USA > Missouri > Vernon County > History of Vernon County, Missouri : past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county Vol. I > Part 15
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OSAGE TREATY OF 1825.
By a treaty between the United States and the Osage people. made in 1825, the former was to pay to the latter seven thousand dollars annually, for twenty years, provide them with stock, farming implements, a blacksmith, a teacher to instruct them in agriculture, to build a suitable house for each of the four prin- cipal chiefs, and pay certain specified debts or claims against the Indians. In consideration of this, the Osages, among other con- cessions, surrendered their title to all the land in Missouri not included in the former cession of 1808.
With tender recollections of the places that so long had been the homes of themselves and their ancestors, with heartfelt regret
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at breaking the fond ties that bound them, and with sore lamenta- tions at being obliged to tear themselves from all that to them was most dear on earth, the Osage nation, in 1826, left the soil of Missouri and took up their home on the Kansas reservation provided for in the treaty. The story of their lot in their new home is a sad one: Homesick, dispirited and heart-sick, they became the easy victims of conscienceless men; the teachers pro- vided them could do little and left, as did also the blacksmiths, the annuities stipulated, after a time were not paid in the manner as agreed, so that it was not strange that, when they thought of the unjust treatment accorded them, pinched with poverty and with starvation threatening, they became desperate and sought to avenge their wrongs. It was this condition of affairs that led to the only hostile encounter that ever occurred between the Osages and the early settlers of this region. In the early spring of 1838 some of the Little Osage band came from their reserva- tion in Kansas to the settlement near Balltown, to get food of which they were sorely in need. Smarting under disappointment they went back. On March 14th, some twenty of their warriors, led by an under-chief returned, and coming upon some of the settlers' hogs in the Osage bottom, killed four or five of them, and the common report is, also killed a young steer of one of the Summers brothers. The depredation was soon discovered by Mr. Jesse Summers, while searching for his stock in the bottom, and he immediately gave the alarm to the other settlers, many of whom were at the place of Mr. Jonathan E. Dodge helping in a house-raising. With all possible speed, a pursuing party, com- prising Samuel N. Dodge, Jonathan E. Dodge, N. B. Dodge, Jr .. Joshua Ewell, Josiah M. Austin, William Modrel. Abram Mc- Knight, Jesse, James, Allen, Wesley and Ira Summers, and pos- sibly others, headed by Dr. Leonard Dodge, mounted and armed. took the trail of the Indians which was easily followed in the snow. They came up with the Indians, who were encamped on Slough Island, near the mouth of Walnut creek on the Marais des Cygnas, and Newell Dodge, who acted as interpreter, hailed them in their language, charging them with killing the hogs and demanding that they surrender the guilty ones. Thereupon one of the Indians, a brave, stalwart fellow, came forward. armed with his gun, and challenged the whites to fight, telling them the men who killed their hogs were there, but they would have to get him
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before they got them, and that he was not afraid to die. Suiting his actions to his words, the Indian was in the act of priming his gun when a shot from the gun of Dr. Dodge felled him to the ground, and as he lay, still trying to prime his gun, Newell Dodge fired, the shot severing one of the carotid arteries and killing him. In the general melee that ensued, Newell Dodge received a shot in the shoulder, which disabled him a short time, and N. B. Dodge, Jr., was mortally wounded by a shot from one of the Indians, who, in turn, was shot and killed by William Modrel. With several of their number severely wounded, the Indians re- treated and the settlers returned home. After nine days of suf- fering N. B. Dodge, Jr., passed away on March 23, and his was the first body interred in the old Balltown burying ground.
As was but natural, exaggerated accounts of the unfortunate affair rapidly spread, and the news coming to Governor Boggs at Independence, he sent to the seat of the trouble 800 militia- men ; also three companies of United States cavalry under com- mand of Capt. E. V. Sumner were sent from Fort Leavenworth.
LAWLESS MILITIA.
The lawlessness of the militiamen proved a greater menace to the settlers than the depredations of the Indians, and the · cavalrymen failed to find an Indian in their march. At their encampment on the farm of Col. George Douglas, on the Marma- ton, Captain Sumner reported that he had failed to find any Indians after searching the country thoroughly and seemed to question whether or not there were really any Indians there. This suspicion, however, was dispelled when G. M. Stratton, by direction of Colonel Douglas, led him to the Indian camp, on the Marais des Cygnes, outside of Missouri territory, in Kansas. Captain Sumner had been ordered "to remove every Indian from that quarter of the state." He followed his instructions to the letter, and searching out a small number of Indian women who were living with French and half-breed traders as their wives, he forced them to leave their homes and go to the Kansas reser- vation. Thus ended the only serious trouble between the Osages and the early settlers of this section. But it served to call at- tention anew to the miserable lot of the Indians, and to its mate- rial improvement a little later, when our congress passed an act under which money was appropriated to aid them in farm-
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ing, two millers and two blacksmiths were provided for them, and instead of money their annuity was paid in articles of food if they so desired.
A comparatively · small number of Osage families, possibly some forty, scattered along the Osage river, the Marmaton and in timbered sections on other streams, were living on Vernon county territory in 1840. Fort Scott was established as a trad- ing post in 1842, and at a later date, during the Civil War, the Osage agency in the Quapaw country, whither it had been re- moved from its first location on the Neosho river, was transferred to Fort Scott, which was for many years the principal trading point of the Osages, though they traded some at Balltown, at Harmony Mission and a few other places. The Osage tribe for the most part was loyal to the government during the war and an entire regiment entered the Union army and did valiant serv- ice. A comparatively small number served in the Confederate army. Those living in southern Kansas suffered much at the hands of guerrillas, having their homes and schools destroyed, their goods and stores pillaged and their stock driven off.
It was to relieve their impoverished condition that they were persuaded after the war was over to cede to the government an extensive tract of land in southeastern Kansas, which came to be known as the "Osage ceded lands," as distinguished from the "Osage trust lands," in return for which the government was to pay them 5 per cent interest on a sum of $300,000, which was to be deposited in the treasury to the credit of the tribe. The other tract, the "Osage trust lands," the government was to sell for the tribe's benefit. Failure on the part of the govern- ment, after receiving the land, to carry out its part of the con- tract as agreed, led to much trouble and controversy, which was settled in 1880 by the payment to the Osages of $1,028,785.15, to their attorney, $71,901.68, and $55,664.49 to an Indian educa- tional fund.
As a people the Osages had many admirable qualities; domes- tie in their tastes, home-loving, affectionate and loyal to those who befriended them, they were long suffering and patient and held in loving remembrance and even veneration their ancestors and the places where they had hunted and lived. For many years after they left their homes in this county and vicinity it was their custom, periodically, to revisit the scenes of their
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earlier days and the burial places of their dead, where they gave expressión to unfeigned grief in heartfelt mourning and lamenta- tions. A favorite place for scenes of this character was what they called the Crying Mounds, their name for the Blue Mounds, in the northern part of Vernon county, and they were witnessed by many of the earlier settlers of the county.
OLD WHITE HAIR.
Old White Hair, whose name was borne by numerous suc- ceeding chiefs of the tribe, and whose death occurred, as nearly as can be ascertained, about 1824, was always held in great rever- ence. His mortal remains were laid away in a specially prepared stone sepulcher on the top of Blue Mound, where one could wish they might have been allowed to rest in undisturbed repose. And it is a sad comment to record that the grave was in after years desecrated and rifled by heartless vandals in quest of trophies.
After the removal of the tribe to the reservation in Indian Territory their condition was greatly improved, and under the helpful influences of religious teachers, schools and other civiliz- ing agencies of later times, many of them became valuable mem- bers of society and important factors in the development and growth of the communities in which they live.
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CHAPTER XV.
THE FIRST MISSION.
An important agency in the early settlement of Vernon county was the establishment in 1820 and 1821 of missions among the Osages. This was done by an organization made up of Presby- terians and Congregationalists, known as the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, whose headquarters were in Boston, and was in compliance with the request of representa- tives of the tribe who were in Washington on business with the government that missionaries be sent out to teach them. The first, established in 1820, was known as Union Mission and was west of and not far from the Neosho river, some twenty-five miles from its mouth and about the same distance from the principal Osage town. Some of the first workers and promoters of this station afterwards made their homes in Vernon county, notably Mr. Abram Redfield, Colonel Douglass and some others; and also connected with it were Dr. Palmer and the Rev. Mr. Chap- man and Rev. Mr. Vaill.
In the winter of 1841 this mission board organized a band comprising ministers, teachers, a physician, a millwright, a farmer and a blacksmith, mostly married men with families, with the purpose of establishing what came to be widely known as Har- mony Mission, which was situated on the Marais des Cygnes, near the present site of Papinville in what is now Bates county territory.
Besides Rev. Nathaniel B. Dodge, who was made superin- tendent of the company, there were the Revs. Montgomery and Pixley, Rev. Amasa Jones and his wife, Roxana, nee Stearns, Dr. W. N. Belcher, Daniel H. Austin, a millwright, Mr. Samuel B. Jones. a farmer. a Mr. Colby, a blacksmith, also the Misses Comstock and Ettress and others. Everything in readiness, this devoted band, consecrated to purpose of the undertaking, em- barked aboard two rudely constructed boats early in the spring of 1821 and set out from Pittsburg on their toilsome and tedi-
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HISTORY OF VERNON COUNTY
ous voyage into the then little known regions whither they jour- neyed. 'The passage down the Ohio river, floating with the stream, was comparatively easy, and save the sadness caused by the decease of Mrs. Montgomery, who sickened and died, there was little to mar the enjoyment of this stage of the jour- ney. There was a school for the children of the families, a prayer and praise service was held one evening of the week, and on Sundays the boats were anchored and religious services were observed. Reaching the Mississippi, the progress up that stream against the swollen, rushing current and again up the turbulent waters of the Missouri, the boats being propelled by means of poles and long sweeps used after the manner of oars was slow and laborious, and the difficulties and discouragements encoun- tered would have disheartened less devoted and courageous souls. But strengthened by the thought of the high purpose of their mission and buoyed by hope, they faced every trial with cheer- ful determination and with unflinching courage fought against and overcame one obstacle after another, till they finally came to the mouth of the Osage river and realized that their journey, if not their trials, was nearing an end.
ARRIVAL AT COLLEN'S FORD.
The easier passage through inspiring and picturesque scenery, up the clear waters of this stream, was a comforting relief, after weary months of privation and peril, and the remainder of the trip was made without special incident, and on August 9, six months from the time they started, they reached their destina- tion, disembarking at what came to be known as Collen's Ford, a few miles below Papinville, where there was an Indian village. During the autumn, while living in tents awaiting the building of the cabins, constructed of hewn logs with board roofs, which they later occupied, there was much sickness and a few deaths. When the row of hewn log cabins, built by Col. Henry Renick and his son, Burton, were ready for occupancy, rude as they were, floored with puncheons, with openings for windows, but without glass, with beds made by inserting one end of poles in the logs, with supports resting on the floor at the other ends, laying clapboards across these and covering the boards with prairie hay and blankets, and with all the interior finishing and furnishings of the same primitive character, there was general
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THE FIRST MISSION
rejoicing. Ten of these cabins, one a schoolhouse, were soon in readiness, and the work of the mission began. And notwithi- standing the constant indifference on the part of the Indians, due largely to the adverse influence of agents of powerful trad- ing companies who sought to retain their hold on the Indians' traffic, gradual progress was made and good results were soon apparent. Sixteen Osage children were reported in the school at the end of the first school year and the number gradually increased till there were seventy or more. Though many of the children, among whom were a few Delawares, Cherokees and Omahas, were apt pupils, it was with the greatest difficulty and the exercise of the utmost patience that they were trained to habits of cleanliness, industry, truthfulness and other moral vir- tues. Besides the English language and the common branches of learning, the boys were instructed in the simpler mechanical arts and in farming; while the girls were taught housekeeping and domestic science. Nor was their religious training over- looked, and many became converts to the Christian faith. But contrary to the hope and expectation of the missionaries and teachers, the pupils, on leaving the mission and returning to their people, instead of influencing others to better modes of living, themselves soon relapsed into their former habits and conditions. Added to discouragements of this character was the continual opposition of many of the parents, who attributed every misfortune and even deaths of children to the fact that they had attended the school, and it was no uncommon thing for them to abduct their children from the school in order to hire out the boys or sell the girls for wives to traders, who val- ued them for their school accomplishments. In connection with the mission an extensive farm was cultivated on which was planted a large orchard which was the source of numerous other of the early orchards in this section. In the year following the establishing of the mission Daniel H. Austin built a grist mill, run by horsepower, on the side of the river opposite the mission and a mile below it, being unable to build a watermill on account of the difficulty in keeping the dam from washing out. The mission's supplies were brought from Jefferson City in wagons till boats began running to Independence, when that place be- came the source of their provisions as well as their postoffice which at first was at Fort Osage, sixty-five miles away.
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HISTORY OF VERNON COUNTY
CLOSE OF THE MISSION.
After the Indians were transferred to the reservation in Kan- sas, following the treaty of 1825, the work of the mission grad- ually diminished and two years later, in 1827, it was closed and the site, comprising 1,280 acres of land, which was reserved in that treaty, reverted to the government, which paid to the mis- sion board $80,000 for the permanent improvements. The per- sonal property, except that allowed to each of the several fam- ilies in the way of bedding, etc., and provisions for immediate use, was sold and the proceeds turned over to the mission board. Withal, Harmony Mission had a considerable part in the early development of the country. It was some seven years the county seat of. Bates county, after its organization in 1841, and here was the first postoffice in the county, Mr. Freeman Barrows be- ing the first postmaster. The mission buildings fell into decay and were torn down many years ago and today there remain few, if any, traces of the place that was the scene of the self- sacrificing activities of that consecrated band of men and women who came hither when this territory was a barren wilderness. Of those connected with the mission some returned home and others scattered to various points. Amasa Jones went with his family to Henry county, Missouri, and there died April 17, 1870. Rev. Mr. Fuller and Abram Mcknight settled in St. Clair county ; Dr. Belcher returned to New York after six years on account of failing health. Rev. Nathaniel B. Dodge, the superintendent, went to Independence, Mo., two years after the mission closed, and thence in the spring of 1830, under direction of the mission board. moved with his family to the Osage country, on the Neosho river, where he organized a mission and worked among the Big Osages some five years. In 1835 he settled with his family on a tract of land near Balltown, but devoted most of his time to preaching the gospel. His death occurred in September, 1848, in his sixty-ninth year, and his body was interred in the Little Osage graveyard. His widow, whose maiden name was Sally Gale, survived till 1866, and passed away at the age of almost eighty-three years. They had a large family of children. those growing to maturity and living in Vernon county being Dr. Leonard Dodge, Philena and Sally Dodge, Nathaniel B. Jr., Jonathan Edwards. Samuel N., Thomas S. and Harriet N. Dodge.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FIRST SETTLERS.
Thus far our record, except insofar as it relates to missionaries and teachers and those connected with them, has had to do largely with explorers, traders and adventurers-men who were sent or came hither in search of information or from motives of personal gain, and whose stay was at the most but transitory. But the time came when men, lured by favorable reports of the possibilities of the country, came in search of permanent homes. It was during the year 1829, two years after the closing of Har- mony Mission as a mission station, that three brothers, Jesse J., Moses and Allen Summers, who had removed from their native place in Wayne county, Kentucky, in 1820, to Warren county, Missouri, and thence a little later to Arkansas, were attracted by what they had heard of Harmony Station. With that as their objective point, two of these brothers, Jesse J. and Moses, with their families, came hither in the spring of that year. On reach- ing the Osage valley whither their course led them, so impressed were they with the natural advantages offered that they re- solved to go no further and settled just north of the Osage river in what later became Metz township, in Vernon county. Allen Summers, who came in the following autumn, as much pleased with the allurements of the section as his brothers, settled on the south side of the same stream. Nothing of special import attached to the lives of these men differing materially from the experiences of all pioneers in an unsettled country. Hardships and privations they had, but they were hardy men and faced their trials with manly courage. Domestic and simple in their tastes, with limited means and little schooling, they went the round of their daily lives unostentatiously and in comparative contentment, doing well their part as kind neighbors and good citizens in the community where their lots were cast. Jesse J. Summers died in 1842; Allen's death occurred in 1849, and that of his widow, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Wright, in 1856.
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HISTORY OF VERNON COUNTY
All of the brothers and their wives died in Vernon county and their remains were laid to rest in the old Summers burying ground near the scenes of their unpretentious lives.
SOME EARLY SETTLERS.
The settlement of the Rev. Mr. Dodge and his family on the Osage in 1835 has already been referred to. Prior to that time, in 1832, Mr. William Modrel, who married a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge, and who had been connected with Harmony Mis- sion, settled a mile east of the present site of Balltown, south of the Osage. The founder of this place, Cecil D. Ball, came from the East, first in 1833, but did not settle permanently till 1837. Soon after that he bought from Daniel H. Austin, the millwright formerly attached to Harmony Mission, the waterpower mill which Mr. Austin had built there in 1836 and which played no small part in drawing settlers to this section. Other settlements were made about the same time along the Marmaton river and near the mouth of the Big Drywood, formerly called Deadwood. Another well-known name in the early days was that of George Douglas, familiarly known as Colonel Douglas. He was one of the men connected with Union Mission and was a man of influ- ence and position and at different times was in the government employ. It was about 1830 while on government business, rid- ing from Fort Gibson to Fort Leavenworth that he was first at- tracted by the beauty of the scenery and fertility of the land in the vicinity of Deadwood Ford and determined to some day return and make it his home. In fulfillment of this purpose he came back to the old Indian ford in the spring of 1834 and made a permanent settlement, buying out a half-breed and his Indian wife then living there. He built a spacious story and a half double log house, pretentious for those days, with convenient and roomy porches and finished and furnished in a manner commen- surate with his ample means. Colonel Douglas brought hither a considerable number of cattle with which he stocked his planta- tion. He also brought with him a slave and afterwards bought a number of others and added to his force of helpers by hiring white and half-breed laborers. His position made it easy for him to secure contracts for furnishing beef and hay to Fort Scott. the site of which he had helped to select, and he readily filled the contracts from his growing 1.erd, while the broad prairies
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ENIDERS STENS TO
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
supplied abundant hay. Colonel Douglas was a big-souled man and dispensed the hospitalities and good cheer of his home with lavish hand, and there were few, if any, notables or others who came hither in the early days who were not the welcomed guests and recipients of its generous and open-hearted bounty. His wife was a woman of refined tastes and presided with dignity and genuine grace over the household and her influence in her home was reflected in the lives of their children, who were given the advantages of education and culture afforded by the best schools. Colonel Douglas died April 14, 1864, and his widow sur- vived him some thirteen years, living in peace and quiet among her friends and children and passed away in February, 1877. Joseph Douglas, a brother, who came hither with Colonel Doug- las, with whom he lived while a single man, afterward married Elizabeth, a daughter of Jesse J. Summers, and settled some seven or eight miles below the colonel's place on the north side of the Marmaton river.
In 1834 came William Pryor, Sr. Augustine De Ville settled near Bushy Mound, afterward called Le Tiembre Hill, about 1835. John Son located at Belvair in 1837. The next year Rob- ert and William Quay, Henri Le Tiembre, Peter Weyand and Isaac Yocum settled on the Little Osage. Colonel Anselm Halley took possession of the bluffs that bear his name in 1839, and dur- ing the same year William Barnes, Peter Duncan, his stepson. and Daniel Smith were the first to settle on Duncan's Creek in what is now Henry township. Besides these heads of families also might be named Hardin Wright, Joshua Ewell, William and Ira Summers, David Cruise, Ezekiel Rhea, William and Jona- than Pryor, Nelson McDermitt and others who were permanently located in this vicinity prior to 1840.
During the last half of this decade, between 1835 and 1840, numerous others came in, forming settlements in different quar- ters. There was the Deerfield settlement in 1836, comprising Capt. Alexander Woodruff, Abram Redfield and Ebenezer C. Howe, friends of the Douglases and formerly attaches of Union Mission; James Fergus settled on Clear Creek in the northeast part of the county in 1837. The next year found the Wilkeys on Horse Creek in the southwestern quarter, and also McCarty for whom McCarty's branch was named. Here, too, lived Smith Profitt and John K. Gammons on Morre's branch, and also Judge
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