USA > Missouri > Bates County > History of Bates County, Missouri > Part 6
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Death of Mr. Seeley.
"Thursday, November 22 .- This morning Brother Seeley seemed to be as comfortable as could be expected. At 11 o'clock, he was taken out of his bed for the purpose of having it made. He was apparently
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refreshed by the change; but in the after part of the day, his counte- nance suddenly altered. His eyes were set, and he became speechless, and in a short time, gave up his immortal spirit to the God who gave it. Thus death is making ravages among us, and lessening our numbers for the labours of the mission.
"Friday, November 23 .- This day we attend the funeral of Brother Seeley. How solemn and instructive are the providences of God. Although He is afflicting us, yet His mercies are abundant, and entitled to our warmest gratitude. May we not be left to repine at the afflic- tions which are laid upon us, but may they, through Divine Grace, work within us the peaceable fruits of righteousness.
"Tuesday, November 27 .- This evening met for business. Resolved that by the consent of Brother Jones, he take our children to his house, and school them. Considering the situation of our family, the present state of the health of our physician, and the liability that he may be sick, as well as others, we therefore Resolved, That Brother Mont- gomery turn his attention to the study of physics, as he can find leisure.
"Wednesday, December 6 .- Since the 28th of November, nothing material has taken place. Our sick generally are gaining very fast, and we hope the family will soon enjoy a comfortable state of health. The business of erecting our buildings has gone on very prosperously, and we are all comfortably situated in our log cabins."
The Cemetery.
Since the foregoing was written we have been enabled to locate and visit the Harmony Mission cemetery. It required considerable inquiry among the oldest inhabitants of the vicinity to locate it, so completely has it been lost; and it is known to the few who know anything about it as the "old Indian burying ground."
The old Mission trail from Harmony north to Ft. Osage and other points on the Missouri river is still perfectly plain, and from the site of the cabins and school at Harmony it runs a little west of north for some distance. The cemetery is situate about fifty yards to the west of this trail and about a quarter from the site of Harmony, on a rather high, dry roll of the land, now timber land, many of the trees being nearly a foot in diameter. It is apparent that this cemetery was located on the open timberless prairie : and that the timber has grown up since. Only one grave has any stone or monument at this time. though old settlers say there used to be more of them marked. The head stone
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stands about two feet out of the ground and the one at the foot only about a foot high. Both are just ordinary sand-stone slabs stuck in the ground; and on the face and smoother side of the head stone three letters, "D A P," are deeply cut, as if by a common chisel.
The depression of graves was marked and plain, and they were in rows about six to eight feet apart, there being several rows north and south ; and the gentleman with us on our recent visit counted thirty-eight depressions or graves.
It should be recalled that the last entry in the Journal was on Decem- ber 6, 1821. It appears from the record that two adults and four chil- dren had died and been buried prior to the last Journal entry-Mrs. Montgomery and her infant, and the infant of Mrs. Seeley, in October, and in November Mr. Seeley, an infant of Mrs. Belcher, and the young- est son of Superintendent Dodge. The initials "D. A. P." can not stand for any of these; but just who died of the Mission family during the succeeding ten years the Mission remained is not recorded in any history available to us. From all that we know it is fair to conclude that the missionaries and the Osage Indians made this place a common sepulcher, and that it was under the control of the missionaries; else why its system and regularity? The location of this cemetery tends to show that the body of the Great Osages lived at that time in that vicinity, else there would not have been so many graves: for it must be recalled that by the treaty of 1825 the Osages were removed from the boundaries of Missouri.
It seems too bad that so much of historic worth should be permitted to perish within a century of the sad and heroic events of Harmony Mission. Even yet, it would seem, the story of these devout missionaries should appeal to the Presbyterian and Reformed Dutch churches so strongly that benevolent members would take steps to erect suitable monuments to the heroic men and women who sacrificed so much for the Master at Harmony. The few acres actually occupied by the cabins and other buildings could be cheaply purchased and readily converted into a beautiful park, with appropriate memorials, and thus made a sacred place in the history of the work of the United Foreign Missionary Society.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GRAND OSAGE INDIANS.
GRAND OSAGES AND HARMONY MISSION-HOME OF THE OSAGES-CHARACTER- ISTICS-FAILURE OF MISSION-PIKE'S EXPEDITION-LOCATION-RECENT OBSERVATIONS-THEIR RELIGION-FIRST MARRIAGE IN OSAGE COUNTRY- LAST OF HIS LINE.
In connection with Harmony Mission, the location, character, and general conduct of the Grand Osages becomes interesting; and in a history of Bates county, something must be said of these original occi- pants of this fair country. We have elsewhere shown that when history took note of them they occupied the vast territory between the Mis- souri and the Arkansas rivers north and south, and from the mouth of the Osage river as far west as the country was known to white men. But not much was known of them in this section of Missouri until the expedition of Gen. Zebulon B. Pike, who visited this section in 1806, one hundred and twelve years ago. At that time this was an unexplored region except so far as it may have been known to the French-Cana- dians, and the half-breed voyageurs, hunters, and trappers. The Osages were a restless, vagrant, nomadic people. They lived in temporary villages easily moved, or easily rebuilt, after the abandonment of a village. They roamed the country over during the hunting season and lived in so-called villages in considerable numbers only in the winter season. Often when afflicted with contagions disease whole villages would suddenly remove to some other locality. From all accounts the Osages were among the most intelligent and best developed physically of any of the numerous tribes which inhabited this country. They were not a fierce and war-like tribe: yet they were brave and strong in war when so engaged with other tribes. So far as white men were con- cerned they were not hostile, and always disposed peaceably towards the whites. Mentally and morally they never had risen much above the average Indian tribe. When the missionary came among them they treated them kindly and the chiefs and more elderly among them expressed great desire to learn the ways and life of the white people-
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their methods of agriculture, the making of tools, and farm implements, and seemed disposed to adopt the white man's life. But their moral darkness was complete, from our viewpoint, and the Missionaries at the numerous stations found it very difficult to make any progress with them in a religious or educational way. It cannot be said historically that the Mission schools were in any substantial sense successful, though they may have done some good. All the evidence obtainable of results at Harmony Mission school in this county go to show that the ten years' earnest effort that was put forth in their behalf was poorly rewarded. Indeed, it may be said that the school was a flat failure.
When General Pike came up the Osage river in the fall of 1806 according to his report, he found one of the principal Osage villages near the junction of the Marmiton and the Little Osage river, which was five or six miles south and four or five miles west of Harmony. He never explored what he called the "north fork" of the Osage, or the Marais des Cygnes, and did not know whether an Osage village existed on the Marais des Cygnes river very near where Harmony station was established in 1821, about fifteen years after he passed that way on his expedition to the West. It does not seem reasonable that the intelli- gent Missionaries seeking to preach the gospel to them and to estab- lish a school for their children, would have located Harmony ten or twelve, or as some early writers have said, fifteen miles away from the principal Osage village. Our best investigation leads to the belief that the body of the Grand Osage lived in 1821, on the high lands very near the site of Harmony-the principal village being within a mile or two of the school. Nor does it seem reasonable that the chiefs, with full knowledge of the purposes of the Missionaries would have endorsed or acquiesced in the choice of a site made by the Missionaries before the arrival of the chiefs and warriors from the hunt, as it seems they did if it were twelve or fifteen miles from the principal village of the tribe. This view is confirmed by tradition and by the oldest and best informed citizens now living, who unite in saying that they always understood that the principal Osage village was on the high land just north of the present village of Papinsville, and only a mile or two to the east of Harmony site. This is fortified by a letter written by Mr. George Sibley from Fort Osage, old Ft. Clark, on the Missouri river, dated October 1. 1820, less than one year before Harmony was located, (page 203, Morse's "Report on Indian Affairs") the second paragraph of which reads, "The Great Osages, of the Osage river. They live in one village
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on the Osage river seventy-eight miles (measured) due south from Fort Osage. I rate them at about one thousand two hundred souls, three hundred and fifty of whom are warriors and hunters, fifty or sixty super- annuated, and the rest are women and children." At that time he may well have referred to the Marais des Cygnes as the Osage, or a continuation of the Osage river, as the name Marais des Cygnes river had not appeared upon any explorer's or official map, and did not so appear for some years later. Mr. Sibley had been in charge of Ft. Osage prior to the War of 1812, when it was abandoned for a time, and he returned there when it was re-established. The government survey of the Osage nation boundary line, running south from Ft. Osage, to the Osage river, was made by a Mr. Brown in 1816, and George Sibley, a government officer, doubtless knew what he was talk- ing about when he wrote the letter on October 1, 1820, and said the Osage village was seventy-eight measured miles directly south from where he was then writing. Our investigation shows that seventy-eight miles meas- ured directly south from Ft. Osage (now the town of Sibley, in Jackson county, Missouri, ) will not cross the Osage river at any point but will reach as far south as Harmony or possibly a little further; and Rand, McNally & Co., the map makers of Chicago, say: "Papinsville is seventy- seven and one-half miles from Sibley (old Ft. Osage) in a straight line and about two miles above the mouth of the Marais des Cygnes river where it enters the Osage river."
David W. Eaton, now with the United States Department, a man familiar with government surveys, in a letter to the author says that : "It is sixty miles from Sibley to the standard line just south of Butler," between Mt. Pleasant and Lone Oak townships; and by actual count of the sections south of that standard line it confirms the distance stated by Rand, McNally & Co. All which goes to prove that the "one Osage village" as stated by George Sibley was north of the Osage river in 1820-21, and within the present limits of Bates county; and this all cor- roborates the knowledge of our oldest inhabitants and the traditions coming down to us from reasonably trustworthy sources.
This is historically important because of the prevalent view of historians who have written about the Osage. They have all taken their cue from Pike's report and map. Even Mr. Coues' notes on Pike are at fault in this particular. It is not disputed here that General Pike found a Great Osage village where he indicates it on his official
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map, nor that Chief White Hair resided at a village in that vicinity, in 1806 and afterward. But the contention that in 1820-21, and there- after, until the Osage moved further west, under the treaty of 1825, the "one Osage village" and the body of the tribe, lived north of the Osage and northeast of the Marais des Cygnes river, is historically cor- rect and sound.
Recent Observations.
The author recently visited the site of Harmony Mission in com- pany with J. N. Barrows of Rich Hill, who was born within a mile and a half of Papinsville in 1847, and who as a boy drank from the great well digged by the Missionaries at Harmony, and ate apples from the trees they planted there, and we walked over the very sites of the log cabins and the great school building, all of which he remem- bers having seen before destroyed or removed. Nothing remains to mark the site except a large sink hole where the well once was, (doubt- less still is if cleaned out) and stumps of large black locust trees planted by those God-fearing men. Bits of crockery and glass, lie scattered about and a few brick-bats.
The location is all that was described in the "Journal" and in the letters of the Missionaries. The soil is not so good about the imme- diate location as they thought it, and the stone coal referred to by some of them is a very thin stratum of poor coal outcropping at the very bottom of the river. The timber to the east and to the west is still there in limited quantities. We did not learn where the dead who died there lie buried, or whether any stone marks the resting place of the faithful who died in that consecrated work.
Harmony was the first settlement in what is now Bates county. Forty-one made up the family that went aboard the keel boats at Pittsburg on April 19, 1821, thirty-nine of them arrived at Harmony Station August 25th of the same year. After about eleven years of habitation, and fruitless labor, the Mission was abandoned and the living scattered to the four quarters of the country. Dr. Amasa Jones established a home near old Germantown, Henry county, and died there at a ripe old age, full of honors and usefulness. Dr. W. C. Requa came up from Union Mission and settled in Lone Oak township a few miles north of Harmony, reared his family and died there in 1886 at the ripe old age of ninety-one. But the story of these, and other worthies of the pioneer age of our county, will be found elsewhere in this volume.
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The Religion of the Osages.
It seems to be generally agreed by the writers that the Osages universally believed in a God whom they called the Great Spirit. But it seems also that their conception of a God came from the manifestation of the forces of Nature as exemplified in the storm and lightning. That which they could not understand they attributed to the Great Spirit. But there is no evidence that they had any concept of a God of love and care. Hence, they feared the Great Spirit, because they recognized in it the power to injure and destroy. Their form of worship was indefinite and variant with the customs or whims of the few old men who were intrusted with religious secrets. Only a few old men were custodians of the religion and traditions of the tribe; and they trans- mitted both to younger men only after they had accomplished some exploits which, in the opinion of the old men, entitled them to receive such instructions. It may be safely said that the Missionaries at their several stations, after long years of patient efforts, and faithful teach- ing, made little impress on young or old. They were simply incapable of comprehending intellectually the teachings of Jesus as presented by the Missionaries, and morally they could not be affected by teaching or preaching. In fact the Christian God was to them unthinkable, and the doctrines of the Christ so foreign to every instinct, intuition and tradition of the race that it was impossible to make any serious or last- ing impression upon the mind and heart of even the young. They believed, in a sense, in rewards and punishment beyond this life. It is clear they believed in immortality-in a life beyond death here. This is shown in the universal custom of burying with the deceased the things he owned and loved on earth, so that when he arrived at the "happy hunting ground"-which seemed to be their conception of Heaven beyond-he would have all the things necessary to continue the enjoy- ment of them over there. This is a very beautiful though child-like thought. Washington Irving relates a story of the death of a beautiful daughter of a warrior. She was devotedly attached to a pretty pony, and when she died the pony was killed and buried with her so that she should have her pretty pony over there. It is a touching story and it fairly presents their customs and beliefs in the Hereafter. Irving had an Indian guide, hunter, and interpreter, whose name was Beatte, and we cannot forbear quoting one paragraph from Irving's "Tour of the Prairie":
"The Osage, with whom Beatte had passed much of his life, retain
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their superstitious fancies and rites in much of their original force. They all believe in the existence of the soul after its separation from the body, and that it carries with it all the mortal tastes and habitudes. At an Osage village in the neighborhood of Beatte, one of the chief warriors lost an only child, a beautiful girl, of a very tender age. All her playthings were buried with her. Her favorite little horse, also, was killed, and laid in the grave beside her, that she might have it to ride in the land of spirits."
Thus we see that their religion was full of the human; that it was just what might be expected to prevail among the children of the forest and prairie. We have no reason to say they did not get comfort and hope from their beliefs, even as we are comforted and made hopeful by our beliefs. At least their view of the life of the soul beyond was so strong in the Osage that the devoted Missionaries could not shake them or get them to accept the Christian view. Hope leads to many beliefs, yea, to what we call convictions. The very soul of man hungers for a life beyond this. It is the most appealing thought in the world to the old-to those who approach the end in sadness and decreptitude. Knowing that he is going man rebels at the idea that he is to be blotted out. He naturally indulges the story that the boatman on the Styx must land him somewhere on the other shore ; and he hopes to continue life over there with friends under more pleasurable environment than was his lot on this side. And it has always appeared to me that the very poor, the lame, the halt, the blind, the unfortunate, on this side, must have, in the nature of the mind, a stronger hope and conviction and certainty about the matter than those more blessed in this world. Hence, the eternal appeal of the Christ doctrine and the Christ promises to the poor, the meek and the humble.
So whatever we may think of the heathen Osages we cannot deny to ourselves a certain respect for their religious conceptions and cus- toms. They are beautiful, tender and sincere. Who among us is competent to say certainly how far or in what respect their customs, beliefs and philosophy were wrong?
In conclusion of this subject we quote the following excerpt from a letter of Rev. E. Chapman to the domestic secretary, March 4, 1822 (from Union), discussing the difficulties of learning the Osage lan- guage: "There are no adequate interpreters, the most skillful are ignor- ant of it. except so far as relates to trade and common domestic business. Nothing, or very little, that relates to their devotion or superstitious
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notions and practices is understood by the interpreters, or even by most of their chiefs, warriors and common people. This knowledge is con- fined to two or three old men in each village. These preserve and communicate part of their doctrines of religion and traditions from time to time to those who can pay sums proportioned to the importance of their lessons, after they have performed such a number of exploits as will entitle them to this privilege. The language which the interpreters have acquired is such as is used by women and the most degraded of the community with whom they have associated, and theirs is a different dialect from that which is used by the majority, and the most respectable part of the nation. I have never been able by the help of an interpreter to communicate divine instruction."
The First Marriage in the Osage Country.
Although the Missionaries came to Harmony a year after the Mis- sionary family was sent up the Arkansas river, to Union, Harmony in Bates county, Missouri, is entitled to the credit and honor of the first wedding solemnized in all that vast territory known as the Osage country, although the groom came from Union station. On the 21st of August, Reverend Chapman and Brother Fuller arrived from Union Station. This was before all the family had removed from the boats on the Osage river to Harmony Station on the Marais des Cygnes, and the family was living in tents at Harmony-those who had left the boats. On Lord's day, September 19th, the annals show that they "held public worship under the shade of some oak trees. Brothers Dodge and Prixley preached here, and Brother Montgomery at the boats." But on August 25, they had fin- ished unloading their boats and all the family had left the boats and were dwelling in tents at Harmony. This is the last mention of the boats and it is not recorded what disposition was made of them; but the boats never ascended the Marais des Cygnes river to Harmony Station, and a reasonable presumption is that they were sold to traders and returned to St. Louis. On Lord's Day, August 26, 1821, Brother Chapman, of Union, preached at Harmony in the morning and Brother Dodge in the afternoon; and at the close of the exercises they were visited by a number of Indians. Nearly everybody was down with the fever and ague; and the next day the annal reads: "The chastisement of the Lord is upon us."
Three days later, on September 1st, the announcement of the
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engagement of Brother Fuller and Sister Howell was recorded in these words: "Brothers Chapman and Fuller from the Union Mission are still with us. Sister Howell is about to leave us." You will note that this is only five days after the removal from the boats, and only ten days after the arrival of Brother Fuller. So that it may be concluded that their wooing in the wild, primeval forests of the Marais des Cygnes must have been beautiful, rapid and satisfactory to the love lorn twain. And we can conceive of few situations better adapted to stir the heart and make its emotions more responsive to earnest words of love. The record indicates that the brave groom had come a long journey pony- back from Union across the virgin prairie to supply, if he could, the much-needed "female" help at Union; and the result shows that he lost little time in the pursuit of his object. Miss Howell of Baltimore, edu- cated, refined, dominated by the Mission spirit, of uncertain age-at least the record does not disclose it; new to her environment in the wilderness of the heathen Osage, possibly was touched by a natural loneliness born of the forests and became an easy prey to the earnest appeals of Brother Fuller for an actual as well as a soulmate, and accepted him on the spot-we do not mean the spot where Harmony was meas- ured off by the chiefs; for it may have been at some other spot up or down the beautiful Marais des Cygnes or over on the Great Osage, miles away, in some sylvan retreat removed some hundreds of miles from the hearing of any curious white ears. It requires little imagination to see the devoted couple during the brief days of their wooing strolling in the forests or out upon the rolling prairies in those early autumn days, hand in hand, enjoying the surroundings just as God had made them and all unmarred by the trample of human feet, except such slight effect as the occasional passing of the stalking or sulking savage may have left behind. It must have been ideal for a serious courtship, and we indulge the pleasant thought that the cultured Miss Howell sur- rendered easily amidst such appealing, prompting scenes. "The groves were God's first temples, ere man learned to hew the shaft and lay the architrave," and hence Brother Fuller and Sister Howell must have spent sweet and tender hours in God's temple and as results seem to indicate, with God's approval.
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