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Big Blue River
The
Kansas town erected at the mouth of the Big Blue
was established after Bourgmont's visit to the tribes at the mouth of
Independence Creek. The exact date can not now be fixed. It was probably
about 1780. Lewis and Clark found their abandoned villages on the Missouri
and their towns were then on the Kansas. One town was twenty leagues up
this river, and the other twice that distance. The entry runs to this
effect: “This river (the Kansas) receives its name from a nation which
dwells at this time on its banks, and has two villages one about twenty
leagues, and the other forty leagues up.” The location of the first
village is not now certainly known, but it must have been near the present
site of Topeka. There was a Kansas town immediately west of the present
North Topeka at different periods after the expedition of Lewis and Clark.
The upper village was at the mouth of the Big Blue. It was in Pottawatomie
County between the Blue and the Kansas rivers, on a neck of land formed by
the parallel courses of the two streams, and about two miles east of
Manhattan. This became the sole residence of the Kansa before 1806, for in
that year Captains Lewis and Clark, Doctor Sibley and Mr. Dunbar, made an
exploration to discover the conditions of the Western Indians. The lower
village had been abandoned and the inference is that the inhabitants had
moved to the town at the mouth of the Blue. The entry on this subject is
“Eighty-leagues up the Kansas River, on the north side.” And the report
says they all lived in this one village. They furnished the traders with
the skins of deer, beaver, black bear, otter (a few), and raccoon (a few).
Also buffalo robes and buffalo tallow. This fur product brought the tribe
about five thousand dollars annually in goods sent up from St. Louis. The
general remarks on the Kansas made at that time by the explorers Lewis,
Clark and others are of interest.
The limits of the country they claim is not known.
The country in which they reside, and from thence to the Missouri, is a
delightful one, and generally well watered and covered with
excellent timber: they hunt on
the upper part of Kanzas and Arkanzas rivers: Their trade may be expected
to increase with proper management. At present they are a dissolute,
lawless banditti; frequently plunder their traders, and commit
depredations on persons ascending and descending the Missouri river:
population rather increasing. These people, as well as the Great and
Little Osages, are stationary, at their villages, from about the 15th of
March to the 15th of May, and again from the 15th of August to the 15th of
October: the balance of the year is appropriated to hunting. They
cultivate corn, &c.
The town at the mouth of the Blue was partly
depopulated about 1827. In that year an Agency for the Kansas Indians was
established on Allotment No. 23, to Kansas half-breeds, on the north bank
of the Kansas River, in what is now Jefferson County. At least, it was
intended to build the Agency on that Allotment. It was in fact so near the
east line of the tract that some of the buildings were on section 33,
township 11, range 19, and on section 4, township 12, range 19, most of
them on section 4, as was determined when the state was surveyed. This
town was south of the station of Williamstown, on the Union Pacific
Railway. There was a blacksmith and a farmer appointed for the Indians of
the Agency, and these lived there. The farmer was Col. Daniel Morgan
Boone, son of the great pioneer. Napoleon Boone, son of Col. D. M. Boone,
was born there August 22, 1828, supposed to have been the first white
child born in what was to become Kansas. The chief, Plume Blanche, White
Plume, or Wampawara, was at the head of the village. Frederick Chouteau
was the Indian trader. He had his trading-house on the south side of the
river, on Horseshoe Lake, now Lakeview. It was at this Agency that Captain
Bonneville crossed the Kansas River on his journey to the Rocky Mountains
(1832). Marston G. Clark was U. S. Sub-Indian Agent there. The Captain
spent the night with Chief White Plume, whom he found living in a
substantial stone home, which had been erected for him by the Government.
It is scarcely probable that all the Kansas Indians were gathered about
this Agency. No doubt there were other villages up the Kansas River at
that time. Some of the annuity payments provided for in the treaty when
the great cession was concluded were made at this agency. The first was
made at a trading-house near the mouth of the Kansas River, in what is now
Wyandotte County. White Plume discovered in some way that his residence
was over the line on the Delaware lands. While there would never have been
any objection to this mistake or oversight of the white men who located
the Agency buildings, White Plume was too proud to live on the land of
another tribe. He abandoned his house and moved up the Kansas River. His
house stood northwest of the Agency, and north of where the railroad
station of Williamstown was located. Long before he moved his house had
become uninhabitable, most of the woodwork having been torn out and used
for fuel. It was alive with vermin.4
When White Plume moved from the Agency the other
Indians followed him. It was found unprofitable to maintain the Agency,
and it was abandoned after 1832. The remainder of the population of the
town at the mouth of the Blue had moved down the Kansas River by the year
1830. They had established three villages under the government of as many
chiefs. Hard Chief had fixed his village, in 1830, about a mile above the
mouth of what is now known as Mission Creek, on the south side of the
river, from which his people carried their water. He had more than five
hundred followers in his town. The American Chief's village was on
American Chief Creek (now called Mission Creek). It was some two miles
from the Kansas River, and on the creek bottom. The town consisted of
twenty lodges and about one hundred Indians. This village was also
established in 1830.5 They were built because
Frederick Chouteau had told American Chief and Hard Chief that he would
build a trading-house on the creek which he named American Chief Creek,
for the chief who established his village on its banks. He did move there
in 1830, and he and these two villages remained there until the removal of
the tribe to the reservation at Council Grove. The other village
established by the inhabitants of the town at the month of the Blue was
that of Fool Chief. It was the largest, containing more than seven hundred
people. It was on the north side of the river about a mile west of Papan's
Ferry. The location of this town must be determined by that of the ferry
at that time, something difficult to do. The town is said to have been
immediately north of the present town of Menoken. That would have put it
inside the bounds of the lands belonging to the tribe. White Plume must
have settled near the town of the Fool Chief when he moved up from the
Agency. But there was another Kansas Village. Little is known of it, and
its location is not clear. The only information concerning it is given by
Fremont, in 1842, as follows:
The morning of the 18th, [of June]
was very pleasant. A fine rain was falling, with cold wind from the north,
and mists made the river hills look dark and gloomy, We left our camp at
seven, journeying along the foot of the hills which border the Kansas
valley, generally about three miles wide, and extremely rich. We halted
for dinner, after a march of about thirteen miles, on the banks of one of
the many little tributaries to the Kansas, which look like trenches in the
prairies, and are usually well timbered. After crossing this stream, I
rode off some miles to the left, attracted by the appearance of a cluster
of huts near the mouth of the Vermillion. It was a large but deserted
Kansas village, scattered in an open wood, along the margin of the stream,
on a spot chosen with the customary Indian fondness for beauty of scenery.
The Pawnees had attacked it in the early spring. Some of the houses were
burnt, and others blackened with smoke, and weeds were already getting
possession of the cleared places. Riding up the Vermillion river, I
reached the ford in time to meet the carts, and, crossing, encamped on its
western side.
On Fremont's map this village is found to be on the
Little Vermilion, a creek he delineates. But there is no such stream—and
there never was. In what is now Pottawatomie County there is a Vermilion
Creek. The Oregon Trail crossed it on what the official survey made
section 24, township 9, range 10, two and one-half miles east of the
present town of Louisville. There is where Fremont camped. From that point
the Oregon Trail bore away from the Kansas River starting over the uplands
for the Blue River. The Indian town was on the Vermilion below the
crossing. Long's detachment to visit the village at the mouth of the Blue
crossed the Vermilion. This crossing was on the Indian trail which led up
the Kansas River. This village was probably where the Indian trail crossed
the Vermilion. Its inhabitants no doubt fled to the lower towns when
driven out by the Pawnees.
There is a question as to when the missionaries turned
attention to the Kansas Indians. At the Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church held at St. Louis, Mo., in 1830,
Rev. Thomas Johnson was appointed a missionary to the Shawnees, and
his brother, Rev. William Johnson, was appointed missionary to the Kansas
Indians, Rev. William Johnson seems to have gone at once to the tribe to
which he was appointed. According to one statement of Frederick Chouteau
the Kansas Agency in what is now Jefferson County was maintained until
1830; and by another statement he fixed the date at 1832. If the Agency
was kept up until 1832, Mr. Johnson spent the first two years of his
missionary life there. If Mr. Chouteau moved his trading-house to Mission
Creek, in Shawnee County, in 1830, then it was there that Mr. Johnson
began his missionary labors. The probability is that it was at the more
western location that he established the first Kansas Indian Mission, in
1830. In 1832 he was sent as missionary to the Delaware, where he
remained about two years. He received then his second appointment to the
Kansas Indian Mission, in 1834. He arrived on Mission Creek at the Kansas
towns early in the summer, and began work on the mission buildings. These
were erected on the northwest corner of section 33, township 11, range 14
east. The principal building was a hewed-log house thirty-six feet long
and eighteen feet wide. It was a two-story structure, having four
rooms—two below and two above. There was a huge stone chimney at each end.
The kitchen was of logs, and apart from the house. There was a smoke-house
and other building.
William Johnson labored at this mission until April,
1842, when he died. He accomplished little, and his hard work bore little
fruit in the savage minds and hearts of the Kansas Indians. They could not
be prevailed on to labor for their own support. They would not plant and
cultivate corn and other grains, nor raise cattle. They went into the
settlements by the hundred to beg. Rev. Thomas Johnson, brother to the
missionary William, on his way to the Kansas Mission in May, 1837, met
four hundred to five hundred of these Indians on their way to the Missouri
settlements to beg.
Footnote
4 The following notes, from Vol. IX, pp. 194-196, Kansas Historical
Collections, are of interest here. “Regarding the situation of the
first Kaw agency, Daniel Boone, a son of Daniel Morgan Boone, government
farmer of the Kaws, says in a letter to Mr. W. W. Cone, dated Westport,
Mo., August 11, 1879: ‘Fred Chouteau's brother established his
trading-post across the river from my father's residence the same fall we
moved to the agency, in the year 1827. The land reserved for the
half-breeds belonged to the Kaws. The agency was nearly on the line inside
of the Delaware land, and we lived half-mile east of this line, on the
river.’ “Survey 23, the property of Joseph James, was the most easterly of
the Kaw half-breed lands. The first Delaware land on the Kansas river east
of this survey is section 4, township 12, range 19 east; hence the site of
the old agency. August 16, 1879, Mr. Cone and Judge Adams, piloted by
Thos. R. Bayne, owner of survey No. 23, visited the site of the agency. In
the Topeka Weekly Capital of August 27, Mr. Cone says: ‘We noticed
on the east of the dividing line, over on the Delaware land, the remains
of about a dozen chimneys, although Mr. Bayne says there were at least
twenty when he came there, in 1854.’ “John C. McCoy, in a letter to Mr.
Cone, dated August, 1879, says: ‘I first entered the territory August 15,
1830. . . . At the point described in your sketch, on the north bank of
the Kansas river, seven or eight miles above Lawrence, was situated the
Kansas agency. I recollect the following persons and families living there
at that date, viz.: Marston G. Clark, United States sub-Indian agent, no
family; Daniel M. Boone, Indian farmer, and family; Clement Lessert,
interpreter, family, half-breeds; Gabriel Phillibert, government
blacksmith, and family (whites); Joe Jim, Gonvil, and perhaps other
half-breed families. . . . In your sketch published in the Capital
you speak of the stone house or chimney, about two miles northwest of the
Kansas agency. That was a stone building built by the government for White
Plume, head chief of the Kanzans, in 1827 or 1828. There was also a large
field fenced and broken in the prairie adjoining toward the east or
southeast. We passed up by it in 1830, and found the gallant old chieftain
sitting in state, rigged out in a profusion of feathers, paint, wampum,
brass armlets, etc., at the door of a lodge he had erected a hundred yards
or so to the northwest of his stone mansion, and in honor of our expected
arrival the stars and stripes were gracefully floating in the breeze on a
tall pole over him. He was large, fine-looking, and inclined to corpulency,
and received my father with the grace and dignity of a real live
potentate, and graciously signified his willingness to accept of any
amount of bacon and other presents we might be disposed to tender him. In
answer to an inquiry as to the reasons that induced him to abandon his
princely mansion, his laconic explanation was simply “too much fleas.” A
hasty examination I made of the house justified the wisdom of his removal.
It was not only alive with fleas, but the floors, doors and windows had
disappeared and even the casings had been pretty well used up for
kindling-wood.’ “Mr. Cone gives the following description of White Plume's
stone house in his Capital article of August 27, 1879: ‘Mr. Bayne
showed us a pile of stone as all that was left of that well-known landmark
for old settlers, the “stone chimney.” It was located fifty yards north of
the present depot at Williamstown, or Rural, as it is now called. Mr.
Bayne, in a letter dated August 12, says: The old stone chimney, or stone
house to which you refer, stood on the southwest quarter of section 29,
range 19, when I came here, in 1854. It was standing intact, except the
roof and floors, which had been burnt. It was about 18×34, and two stories
high. There was a well near it walled up with cut stone, and a very
excellent job.’” John T. Irving's account of his visit to this village
throws light on the character of the Indians, especially White Plume. “We
emerged from the wood, and I found myself again near the bank of the
Kansas river. Before me was a large house, with a court-yard in front. I
sprang with joy through the unhung gate, and ran to the door. It was open;
I shouted: my voice echoed through the rooms; but there was no answer. I
walked in; the doors of the inner chambers were swinging from their hinges
and long grass was growing through the crevices of the floor. While I
stood gazing around an owl flitted by, and dashed out of an unglazed
window; again I shouted; but there was no answer; the place was desolate
and deserted. I afterwards learned that this house had been built for the
residence of the chief of the Kanza tribe, but that the ground upon which
it was situated having been discovered to be within a tract granted to
some other tribe, the chief had deserted it, and it had been allowed to
fall to ruin. My guide waited patiently until I finished my examination,
and then again we pressed forward. . . . We kept on until near daylight,
when we emerged from a thick forest and came suddenly upon a small hamlet.
The barking of several dogs, which came flying out to meet us, convinced
me that this time I was not mistaken. A light was shining through the
crevices of a log cabin; I knocked at the door with a violence that might
have awakened one of the seven sleepers. ‘Who dare—and vot de devil you
vant?’ screamed a little cracked voice from within. It sounded like music
to me. I stated my troubles. The door was opened; a head garnished with a
red nightcap was thrust out, after a little parley, I was admitted into
the bedroom of a man, his Indian squaw and a host of children. As however,
it was the only room in the house, it was also the kitchen. I had gone so
long without food that, notwithstanding what I had eaten, the gnawings of
hunger were excessive, and I had no sooner mentioned my wants, than a fire
was kindled, and in ten minutes a meal (don't exactly know whether to call
it breakfast, dinner or supper) of hot cakes, venison, honey and coffee
was placed before me and disappeared with the rapidity of lightning. The
squaw, having seen me fairly started, returned to her couch. From the
owner of the cabin I learned that I was now at the Kanza agency, and that
he was the blacksmith of the place. About sunrise I was awakened from a
sound sleep, upon a bearskin, by a violent knocking at the door. It was my
Indian guide. He threw out broad hints respecting the service he had
rendered me and the presents he deserved. That I could not deny: but I had
nothing to give. I soon found out, however, that his wants were moderate,
and that a small present of powder would satisfy him; so I filled his
horn, and he left the cabin apparently well pleased. In a short time I
left the house, and met the Kanza agent, General Clark, a tall, thin,
soldier-like man, arrayed in an Indian hunting-shirt and an old fox-skin
cap. He received me cordially, and I remained with him all day, during
which time he talked upon metaphysics, discussed politics, and fed me upon
sweet potatoes.”
5 This is stated from what Frederick Chouteau told Judge F.
C. Adams. See Vol. I, Kansas Historical Collections, page 287. In a
letter of Mr. Chouteau to W. W. Cone, May 5, 1880, he fixes the date as
1832. See Kansas Historical Collections, Vol. IX, page 196, note
54. These statements are incorrect. Captain Bonneville found the Agency
there in May, 1832.
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