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Treaty of June 3rd 1895
In 1844 the widow of William Johnson was married to
Rev. J. T. Peery, who was in that year sent to continue the work of
Christianizing the Kansas Indians. Nothing of account was accomplished,
and the school was discontinued. In 1846 the Kansas Indians were given a
reservation at Council Grove. They soon removed to their new home. In 1850
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, put up, at Council Grove, what was
the best mission building ever erected in Kansas. It was built by Rev. T.
S. Huffaker, who was long connected with the Kansas tribe. It still
stands, the finest specimen of the buildings of its time, quaint, massive,
silent, a splendid monument to the fine spirit of the Church which labored
long, zealously, but in vain to make Christians of intractable savages.
In 1851, Mr. Huffaker opened his school. As few or no
Indian children would attend, he admitted the children of white settlers,
employees of the commerce which rolled over the Santa Fe Trail. It was one
of the first schools in Kansas to receive white children. In after years
Mr. Huffaker was constrained to admit that all attempts to educate the
Kansas Indian children had failed. And these Indians never gave any
serious attention the Christian religion.
The Kansas Indians ceded to the United States an
immense territory. They did not own so vast a tract. They never had
possessed it. Much of it they had never even hunted over. It is very
doubtful whether they even claimed some of the land they sold. The
Government wished to extinguish the Indian title. Having purchased it from
the Kansas Indians, no other tribe could set up a claim.
At St. Louis, on the 3d of June, 1825,
the Kansas Indians ceded, by treaty of that date, the
tract or territory described as follows:
Beginning at the entrance of the Kansas river into the
Missouri; thence North to the North-West
corner of the State of Missouri; from thence Westwardly to the Nodewa
river, thirty miles from its entrance into the Missouri; from thence to
the entrance of the big Nemahaw into the Missouri, and with that river to
its source; from thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old
village Panai Republic to the West; from thence, on the ridge dividing the
waters of the Kansas river from those of the Arkansas, to the Western
boundary of the State line of Missouri; and with that line, thirty miles,
to the place of beginning.
To understand this cession it
must be made plain that at that time the western line of
Missouri was a north-and-south line through the mouth of the
Kansas River. West of that line, north of the mouth of the
Kansas, and east of the Missouri River, lay what are now
Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, and Platte
counties, Missouri. These comprise the best body of land in
Missouri. It was attached to that state in 1836.
As construed and mapped the treaty conveyed a tract of
the best land in Nebraska, reaching from the Missouri to Red Cloud, and
extending north at one point something more than forty miles, and
including the present towns of Pawnee, Tecumseh, Beatrice, Fairbury,
Geneva, Hebron, Nelson and many others.
This princely domain was cut off at the head of the
Solomon, from where it reached down to within twelve miles of the
Arkansas, northwest of Garden City. Thence it followed the divide to the
Missouri line. It was nearly half the State of Kansas.
Out of this cession, however, there was set aside a
reservation for the Kansas Indians, the grantors. This reservation was
described as follows:
A tract of land to begin twenty leagues up the Kansas
river, and to include their village on that river; extending West thirty
miles in width, through the land ceded in the first Article.
There were twenty-three
allotments to half-breeds, as has been noticed. The east line of this
reservation was through the center of range 14, east, of the public survey
made later, and nine miles west of the center of Topeka. It extended west
three hundred miles and contained nine thousand square miles of the heart
of Kansas. It was held by the Kansas Indians until 1846. On the 14th of
January of that year they ceded two million acres off the east end of
their tract, embracing the full thirty miles in width, and running west
for quantity. It was provided that if the residue of their land should not
afford sufficient timber for the use of the tribe, the Government should
have all the reservation. This lack of timber was found to exist;
thereupon the Government took over the entire Kansas reservation, and laid
off another tract for the Indians. This tract was at Council Grove, and
was about twenty miles square. It was supposed to lie immediately south of
the lands of the Shawnees, but when surveyed it was found to encroach on
the Shawnee reservation some six miles. To avoid complications, the
Shawnees ceded this overlapped part in 1854. In 1859 the Kansas Indians
made a treaty retaining a portion of their reservation—nine miles by
fourteen miles—intact. The remainder was to be sold by the Government, and
the money used for the benefit of the tribe. These lands were sold by acts
of Congress, of May 8, 1872, June 23, 1874, July 5, 1876, and March 16,
1880. The tribe had in the meantime moved to a reservation in Oklahoma.
The tract nine by fourteen miles was disposed of under the above named
acts of Congress, and the money applied to the use of the tribe. And thus
were the Kansas Indians divested of the last of their hereditary soil.
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