west of the Mississippi, a few of them coming into Kansas. Of the treaties of amity made with the western tribes by representatives of the United States, little need be said, as they were generally made for temporary purposes and were often unofficial, or at least partially so, in their char- acter. Treaties of this nature were made by Lewis and Clark, Lieut. Pike, Maj. Stephen H. Long and others. The treaties of cession played a more important part in the history of Kansas, as it was through
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them that tribes east of the Mississippi were assigned homes in the new Indian Territory, and in the end the domain was acquired by the gov- ernment and opened to white settlers. Following is a list of the prin- cipal treaties of this character that had an influence upon Kansas lands, given by tribes in the order, as nearly as possible, in which they were negotiated.
Osage .- The first cession of Osage lands in Kansas was made by the treaty of June 2, 1825, at St. Louis, Mo., William Clark, superintend- ent of Indian affairs, acting as commissioner for the United States. By this treaty the Great and Little Osage ceded to the United States all their lands in Missouri and Arkansas, and all lands "west of the State of Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas, north and west of the Red river, south of the Arkansas river, and east of a line to be drawn from the head sources of the Kansas southwardly through the Rock Saline," except certain reservations, etc. The northern boundary of the ceded lands was the divide between the Kansas and Arkansas rivers ; the line drawn through the Rock Saline crossed the southern boundary of Kansas near the western line of Clark county, after run- ning due south from the Arkansas river not far from Dodge City. In the treaty the boundaries of the general tribal reservation are thus described :
"Beginning at a point due east of White Hair's village and 25 miles west of the western boundary line of the State of Missouri, fronting on a north and south line so as to leave 10 miles north [south?] and 40 miles south [north?] of the point of said beginning and extending west, with the width of 50 miles to the western boundary of the lands ceded and relinquished."
In addition to this general reservation, 42 square miles were reserved to certain half-breed members of the tribe and 54 square miles were set apart to be sold and the proceeds used to establish a school fund for the Osage children. For the lands ceded and relinquished the gov- ernment agreed to furnish the tribe immediately with 600 cattle, 600 hogs, 1,000 domestic fowls, 10 yoke of oxen, and such farming utensils as the superintendent of Indian affairs might direct ; to erect four com- fortable dwellings for the four principal chiefs at their respective villages ; and to pay the tribe an annuity of $7,000 for 20 years.
On Aug. 10, 1825, at Council Grove the Osage nation granted a right of way through the reservation for the Santa Fe trail (q. v.), and by a treaty concluded at Fort Gibson on Jan. II, 1839, the tribe ceded all interest in any reservation claimed by another tribe and reaffirmed the cession of 1825, the government agreeing to pay them an annuity of $20,000 for 20 years, erect a saw and grist mill and furnish millers for 15 years, furnish 1,000 cows and calves, 2,000 hogs, certain farm- ing utensils, and pay all claims against the Osages for depredations, not exceeding $30,000, and was given the right to buy the 42 individual reservations of the Osage half-breeds at a price not exceeding $2 an acre.
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The next treaty with the Osage nation was at Canville, Kan., Sept. 29, 1865. Owing to the fact that the annuities granted by the govern- ment under the treaties of 1825 and 1839 had expired, the tribe was in an impoverished condition and readily consented to sell 30 miles off the east end of their reservation and a strip of 20 miles wide off the north side of the remainder, the latter to be sold in trust for their bene- fit. The government agreed to place $300,000 to the credit of the Osages, that sum being the purchase price agreed upon for the 30 miles off the east end of their lands, and to pay the tribe five per cent. upon that amount semi-annually, in money or goods as they might choose. The Indians promptly gave possession of the ceded lands, but the government was not so prompt in placing the $300,000 to their credit or in paying the interest. Consequently, in 1877 the Osage nation employed Charles Ewing, an attorney, to look after their interests in the matter. On June 16, 1880, President Hayes approved an act of Congress providing that the sum of $1,028,785 be placed to the credit of the tribe. Ewing's fee in this case was over $70,000. In the mean- time Congress had, on July 15, 1870, passed an act providing for the sale of the remaining Osage lands in Kansas, and on March 27, 1871, the secretary of the interior was authorized to designate a new reserva- tion in the Indian Territory.
Kansa .- On June 3, 1825, the day following the treaty with the Osage nation, the chiefs and head men of the Kansa tribe entered into a treaty with William Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs, at St. Louis, Mo., by which the tribe ceded to the United States all claim to lands in and west of the State of Missouri, the boundaries of the cession being described as follows: "Beginning at the entrance of the Kansa river into the Missouri; thence north to the northwest corner of the State of Missouri; thence westwardly to the Nodewa river, 30 miles from its entrance into the Missouri; thence to the entrance of the Big Nemahaw river into the Missouri, and with that river to its source; thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old village of the Pania Republic to the west ; thence on the ridge dividing the waters of the Kansas river from those of the Arkansas to the western bound- ary line of the State of Missouri, and with that line to the place of beginning."
This cession included all the northern half of Kansas east of the Araphoe and Cheyenne lands, except a triangular tract of the Pawnee country lying northwest of the divide between the Prairie Dog creek and the north fork of the Solomon river, and a reservation "beginning 20 leagues up the Kansas river and to include their village on that river ; extending west 30 miles in width through the lands ceded."
The east line of this reserve was about 10 miles west of the present city of Topeka, and it included westward from that line townships 8, 9, 10, II and 12, the northern boundary of the reserve being 35 miles from the Nebraska line. At that time the sources of the Kansas river were not definitely known, and from government maps of Indian ces-
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sions it appears that the Kansa cession extended no farther west than the headwaters of the Solomon, the country farther up the Republican fork belonging to the Pawnees.
A second treaty with the Kansa Indians was concluded at the Methodist mission in Kansas on Jan. 14, 1846. By its provisions the tribe ceded 2,000,000 acres off the east end of their reserve, the full 30 miles in width and extending west until the designated quantity of land was obtained. The government agreed, in the event there was not sufficient timber on the remaining portion of the reservation, to lay off a new reservation near the western boundary of the 2,000,000 acres ceded. Pursuant to this stipulation, when it was found that there was a scarcity of timber on the diminished reserve, the government assigned to the tribe an additional tract in the vicinity of Council Grove. Part of this tract was claimed by the Shawnees, but that tribe relinquished its claim in 1854, giving the Kansa Indians a clear title.
On Oct. 5, 1859, at the Kansas agency, a treaty was negotiated with that tribe by which the reservation was reduced to a tract 9 by 14 miles in the southwest corner of the reservation near Council Grove and the remainder of the reserve was ceded to the United States in trust, to be sold for the benefit of the tribe. An act of Congress on May 8, 1872, provided for the sale of the remaining "trust" lands and the "diminished reserve," and the removal of the tribe to the Indian Territory. Another act, approved on June 5. of the same year, con- firmed a reservation selected in the Indian Territory, and by the act of June 23, 1874, the lands acquired from the Kansa Indians were ordered to be sold to actual settlers.
Shawnee .- Contemporaneous with the Osage and Kansa cessions, which gave to the United States about five-sixths of the present State of Kansas, other tribes ceded lands in Nebraska, thus giving the nation a large tract of territory to be set apart for the use and occupancy of the Indian tribes farther east. And almost immediately upon the acquisition of these western lands the government began negotiations for the removal of the eastern tribes to the new territory. On Nov. 7, 1825, at St. Louis, Mo., a treaty was concluded with the Shawnee tribe living near Cape Girardeau upon a tract of land acquired by Spanish grant, signed by Baron de Carondelet, governor of Louisiana, and dated Jan. 4, 1793. By the St. Louis treaty this tract was ceded to the United States, and the Shawnees were assigned another tract, equal to 50 square miles, "Commencing 2 miles northwest of the south- west corner of Missouri; thence north 25 miles; thence west 100 miles; thence south 25 miles ; thence east 100 miles to the place of beginning."
This tract happened to overlap the Osage lands in the Indian Ter- ritory and was not acceptable to the Shawnees, who were then assigned another reservation, "Beginning at a point in the western boundary of the State of Missouri, 3 miles south of where said boundary crosses the mouth of the Kansas river ; thence continuing south on said bound- ary 25 miles ; thence due west 120 miles ; thence due north until said line
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shall intersect the southern boundary of the Kansas reservation; thence due east coinciding with the southern boundary of said reserva- tion to the termination thereof; thence due north coinciding with the eastern boundary of said reservation to the southern shore of the Kan- sas river; thence along said southern shore of said river to where a line from the place of beginning drawn due west shall intersect the same."
As thus established the Shawnee reservation included the present counties of Johnson and Douglas, a little of the northern portions of Miami, Franklin and Lyon, the northern part of Osage, the southern part of Shawnee, the greater part of Wabaunsee, and portions of Morris and Geary, the northwest corner of the reserve being about 3 miles southeast of Junction City.
By a treaty concluded with the Shawnee chiefs at Washington, D. C., May 10, 1854, all the above described reservation was ceded to the United States except 200,000 acres, which also included about 25,000 acres to be allotted to the "absentee Shawnees" upon their return to the tribe. Many of these never returned and the land was ordered to be sold to actual settlers by an act of Congress, approved by President Johnson on April 7, 1869. Another act, approved by President Hayes on March 3, 1879, provided for the disposition of the entire reserve and the removal of the Shawnees to a new reservation outside the state.
Delawares .- As early as Oct. 3, 1818, the Delawares of Ohio, by a treaty at St. Mary's in that state, ceded their Ohio lands to the United States and were promised peaceable possession of reservation west of the Mississippi. The Ohio Delawares first joined their tribesmen near Cape Girardeau, Mo., but by the treaty of Sept. 24. 1829, the Missouri lands were ceded to the United States and the tribe was assigned a reservation "in the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, extending up the Kansas river to the Kansa line and up the Missouri river to Camp Leavenworth, and thence by a line drawn westwardly, leaving a space of 10 miles wide north of the Kansas boundary line for an outlet," etc. These lands were surveyed the following year, and by the treaty at Castor Hill, Mo., Oct. 26, 1832, the cession and reserva- tion were reaffirmed. The Delaware lands in Kansas included the pres- ent county of Wyandotte, the greater part of the counties of Leaven- worth and Jefferson, and small portions of Jackson and Shawnee.
By a treaty concluded at Washington, D. C., May 6, 1854, the Dela- wares granted the right of way for certain roads and railroads through their reservation, and ceded to the United States all their reserve except 39 square miles which had been sold to the Wyandots (q. v.) and "excepting that part of said country lying east and south of a line beginning at a point on the line between the land of the Delaware and half-breed Kansas, 40 miles in a direct line west of the boundary between the Delawares and Wyandots; thence north 10 miles; thence in an easterly course to a point on the south bank of Big Island creek,
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which shall also be on the bank of the Missouri river where the usual high-water line of said creek intersects the high-water line of said river."
By the same treaty 4 square miles were to be confirmed to the Munsees or Christian Indians upon payment of $2.50 per acre. This tract was sold by the Christian Indians to A. J. Isaacs and the sale was confirmed by act of Congress on June 8, 1858.
Under the provisions of the treaty of May 30, 1860, which was con- cluded at Sarcoxieville, on the Delaware reservation, a portion of the reservation was allotted to them in severalty and the remainder was sold to the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad company. This sale was confirmed by a treaty at Fort Leavenworth on July 2, 1861, and by a supplementary treaty at the Delaware agency on July 4, 1866, the entire reservation passed from the hands of the Delawares, whose tribal existence was at that time merged with the Cherokee nation.
Ottawa .- Two bands of this tribe-the Blanchard's Fork and Roche de Boeuf-met with representatives of the United States at the Miami bay of Lake Erie, near the city of Toledo, Ohio, Aug. 30, 1831, and entered into a treaty by which they ceded their lands in Ohio and accepted a reservation in Kansas. The Roche de Boeuf band received 40,000 acres and the Blanchard's fork band 34,000 acres. The present city of Ottawa, the county seat of Franklin county, stands near the center of this reserve. After the removal to Kansas the two bands became confederated. On June 24, 1862, the reservation was ceded to the United States under certain conditions, one of which was that the tribal relations of the Ottawas were to be dissolved at the end of five years, when they were to become citizens of the United States and receive allotments of land in severalty. By a treaty on Feb. 23, 1867, which was concluded at Washington, D. C., a portion of the reservation was sold to the Ottawa University and the tribe was assigned lands in the Indian Territory. Thus matters stood until June 10, 1872, when Congress passed a law providing for the sale of the unsold portions of the Ottawa reserve, including the lands sold to the Ottawa University under the treaty of 1867.
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