Kansas Before 1854, A Revised Annals, 10
Compiled by Louise Barry
Summer 1963 (Vol. 29, No. 2), pages 143 to 189
PART TEN, 1838-1839
Robert Polke (recently of Indiana) opened a trading house for the Pottawatomies (on Pottawatomie creek, about where present Lane, Franklin county is today) in the latter part of 1837, but no reference earlier than the January 3, 1838, diary entry of the Ottawas* missionary Jotham Meeker has been located. He wrote: "Visit Quaquatau [Qui-qui-to, Pottawatomie chief], do some business at Mr. Polks ["Robert Polke & Co."] and ride [12 miles] home. . . ."
(Subagent A. L. Davis had met Polke a brother-in-law of Isaac McCoy in the spring of 1837 and promised him a trading license when the Pottawatomies removed to the Marais des Cygnes country.)
In a July, 1838, journal entry, McCoy recorded that on July 21 he took his wife "to Mr. Polke's among the Putawatomies," after a journey from Westport, Mo., and overnight stop at Davis* "Agency among the Weas. . . ." ( Reminiscing, in 1879, John C. McCoy stated that "Robert Polk and Moses H. Scott, traders among the Pottawatomies ... [in the 1830s] broke and put in cultivation a large field in the valley of Pottawatomie creek, near Osawatomie, which they cultivated for several years . . . [with indifferent success].") It appears that W. W. Cleghome was also trading at Pottawatomie creek, as early as 1839.
Robert Polke was still living on Pottawatomie creek at the time of his death in 1843. Apparently he, his wife Elizabeth (Widener) Polke (and some? of their children) had been "Kansas" residents during the intervening years. His oldest son Thomas W. Polke (about 23 in 1838) probably was associated with the trading house from the beginning; and his second son, John W. Polke (about 18 in 1838) later(?) became a trader. Ref: Jotham Meeker's "Diary," in Kansas State Historical Society (KHi) ms. div., January 3, 1838, and occasional subsequent entries, also May 26, 1843 (for Polke's death); Isaac McCoy's "Journal," in KHi ms. div., as noted above; Indiana Historical Collections, Indianapolis, v. 26, pp. 362, 398; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Doc. No. 173 (Serial 366), p. 93 (for an August 25, 1839, item on "Robert Polke & Co.," and mention of "W. Cleghome"); 27th Cong., 2d Sess., H. Doc. No. 164 (Serial 403), p. 97; Vital Historical Records of Jackson County, Missouri, compiled by the Kansas City chapter, D. A. R. (c!934), p. 415 (Polke burials in McCoy cemetery); Indiana Magazine of History t Bloomington, v. 10 (March, 1914), pp. 86 and 107 (for biographical data on Robert Polke and family). Kansas City (Mo.) Journal, February 6, 1879 (or, "Kansas Reminiscences," clipping volume in KHi library) for John C. McCoy's statement. The Polkes are not in the 1840 U.S. census of Jackson county, Mo., but Elizabeth Polke (Robert's widow), and five sons, are listed in the 1850 census under Jackson county, Mo. (These sons were: Thomas W., John W., Oliver H. Perry, Charles, and Robert T.; Robert Polke's only daughter, Mary A., married Pierre Menard Chouteau, son of Francis G. Chouteau, in 1849.) A
(143)
144 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
"Moses G. Scott" is listed in the 1850 U. S. census of Jackson county, Mo. "Mr. deghorn," of Pottawatomie creek, is mentioned in Meeker's "Diary," under date of December 26, 1840.
BORN: on January 15, at Shawnee Methodist Mission (present Wyandotte county), Mary Cummins Johnson, daughter of the Rev. Thomas and Sarah T. (Davis) Johnson. Ref: Kansas Historical Collections (KHC), v. 12, p. xii; or, 15th Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, p. 35. (This infant died two months later on March 19.)
January. The Rev. Christian Hoecken (of Kickapoo Catholic Mission), after a difficult eight-day, 80-mile winter journey, arrived at Pottawatomie creek (near the present Miami-Franklin county line) on his first visit to the Pottawatomie Indians. He remained for "about a fortnight" as guest of the chief "Nesfwawke" (Nas-waw-kee) and his band of Catholic Indians (formerly of Indiana).
On January 30 Father Hoecken performed marriage ceremonies for two Pottawatomie couples. Both "brides" were daughters of "Nesfwawke." These marriages (of Wawiakachi to Josette, and Chachapaki to Wawasemokwe) are the earliest of record among the Pottawatomies of the Marais des Cygnes country. They were, it appears, ceremonies revalidating irregular marriages. Ref: Christian Hoecken's "Diary," as published in T. H. Kinsella's . . . The History of Our Cradle Land . . . (Kansas City, 1921), pp. 225, 226; G. J. Garraghan's The Jesuits of the Middle United States . . . (New York, 1938), v. 1, pp. 190, 191, and 195. In Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838, p. 59, the chief's name is given as "Naswaugee." The April 22, 1836, Pottawatomie treaty "signature" is "Nas-waw-kee."
January-February. Smallpox was prevalent among the Pawnees. (See p. 66.) It had been transmitted first to the Pawnee Loups by captives (some 20 women and children, most of whom succumbed to the disease) and plunder taken in a winter battle with the Sioux. "Multitudes" of Pawnee children died as smallpox spread to the other villages. According to Missionary John Dunbar, the mortality among the adults was not so great. The victims were chiefly those persons born since the 1831 epidemic.
The Pawnee Loups, in order to "retrieve their good fortune," resorted to a custom for which this Pawnee band was notorious, killing one of the remaining Sioux prisoners (a 14-year-old girl) in a human sacrifice rite. "The chiefs of the other bands refused to witness the bloody spectacle though specially invited to be present." This incident occurred on February 22. Ref: KHC, v. 14, pp. 630-832, 640; Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838, pp. 22-24; Henry R. Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs . . . (Philadelphia, 1851), p. 614;
John B. Dunbar's The Pawnee Indians, A Sketch (reprint from Magazine of American History).
BORN: on February 10, at Kickapoo Methodist Mission (present Leavenworth county), Emily Greene Berryman, daughter of the Rev. Jerome C. and Sarah C. (Cessna) Berryman. Ref: 15th Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, p. 35.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 145
February 15. The "fast running St. Peters" (the steamboat which in 1836 and 1837 had carried American Fur Company employees and supplies to the upper river trading posts, and brought back fur returns) was advertised to leave for Fort Leavenworth "as soon as the navigation will permit/' and to "run as a regular packet in the Missouri trade" during the ensuing season.
On October 11 the Missouri Republican, St. Louis, reported the return (on October 9 or 10) of the St. Peters perhaps completing her last run of 1838 on the Missouri. This boat was also in service during 1839. Ref: Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, Lincoln, v. 20, pp. 70, 86.
March. In an altercation between some Missourians and a party of Osages (over Indian depredations on livestock), Nathaniel B. Dodge, Jr., was killed, another white man was wounded; and the Osages had two men killed and one wounded. This border incident perhaps occurred in Linn or Bourbon county of today. Ref: Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts" (in KHi ms. div.), v. 26 (1839), in a McCoy "document" labeled "Remarks to aid Genl Tipton in speaking on Ind Affs. . . ."; History of Vernon County, Missouri . . . (St. Louis, 1887), p. 157.
Late in March Parks & Findlay (Joseph Parks, prominent member of the Shawnee nation; and James Findlay, of Jackson county, Mo.) erected a trading house near the Ottawa Indian settlements (present Franklin county) and within a few miles of Ottawa Baptist Mission. Missionary Jotham Meeker assisted in the "raising" of this "store house" on March 29.
(On September 8 Meeker noted in his diary: "Visit Mr. Findlay who arrived with his goods on yesterday at his Post." On December 25 he "Attended the Ottawa [annuity] payment at Findlay's store. . . . The Agent
[Anthony L. Davis] and Paymaster [Dr. John C. Reynolds] . . . [left] at sunset.") Ref: Jotham Meeker's "Diary," entries of February 23, March 29, September 8, 21,
December 25, 1838, January 19, 1839 (and subsequent entries). In the 1850 U.S. census of Jackson county, Mo., James Findlay is listed as aged 34. He was about 22, apparently, in 1838. See, also, June 16, 1838, annals entry.
In late March(?) taking advantage of an early break-up of ice in the Missouri the American Fur Company's new steamboat Antelope passed along the "Kansas" shore, en route to the upper river trading posts. Trader Charles Larpenteur and Robert Christy (coming down from Fort Union in a canoe, with two oarsmen) met the steamboat at the Flattens mouth some time in April, apparently.
The Antelope returned in mid- July. On arrival (July 16) at St. Louis, it was reported that most of the 1,000 packs she brought were buffalo robes; and that the more valuable furs were coming down in Mackinaw boats. Ref: Charles Larpenteur's Forty fears a Fur Trader . . . (New York, 1898), v. 1, p. 136; Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, v. 20, p. 78.
146 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
April 3. Joseph V. Hamilton, sutler (since 1835) at Fort Leavenworth, was also appointed postmaster, succeeding Alexander G. Morgan (who had been Hamilton's predecessor as sutler). (See, also, June 27, 1839, entry.) Ref : KHC, v. 1-2, p. 255.
DIED: Francis Gesseau Chouteau, on April 18, at his farm on the Missouri's right bank, two to three miles below the Kaw's mouth, within present Kansas City, Mo. (See KHQ, v. 28, p. 25, for his settlement there.) He was 41 years old, and died suddenly. Notably, his death occurred at a time when the American Fur Company's caravan was organizing in the Westport and Chouteau's landing area. See next entry.
Francis G. Chouteau (son of Pierre Chouteau, Sr.) had entered the fur trade about 1816 (see KHQ, v. 27, p. 378). At the time of his death, "Chouteau's Landing" (on the river front of his property) was at the height of its prominence as a shipping point on the Missouri. This lower landing (where his warehouses served as a base for American Fur Company or, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company operations) was the steamboat port generally used for traffic and commerce bound to Westport, Mo., or the Indian Country beyond. The upper, or "Westport Landing," some two miles above, near the Kaws mouth was, as yet, the lesser-used shipping point.
The following quotations (from a sequence of letters Sup't Joshua Pilcher wrote Subagent A. L. Davis in the latter part of 1839) show that Cyprian Chouteau (younger brother of Francis G., whose own trading place was on the Kansas river, a few miles above its mouth, in present Wyandotte county) took over the operations at Chouteau's Landing. Pilcher, on September 9, wrote: [about goods for the Pottawatomies] "which I wished you to be prepared to receive by the 13th at Chouteaus landing . . ."; and on September 25: "I will ship the property . . . and have it consigned to Mr. Ciprien Chouteau's landing . . ."; and on November 4: "the property . . . was shipped on board the Pizarro, and Mr. Chouteau, being absent, it was taken to the upper [Westport] landing, and placed in charge of Mr. [Thomas A.] Smart. . . ." Ref: The following information was supplied to this compiler by James Anderson, historian of The Native Sons of Kansas City, Mo., and his help is acknowledged with gratitude. There is extant a Bible inscribed "To Delia from her Grandma" [i. e. t to Odille Chouteau from Mme. Berenice Chouteau (widow of Francis G. Chouteau)] which was (and probably is) at the Boatman's Bank, St. Louis. On a page in this Bible are Chouteau family vital records, apparently recorded there by Mme. Berenice Chouteau; and therein the death date for Francis G. Chouteau is entered as April 18, 1838. Also, the Missouri Saturday News, St. Louis, of April 28, 1838 (in Mercantile Library, St. Louis, Mo.), reported the sudden death (on an April day unspecified) of "Mr. Francis Chouteau" at the "mouth of the Kansas river," and stated that his remains had been brought to St. Louis "on Tuesday last [. e., April 24] and interred in the Catholic burying grounds." This tends to corroborate the April 18 death date. Sup't Joshua Pilcher's letters, noted above, are to be found in Superin tendency of Indian Affairs (SIA), St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, pp. 44, 46, and 55.
April 22-28. Andrew Drips headed the American Fur Company's caravan which left Westport, Mo., on Sunday, the 22d, for
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 147
the Rocky mountains. Moses ("Black") Harris was his lieutenant; additionally there were perhaps 45 company employees; and an outfit of 17 carts and some 200 horses and mules.
With the caravan were Capt. William Drummond Stewart (making his fourth trip West) and party of five(?) which included William Clark's son William Preston Clark and step-son John Radford (Stewart and Clark each had a wagon); also, Swiss-born John Augustus Sutter (who would become prominent in California's development after his settlement there in 1839), and a friend named "Welter," or "Wetler?"
By April 27 (having followed a section of the Santa Fe trail and the general pathway up the south side of the Kansas river across present Johnson, Douglas, and Shawnee counties soon to be known as the "Oregon trail") the American Fur Company caravan reached a point of timber on the Kansas river, above(?) present Topeka, and encamped. At that place (apparently for the first time) the crossing would be made, after the arrival of a company flatboat then on its way upriver with supplies. (For crossing apparently used on the 1837 journey, see p. 64.)
On April 28 a party of missionaries, Oregon-bound, reached the camp of Drips and party, to travel in company as far as the Rocky mountain rendezvous. (See, also, following entries.) Ref: Oregon Pioneer Association Transactions, Portland, 1889, pp. 54-88 (for Mrs. Myra F. Eell's "Journal"); C. M. Drury, editor, First White Women Over the Rockies . . . (Glendale, Calif., 1963), v. 2 (contains diaries of Mrs. Mary Walker and Mrs. Myra F. Eells); Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Seattle, v. 29 (1938), pp. 277-282 (for
W. H. Gray's "Journal"); C. M. Drury, editor, The Diaries and Letters of Henry H. Spalding and Asa Bowen Smith Relating to the Nez Perce Mission 1838-1842 (Glendale, Calif., 1958), pp. 43-79; Ruth Karr McKee's Mary Richardson Walker, Her Book (Cald- well, Ida., 1945), pp. 140-157; C. M. Drury's Elkanah and Mary Walker . . . (Caldwell, Ida., 1940), pp. 67-95; Cornelius Rogers' letter of July 3, 1838 (microfilm, KHi); J. Ceca Alter's Jim Bridger (Norman, Okla., c1962), p. 182 (for names of William Clark's son and stepson); J. P. Zollinger's Sutter, The Man and His Empire (New York, 1939), pp. 36-38, 41, 345; E. G. Gudde's Slitter's Own Story . . . (New York, 1936), pp. 11, 12; Myron Eell's Father Eetts . . . (Boston, c1894); 'Tersonal Reminiscences of General John Augustus Sutter" (in Bancroft Library), typed copy, courtesy of Dale L. Morgan; Kansas City (Mo.) Journal, January 23 and 30, 1879, or, "Kansas Reminiscences," clipping volume, in KHi library, for John C. McCoy's statements on Sutter.
April 23-28. Nine missionaries (four couples, and a single man) left Westport, Mo., on Monday, the 23d, to begin an overland journey to the Oregon country (where they would serve as reenforcements for the Indian mission sponsored by the American Board of Comm'rs for Foreign Missions). They were: William H. Gray (who had gone to "Oregon" in 1836, and returned in 1837), his bride Mary A. (Dix) Gray, the Rev. Gushing Eells, his bride Myra (Fairbank) Eells, the Rev. Asa B. Smith, his bride Sarah G. (White) Smith, the Rev. Elkanah B. Walker, his bride Mary (Richardson) Walker, and Cornelius Rogers (bachelor). Their companion, and guide, on the first stage of the journey was Dr. J. Andrew Chute, of Westport. The four women in this party were the first white females to cross "Kansas" by the Oregon trail
148 KANSAS HISTORICAL, QUARTERLY
pathway. (Compare with the route which Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding traveled in May, 1836 see pp. 47, 48.)
(The Eells, Smiths, Walkers, and Rogers had debarked at Independence Landing, Mo., on April 15, from the steamboat Howard; the Grays had reached Independence a few days earlier. At this town they outfitted; then moved 12 miles to Westport, where the American Fur Company caravan was organizing. There they hired mountain man John Stevens, as their packer. At Westport, Mary Walker and Mary Gray were guests at Isaac McCoy's home; the others stayed in quarters Doctor Chute found for them.)
At the start the missionaries had 25 horses and mules, 12 homed cattle (including two fresh milk cows), and a light one-horse wagon. The available journals (of Gray, Smith, Myra Eells, and the Walkers) provide detailed information of their journey across present Johnson, Douglas, and Shawnee counties; and make it clear that they traveled nearly 100 miles to reach the Kansas river crossing (just above present Topeka) where the American Fur Company caravan was encamped. (By a direct route this would have been little more than 70 miles.)
From Westport, on the 23d, their course was south of west towards the Santa Fe road (which they would follow for a time). According to the journal of William H. Gray (whose log is used here because he was die experienced traveler in the party) their first day's journey was eight miles to "Sapling Grove," where a little stream ran northwest into the Big Blue of Missouri.
On April 24, after 25 miles of prairie travel, their night's camp was on "a little stream called Brush Creek" [headwaters of Bull creek]. (Myra Eells wrote that it was "one of the head branches of the Osage river.")
After eight miles of travel on the 25th, they "proceeded onto a beautiful stream called the WaKorusah from a root found in abundance on its banks made use of for food by the Natives," according to Gray. [There are several versions of the meaning of "Wakarusa."] Late in the day they crossed this stream. (Smith recorded: "Had one small river to cross just before we encamped wh. we forded without any difficulty.") They had traveled 20 miles.
On the 26th they "proceeded over high rolling prairie ... on the top of the divide between the waters of the Wakerusah and the Kansas . . ." (Gray's journal), and camped on the open prairie, after a 20-mile journey.
They traveled 17 miles on the 27th, and (according to Gray) camped on the west bank of a "stream running into the Kansas" [the Shunganunga, or a branch] at a spot "about 9 miles East of the Kansas Village." [Hard Chiefs? prominently located village in Dover township, Shawnee co. see KHQ, v. 28, p. 59.] During the night three of their best horses disappeared presumably stolen by Kansa Indians.
On April 28 they "proceeded about 7 miles do [due] North" to the Kansas river where they "found the Fur Co. encamped on its South bank in a point of timber . . ." (Gray's journal).
Gray's "distances" total 97 miles. (By the estimates of two others in his party, the journey to the Kansas crossing, from Westport, was slightly over 100 miles.) If Gray's statements can be taken literally (as to traveling due north to the river after camping "about 9 miles" east of the Kansa village), the caravan crossed the Kansas just above present Topeka. But, see annals entry for the American Fur Company party of (May) 1839. Ref: Same as for preceding entry. See, also, preceding entry, and entries of April 28 and April 29.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 149
April 28(?) The American Fur Company's supply-carrying flatboat, cordelled up the Kansas river to the overland caravan's camp (above present Topeka), made rendezvous late on the 28th (or early on the 29th?). (See preceding entry.)
In 1906 nearly 70 years after the event Joseph S. Chick (aged nine in April, 1838) wrote: "In 1838 I was visiting my sister, Mrs. William Johnson . . . [at the Kansa Methodist Mission a few miles above the caravan's camp] when the Chouteaus [about April 30?] brought a 'Periogue' to the mouth of Mission Creek [where Frederick Chouteau had his trading post see KHQ, v. 28, p. 193]. Every body living near there, whites and Indians, went to see it." In an interview (1908) Chick stated: "Chouteau's pirogue was
cordelled up the Kaw river. It had a plank deck. The goods were all down in the hold. There was no awning over the boat." Chick (in 1906) also wrote: "I have no recollection of any keel boats on the Kansas river. The Chouteaus did use pirogues on both the Missouri and Kansas."
However, Frederick Chouteau stated (see KHC, v. 8, p. 428) that keelboats were used for the Chouteaus' trading activities on the Kansas. He described them as "ribmade boats, shaped like the hull of a steamboat, and decked over. They were about eight or ten feet across the deck and five or six feet deep below deck. . . ." Chick and Chouteau seem to describe the same type of craft, but Chick called them pirogues, and Chouteau called them keelboats. Ref: See April 22-28, and April 23-28 entries; and Joseph S. Chick's letter of May 3, 1906, and interview of October 19, 1908 (in KHi ms. division).
On Sunday, April 29, the rendezvous-bound American Fur Company caravan and the Oregon-bound missionary party crossed the Kansas river not far above present Topeka. The baggage was ferried on the Company's flatboat, and the animals swam. After camping for the night on the north bank, the cavalcade (stretching for nearly half a mile) set out, on the 30th, up the Kansas valley. According to Myra Eells, there were about 60 men, and besides the four females of the missionary party, "ten or fifteen Indian women and [half-breed] children."
The further "Kansas" travels of this company (while spelled out in considerable detail in the missionaries' journals) are not here outlined since the route from this point was the now "old" and familiar "Sublette's Trace" (or, "Oregon trail") previously noted in these annals (and dealt with at some length in KHQ, v. 28, pp. 352-355).
On May 13 the cavalcade crossed from the Little Blue to the Platte. (The camp that night was "about 27 miles below the head of the Grand or Big Island in the Platt River on its South East Bank." Gray.) On the 30th these travelers crossed Laramie's Fork and came to "Ft. Laramy or Ft. William at the foot of the black hills." Gray stated: "As near as we can make or calculate the distance it is 790 miles [although] it is called ... [by those who travel with pack animals] but 750." (Myra Eells' estimate to this point was 776 miles; Asa B. Smith calculated it as 740 miles.)
After reaching the Wind river rendezvous on June 21, the missionaries remained in camp till July 12; then continued westward (to Fort Hall) with
150 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Francis Ermatinger (of the Hudson's Bay Company) and a small company (about 20 men) which included John Augustus Sutter and party of five. Eventually on August 29 (after four months and one week en route from Westport) the nine missionaries reached the mission at Walla Walla, where they were greeted by the Whitmans and Spaldings (pioneers of 1836). Ref: Same as for April 22-28 entry; also, see The Missionary Herald, Boston, v. 35 (July, 1839), p. 269, and v. 36 (January, 1840), pp. 15 and 33.
DIED: Clermont, II, chief, since 1828, of the Osages on the Verdigris river, in "Oklahoma," in the spring(P).
On June 5 Montfort Stokes wrote (from Fort Gibson): "The recent death of their [Osages'] Principal Chief Clermont, will cause their turbulent warriors to go to war before winter with the Pawnees, Kiawas, and other tribes of the great Prairies, with whom they have been at peace ever since our late Treaties." Ref: Grant Foreman's Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest (1926), p. 239, footnote. See Kansas Historical Quarterly (KHQ), v. 28, pp. 40 and 320, for other data on Clermont and his band of Osages. A successor, Clermont (III), signed the Osage treaty of January 11, 1839.
Beginning May 9, and continuing into June, John C. McCoy surveyed the Pottawatomie reserve completing a project on which preliminary work had been done in August, 1837. (See p. 60.) Ref: Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 25 (for survey field note*); "Plat of the Putawatomie Lands Surveyed in 1838 by J. C. McCoy" (photostat from National Archives, in KHi ms. division); 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Doc. No. 174 (Serial 347), p. 105. In these references August, 1837, is indicated as the time the preliminary survey was made.
May 10. This was the scheduled date for the annual traders' caravan to depart from Independence, Mo., for Santa Fe (as announced in the St. Louis Missouri Argus of April 5).
Little information has been located which relates to the 1838 season. Overland trade to Mexico was in a 'languishing condition," partly due to recently imposed higher duties at Santa Fe for American traders, and also because of an uprising a revolutionary movement (lasting till the spring of 1838) which had begun in the province of New Mexico in the summer of 1837. A memorial that the General Assembly of Missouri addressed to congress in December, 1838, stated "only seven [Missourians'P] wagons" had gone to
Mexico "during the last season." According to Josiah Gregg's later-published estimate, some 50 wagons (carrying goods worth $90,000), and around 100 men (20 of them proprietors) made the trip to Santa Fe in 1838. It may be that the wagons of Mexican traders carried the bulk of the 1838 New Mexico-bound trade.
Ref: Missouri Argus, St. Louis, April 5, 1838; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 472 (Serial 360), p. 6 (for memorial of December 27, 1838); R. E. Twitchell's Leading Facts of New Mexico History (1912), v. 2, pp. 53-60; Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies (New York, 1844), v. 2, p. 160. The 1838(?) expedition recollected by Oliver P. Wiggins (see E. L. Sabin's Kit Carson Days [1935], v. 1, pp. 307, 308; The Trail, Denver, v. 3, no. 7 [December, 1910], p. 6; and M. M. Estergreen's Kit Carson [c1962], pp. 77-79), has been omitted here for lack of substantiation, and because of discrepancies in Wiggins' accounts. For lack of time, the files of certain St. Louis newspapers (not available in KHi) have not been examined. The Missouri Republican, particularly, may contain items which throw additional light on the Santa Fe trade of 1838,
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 151
May 11. In the party of 22 Americans (with 12 Mexican servants, and outfit of seven wagons, one dearborn, and two small fieldpieces) arriving at Independence, Mo., after a 38-day journey from Santa Fe, were traders Josiah Gregg, and "Messrs. Ryder and Payne." Gregg and the other principal proprietors brought with them about $150,000 in specie and bullion. (Ryder and Payne were later reported as reaching St. Louis with $65,000 in gold and silver.)
(This company left Santa Fe on April 4; John J. Langham died after they had proceeded some 130 miles; at a camp in the Cimarron valley, below the Willow Bar, Pawnees attempted, but failed, to stampede the stock; the rest of the trip was without incident.) Ref: Gregg, v. 1, pp. 308-313; Missouri Argus, St. Louis, May 31, 1838.
BORN: on May 12, at Shawnee Baptist Mission (present Johnson county), Ann Eliza Pratt, daughter (and first child) of Missionaries John G. and Olivia (Evans) Pratt. Ref: Pratt Collection (KHi ms. division); J. W. Manning's "John Gill Pratt . . ." (dissertation, May, 1951; microfilm copy in KHi).
May 21. About this date there arrived at Kickapoo Catholic Mission (five miles above Fort Leavenworth) a small party of Jesuits: the Rev. Peter Joseph Verhaegen (superior of the Missouri Jesuits), as a visitor, the Rev. Anthony Eysvogels and Brother William Claessens (who were to remain at the mission), and the
Rev. Pierre- Jean De Smet (whose ultimate destination was the Pottawatomie settlements at Council Bluffs [Iowa]).
All had traveled from St. Louis on the S. Howard as far as Independence, Mo. There Father Verhaegen had disembarked and made his way overland, on horseback, to Fort Leavenworth reaching that post four days later. The others remained on the Howard till the boat put in at the fort's landing. Father De Smet (who stayed to supervise baggage unloading) was a day later than the others in reaching the mission. Ref: De Smet's letter of July 20, 1838, in Chittenden and Richardson, op. cit., v. 1, p. 161; Garraghan, op. cit., v. 1, p. 433. Verhaegen had previously visited Kickapoo mission in 1837 see ibid., pp. 403-406.
May 25. The Rev. Pierre-Jean De Smet and two missionaries from die Kickapoo Catholic Mission (the Rev. Felix L. Verreydt and Brother Andrew Mazzella) boarded the upbound steamboat Wilmington at a landing near the mission (five miles above Fort Leavenworth), to journey to the Pottawatomie settlements at Council Bluffs (Iowa), where they were to establish a mission.
The night of May 25 the Wilmington s stopping place was "two miles from the village of Pashishi" ( Pa-sha-cha-hah Kickapoo head chief). De Smet paid the chief a visit that evening at his town "situated on the river." Subsequently, the steamboat stopped at the Blacksnake Hills (the future St. Joseph, Mo.) for two hours, and De Smet had a 'long talk with J[oseph]
152 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Robidoux, Jr.] who keeps a store and runs his father's fine farm." "The place is one of the finest on the Missouri for the erection of a city," wrote Father De Smet. Later, as the Wilmington passed "up by the Sauk country, the bank for more than a quarter of a mile presented nothing but groups of savages, warriors, women and children, accompanied by an army of dogs." At the Iowa village, where the boat stopped for several hours, De Smet talked with young head chief Mahaska (Francis, or Frank, White Cloud). Farther
up the Missouri he visited the Otoes. On May 31, in the afternoon, the Catholic missionaries reached their destination the Pottawatomie settlements at Council Bluffs (Iowa). Ref: Chittenden and Richardson, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 150-157, 161, 162; Garraghan, op. cit., v. 1, p. 418 (which refers to a move by Pa-sha-cha-hah and his band in 1839[?] to a locality about 20 miles from the Kickapoo mission). De Smet, in 1838, found this band living on the bank of the Missouri a location which apparently is not the same as the 1837 village site shown in Father Verhaegen's sketch (of 1837 date) published in Garraghan, op. cit., v. 1, facing p. 403.
May-June. In company with the Rev. Peter Joseph Verhaegen ("the Superior of the Missouri Jesuits"), the Rev. Christian Hoecken (of Kickapoo Catholic Mission) paid a second visit to the Catholic Indians on Pottawatomie creek. ( See January, 1838, entry. ) Their particular host was Joseph Napoleon Bourassa an education Pottawatomie, and one of the nation's prominent young men. Though Verhaegen's stay was brief, Hoecken remained about three weeks among the Pottawatomies. (See, also, October 2 entry.) Ref: Christian Hoecken's "Diary," in Kinsella, op. cit. f p. 226; Garraghan, v. 2, pp. 191-193. On December 10, 1838, Father Hoecken performed a marriage ceremony for (Joseph) Napoleon Bourassa and Memetekosikwe. Ibid., pp. 193 and 195.
June 16. Licenses to trade with the Indians in the Fort Leavenworth Agency (the Kickapoos, Delawares, Shawnees, and Kansa) were issued by Agent R. W. Cummins to: (1) C[yprian] Chouteau, (2) William M. Chick, (3) J[oseph] Parks and Charles Findlay, (4) A[lbert] G. Boone.
For earlier mention of Cyprian Chouteau, see, particularly, KHQ, v. 27, p. 378, and v. 28, p. 45. (Kansa trader Frederick Chouteau, though not named, was "covered" by Cyprian's license.) William M. Chick had arrived in Westport, Mo., to make his home, in 1836 (see ibid., v. 29, v. 42). Joseph Parks had resided on the Shawnee reserve since 1833 (see ibid., v. 28, p. 334).
Traders James Findlay (see March, 1838, annals) and Charles Findlay were, apparently, brothers. They are listed in the 1840 U. S. census of Jackson county, Mo. (both in the 20-30 age bracket). Two letters of 1840 written from "West Port," by Mrs. H. C. D. Findlay to her daughter Margaret C. Findlay (then aged 17), and addressed to "Lone Jack Jackson Co., Mo.," refer to trading activities. The August 14 letter mentions "William" (probably William S. Chick son of William M. above whom Margaret later married), and James Findlay's store (at Lone Jack), also "Charles" (Findlay) at Westport. The August 27 letter includes these statements: "Mrs. [Joseph?] Parks is sick the new [trading] goods has been here some eight or ten days . . .," and "Your brother [Charles] has gone to Park's since supper to try and get a horse to send for you."
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Albert G. Boone (son of Jesse Bryan Boone; and grandson of frontiersman Daniel Boone) brought his family to live in Westport, Mo., about 1838, it is said. He had been a resident of Callaway county, Mo. Boone remained at Westport till the beginning of the Civil War. Ref: Office of Indian Affairs (OIA), Letters Received from St. Louis Superintendency (R. W. Cummins' letters of June 28, 1838), Microcopy 234, Roll 751, National Archives; Mrs. Carrie W. Whitney's Kansas City Missouri, Its History and Its People . . . (Chicago, 1908), v. 1, pp. 649-651 (for Findlay letters); KHC, v. 9, p. 565 (for W. R.
Bernard's statement regarding A. G. Boone); Hazel A. Spraker's The Boone Family (1922), pp. 125, 126, 189.
June(?). At Fort Leavenworth on an inspection trip, Col. George Croghan commented favorably on the "experiment" there to grow forage for the garrison's horses and cattle. (See September 18, 1837, annals entry on pp. 73, 74.)
"About 1,000 acres of prairie are now under fence and in corn," he wrote, "from which 20,000 bushels may be expected, that is to say, 20 bushels an acre or half a crop and no more, such being the average of prairie lands that have been broken up during the fall previous to planting." (He anticipated a second-year crop of 40 bushels to the acre given a reasonably favorable season in 1839.) Ref: F. P. Prucha, editor, Army Life on the Western Frontier (c!958), p. 83.
July 3. Iowa became a territory. (The organic act of June 12 had provided for the division of the territory of Wisconsin, and the establishment of the territorial government of Iowa. Ref: 17. S. Statutes at Large, v. 5, p. 235.
July. Dr. J. Andrew Chute, of Westport, Mo. (employed by the Indian department), gave smallpox vaccinations to the Ottawas at the beginning of the month; and proceeded to the Pottawatomie settlements on July 4. He also visited some of the other Indian reserves in "Kansas" on this mission during the summer. Probably he had vaccinated the Kansa in April. See p. 147.
Doctor Chute, aged 27, died at Westport, Mo., on October 1, 1838. Ref: Jotham Meeker's "Diary," June 30, July 2, 4, and October 8, 1838; C. M. Drury, editor, First White Women Over the Rockies (1963), v. 2, p. 59. See, also, September 6, 1839, annals entry.
July 5. The act of this date to increase the "present military establishment" of the United States, included a provision for the organization of the Corps of Topographical Engineers (to replace the previous Bureau) ; and a provision which permitted "the officers composing the council of administration at any post . . ." to employ a chaplain.
Capt. Washington Hood (appointed a captain in the topographical corps effective July 7) arrived at Westport, Mo., not long afterward (in the summer?) to make surveys in the Indian territory. (For this purpose congress, in 1838, appropriated $10,000). He began, at the mouth of the Kansas river, an initial
154 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
project to determine the eastern boundary of the Indian territory. John C. McCoy was hired to assist in the survey. Work on this line (which was also the western boundary of Missouri) was continued some 40 miles southward, then abandoned when Captain Hood became incapacitated and had to return East. McCoy, in reminiscences, indicated Captain Hood found Joseph C. Brown's 1823 survey of the western boundary of Missouri (see KHQ, v. 27, p. 527) accurate, and made no changes.
The provision of the July 5 act which related to chaplains was amended on July 7, by limiting to 20 the number of posts permitted to have such an officer. See December 17, 1838, entry for Fort Leavenworth's first chaplain. Ref: 17. S. Statutes at Large, v. 5, pp. 257, 258; Kansas City (Mo.) Journal, February 13, 1879, or "Kansas Reminscences," clipping volume, in KHi library (for McCoy); also KHC, v. 4, p. 301.
July 12. Fur trader Lancaster P. Lupton's small caravan, bound for Fort Lupton (or, Fort Lancaster) on the South Platte, started out from Independence, Mo., on the Santa Fe trail. Seth E. Ward (aged 18), beginning his career in the West, was one of the hired hands. His recollections provide the only information located on this journey, which took about six weeks. (See, also, July 26, 1839, entry.)
Soon after reaching the South Platte, young Ward joined fur traders Thompson & Craig; crossed the continental divide to their post (Fort Davy Crockett) at Brown's Hole [in the northwest corner of present Colorado]; and spent some seven years in the mountains, and among the Indians, before becoming an independent trader, and a freighter. Later, from 1857 to 1871, Seth Ward was sutler at Fort Laramie. Subsequently, he lived in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Alexander Majors, in 1893, described the Wards' home as a spacious, two-story brick house, two-and-a-half miles south of Westport, on the old Santa Fe trail. Ref: The United States Biographical Dictionary . . . Missouri Volume (New York, etc., 1878), pp. 466-469; H. L. Conard, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri . . . (1901), v. 6, p. 372; Alexander Majors' Seventy fears on the Frontier (Chicago, etc., 1893), pp. 119-124; A Memorial and Biographical Record of Kansas City and Jackson County, Mo. (Chicago, 1896), pp. 567-570; Annals of Wyoming, Cheyenne, v. 5 (July, 1927), pp. 5-18; L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, editors, To the Rockies and Oregon, 1838-1942 (Glendale, Calif., 1955), p. 57 (Obadiah Oakley's journal).
July. Outfitting at Independence, Mo., partners Louis Vasquez and Andrew W. Sublette moved out on the Santa Fe trail (about mid-month?) with ox-drawn supply wagons, and a company which included James Beckwourth, bound for their trading post "Fort Vasquez" (of autumn, 1835, origin) the first of the forts on the South Platte river.
(These partners had received their first trading license for the South Platte country on July 29, 1835, at St. Louis. "Fort Vasquez" about one and a half miles south of present Platteville, Colo. was maintained by Vasquez and Sublette till the spring of 1840.)
As Beckwourth later recollected it, the particular incidents of this journey on the Santa Fe trail and upper Arkansas route (past Bent's Fort) were (1)
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 155
his own illness from sunstroke (suffered while crossing the Arkansas-Platte dividing ridge), and (2) Louis Vasquez's encounter (on the upper Arkansas) with a war-party of Pawnees (on foot). By his account, it was after this 1838 company reached the post that "suitable buildings" were erected at "Fort Vasquez." Ref: T. D. Bonnets The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth (New York, 1856), pp. 422-424; OIA, "Registers of Letters Received" (National Archives microfilm), for William Clark's August 3, 1835, letter; E. W. Smith's "Journal, in To the Rockies and Oregon . . ., edited by L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, p. 161; Dale L. Morgan's letter, June 9, 1962, to L. Barry; The Colorado Magazine, Denver, v. 29 (October, 1952),
p. 241; Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, v. 12 (December, 1925), pp. 335-341. Since Beckwourth says he spent July 4, 1838, on a Missouri river steamboat en route to Independence, Mo., it seems the overland journey may have commenced by mid-July.
July 14-26. Conducted by James L. Schoolcraft (with four assistants), a delegation of 26 Ottawas and Chippewas from Michigan arrived at Westport, Mo., on the 14th, en route to examine lands for a future home.
Under Isaac McCoy's direction, this party set out on the 19th for the Ottawa settlements (present Franklin county), traveling by way of the Osage River Subagency (on the Weas* land, present Miami county), and across the Peoria & Kaskaskia reserve. On July 22 McCoy joined the group, which proceeded, on the 23d, to examine the Marais des Cygnes country adjoining the existing Ottawa reserve. After a noon council on the 24th, at a crossing of the river, the company started home. Schoolcraft's party was back at Westport, Mo., by July 26. Ref: Isaac McCoy's "Journal," July 18-26, 1838, entries; Isaac McCoy's History of Baptist Indian Missions (1840), p. 543; Jotham Meeker's "Diary," July 23 and 25, 1838.
Between July 18(?) and August 10 William S. Donohoe surveyed the "twin" reserves of the Iowa, and Sac & Fox Indians, on the Missouri river in northeastern "Kansas," under instructions from John C. McCoy. ( Preliminary surveying had been done in August, 1837 see p. 67.)
The lowas' lands extended, on the north, to the Great Nemaha river (in southeastern "Nebraska"). The Sac & Fox lands (below the Iowa reserve) extended southward to the Kickapoos' north line. The two reserves were divided by a diagonal line having a beginning point near the mouth of Wolf river and running to the northwest. Ref: Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 25 (for field notes); Isaac McCoy's "Journal,"
July 28 and August 8, 1838, entries; survey plat (in KHi ms. division); 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Doc. No. 174 (Serial 347), p. 98. The field notes were dated "Westport, Mo., Sept. 15, 1838."
BORN: on August 3, at "loway and Sac Mission" (present Doniphan county), Anna Maria Hamilton, daughter of the Rev. William and Julia Ann N. (McGiffin) Hamilton. Ref: Presbyterian Historical Society, American Indian Missions correspondence, Box 100 (microfilm, KHi), William Hamilton's letter of September 29, 1851. Though some sources have suggested that the Rev. S. M. Irvin's son Elliott Loury Irvin was born at the above mission in 1838 or 1839, it appears that he was born in Pennsylvania. (The
156 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Irvins returned East in the fall of 1838, because of Mrs. Irvin's health, and she remained there till the spring of 1840.) Also, see, Ittustriana, Kansas . . . (1933), p. 580 (biographical sketch of Elliott Samuel Irvin); and Mrs. Mary Irvin Leigh's letter of February 25, 1907, in KHi ms. division.
August. On the Arkansas river a war party of about 80 Kansa and Osage Indians surprised a party of Pawnees and took 11 scalps. Their own losses were four killed and two wounded. In a separate skirmish, warriors from the same party killed five Pawnees.
Isaac McCoy, who reported these incidents, also wrote: "On the first of September a party of about 20 Kanzans, headed by the 3d Chief of the nation named 'The Hard Chief’ was absent on a war and stealing expedition, the result of which I have not yet heard. In August last a large drove of horses was stolen from the Osage villages. Besides many horses stolen from other Indian tribes, the Osages have among them some valuable horses stolen from the whites." Ref: Grant Foreman's Advancing the Frontier 1830-1860 (Norman, Okla., 1933), p. 197 (quoting McCoy's letter of November 27, 1838, from OIA, Western Superintendency records in National Archives); Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 26 (1839), also contain McCoy's statements, in a copy of lengthy "Remarks" he originally prepared for Sen. John Tipton.
In late August and early September the American Fur Company caravan (including some 30 fur-laden wagons and carts) homeward bound from the summer rendezvous (held near present Riverton, Wyo.), crossed "Kansas" doubtless retracing the "Oregon trail" pathway utilized on the westward march in April and May. Indications are that Moses "Black" Harris, and probably Lucien Fontenelle too, made this journey.
Capt. William Drummond Stewart returned with the caravan; presumably William Preston Clark and John Radford were with him. Some travelers from the Oregon country also were in the party. They included the Rev. Jason Lee (going East for re-enforcements to the Methodist mission on the Willamette river), Philip L. Edwards (missionary assistant; now homeward bound to Missouri), F. Y. Ewing (who had gone West with the 1837 party), and five Indian youths (in Lee's charge) who were to be educated in the East. (Lee and Edwards had crossed "Kansas" westbound, in 1834, with N. J. Wyeth's second expedition. -See KHQ, v. 28, pp. 352-355.)
(Capt. William Drummond Stewart learned, after he arrived at St. Louis on, or before, September 28, that his brother, Sir John A. Stewart, had died in Scotland on May 20. As successor to the title, he thus became "Sir William.")
On September 5 Jason Lee arrived at Shawnee Methodist Mission (the "old" mission, present Wyandotte county) and remained for several days. At one o'clock on the morning of September 9 two messengers from the West reached the mission to notify Lee that his wife and infant son had died in "Oregon" in late June. (One of the men who had left Fort Hall [Ida.], after July 27, on this mission was Paul Richardson.) Ref: Drury's EUcanah and Mary Walker, pp. 87, 88, 91; Christian Advocate and Journal, New York, v. 13 (November 9, 16, 23, 30, 1838, January 4, 1839), pp. 46, 54, 60, 77, 78; William Drummond Stewart's letter of August 27, 1838, from "Head of the Blue Fork," en route to Missouri (item not seen by this compiler available by
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 157
courtesy of Dale L. Morgan, of the Bancroft Library, from the original in the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis); Oregon Pioneer Association Transactions, 1889, pp. 79, 83; Dale L. Morgan's letter of March 5, 1963, to L. Barry (for Harris and Fontenelle); Jason Lee's "Diary," in Oregon Historical Quarterly, Portland, v. 17 (December, 1916), pp. 403-430; Pacific Northwest Quarterly, v. 29 (July, 1938), p. 282; Alter, op. cit., pp. 181, 183; Bernard DeVoto's Across the Wide Missouri (Boston, 1947), p. 358 (for "Sir William" data); C. J. Brosnan's Jason Lee . . . (New York, 1932), pp. 92-103.
DIED: William Clark (sup't of Indian affairs at St. Louis since 1822), on September 1, at the home of his son Meriwether Lewis Clark, in that city. He was 68 years old. The Missouri Republican was of the opinion Clark was "probably the oldest American settler residing in St. Louis” Ref: Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, v. 20, pp. 80-82 (for item from Missouri Republican, St. Louis); KHQ, v. 16, pp. 1-3 (for brief sketch of Clark's life).
In the autumn (or late summer), Henry Bradley, his wife, and Mrs. Rosetta Hardy the last of the Wea Presbyterian Mission personnel removed to the "loway and Sac Mission" in present Doniphan county. The Wea mission buildings (on Wea creek, near present Paola, Miami co.) were sold to the government for
$750, and the Osage River Subagency headquarters, established there in 1837, by Subagent A. L. Davis, remained at that location till after 1843(?). Ref: Presbyterian Historical Society, American Indian Missions correspondence (microfilm, KHi), Box 100; Spooner & Rowland's History of American Missions (1840), p. 724; Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, v. 28 (December, 1950), pp. 244, 245; Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838, p. 60.
Pottawatomie Methodist Mission was opened in the autumn at a site near one of the Indian settlements on Pottawatomie creek not far from the Miami-Franklin county line of today. (No information has been found on its exact location.) The main building was a story-and-a-half "double log house, standing east and west, with a hallway between/' Mackinaw Beauchemie (half Chippewa, but raised among the Pottawatomies ) and his family may have moved into quarters there before the Rev. Edward T. Peery (with his family) arrived in the latter part of 1838.
A missionary had been assigned (by the Missouri conference) in the fall of 1837, to work among the Pottawatomies, but failed to arrive. Meantime, the Rev. Thomas Johnson (of Shawnee mission) visiting the Pottawatomies, and finding them unsettled, determined not to build a mission in 1837; but "employed a native exhorter [Beauchemie] from the Shawnee mission . . . who speaks the language to labor among them this winter [1837-1838] and to act as interpreter for the missionary when he arrives."
According to an October 15, 1839, report, Pottawatomie Methodist Mission had opened, within the preceding year, despite strong opposition from various sources; the missionary [Peery] had "suffered much from affliction himself, and in his family," yet had been able "to collect a little band of 23 Indians.
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. . ." The 1840 report indicated that "on the whole," prospects were encouraging. In the fall of 1840 the Rev. Nathaniel M. Talbott (of nearby Peoria Methodist Mission) was assigned to minister also to the Pottawatomies. (The Peerys were reassigned to Delaware mission.)
Pottawatomie Methodist Mission was maintained till the Indians removed (in the latter 1840's) to a reservation on the Kansas river. Mackinaw Beauchemie and his family continued to occupy the mission house till the deaths of both Beauchemie and his wife in the early part of 1849. Ref: KHC, v. 9, pp. 211, 212, 228, 227; Christian Advocate and Journal, v. 12 (February 16, 1838), p. 102 (for Johnson letter of December 27, 1837), v. 13 (November 9, 1838), p. 28 (for 1838 report), v. 14 (November 22, 1839), p. 54 (for 1839 report), v. 14 (March 20, 1840), p. 122 (for 1840 report); Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1839, p. 518; Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838, p. 59; Christian Advocate and Journal, v. 13 (September 21, 1838), p. 18, for a Thomas Johnson letter of August 17, 1838.
Pottawatomie Catholic Mission (present Miami county) had its beginning on October 2 when the Rev. Christian Hoecken reached the Pottawatomie creek settlements to serve the Indians of Catholic persuasion already there, and await the arrival of the "Wabash and St. Joseph" Pottawatomies (then en route from northern Indiana). The location, by Father Hoecken's description (in an 1837 diary) was southwest of present Osawatomie five miles from the mouth of Pottawatomie creek.
Chief Nas-waw-kee's new cabin served as Father Hoecken's headquarters for over a month. The large immigrant party reached Pottawatomie creek on November 4 see pp. 160, 161. (They were accompanied by Father Benjamin-Marie Petit, who remained two months in poor health.) The newcomers "immediately constructed a church 40 feet long and 22 feet wide; and by means of wood and bark and canvas they raised shanties for a temporary shelter, until they could select a fixed abode." In January, 1839, Father Hoecken reported there were 600 Catholics among the Pottawatomie creek Indians, and that his mission was thriving. See March 10, 1839, annals for continuation of Pottawatomie Catholic Mission at a new site on Big Sugar creek (in present Linn county). Ref: Christian Hoecken's "Diary" of 1837 (at St. Mary's College, St. Marys), and of 1838 in Kinsella, op. cit., pp. 226, 227; Garraghan, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 193, 194, 200; Indiana Historical Society Publications, v. 14 (1941), especially p. 131.
MARRIED: James Hays, "agriculturist for the Kansas Indians," and Rebecca Lemons, of Jackson county, Mo., on October 13, by the Rev. William Johnson, of Kansa Methodist Mission. Ref: Jackson county, Mo., marriage records. The place of the ceremony is not indicated.
October 15. Contracts were let (at Independence, Mo.,) to (1) Aaron Overton and (2) D[aniel] M[ organ] Boone and others, by Capt. George H. Crosman (AQM), for the "construction and completion" of the 72-mile section of the Western military road between Fort Leavenworth and the Marais des Cygnes (in present Linn county). Work was started at once, but not completed till the fore part of 1839. (See, ako, October 29, 1839, annals entry.)
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Ref: 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Doc. No. 194 (Serial 346), p. 57; 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Ex. Doc. No. 2 (Serial 344), p. 122; KHQ, v. 11, pp. 123, 125.
DIED: White Plume (principal chief of the Kansa for at least 13 years), also four Kansa braves, during the Indians' autumn hunt. ( Some died of fever, others of whiskey, as reported by Missionary William Johnson).
(A year earlier, the aging chief had made his last visit to St. Louis. There is a record of payment on November 11, 1837, by the Indian department, of $36 to "E. Flenister" for "transportation of White Plume, principal chief of the Kanzas, and six Indians, from St. Louis to Liberty, Mo.")
Commenting on the Kansa Indians, after an April, 1839, visit to their villages, the Rev. Henry Gregory wrote: "An old chief [White Plume], who was opposed to the abandonment of their Indian habits, recently died, and now the two principal chiefs, both active and intelligent men, are in favor of civilization."
Whereas Isaac McCoy, in his Annud Register of Indian Affairs for 1835, 1836, and 1837, had listed "Nam-pa-war-rah or White Feather" [White Plume] as principal chief for the Kansa (followed by "Ka-he-ga-wa-ta-ne-ga" [Fool Chief], and others), in the 1838 edition (not published till early 1839?), there was a significant change with "Nam-pa-war-rah, (Fury)" [or, White Plume, II] as first chief, followed by "Kia-he-ga-wa-ta-in-ga (Reckless [or, Fool] Chief)," "Kia-he-ga Wah-cha-ha (Hard Chief)," and "Me-chu-shing-a
(Little White Bear)," as second, third, and fourth chiefs. Ref: KHC, v. 16, p. 230 (for William Johnson's statement); 25th Cong., 3d Sess., House Doc. No. 174 (Serial 347), p. 52 (for Capt. E. A. Hitchcock's disbursement of November 11, 1837); Baptist Missionary Magazine, Boston, v. 20 (February, 1840), p. 42
(for Henry Gregory's statement); Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838, p. 66. White Plume, first mentioned in these annals in 1815 (see KHQ, v. 27, p. 377), was head chief, apparently, by 1825, since he was the first to sign the June 3, 1825, Kansa treaty. For C. B. King's 1821 (?) portrait of White Plume, see cover of KHQ, v. 28 (Spring, 1962).
October 19. At the Great Nemahaw Subagency (present Doniphan county), John Dougherty (as commissioner for the United States) concluded a treaty with the Iowa Indians which confirmed cession of all claims by them to lands between the Missouri and Mississippi which had been held in common with the Sacs & Foxes.
In return, the government was to invest (at not less than five per cent interest) $157,500 for the tribe's use; and to pay the income annually, in October, to the lowas (less a $50 lifetime annuity to their interpreter Jeffrey Dorion) ; also, 10 houses were to be built for the lowas ( in addition to the five promised under the treaty of September 17, 1836).
Heading the 13 Iowa signers were "Frank White Cloud" (i. e., young Mahaskah, or White Cloud) and "Non-gee-ninga, or No Heart" (second chief, whose name also appears as "Nacheninga," etc.). Ref: C. J. Kappler's Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties (Washington, 1904), v. 2, pp. 518, 519; Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1839, p. 328; T. L. McKenney and James Hall, The Indian Tribes of North America . . . (Edinburgh, 1934), v. 1, pp. 283, 301, 303, v. 2, pp. 110, 111, 114 (for biographical data on the chiefs White Cloud and No Heart).
October 30. Maria Pensineau, daughter of trader Paschal Pensineau and a Kickapoo(P) woman "Dutchi," was baptized by
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the Rev. Anthony Eysvogels. Joseph Robidoux (of Blacksnake Hills, Mo.) was sponsor.
Maria, or Mary Pensineau (born June 25?, 1838) apparently did not have the same mother as Brigitte Pensineau (see July 23, 1836, annals entry). In the 1850's Mary Pensineau married Tom Whipple. In 1883 she was living in Mexico, separated from her husband (who was residing with the Cherokees); and their son, aged 26 (born in 1857?) was on the Kickapoo reserve in Kansas. Ref: "Kickapoo Register," St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kan.; Paschal Pensineau's dictation, in KHi ms. division. Indications are that Paschal was not the son of Kickapoo trader Laurence Pensineau. His parents, it appears, were Louison and Lizette Pensineau, of Cahokia, 111. See "Remsburg Clippings," v. 1, p. 147 (in KHi library). In the dictation, Pensineau says only that his father was a Frenchman, and that his mother had some Pottawatomie blood.
MARRIED: William Turner and Mary Bowers, on November 1, at Ottawa Baptist Mission, by Missionary Jotham Meeker, in the presence of about 30 Ottawa Indians.
(After the wedding dinner, the couple removed into their own house. Both had lived with the Meekers for over four years. Turner, on January 15, 1838, had received permission to settle on the Ottawa reserve, and that same day had selected a site for a cabin and a field near the mission.) Ref: Jotham Meeker's "Diary," January 15 and November 1, 1838, entries.
November 4. Some 750 emigrating Pottawatomies (of Wabash river, Ind., and St. Joseph river, Mich.), under the conductorship of William Polke, arrived at the settlements of their kinsmen on Pottawatomie creek (near the present Miami-Franklin county line), after a two-months' overland journey.
Their trip had begun on September 4, from a camp near Plymouth, Ind., where some of the reluctant-to-move Pottawatomies had been collected forcibly by a volunteer militia force headed by John Tipton (U. S. senator from Indiana). The emigrating party (by report over 850 persons) had been escorted to the Illinois line by Tipton and a few militiamen, and turned over to Polke's charge on September 20 near Danville, 111.
Among the chiefs who made the journey were Ash-kum, I-o-weh, and Pe-pish-kay. Father Benjamin-Marie Petit accompanied the Indians, and his presence helped to reconcile the Catholic bands to the move westward. (Menominee, Black Wolf, and Pepinowah all "improperly called chiefs" leaders of these bands, had been among those in militia custody early in September.)
The Pottawatomies crossed the Mississippi at, or near, Quincy, Ill., on October 8, and the Missouri at Lexington, Mo., on October 27. (At the end of October, Ass't Conductor Jacob Hull, with 23 Pottawatomies, caught up with Polke's party.) The company which crossed the Missouri line on November 2 (some 18 miles southwest of Independence) totaled about 750 Pottawatomies. (On the long march some had dropped out because of illness; others had "deserted"; and around 43 persons had died.)
On November 3 the immigrants camped near the Wea settlement on Bull creek (present Miami county); on November 4, at 2 P.M., they began
Reproduced here is an enlarged segment of Hutawa's map (1842) of the "Platte Country." East of the Missouri (in the dark background) is shown a part of Platte county, Mo. (organized following the 1837 Platte Purchase addition to the state of Missouri). West of the river, in present Leavenworth county, is Fort Leavenworth, and to the north, a part of the Kickapoo Indians' reserve.
ON THE "KANSAS" SIDE: Forf Leavenworf/i was founded in May, 1827 (see KHQ, v. 28, pp. 34, 35); the Kickapoo Village[s] were of May, 1833, origin (see KHQ, v. 28, p. 326); Pensineau's trading posf was opened about October, 1833 (see KHQ, v. 28, pp. 338, 339); Kickapoo [Methodist] M[ission] was founded in November, 1833 Csee KHQ, v. 28, p. 344); Kickapoo Catholic Mission ("Cathc. C/i. [and] Missionary Estbt.") was begun in June, 1836, and closed in December, 1840 (see KHQ, v. 29, p. 51). Mill creek] presumably was so labeled by Hutawa because the Kickapoo's mill (built in 1835-1836 see KHQ, v. 28, p. 513) was located on it, but the stream's name, at least as early as 1833 (see KHQ, v. 28, p. 338), was Salt creek. (The 18th century French post, Fort Cavagnolle, of 1744 origin, was located near the mouth of Salt creek see KHQ, v. 27, p. 88.) The large island in the bend of the Missouri (opposite Weston, Mo.) is Kickapoo Island. On maps of later decades it appears in varying shape and size.
ON THE MISSOURI SIDE: The U. S. Military Reserve (a tract of some 6,840 acres) was created June 21, 1838, to prevent whisky sellers and other undesirables from settling opposite the fort. It was reduced in size, in 1844, to 936 acres. Rialto (or, "the Rialto"), at the mouth of Pensineau's creek, was also known as Pensineau's Landing. Weston, selected for a town site in 1837 by ex-soldier Joseph Moore (for whom Moore's creefe evidently was named), had a population of some 300 persons in 1839 (see KHQ, v. 29, p. 176). Ellis ferry was licensed on March 11, 1839 (see KHQ, v. 29, p. 166).
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 161
crossing the Marais des Cygnes; and around 3:30 P. M. they reached the end of their journey. Subagent A. L. Davis being absent, Conductor Polke (and his son Benjamin C. Polke, an assistant conductor) remained in the Indian Country till Davis* return at the beginning of December. Ref: Indiana Magazine of History, v. 21 (December, 1925), pp. 315-336, v. 44 (December, 1948), pp. 393-408, v. 45 (September, 1949), pp. 285-288; Indiana Historical Society Publications, v. 14, no. 1 (1941), especially pp. 87-110; Reports of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1838, 1839, and 1840; Indiana Historical Collections, v. 26, pp. 659-769; Niles' National Register, Washington City, v. 55 (October 6, 1838), p. 88.
November. As reported by the army's commander-in-chief, Fort Leavenworth's garrison consisted of six First U. S. dragoon companies with Col. Stephen W. Kearny's command having an aggregate of 329 (24 commissioned officers and 305 troops); additionally 99 recruits were "on march." (The other four First dragoon companies were at Fort Gibson [Okla.].)
On August 31 Lt. Col. J. B. Brant had arranged (by contract with J. P. Moore) for transportation of four officers and 190 recruits from Jefferson Barracks, Mo., to Fort Leavenworth; and on October 8, had made a contract with T. Dennis for carrying up to Fort Leavenworth two officers, one surgeon, and 180 recruits. (The November report obviously did not include all the late arrivals.) Ref: 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Ex. Doc. No. 2 (Serial 344), table between pp. 120, 121; 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Doc. No. 94 (Serial 346), pp. 50, 58.
November 14. The Gabriel Prudhomme estate a 257-acre Missouri river front property which included "Westport Landing," was sold for $4,220 to a hastily-organized town company of 14 persons, who were: William L. Sublette, of St. Louis, Moses G. Wilson, John C. McCoy, William Gilliss, Fry P. McGee, Abraham Fonda, William M. Chick, Oliver Caldwell, George W. Tate, Jacob Ragan, William Colh'ns, James Smart, Samuel C. Owens, and Russell Hicks, all of Jackson county, Mo.
The proprietors reached an agreement that their projected town (the future Kansas City, Mo.) should be called "Kansas." John C. McCoy made out a plat for about 15 acres of the "Westport Landing" area, which William S. Donohoe (his brother-in-law) then surveyed. Because the legality of the Prudhomme estate title sale was undetermined till 1846, little was done in the intervening eight years to develop the town of "Kansas."
Nine town lots were sold in May, 1839, but these sales were never effective. Some time in 1839, Thomas A. Smart located at Westport Landing (operating the first trading house in that vicinity). The steamboat Pizarro, in October, 1839, delivered some Indian goods at the "upper landing" and placed it "in charge of Mr. Smart" It may be that he occupied the small (20'x40') hewed-log warehouse which the town company built (in 1838?, or 1839?) at "Kansas."
In 1843, according to the later recollection of Washington H. Chick (son of W. M.), aside from the warehouse, the only building within the original
162 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
15-acre town limits was a two-story double log house built by William B. Evans and "occupied by him as a dwelling and hotel." Joseph S. Chick (son of W. M.) wrote, in 1906: "At that time [1843] there was, as I remember, the Evans tavern at the foot of Main Street and Levee, a warehouse and two other houses [not in the 15-acre area?]. My father built the next houses, a warehouse [in the winter of 1843-1844] on the Levee and the first residence on the hills in Kansas City [Mo.]."
By 1846 instead of 14 town of "Kansas" shareholders there were only seven: Robert Campbell, of St. Louis (four shares), William Gilliss (three shares), Fry P. McGee (two shares), John C. McCoy (two shares), Jacob Ragan, William B. Evans, and Henry Jobe, each one share. Ref: The History of Jackson County, Missouri . . . (Kansas City, Mo., 1881), pp. 396-398; C. C. Spalding's Annals of the City of Kansas (reprint of 1858 edition), pp. 15-20; Superintendency of Indian Affairs (SIA), St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, p. 55 (for item on Smart); letter of February 22, 1963, James Anderson (historian of The Native Sons of Kansas City, Missouri) to L. Barry, and enclosures with the letter; John C. McCoy's statements in Kansas City (Mo.) Journal, February 17, 1884; W. H. Chick's recollections, and J. S. Chick's letter of May 3, 1906, are in the KHi ms. division. In v. 32 of the Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts" (in ibid.), is a fragment of what may be J. C. McCoy's original(?) outline plat of "Kansas" which, on the back, records 15 lot
numbers with corresponding names of would-be(P) purchasers, and the price to be paid. The names on this list are: D[aniel] Yoacham, J. C. McCoy, M[ilton] McGee, C. Young, W. L. Sublette, H. Weymeyer, [W. S.] Donohoe, E. Downing, J[acob] Ragan, A. Justice, O[liver] Caldwell, J. C. McCoy, Jr. [?], and McGee.
For use at the Kansa Methodist Mission, 300 copies of a 24-page book in the Kansa language were published, probably in the latter part of the year, by the Shawnee Baptist Mission press (John G. Pratt, printer).
No copy is known to exist. Isaac McCoy, in his Annual Register for 1838 (published in late 1838, or early 1839) stated: "A small book in the Kauzau language, upon the New System, has been published and brought into use." Ref: Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 19 (June, 1839), p. 125; McCoy, Annual Register, 1838, p. 67; D. C. McMurtrie and A. H. Allen, Jotham Meeker . . . (1930), p. 125.
December 17. Newly arrived Rev. Henry Gregory, of the Protestant Episcopal Church was appointed chaplain at Fort Leavenworth, by the council of administration. He was the first chaplain there (see July 5 entry), and the first resident Episcopalian clergyman in "Kansas/' (He resigned September 30, 1839.)
During his brief tenure, Chaplain Gregory officiated at four marriages, and three funerals; baptized one child; distributed Bibles, prayer books, and tracts in addition to preaching. Also, he made two tours into the Indian country (visiting the Kansa in April, 1839, with Agent Cummins; and accompanying Colonel Kearny's party to the Otoe and Missouri village, and to the Pottawatomie settlements around Council Bluffs, [Iowa] in September, 1839). Ref: KHC, v. 16, p. 355; David C. Skaggs, Jr.'s, thesis "Military Contributions to the Development of Territorial Kansas" (microfilm, KHi); Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Richmond, Va., v. 4 (September, 1935), pp. 201, 202; Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 20 (February, 1840), pp. 42-44 (for Gregory's account of tours in the Indian country).
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 163
DIED: Auguste P. Chouteau (long-time trader with the Osages, and other nations on the frontier), on December 25, at Fort Gibson (Okla.) . He was 52 years old. (For first mention of him in this chronology, see 1807 annals entry in KHQ, v. 27, p. 362; and see his portrait [together with a summary of his connection with "Kansas" history], facing p. 361 in the same volume.) Ref : Grant Foreman's Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest, p. 239.
December 31. An act by the general assembly of Missouri to organize the counties of Platte and Buchanan (both bordering on the Missouri river; and formed from the "Platte Purchase") was approved on this date. Ref: The History of Buchanan County, Missouri . . . (St. Joseph, Mo., 1881), p. 152-154.
Between December, 1838, and March, 1839, over 11,000(?) Cherokees, removed by force from their southeastern United States homes, arrived in "Oklahoma" to join the Western Cherokees (residents for more than 20 years in the Indian country see KHQ, v. 27, p. 380), and some 3,000 other Eastern Cherokees (arrivals in late 1837 and during the summer of 1838), on the large Cherokee reserve (see KHQ, v. 28, pp. 39 and 514).
The Indians in the 13 detachments which made the late 1838- early 1839 journey overland endured hardships, which caused them much misery and distress. (Chief John Ross placed the number of deaths en route at 424.) The Cherokees' phrase for this trek, "the Trail of Tears," has endured as a fitting description for an event of great tragedy in their history. Ref: Grant Foreman's Indian Removal (Norman, Okla., 1932), pp. 229-312; Grace S. Woodward's The Cherokees (Norman, Okla., c1963), pp. 192-218; Missouri Historical Review, Columbia, v. 56 (January, 1962), pp. 156-167 (article by B. B. Lightfoot, "The Cherokee Emigrants in Missouri, 1837-1839"); Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs, 1839 ("Of the Indians removed last year [1838-1839] there are now . . . upon subsistence . . . 10,000 Cherokees, whose 12 months will expire at different periods from December [1839] to March, next.").
Employed in "Kansas" by the Indian Department during all, or part of the year 1838, were the following:
FORT LEAVENWORTH AGENCY Agent Richard W. Cummins; Interpreters Henry Tiblow and Clement Lessert; Gun and blacksmiths William Donalson (for Shawnees), Robert Dunlap (for Shawnees), James M. Simpson (for Shawnees), Andrew Potter (for Kickapoos), William F. Newton (for Delawares), and Nelson A. Warren (for Kansa); Assistant gun and blacksmiths Mathew King (for Shawnees), Wilson Rogers (for Shawnees), Charles Fish (for Kickapoos), Paschal Fish (for Delawares), J. Bezain (for Delawares; appointed in October), William Pechalker (for Kansa); Farmer James Hays (for Delawares; appointed January 30, 1838, subsequently, farmer for the Kansa); Teacher David Kinnear (for Kickapoos); Millers James Allen (for
164 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Datawares), Edward Brafford (for Dela wares), and Azariah Holcomb (for Shawnees).
GREAT NEMAHAW SUB AGENCY Subagent Andrew S. Hughes (with notation: "Discontinued" John Dougherty "acting temporarily"); Interpreter Jeffrey Dorion; Gun and blacksmiths Hiram W. Morgan (for lowas ) and James Gilmore (for Sacs & Foxes); Assistant gun and blacksmiths Francis Brishnell (appointed in April), Benjamin F. Catlett, and Samuel M. Gilmore; Farmers William Duncan (for lowas) and Leonard Searcy (for Sacs & Foxes); Teacher Aurey Ballard (for lowas; appointed May 31).
OSAGE [MARAIS DES CYGNES] RIVER SUBAGENCY Subagent Anthony L. Davis; Interpreter John T. Jones; Blacksmith William Carlisle; Assistant blacksmith Perry G. Crafton; Clerk (in payment of goods) Joseph N. Bourassa.
OSAGE SUBAGENCY Subagent Paul Ligueste Chouteau (with notation: "Resigned Mr. [Robert A.] Galloway [of the Neosho River Subagency] acting temporarily."); Interpreter Baptiste Mongrain. [No other employees listed.] Ref: 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Ex. Doc. No. 103 (Serial 346); OIA, Letters Received from SIA, St. Louis (Maj. E. A. Hitchcock's disbursements for July, 1838) National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 751; John Dougherty's requisitions, for quarters ending June 30, and September 30, 1838, in ibid., Roll 752; Isaac McCoy's Annual Register for 1838. Also, see, October 13, 1838, annals entry.
1839
January 11. At Fort Gibson [Okla.], Brig. Gen. Mathew Arbuckle (as U. S. commissioner) negotiated a treaty with the Osage Indians. The government, taking cognizance of the long-neglected Osages' destitute condition (see KHQ, v. 28, p. 320), found it imperative to (1) induce the Osage bands still living on the Verdigris (in the Cherokees' reserve), to join the rest of the nation, and (2) to extinguish title to the half-breed tracts (of 640 acres each) granted under the 1825 treaty. By the above negotiation these purposes were accomplished.
The Osages ceded all claims under the treaties of 1808 and 1825 (except Article 6 of the latter); and the bands on the Verdigris promised to remove to the reservation in "Kansas." The government agreed to pay the Osages annually, for 20 years, $12,000 in money and $8,000 in goods; and to furnish blacksmiths; mills and millers; stock; agricultural tools, etc.; also to furnish each of 22 chiefs with a house worth $200. (The first eight chiefs on this list were: Pa-hu-sca [White Hair], Clermont, Chiga-wa-sa [Shingawassa],
Ka-he-gais-tanga, Tawan-ga-hais, Wa-cho-chais, Ni-ka-wa-chin-tanga, and Tally. ) Also, the United States arranged to buy the half-breed tracts (some in "Oklahoma" on Grand, or Neosho river; others on the Marais des Cygnes, or Osage, in "Kansas") at $2 an acre (and specified that the fund of $69,120 should be invested to produce annual income of $3,456 for the Osages).
Sup't William Armstrong (of the Western Superintendency) , in his report for 1839, stated that the Osages were "concentrating in their country, where, with the attention of an agent lately appointed for them [Congreve Jackson], they will probably turn their attention to labor. . . . Their character has been greatly misunderstood. They are represented as fierce, and disposed to war; they are on the contrary civil and easily governed. They are a fine looking race of Indians, but little removed in point of civilization from the
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 165
prairie Indian. They have been reduced very much in numbers within a few years. . . ." Ref: Kappler, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 525-527; Comm'r of Indian affairs Report for 1839.
January. The steamboat Kansas, upbound on the Missouri, stopped at Jefferson City, Mo., on the 20th, and the local paper commented on "the novel spectacle of a steam boat landing at our shore in January."
During the last week of January, the Pirate (a new craft) ascended the river (above Jefferson City), and the Kansas came down. Floating ice was thick in the Missouri, and the water level low. Ref: Jeffersonian Republican, Jefferson City, Mo., January 26 and February 2, 1839.
January. A petition (relating to withheld annuity funds) from the Pottawatomies of Pottawatomie creek, Osage River Subagency, which Subagent A. L. Davis forwarded to Washington on January 22(?), was signed by about 110 Indians.
The principal chief of the Pottawatomie Nation To-pen-e-bee headed the list. Other leading chiefs who signed were O-ke-mas, Che-bas, Pash-pa-ho, We-we-say, Ash-kum, Sin-ba-nim, Au-be-nah-ba, and I-o-way. Louis "Bernott" [Burnett?] and Abraham Burnett were 14th and 15th on the list of chiefs. Among the prominent Indians in the section headed "young men*' of the Pottawatomie Nation were J[oseph] N[apoleon] Bourassa, Luther Rice, and Stephen Bourassa. Ref: Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 26.
February. The last day of the month, the Kansas (again upbound see January) was at Jefferson City; and departed March 1 for Independence, Mo. The Missouri was reported "higher than in many months/' and excellent for navigation.
(In the latter part of February, the Howard, going downriver, sank and was "entirely lost.") Ref: Jeffersonian Republican, March 2, 1839.
March 4. Joshua Pilcher was appointed to head the superintendency of Indian affairs, St. Louis (as successor to William Clark, deceased ) . Ref: 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 126 (Serial 357), p. 5; OIA, Letters received from SIA, St. Louis (National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 752) contains Pilcher's March 13, 1839, letter of acceptance.
March 10. With their missionary, the Rev. Christian Hoecken, the Catholic band of Pottawatomies (600? Indians see p. 158) moved, in a body, from Pottawatomie creek to a new home 15 miles southward, on (Big) Sugar creek, present Linn county. A small log church (replaced in 1840 by a larger one) was built immediately after they were settled, the Indians erecting it in three days' time. Thus the Pottawatomie Catholic Mission of October,
166 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
1838, origin was re-established on Sugar creek, where it would remain till 1848 when the Indians again moved to a Kansas river reserve.
The location of these Pottawatomies was approximately four miles (in a direct line) northeast of present Centerville, Linn co. (The government survey plat of the 1850's, shows an "old Indian field" in Sections 12 and 13, T. 21 S., R. 22 E., which coincides, generally, with the above description.) In 1843 Father Felix Verreydt wrote that the mission was "about 15 miles directly west from the point where the military road leading from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Scott crosses the Osage River" (i. e. y 15 miles west of present
Trading Post, Linn co. see July, 1839, annals entry, p. 177).
On April 26, 1839, Father Herman G. Aelen and Brother Francis Van der Borght arrived at Sugar creek. For two months Aelen worked among other tribes (Peorias, Ottawas, etc.). But when Father Hoecken left the Indian country in July, because of illness, Father Aelen took charge of Pottawatomie mission. It is recorded in Hoecken's diary that after he left the Indians "were sorely tried by sickness and disease" and "being without medicines, they died in great numbers in . . . [1839] and . . . 1840." ( Hoecken returned to Sugar Creek mission in 1841.) A school for Indian boys was opened July 7, 1840. Ref: Christian Hoecken's "Diary," in Kinsella, op. cit., p. 227; Garraghan, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 194-196; Felix Verreydt*s report in Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1842. In Kinsella, op. cit., the location of the Pottawatomie settlement of Sugar creek is stated as "Five and a half miles northeast, on the Michael Zimmerman farm, but about four miles in a direct line from Centerville."
March 11. At the first term of the Platte county (Mo.) court, Isaac M. C. Ellis was licensed to keep a ferry on the Missouri between the Platte county side and the Kickapoo village in "Kansas." His location, it appears, was some three and a half miles above Weston, Mo. Ref: The name is "Isaac McEllis" in W. M. Paxton's Annals of Platte County, Missouri (Kansas City, Mo., 1897), p. 26, and in the History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri . . . (St. Louis, 1885), p. 572; but in Edwards Brothers' An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Platte County, Missouri (Philadelphia, 1877), p. 10, a tax list of 1839 lists "Isaac M. C. Ellis," and several other taxpayers with the surname "Ellis." See, also, KHQ, v. 2, p. 25.
In the spring (March?, or April?), Capt. John D. Keiser's new steamboat Shawnee, built for the Missouri river trade at Pittsburgh, Pa., and chartered there early in the year by the Rev. Jerome C. Berryman, arrived at Westport Landing, Mo., with a load of materials for the new Shawnee Methodist Mission and Indian manual labor school, in present Johnson county. (See May 23, 1839, annals item, p. 171.) Berryman, sent East (by Rev. Thomas Johnson) to make the purchases, had spent a month at Pittsburgh on this mission. Ref: KHC, v. 16, p. 219.
April 6. A commission as subagent for the Osage Indians was forwarded from St. Louis to Congreve Jackson, of Howard county,
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 167
Mo. (The Osages, since the resignation of their long-time agent-subagent Paul Ligueste Chouteau, had been in the temporary charge of Robert A. Galloway, head of the Neosho River Subagency [in northeastern "Oklahoma"].) Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, pp. 2, 3; 25th Cong., 2d Sess., H. Doc. No. 135 (Serial 326).
April. The American Fur Company's Antelope (Edward F. Chouteau, master) left St. Louis April 4 on the annual journey to the upper Missouri trading posts. She carried about 12 clerks and 120 hands. Around midmonth this steamboat passed along the "Kansas" shore.
French scientist Joseph N. Nicollet (in U.S. government service) was aboard, and in his party were Lt. John C. Fremont (of the U. S. Topographical Engineers), Charles A. Geyer (botanist), Etienne Provost (mountain man), Louis Zindel (former Prussian soldier), and one other person. (They were to be convoyed to Fort Pierre [S. D.]; there to begin an overland journey which would take them as far as Devi's Lake [N. D.], for the purpose of collecting data for Nicollet's subsequently-prepared map of the "Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River.")
Company employees making this journey (or part of it) included John F. A. Sanford, William Laidlaw, and James Kipp. From Council Bluffs (Iowa) as far as the Vermilion river (some 360 miles upstream), Father Pierre-Jean De Smet was also a passenger on the Antelope.
In a report (dated September 13, 1843), Nicollet observed that they were 69 days (April 4- June 12) in ascending a distance of 1,271 miles (from St. Louis to Fort Pierre), "which, on the Mississippi, and with a steamboat of the same power, could have been accomplished in twelve days." Neither Nicollet's report or his journal (begun April 21, 1839, in the Council Bluffs vicinity) contain mention of the "Kansas" area of the Missouri. Ref: 28th Cong., 2d Sess., House Doc. 52 (Serial 464), for Nicollet's report; Missouri
Republican, St. Louis, April 5, 1839, item, as quoted in Nebraska Historical Society Publications, v. 20, p. 97; South Dakota Historical Collections, Pierre, v. 10, pp. 98-129; North Dakota History, Bismarck, v. 21, pp. 75-82; Annie H. Abel, editor, Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark (Pierre, S. D., 1932), p. 270 (Note 257); John C. Fremont's Memoirs . . . (1887), pp. 30-54; Chittenden and Richardson, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 179-182; Susan D. McKelvey's Botanical Exploration of the Trans-Mississippi West . . . (1955), pp. 659-667.
April 20(?) The Pirate, which had started up the Missouri from St. Louis on April 2, hit a snag and sank about seven miles below Council Bluffs (Iowa).
The total damage was estimated at $40,000. She carried government provisions for the Council Bluffs Pottawatomies, and for scientist Joseph N. Nicollet's party (traveling on the Antelope). Supplies for Father De Smet's Catholic mission at Council Bluffs also were lost. Ref: Chittenden and Richardson, op. cit., v. 1, p. 183; Garraghan, op. cit. t v. 1, p. 441; Abel, op. cit., p. 270 (Note 257). In OIA, Letters received from SIA, St. Louis (National Archives Microcopy 234, Roll 752), Agent John Dougherty's requisitions for the quarter ending June 30, 1839, include one of April 8 date for transportation (upriver) of himself, John Gantt, and Jeffery Dorion on the Pirate. In ibid., is Dougherty's letter
163 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of April 4, 1839, from Liberty, Mo., referring to his impending journey to the Council Bluffs with the disbursing agent. He planned to go up on the Antelope.
April. After a journey to the Kansa villages, in company with Agent R. W. Cummins ( and five other persons ) , Fort Leavenworth's chaplain, the Rev. Henry Gregory, wrote:
"The number of the Kauzas, as ascertained from the pay roll, during my visit, is 1588. They are settled principally in the eastern part of their country, on the Kauzas river, and continuously [?] to each other, as respects the three several villages. . . . Their missionary [the Rev. William Johnson], his assistant!?], and the farmer [James Hays] are Methodists, and speak more or less of the Kauzas language.
"The U. S., within the last two or three years, have made . . . [the Kansa] several fields for corn, and have furnished them with a farmer and blacksmith. (The assistant blacksmith [Charles Fish] is a Shawanoe Indian, and a good workman too.) . . . nearly every head of a family is beginning to engage in agriculture. . . . They are abandoning their filthy wigwams of earth, and beginning to erect dwellings of logs. Several of them have recently fenced and cultivated little fields of their own."
(Agent R. W. Cummins, in his annual report for 1838, had stated: "This tribe number about 1,700; they are divided into three bands, each band having a village or town, all located on the Kanzas river; two of which, one on the north [Fool Chiefs] and the other [Hard Chiefs, apparently] on the south bank [are] nearly opposite each other. . . . [The third] is on the north bank, about 30 miles higher up. . . ." In February, 1839, Missionary William Johnson had written: "The Kanzas . . . number two thousand souls. . . .") Ref: Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 20 (February, 1840), p. 42 (for Gregory's letter reprinted from Spirit of Missions). As quoted above, the order of the letter's contents has been altered. See Comm'r of Indian affairs Report for 1838 (for Cummins); and KHC, v. 16, p. 230 (for Johnson). The chief, in 1839, of the "third" village (which soon changed location again) is not known. By 1841 Chief E-ya-no-sa had a village eight miles above the Kansa mission, on the south side of the Kansas river, near the mouth of present Mill creek, Wabaunsee co. See KHC, v. 16, p. 264.
May 1. Bound for Chihuahua, by way of Santa Fe, Josiah Gregg's trading caravan (fitted out by Gregg and George C. Pickett), left Van Buren, Ark., to follow a route across "Oklahoma” on the north side of the Canadian river. There were 34 men, 14 road wagons (carrying about $25,000 in goods), half drawn by mules, half by oxen, a carriage, a Jersey wagon, and two swivels on one pair of wheels.
Lt. J. M. Bowman and some 40 First U. S. dragoons were detailed to meet the traders at Camp Holmes (see location in KHQ, v. 28, p. 510) and escort them westward (to the boundary?). If the dragoons actually performed this service, Josiah Gregg signally failed to mention it in his Commerce of the Prairies (1844).
Gregg's caravan reached Santa Fe on June 25; subsequently departed for Chihuahua in August; arrived on October 1; left there October 31; and was back at Santa Fe on December 6. Leaving Santa Fe on February 25, 1840, 47 men, Gregg's 27 wagons, one belonging to Samuel Wethered and James
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 169
R. Ware, and some 200 mules made up the returning caravan. The route was "in the vicinity" of the 1839 journey west, except that the party traveled much of the way on the south side of the Canadian. On April 22 the caravan reached Van Buren, Ark. Ref: Arkansas State Gazette, Little Rock, May 15, 1839; Gregg, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 9-155; M. G. Fulton, editor, Diary 6- Letters of Josiah Gregg . . . (Norman, Okla., 1941), pp. 43-69; Grant Foreman's Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest, pp. 241, 242. See Carl I. Wheat's Mapping the Transmississippi West (San Francisco, 1957), v. 2 (1958), pp. 174-176 for the Garland-Gregg map of 1841 and comment on it. Gregg's route to Santa Fe in 1839, and his return route of 1840 are shown on this manuscript map. The dragoon escort is noted in the Arkansas Gazette issue (noted above); also, Maj. Gen.
Alexander Macomb in his 1839 report (26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 1 [Serial 354], p. 56) mentioned the two squadrons of the First dragoons "currently engaged" in building Fort Wayne. "These squadrons," he wrote, "also furnished last spring an escort to a caravan of traders to Santa Fe in Mexico."
May 4. At Sapling Grove (about eight miles from Westport, Mo., in the Shawnee reserve) the various persons 27 in all who were to comprise the American Fur Company caravan of 1839, gathered for their first overnight camp. (Most of them had set out from Westport the organizing point that morning.)
Moses ("Black") Harris headed the expedition. There were eight other Company hands; and an outfit of four two-wheeled mule-drawn carts, plus pack animals. (The mules and horses of the entire party totaled between 50 and 60.)
Two independent Oregon-bound missionary couples made this trip: the Rev. John S. Griffin and his bride Desire C. (Smith) Griffin; Asahel Munger (a carpenter) and his wife Eliza. (The Munger's diary is one source of information on the journey. ) With the missionaries was Paul Richardson, hired as hunter.
Another cotraveler was Dr. Frederick A. Wislizenus, of St. Louis (who had been at Westport since debarking from the S*. Peters at Chouteau's Landing sometime in mid- April). The narrative of Wislizenus (as translated from the German) states: "All the rest [including himself] joined the expedition as individuals," and most were headed for the Columbia, or California "actuated by some commercial motive." (See, also, September 17 entry.)
Sapling Grove, says Wislizenus, was "in a little hickory wood, with fresh spring water." From the Grove, on May 5, the company "marched over the broad Santa Fe road, beaten out by the caravans." Then, turning to the right, they "took a narrow wagon road, established by former journeys to the Rocky Mts., but often so indistinctly traced, that our leader at times lost it, and simply followed the general direction . . . through prairie with many undulating hills of good soil ... [and through a region] watered with a few brooks and rivulets. . . ." [Wislizenus thus pictures for us "Subletted Trace" as it was in 1839, just prior to becoming known as the "Oregon trail."]
On the fifth day of travel (May 8) the caravan "reached the Kanzas, or, as it is commonly called, Ka River . . ." [Wislizenus]. Camp was made "on an elevation near the river," to await the arrival of the Company's "canoe" (bringing supplies up the Kansas). Wislizenus says this camp was "some miles" below the Kansa village, and implies that they had traveled about 100 miles to reach the crossing point. [This fits the general description of
170 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the American Fur Company's 1838 crossing place see p. 148.] But Asahel Munger wrote that the camp (the missionaries' camp, at least) was "within 2& miles" of the Kansa village. This would seem to place the crossing higher above present Topeka than is indicated by the other accounts.
For about two and a half days the caravan remained on the Kansas river's south bank. On May 9 the Mungers visited Missionaries William and Mary Jane (Chick) Johnson at the not-far-distant Kansa Methodist Mission (see p. 43, and p. 149), where they exchanged three horses for two horses and two mules. Next day, the Griffins called on the Johnsons.
Doctor Wislizenus, too, made a "side trip" to the deserted Kansa village. ("The greater part of the inhabitants were hunting buffalo. The rest had gone to our camp.") This settlement presumably Hard Chiefs town was "on an elevation from which one can enjoy a pleasant and wide view." "The whole village consists of 50 to 60 huts, built, all in one style, in four somewhat irregular rows. The structure is very simple. On a round, arched frame of poles and bark, earth is placed with grass or reeds; at the top, in the middle, an opening is left for light and smoke; in front, at the ground, a similar opening as an entrance; and the shanty is finished. At the open door there is usually a reed-covered passage, extending a few steps into the street. There are about twelve cut braces inside the house; the fireplace is under the opening in the roof; at the side are some bunks of plaited strips of wood. The whole is rather spacious."
The "canoe" having arrived, the American Fur Company caravan crossed the Kansas river on May 11. The boat was utilized to carry the baggage over; the carts (empty) were driven across, and the animals swam the river. The travelers repacked and "drove on 3 hours and camped." From this point they were again on "Sublette's Trace."
Apparently, on May 23d the expedition crossed from the Little Blue to the Platte; on June 14 Fort Laramie was reached; and on July 5 this company arrived at the Green river rendezvous. The missionaries eventually reached their "Oregon" destination. Of the noncompany travelers, Dr. Frederick A. Wislizenus, Paul Richardson, and two others reappear on the "Kansas" scene see September 17, entry. Ref: Oregon Historical Quarterly, v. 8 (December, 1907), pp. 387-405 (for the Mongers' diary); F. A. Wislizenus, A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1839 (St. Louis, 1912), pp. 27-105; Missouri Republican, St. Louis, April 12, 1839, item on the Griffins (reprinted in Nebraska Historical Society Publications, v. 20, p. 102); De Voto, op. cit., pp. 379, 380; H. H. Bancroft's History of Oregon (1886), v. 1 (1834-1848), pp. 239, 240, lists a number of the "individuals" in the party.
May 7. Julius C. Robidoux was licensed by the Buchanan county ( Mo. ) court to keep a ferry on the Missouri river at Robidoux's Landing (at, or near present St. Joseph, Mo.). Ref: The History of Buchanan County, Missouri . . . (St. Joseph, Mo., 1881), p. 167.
May 11. In Platte county, Mo., William Hague was granted a license to operate a ferry on the Missouri at the Fort Leavenworth crossing. Ref: Paxton, op. cit., p. 27.
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May- June. The annual spring caravan which crossed "Kansas" to Santa Fe contained, by one report, "93 men with 53 wagons” (Another traveler wrote that the train contained about 40 "immense waggons" and nearly 400 mules.) Dr. David Waldo and Manuel Alvarez headed the caravan, and presumably were the principal proprietors.
On June 19, after this wagon train had corraled for the night on the east bank of Pawnee Fork (near present Lamed), the "Peoria party" (see p. 172) came up and joined the traders, to travel in company as far as the Arkansas crossing a point which was reached on June 28. (The Kansa Indians, on their summer hunt, were on the west bank at Pawnee Fork crossing.)
Solomon P. Sublette (youngest of the five Sublette brothers) may have been with this wagon train. It is known that he left Independence, Mo., by the late spring of 1839, to return to Santa Fe.
The ledgers of Manuel Alvarez seem to indicate that he had (during his trip East in the winter of 1838-1839) purchased goods in New York, Philadelphia, etc., valued at $9,411.93, which were carried to Santa Fe in the above caravan; and that his wagons, teams, and other equipment were given a valuation of about $2,500 (at Independence, prior to starting on the overland journey). Ref: R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1904-1906), v. 28, pp. 80-93 (for Thomas J. Farnham's account); L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., pp. 88-45, 100-102, 297; New Mexico Historical Review, Santa Fe, v. 21 (April, 1946), p. 136 (for Alvarez ledgers), and v. 36 (January, 1961), p. 52 (for item on Solomon P. Sublette).
In early May, by report, Captain Kelly's train ( 14 wagons; about 30 men) started from Independence, Mo., for Santa Fe. But this company did not leave Council Grove till early June. (Untrained mules, and a 'long . . . spell of rainy weather" contributed to the delay.)
On June 12, at Cottonwood Crossing, the mounted "Peoria party" (see p. 172 ) overtook and passed Kelly's wagon train. Ref: Thwaites, op. cit., v. 28, pp. 57, 68 (for Farnham's mention of Kelly and company); L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., pp. 30, 34, 35 (for Oakley's account), p. 71 (for Sidney Smith's mention); J. E. Sunder, editor, Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail (Norman, Okla., c1960), p. 81.
May. New missionaries at Shawnee Baptist Mission (present Johnson county) were: the Rev. Francis Barker (who began work on the 20th), and Elizabeth Churchill (who arrived on the 25th). (See, also, October 23 entry.) Ref: Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 19 (September, 1839), p. 228.
May 23. At the site of the new Shawnee Methodist Mission and Indian manual labor school (present Johnson county), about 40 men were at work on the project (which had been started late in January).
The location (as described by Agent R. W. Cummins in October, 1838, when he and the Rev. Thomas Johnson chose it): about six miles nearly due
172 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
south of the mouth of the Kansas river, and about half a mile west of the Missouri line. (By current survey description: the S. W. K of Sec. 3, T. 12, R. 25 E.) "The site," he wrote, "is on a beautiful elevated ritch prairie near & adjoining a beautiful grove of timber on the south on a small creek known by the name of brush creek . . . there are also three springs which are in a line in the edge of the timber. . . ."
Accomplishments on the project, as of May 23, by Cummins' report: 400 acres of land rail-fenced (12 acres in orchard, and in vegetables; 176 in corn, 85 in oats; "five ploughs . . . breaking the balance . . . which is intended for timothy and blue grass"). "The buildings are under way” he wrote, "mechanics preparing brick, 30,000 feet of lumber at the place, 15,000 of it dressed ready for laying floors, 2,500 lights of sash made, stone quarried for the first building, nails, glass, hinges, locks &c ready on the premises." See, also, October 22-29, 1839, annals entry. Ref: R. W. Cummins' letter of October 18, 1838 (photostat from National Archives, in KHi ms. division); SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 8, pp. 4, 5 (for Cummins' May 23, 1839, report); Christian Advocate and Journal, v. 13 (March 8, 1839), p. 113 (for Johnson's January 22, 1839, letter).
May 29. With Thomas J. Farnham as captain, 18 mounted men (mostly from Peoria, Ill., and all novices in the West), set out from a camp west of Independence, Mo. (Seven pack mules carried provisions.) Oregon was their destination (they called themselves the "Oregon Dragoons"), but their pathway (on the advice of traders Andrew W. Sublette and Philip F. Thompson) was the Santa Fe trail and upper Arkansas route.
[A book Farnham subsequently wrote, together with the journals of Obadiah Oakley and Sidney Smith, and Robert Shortess's later-written narrative, give detailed information on the experiences of this company.]
The Peoria party crossed the Big Blue (of Missouri) on May 31 and encamped that evening at Elm (or Round) Grove [about 33? miles west of Independence] in the Shawnee reserve. By the evening of June 7 (after several days of delays) they were at 110-Mile creek. Next day three men turned back (accompanying a returning wagon party which had been out to Council Grove). At Cottonwood Crossing the Peorians overtook, and passed, Captain Kelly's train (see p. 171); on June 13, about eight miles east of the Little Arkansas, they met Charles Bent's Missouri-bound wagons (see p. 173); on the 16th a hunting detachment of the Peorians caught up with the large Santa Fe-bound traders' caravan (headed by Dr. David Waldo and Manual Alvarez); and on the 19th, at Pawnee Fork, the rest of the party joined this wagon train to travel in company as far as the Arkansas crossing (see p. 171).
On June 21, in a gun accident, Sidney Smith severely wounded himself. (Doctor Waldo removed the bullet, and gave other assistance.) At the Arkansas crossing (on June 28 ) three more of the "Oregon Dragoons" deserted to head for Santa Fe with the caravan. A man named Blair (from the wagon train) joined the dissension-split Peoria party, which with this accession,
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 173
totaled 13. Continuing up the Arkansas (Smith despite his wound managed to ride a mule) the group traveled together as far as Bent's Fort reached on July 6.
Robert Shortess headed the party of eight which then proceeded to Fort St. Vrain on the South Platte. (Eventually six of these men arrived in Oregon five, at least, in 1840.) Farnham, Smith, Oakley, Joseph Wood, and Blair, hiring a trapper named Kelly to guide them across the Rockies, made their way to Fort Davy Crockett on Green river. There, Oakley and Wood turned back, but the other three went on to Oregon. Ref: L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., pp. 20-120 (Obadiah Oakley's journal, pp. 25-64; Sidney Smth's diary, pp. 67-93; Robert Shortess's narrative pp. 94-120). Thomas J. Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Praries from the London, 1843, edition (as reprinted in Thwaites, op. cit., v. 28). The Shortess narrative was also published in 1896, in the Transactions (24th annual reunion) of the Oregon Pioneer Association.
June-October. G. S. Turtle's contract with the war department called for delivery at Fort Leavenworth of 1,000,000 "well-burnt bricks" 200,000 each month beginning June 1 for which he was to receive $7.39 per thousand.
(In November, 1838, the quartermaster general had noted the satisfactory progress "during the past season in the work of enlarging and repairing the quarters at Fort Leavenworth, and in the erection of stables, rendered indispensably necessary by the increase of the dragoon force stationed at that post. . . .")
In November, 1839, the quartermaster general reported: "The barracks at Fort Leavenworth are in rapid progress; and if an adequate appropriation be made, they may be completed during the next year.”
(At the end of 1840, out of an 1840 appropriation of $30,000 for barracks, quarters, etc. at Fort Leavenworth, $10,000 had been spent.) Ref: 25th Cong., 3d Sess., House Ex. Doc. No. 2 (Serial 344), p. 123 (for 1838 report); 26th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Doc. No. 89 (Serial 365), p. 19 (for Turtle contract,
made by Capt. Thomas Swords, AQM, on December 31, 1838); 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 1 (Serial 354), p. 113 (for 1839 report); 26th Cong., 2d Sess., H. Doc. No. 74 (Serial 383), p. 4 (for 1840 item). For a sketch of Fort Leavenworth in 1838, see KHQ, v. 22, facing p. 113.
BORN: on June 9, at Delaware Baptist Mission (present Wyandotte county), Olive Ann Blanchard, daughter of Missionaries Ira D. and Mary (Walton) Blanchard. Ref: A. J. Paddock correspondence, in KHi ms. division.
June. En route from Bent's Fort to St. Louis, Charles Bent, and "Larout" [Antoine Leroux?], with 30 to 35 men, 10 ox-and-mule-drawn wagons (carrying peltries), and 200 "Santa Fe sheep” crossed "Kansas" on the Santa Fe trail. On June 13, in present McPherson county, the west-bound "Peoria party" met this east-bound train. (Bent, earlier, had lost 30 mules and seven horses. These strays were found by the Peorians and taken to Bent's Fort. )
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Ref: Thomas J. Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies (as reprinted in Thwaites, op. cit., v. 28, p. 71); L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., pp. 36, 37, 40, 50 (in Obadiah Oakley's journal); Oregon Pioneer Association, Transactions (24th Annual Reunion), 1896, p. 95 (Robert Shortess narrative).
MARRIED: the Rev. Jesse Greene (a presiding elder in the Methodists' Missouri conference) and Mary Todd (teacher at Shawnee Methodist Mission), on June 21, by the Rev. Thomas Johnson, at the "old" mission (present Wyandotte county). Mary Todd had come to Shawnee mission late in December, 1838.
Ref: Belle Greene's letter of November 13, 1906, in KHi ms. division; Jesse Greene's [Note Book], in ibid.; Jackson county, Missouri marriage records (where the date is given as June 25 perhaps the date of recording?); KHC, v. 9, p. 165 (footnote), v. 16, p. 196; Kansas City (Mo.) Star, January 23, 1925 (reminiscences of T. J. Greene).
BORN: on June 22, at the "old'' Shawnee Methodist Mission (present Wyandotte county), William Thomas Johnson, son of the Rev. Thomas and Sarah T. (Davis) Johnson. Ref: 15th Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, p. 35; KHC, v. 12, p. xii. This infant died less than a year later on April 2, 1840.
June 24. Agent R. W. Cummins reported the completion of a house for the Shawnee blacksmiths [who were, in 1839, Robert Dunlap and James M. Simpson]. J. J. Edwards had built this residence at a cost of $650.
(Cummins, in 1838, had stated: "The Blacksmiths' shops are located about six miles southwest of the northeast corner of [the Shawnees'] lands." This seems to be the same location referred to by Dr. Wilson Hobbs [who was at Shawnee Friends Mission in 1850]. He recollected that: "Adjoining us [the mission] on the east was the government blacksmith and shop.") Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 8, typed copy, p. 12 (and see v. 7, typed copy, p. 28); Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1838 (for Cummins' 1838 statement); KHC, v. 8, p. 255 (for Hobbs). For names of blacksmiths see last 1839 annals entry.
June 27. Joseph V. Hamilton (sutler, and postmaster, at Fort Leavenworth) was appointed agent of the Council Bluffs Agency (for the Otoes, Missourias, Omahas, and Pawnees) to succeed John Dougherty.
On August 1 Sup't Joshua Pilcher wrote Hamilton: "so much has the public service suffered on the Upper Missouri for months past, that it is found necessary to order you forthwith to your post. . . . You will please proceed immediately to Bellevue ... & receive from Major Dougherty . . . [if he is there] all books, papers [etc.]. . . ." Agent Hamilton reached Fort Leavenworth about August 12, and left for Bellevue on the 24th(?). Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, pp. 32, 33, v. 8, pp. 8, 11; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 126 (Serial 357), p. 6; KHC, v. 14, p. 638.
About July 1 a small caravan (18 men, with a few wagons ) left Independence, Mo., for Santa Fe. In the company were several Mexican citizens among them Don Antonio Jose Luna and Captain Branch (Jose de Jesus Branch, of Taos). There were also a
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 175
number of Americans, one of whom was actor Matthew (Matt) C. Field.
[A journal Field kept, mostly in verse, provides an account of the party's progress from Cottonwood Crossing to Bent's Fort; and his later-written series of 85 "Sketches of the Mountains and the Prairies," based on his experiences in 1839, contain much Santa Fe trail information and description, as well as some fiction.]
Matt Field and his companions came to the great bend of the Arkansas on July 21; at rain-swollen Walnut creek (reached on the 22d) they were delayed three days; on the 28th they passed near Pawnee Rock. [Later, Field wrote of this landmark: "Pawnee Rock springs like a huge wart from the carpeted green of the prairie. It is about thirty feet high, and perhaps an hundred around the base. One tall, rugged portion of it is rifted from the main mass of rock, and stands totally inaccessible and alone. Some twenty names are cut in the stone, and dates are marked as far as ten years back." In another of his "sketches," he recounted a "Legend of Pawnee Rock."]
At Big Coon creek, on July 31, these travelers were delayed by heavy rains; next day they came to the Arkansas again, and continued up its north bank, arriving at Fort William (Bent's Fort) about mid- August. Several days later they crossed the Arkansas and continued the journey. Matt Field reached Santa Fe after a stop-over at Taos. The caravan, taking a direct route, arrived there in the fore part of September. (See October annals entry for Matt Field's return journey.) Ref: Sunder, op. cit., pp. xvii-xxix, 3-50, 60-142 passim (especially p. 100, for Pawnee Rock description). The sketch on Pawnee Rock was published in the New Orleans Weekly Picayune of November 9, 1840. All 85 "sketches" appeared in both the daily and weekly issues of the Picayune between December, 1839, and October, 1841.
DIED: Daniel Morgan Boone "one of the two surviving sons of [famed frontiersman] Daniel Boone," on July 13, "near West Port, Mo./' reportedly of cholera ( ? ) . He was about 71 years old. (From 1827-1831 he had been a "Kansas'* resident, as government farmer for the Kansa Indians.) Ref: Jeffersonian Republican, Jefferson City, Mo., August 31, 1839 (which gave his age as 72); Hazel A. Spraker's The Boone Family . . . (Rutland, Vt., 1922), pp. 65 (where his birth date is listed as December 23, 1769), and 123, 124 (where it is stated he was aged 71 years, 1 month, and 19 days on July 13, 1839); Samuel Lewis' letter of March 16, 1839, from Westport see Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, v. 4, p. 114 referred to Boone's "feeble health." A list of Daniel Morgan Boone's children (with birth dates) is in KHC, v. 8, p. 434. In Vital Historical Records of Jackson County, Missouri, compiled by the Kansas City chapter, D. A. R. (c1934), p. 411, Boone's birth date is given as December 23, 1769, and death date as July 13, 1839; and his wife, Sarah Griffin (Lewis) Boone is stated to have died June 19, 1850.
BORN: on July 13, at Fort Leavenworth, Mary Kearny, daughter of Col. Stephen W. and Mary (Radford) Kearny. Ref: D. L. Clarke's Stephen Watts Kearny . . . (Norman, Okla., c1961), p. 77.
MARRIED: Martin Greene and Sarah Ann Pugh, both of Shawnee Methodist Mission, on July 14, by the Rev. Thomas Johnson, at the "old" mission (present Wyandotte county). Ref: Jackson county, Mo., marriage records.
176 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
July. Weston, Mo. (as later recollected by W. M. Paxton, who had been there from July 14 to 20), was a "busy, bustling town of three hundred people."
(Early-day histories state that Joseph Moore, ex-soldier, from Fort Leavenworth, selected the town site in the fall of 1837; that in 1838 Bela M. Hughes [then just 21] purchased a half interest in it; that after he took control, in the winter of 1838-1839, the town began to prosper; and that the plat of Weston was recorded in 1839.)
In May, 1840, Weston was reported to have 400 inhabitants. Ref: Paxton, op. cit., pp. 23, 24; History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri . . ., p. 561; Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, v. 20, p. 119.
July 16. Andrew Potter, recently blacksmith for the Kickapoos, was stabbed and killed by a drunken Indian named Wapuatuck (a son of Kennekuk, the Prophet) at the subagency building on the Kickapoo reserve, in the presence of Potter's family and others (white men and Indians).
Dragoons arrested Wapuatuck and he was put in the Fort Leavenworth guardhouse. (In April, 1841, he was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, and fined $500. Apparently he was given clemency by the President in May(?), 1841.) One result of the incident, as reported by Agent R. W. Cummins, was the subsequent "backwardness in some of the parents of the children in sending or letting them remain at the school [for the Kickapoos, supported by the government, and taught by a Methodist missionary]." Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, p. 65, v. 8, pp. 9, 10, and in typed copy, p. 129; Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs, 1839; KHQ, v. 28, p. 345; "Remsburg Scrapbook," v. 1, p. 200 (in KHi library), or Atchison Daily Globe, June 19, 1908; OIA, "Letters received from SIA, St. Louis" (Microcopy 234, Roll 752, National Archives), see secretary of war's letter of May 17, 1841; New Orleans Weekly Picayune, June 28, 1841.
July. The trading licenses issued by Joshua Pilcher (sup't of Indian affairs, St. Louis) in 1839 which had a "Kansas" connection were all issued during this month:
Joseph Robidoux July 17 At Robidoux's trading house "five miles west of Blacksnake Hills," Mo.; and, on the south [Kansas] side of the Missouri, with the Iowas, Kickapoos, and Sacs & Foxes
Joseph Lafleche July 23 With the lowas and Sacs of Missouri at their villages [in Kansas]; also with the united Pottawatomies at their [Council Bluffs, Ia.] villages; at Bellevue, Cabanne's post, and at the Pawnee villages [all in present Nebraska]
P[ierre] Chouteau, Jr. & Co. July 25 With the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawatowatomies at their villages [Council Bluffs, Ia.] and on the Marais des Cygnes [in Kansas]; and with the Osages near their villages on Grand [Neosho] river [in Kansas]
The license for Pierre Chouteau, Jr., & Co. is notable for mention of the location on the Marais des Cygnes the American Fur Company's new post (of 1839 origin?) for the newly arrived Pottawatomies' trade, on the river's south bank at the ford on the new Fort
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 177
Leavenworth-Fort Gibson military road, about three miles west of the Missouri line, where now is the village of Trading Post, Linn co. Michel Giraud headed this establishment, and for some years it was known as Giraud's trading post.
(Trading Post was the locale of the May, 1858, "Marais des Cygnes massacre" in which five Free-State men were murdered and five wounded by a Proslavery gang from Missouri see KHQ, v. 10, p. 356 for historical marker text. William P. Tomlinson who visited "Chotteau's Trading Post" [his spelling] in 1858, wrote: "It is an old place, having been established as a frontier post to trade with the Indians long before Kansas was organized as a Territory. The buildings are chiefly log long, low, and ruinous. . . .") See February 21 and August 10, 1840, annals for other information on Giraud, his associates, and an early marriage at "Trading Post." Ref: OIA, Letters received from SI A, St. Louis (National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 752), Pilcher's abstract of licenses granted in SIA, St. Louis for the year 1839; William P. Tomlinson's Kansas in Eighteen Fifty-Eight . . . (New York, 1859), p. 62; M. Giraud is mentioned in Abel, op. cit., pp. 210 and 407; W. A. Mitchell's Linn County, Kansas . . . (c1928), pp. 197, 198, contains an account of the Giraud- Chouteau trading post.
In July, apparently, a party of 159 Shawnees from "Neosho, Arkansas," arrived to join their kinsmen on the reservation in "Kansas." Agent R. W. Cummins wrote, on July 23, that he had made a contract with John C. McCoy to "furnish and issue provisions" to these Indians, and was forwarding a muster roll of the immigrants to Sup't Joshua Pilcher.
As Cummins explained it, the Shawnees west of the Mississippi [i. e., those living in Missouri] who made the November 7, 1825, treaty (see KHQ, v. 27, p. 540) had separated afterwards; some (Fish's band) had moved to the reservation in "Kansas"; Lewis Rogers' party had stopped on the Osage river till 1832(?); a third party (the above band) had gone to Arkansas.
In his annual report for 1838, Cummins had stated: "This tribe [Shawnee] numbers about 975, besides those who still remain on the Neosho, Arkansas"; yet in his 1839 report (after the above 159 Shawnees arrived in "Kansas"), he gave the number of Shawnees in his agency as 963! (Perhaps he meant to write "including" rather than "besides," in 1838. ) Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 8, typed copy, pp. 15, 16; 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 161 (Serial 378), p. 57; Reports of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1838 and 1839.
July 25. A delegation of five or six Wyandots from Ohio arrived at Westport, Mo., to explore possible locations in "Kansas" to which their people might emigrate.
This party, which paid its own expenses, returned to Ohio without making a decision, but according to Isaac McCoy, who assisted them, they inclined to a location which included parts of the Shawnee and Delaware reserves. (See, also, November 7 entry.)Ref: Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs, 1839; Isaac McCoy's History of Baptist Indian Missions, p. 559.
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About July 26th trader Lancaster P. Lupton left Independence with six goods-laden, ox-drawn wagons and a small party of men, taking the Santa Fe road to head for his trading post "Fort Lupton," on the South Platte (some 50 miles north of present Denver).
On the upper Arkansas, on August 30, Vasquez & Subletted faster-moving company overtook and passed Lupton's outfit. Presumably Lupton reached his destination in mid-September. Ref: L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., pp. 161-167 (E. Willard Smith's journal).
July-August. Two-year licenses to trade with the Indians in the Fort Leavenworth Agency, as issued by Agent R. W. Cummins, were as follows:
Cyprian] Chouteau July 25 with the Delawares, Shawnees, and Kansa Charles Finley August 21 with all agency tribes [i. e., the above, plus
[Findlay] the Kickapoos]
James M. Hunter " " "
Robert Johnston
William McCoy " " "
T[homas] J. Guthrie
Ref: OIA, Letters received from SIA, St. Louis (National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 752), Abstract of licenses granted in SIA, St. Louis for 1839. William McCoy (and his brother John) arrived in Independence, Mo., in 1838 see The Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, v. 4 (April, 1948), p. 188 but McCoy is not listed in the 1840 U. S. census of Jackson county, Mo. Nor are James M. Hunter or Robert Johns (t)on in that census; but Findlay and Guthrie are.
Among the steamboats plying the Missouri during the middle and late summer, as reported at St. Louis, were the following:
In July, the Shawnee, Wilmington, the Smelter (which departed on the 25th for Independence, Mo.), and the General Leavenworth (which arrived from Independence on the 30th, with 50 cabin and 36 deck passengers).
In August, the new Naomi (George Taylor, master), the St. Peters, Kansas, Wilmington, Pizarro, the Smelter (which arrived from Independence on the 15th), Rhine, Malta, and Shawnee.
In September, the Rhine (which reached St. Louis on the 7th, had met the Pizarro at Glasgow, Mo., on the 4th, the S*. Peters on the 5th, aground at Pinkney bar, and the Malta, near the Missouri's mouth on the 6th). The Rhine reported the river very low and falling. However, the Pizarro (Cleveland, master) advertised to leave for Weston, Mo., on the 14th. Ref: Missouri Daily Argus, St. Louis, issues of July 23 through September 13, 1839 (microfilm, KHi).
August. On the 6th partners Louis Vasquez and Andrew W. Sublette, with four goods-laden wagons, and a party totaling 32 men, took the Santa Fe road out of Independence to head for "Fort Vasquez" on the South Platte (some 10 days* journey north of Bent's Fort). The teams (and most of the mounts) were mules. Sublette, at least, had a fleet horse.
Trader Philip F. Thompson (of Fort Davy Crockett, on Green river, beyond the continental divide) was in this company. (Apparently he had his trading goods on pack animals.) Baptiste Charbonneau (son of Sacajawea) was one
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 179
of the two half-breeds employed as hunters. Another traveler was E. Willard Smith (a young civil engineer), whose journal is the chief source of information on the journey.
The Vasquez-Sublette party arrived at Council Grove on August 15. Four more persons joined the group on the 16th. West of the "Kansas" boundary, on August 30, this cavalcade overtook trader Lancaster P. Lupton (whose ox-teams moved slowly). On September 3 the company passed Bent's Fort; and on the 13th reached Fort Vasquez.
(On August 2, west of the continental divide, Obadiah Oakley of the "Peoria party" met some of a company of 10 men under "Captain Craig" [one of Philip F. Thompson's partners at Fort Davy Crockettl. The party of 10 was en route to the South Platte to meet Thompson, who, as noted above, was on that date about to leave Independence, Mo.) Ref: L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. cit., p. 56, and pp. 151-195 (for E. Willard Smith's journal); The Colorado Magazine, v. 27 (July, 1950), pp. 161-188, contains the same material; and the Oregon Historical Quarterly, v. 14 (September, 1913), pp. 250-279, also contains Smith's journal (but with some slight variations). The Colorado Magazine, v. 29 (January, 1952), p. 20, has information on Philip F. Thompson. "A. Sublette and Phil Thompson" had arrived at Independence, Mo., from the mountains late in May, 1839 as noted by Robert Shortess in To the Rockies and Oregon (cited above), on p. 98. See, also, D. B. Nunis, Jr., Andrew Sublette . . . (Los Angeles, 1960), pp. 59, 60.
BORN: on August 19, at Fort Leavenworth, Clifton Ormsby Wharton, son (and first child) of Maj. Clifton and Oliveretta (Ormsby) Wharton.
Ref: Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Philadelphia, v. 2 (1878), p. 217; Wharton biographical data (in KHi ms. division and in KHi library). [Henry Shindler's] "History of Fort Leavenworth" (ms., in KHi library) states that all six Wharton children were born at Fort Leavenworth. The first reference above names four other Wharton children (without giving birth date) as Oliver Franklin, John Burgwin (died young), Josephine, and Mary Etta (died young).
August. A party of 108 Ottawa Indians from the Maumee Valley of Ohio, in charge of R. A. Forsyth, arrived at St. Louis, by steamboat on the 14th. It appears they were then transported by steamboat up the Missouri to Chouteau's Landing; and that the last stage of the journey was made in wagons. These Maumee Ottawas reached the reserve (in present Franklin county) before August 29. ( See earlier 1837 migration of the Maumee Ottawas to "Kansas/' on p. 75.)
As reported, two chiefs were with this band Autokee (the head chief), and Petonoquette "a much younger man," half French. Both were said to be "very good men, well informed, and not much inclined to barbarity." Autokee was a son of the "celebrated chief Tushquaquier, whom the Ottawas looked upon as "the father of the tribe." Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, p. 37, v. 8, typed copy, pp. 70, 71, 100, 101; Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs, 1839; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 126 (Serial 357), p. 8 (for emigrating officers); Henry R. Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs . . . (Philadelphia, 1851), p. 666; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Doc. No. 89 (Serial 365), p. 3. By inference, the war department contracts from this last reference, as listed below, relate to the Ottawas of Maumee: (1) J. Throckmorton, August 15, 1839, Transportation of "Indians, &c" to "Chouteau's Landing" as "soon as practicable"; (2) W. M. Chick, August 22, 1839, Transportation of "Indians" from "Chouteau's Land-
180 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ing" "to their homes, west," $4.50 for each wagon per day. Grant Foreman's The Last Trek of the Indians (c!946), pp. 91, 92, contains some additional information about the early stages of the Ottawas' journey, but is incorrect as to their trip west from St. Louis and the Indians' experiences after reaching "Kansas." Niles National Register, v. 57 (October 12, 1839), p. 112, says R. A. and D. C. Forsyth were the conductors.
During August and early September "Senores Thompson and Cordero" crossed "Kansas" with a large trading caravan (reportedly over 100 wagons) en route to Santa Fe.
"Cordero" was Jose Cardero of Chihuahua, Mexico and presumably he was bound for that place. Thompson's identity seems to be in question. It is possible he was P. W. Thompson, agent for the St. Louis trading house of Powell and Lament.
Matt Field, eastbound on the Santa Fe trail, noted the meeting of his party with the Thompson-Cardero wagon train on September 29, at a point within a week's travel of Santa Fe. In his diary he referred to the caravan as "Senor Cordero's Companero," and mentioned that he dined with the "American Drivers." Ref: Sunder, op. cit., pp. 54, 277. The Philip Thompson who was at Independence in June, 1839, left there August 6 (see annals entry) with the Vasquez-Sublette party; and therefore was not the same Thompson who went to Santa Fe.
August-September. The Santa Fe-bound 36-wagon caravan of Hicks & Marney which, on October 1, was approaching Rabbit Ear creek, and then within 10 days' travel of its destination, apparently crossed "Kansas" in late August and the fore part of September.
East-bound traveler Matt Field noted the meeting of his party with the caravan. He recorded the traders' names as "Hick & Barney." Ref: Sunder, op. cit., p. 54; James J. Webb, in Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 1844-1847 (Glendale, Calif., 1931), p. 133, refers to traders "Hicks and Marney."
September 5. From Fort Leavenworth, Col. Stephen W. Kearay, Maj. Clifton Wharton, and two First U. S. dragoon squadrons commanded by Capts. Nathan Boone and James Allen marched northward on the "Council Bluffs road" (across Leavenworth, Atchison, and Doniphan counties of today) toward the Platte.
(Other officers on this expedition were: Surg. Edward Macomb, and Lts. Philip R. Thompson [Adjt.], Enoch Steen, Levi P. Davidson, Robert H. Chilton, and William Bowman. Chap. Henry Gregory was along, too. )
At the Council Bluffs Agency, Bellevue (Neb.), on September 16, Colonel Kearny counciled with the Otoes and Missourias (against whom complaints had been made). The Indians' new agent, Joseph V. Hamilton, assuming responsibility for their future good conduct, dissuaded the colonel from punishing them.
On the 17th the dragoons crossed the Missouri and camped at a Pottawatomie village (at the Council Bluffs, Iowa, settlements) for the night. Next day Kearny counciled with some of the chiefs. The expedition then began the homeward march (the route is not recorded). On September 25 Kearny and his command returned to Fort Leavenworth.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 181
Ref: Louis Pelzer's Marches of the Dragoons . . . (Iowa City, 1917), pp. 82-85; Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, December 25, 1839; SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 8, pp. 8, 11, 56; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 1 (Serial 354), p. 56; Chittenden and Richardson, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 176, 177; Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 20 (February, 1840), pp. 42-44 (for Gregory).
September 6. In a report on his summer's work for the Indian department, Dr. Joseph R. De Prefontaine, of Westport, Mo., stated he had given smallpox vaccinations to 517 Delawares, 809 Shawnees, and 237 Kickapoos in the Fort Leavenworth Agency; also, to 312 Pottawatomies, 90 Ottawas, 44 Peorias & Kaskaskias, and 33 Weas & Piankeshaws in the Osage River Subagency.
The Pottawatomies, suffering from the prevalent fever and ague, had been too ill to assemble for vaccination. De Prefontaine had visited as many Indian dwellings (in July) as time permitted. The Kansa (out hunting) could not be reached as a body, so had been omitted (but their agent stated they had been vaccinated in 1838). Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, pp. 20, 21 (in KHi ms. division); Jotham Meeker's "Diary," July 17 and 18, 1839, entries; OIA, Letters received from SIA, St. Louis (National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 752), for De Prefontaine's report, with Joshua Pilcher's letter of September 27, 1839.
BORN: on September 18, at Ottawa Baptist Mission (present Franklin county), Emeline (Emma) Meeker, daughter of Missionaries Jotham and Eleanor (Richardson) Meeker. Ref: Jotham Meeker's "Diary"; 15th Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, p. 35. On December 22, 1859, Emeline Meeker married Peter Byram, of Atchison. She died April 22, 1880. See L. A. Alderson's A Brief Sketch of the Life and Character of Mrs. Emma Meeker Byram . , . (1880), pp. 2-5.
The regular autumn east-bound Santa Fe caravan, numbering 20 wagons, crossed "Kansas'' during September and reached Missouri early in October. By report, the traders brought back close to $200,000 in specie. Ref: John E. Sunder's statement in Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail, p. xiv (in which he used as reference the Dotty Missouri Republican, St. Louis, October 4, 5, and November 12, 1839); Niles National Register, v. 57 (October 19, 26, 1839), pp. 128, 133.
On September 17 a small mounted party Dr. Frederick A. Wislizenus, Paul Richardson (the leader), Charles Kline, "Mr. Koontz," and a French trapper ("Swiss") with pack animals, set out from Bent's Fort (Colo.) to follow down the Arkansas river and the Santa Fe trail to Missouri.
(For the journey of Wislizenus, Richardson, Kline, and Koontz to the mountains, see May 4 annals entry. After reaching Fort Hall [Idaho] in late July, they, and two others, had determined to return to Missouri, but by a different route. Joined by "Swiss" they had traveled across the Rockies and down to Bent's Fort by way of Fort Davy Crockett [on Green river] and the trading posts on the South Platte. They arrived at "Perm's Fort" as the doctor termed it on September 15.)
These five men crossed the present Colorado-Kansas line about September 20; by the 26th they had reached Pawnee Fork; on the 27th they passed Pawnee Rock ("which is accounted as half way between the boundary of Missouri and Penn's [Bent's] Fort," wrote Wislizenus). On the 28th, after
182 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
they had crossed Walnut creek, the doctor became lost (in foggy weather) from his companions, veered several miles north of the Santa Fe road and found himself in "a great swamp" [the Cheyenne Bottoms in Barton county of today]. With his riding horse, pack horse, and dog, he crossed this "swamp." Wislizenus described Cheyenne Bottoms and his experience as follows:
"Toward north and south I could see no end to ... [the swamp], but it seemed to extend only a few miles toward the east. The water was not very deep and the ground pretty firm. ... I rode my horse forward at the slowest pace, but it often slid down on grass and reeds. My pack animal I led after me with a rope. All sorts of water birds swarmed around from all sides. Never have I seen together such quantities of swans, cranes, pelicans, geese and ducks, as were here. The swamp was fairly covered with them, and they seemed to feel themselves so safe that I could have killed hundreds of them with the shot barrel of my double-barreled weapon. ... I finally reached . . . [some] tall reeds, and the second half of the swamp still lay before me. My horse now would not budge for either whip or spur; so I dismounted and dragged it after me by the bridle. The water sometimes reached to my chest. With slow and measured step I moved onward; my dog swam usually in the rear of our stately procession. The sun was sinking when I finally reached the other side of the swamp."
After camping overnight, Wislizenus continued eastward; finally, on the fifth day of his solitary travel, he came out on the Santa Fe road. The next day he "went 25 miles on a stretch to Cottonwood Creek" where he caught up with his companions. (This was on October 4.) Reaching Council Grove on October 6, these travelers stayed three days (because of continuous rains), and set out again on the 9th. On October 14 they rode into Westport, Mo.
Ref: Frederick A. Wislizenus, A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the fear 1839 [as translated from the original German edition of 1840] (St. Louis, 1912), pp. 85-147 (the Cheyenne Bottoms account can be found on pp. 143, 144); L. R. and Ann W. Hafen, op. eft., p. 62 (for Obadiah Oakley's list of persons with Wislizenus); Walter H. Schoewe (in Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, v. 56, June, 1953, p. 164) states: "The Cheyenne Bottoms are in Barton County, primarily in T. 18 S., Rs. 12 and 13 W., about six miles northeast of Great Bend. Hoisington is in the northwest corner of the Bottoms, Ellinwood lies to the southeast. . . ."
In the late summer and during the autumn the Kansa "suffered dreadfully with sickness” and perhaps 100, or more, of the nation died. Commenting on this in February, 1840, the Rev. Thomas Johnson also wrote: "They left their villages in the time of their sickness and have not all returned yet."
Agent R. W. Cummins, in his October, 1839, report, stated, of the Kansa: "This tribe has been exceedingly sickly this season; many of them died; their number at present is 1,602. (See April, 1839, entry for other comment on the Kansa population.) Ref: Christian Advocate and Journal, v. 14 (March 20, 1840), p. 122 (for Thomas Johnson's statement his source it may be assumed was either his brother William [missionary to the Kansa], or Agent Cummins); Lorenzo Waugh in his Autobiography (2d, enlarged edition, 1884), p. 126, stated that when he arrived at the Kansa mission [either in 1839, or 1840] to serve as assistant missionary for a few months, "sickness was prevailing among these Indians at a terrible rate, and many were dying off." The latter part of 1840 was also a time of much illness among the Kansa see KHC, v. 16, p. 231.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 183
BORN: on September 30, at Kickapoo Methodist Mission (present Leavenworth county), John Wesley Berryman, son of the Rev. Jerome C. and Sarah C. (Cessna) Berryman. Ref: 15th Biennial Report of the Kansas State Historical Society, p. 35.
October 5. About this date, apparently, Ewing, Clymer, & Co., opened a store and trading establishment in Westport, Mo. An extant account book (October, 1839-October, 1840) of the firm states, on a front page: "These Books commenced October 5th 1839."
"Clymer" was Joseph Clymer ("of the firm of Ewing Walker & Co.," of Logansport, Ind.), who had arrived in western Missouri in the spring(?) with letters of introduction from Sen. John Tipton and George W. Ewing, both of Logansport.
The largest (and longest) accounts in this record are labeled "Sugar Creek outfit" (i. e., the Pottawatomie Indians of Sugar creek, present Linn county), to whom were sold blankets, scarlet cloth, calico, shoes, gloves, coats, bridles, spurs, beads, knives, axes, pans, kettles, salt, flour, bacon, etc.
Listed below are the names of individuals (largely Westport residents) who purchased goods (gloves, coats, fur caps, blankets, and a wide variety of merchandise items) from Ewing, Clymer, & Co., in 1839:
Daniel Yoacham, Johnston Lykins, Allen McGee, James Johnston, Jos. R. De Prefontaine, A. L. Davis [Indian subagent], Allen McGee, James McGee, Joseph Parks [of the Shawnee Nation], Robert Weathered, Jonathan J. Piert, Boone Hays, A. B. Van Bibber, William M. Chick, John C. McCoy, Samuel C. Roby, William Parks [of the Shawnee Nation?], John W. Polke, Baptiste Peoria [Indian interpreter], Francis Philibert, Lewis Vogel, Jacob Ragan, Andrew J. Stinson [brother-in-law of A. L. Davis], Seth Hays [later trader at Council Grove], Greenup Dodson, David H. Burnett, Hamilton McDowell, Luther Rice [part-Pottawatomie], Wesley Mulkey, William Bowers, David Lock, Stephen Bourassa [part-Pottawatomie], James B. Devenport, Robert Wilson, John ["Tauy"] Jones, Samuel J. Hensley, John B. Young, William Pelott, Isaac McCoy, George W. Yoacham, John Self, Charles Cummins, Samuel Wade, Walter Bales. Ref: Ewing, Clymer, & Co., account book (microfilm, KHi). (The original is in the archives of The Native Sons of Kansas City, Missouri.) An account item of April, 1840, date "Reed De Smith" (for six yards of "Canadian Jeanes," etc.) may represent a sale to the Rev. Pierre- Jean De Smet. The Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 26 (1839), contain the Tipton and Ewing letters of February 28 and March 16, 1839, respectively. "J. aimer" and "G. N. Ewing" (as transcribed) are listed in the 1840 U.S. census of Jackson county, Mo. The History of Cass and Bates Counties, Missouri . . . (St. Joseph, Mo., 1883), p. 807, lists Joseph Clymer as an early resident of West Boone township, Bates co. near the "Kansas" line and states that he moved to Texas after the Civil War.
In a small (five-wagon) eastbound caravan of Mexican merchants (one of them Don Jose Chavez) which crossed "Kansas" in October, Matthew C. Field was the only "American." From Council Grove, on October 24, he and three Spanish companions ( also three servants ) rode on ahead to Independence, Mo., arriving there October 30.
184 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
This party, which left San Miguel, N. M., September 23 to take the Cimarron route, had been accompanied to the Arkansas crossing by a military escort (25 mule-mounted soldiers) headed by Lt. Jose Hernandez. A brass cannon served the traders as protection from that point to Cottonwood Grove, where it was cached.
Matt Field, in his journal, recorded Spanish names (and translations) for "Kansas" streams and places: Nepeste [Arkansas] river, Rio de Pananas [Pawnee Fork], Rio de Nuezes [Walnut creek], Punta la Circuila [Plum Buttes], Rio de Nepestita [Little Arkansas river], Rio de Alamos [Cottonwood river], and Concilia Arboleda [Council Grove]. Ref: Sunder, op. cit., pp. xxiv, 50-59 (for the journal), 288-293, 304-311. On p. 300, Field states: "The party was composed entirely of Mexicans, the writer forming one solitary exception." Evidently Dr. David Waldo (see p. xxiv) traveled in company only as far as San Miguel. Niles' National Register, v. 57 (November 30, 1839), p. 217, stated that the Pizarro which reached St. Louis on November 11, had on board $60,000 in specie brought from Santa Fe; and that her passengers included Matt Field and five Mexican gentlemen from Santa Fe.
October 22-29. In this interval, the following events occurred at the new Shawnee Methodist Mission and Indian manual labor school (present Johnson county):
On the 22d the Rev. Thomas Johnson moved his family down from the old mission (some six miles northwest, near present Turner, Wyandotte co. see KHQ, v. 28, pp. 178, 179) to the new location. (A report of October 15 had stated that a frame building sufficient for two families was nearly completed; and a brick building, intended for a boarding house, cook room, and family residence, was in progress. See, also, May 23, 1839, annals item.)
On the 23d the Indian students were moved to the new institution. On the 25th the centenary of Methodism was celebrated there. On the 29th the Indian manual labor school opened. The missionaries were ministers Thomas Johnson (and his wife), Jesse Greene (and his wife), Wesley Browning (who arrived on October 14), David Kinnear (formerly at Kickapoo mission), and Elizabeth Lee (recently of Kickapoo mission). Ref: Martha B. Caldwell, compiler, Annals of Shawnee Methodist Mission . . . (Topeka, 1939), pp. 31, 32; also, Miss Caldwell’s typescript compilation (with sources of data), which was the basis for the published Annals (on file in KHi ms. division).
MARRIED: the Rev. Francis Barker, and Elizabeth Churchill, both of Shawnee Baptist Mission, on the evening of October 23, at the mission (present Johnson county), by the Rev. Jotham Meeker (of Ottawa Mission). Ref: Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 20 (March, and June, 1840, pp. 58, 126; Jotham Meeker's "Diary," October 23, 1839.
MARRIED: Patrick Brown (son of Jacob and Maria Henry Brown), of Fort Leavenworth, and Catharine Sweany (daughter of Hubert and Johanna Boys Sweany), on October 27, at the home of the groom, by the Rev. Anthony Eysvogels, S. J., of Kickapoo Catholic Mission. Ref: "Kickapoo Register" (at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kan.), courtesy of the Rev. Augustin C. Wand, S. J.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 185
October 29. At Fort Leavenworth contracts were let for construction of sections of the Fort Leavenworth-Fort Gibson military road principally in the area between the Marais des Cygnes and Spring river crossings. (See, also, October 15, 1838, annals.)
In the middle of 1840, when Capt. Thomas Swords returned to Fort Leavenworth after inspecting the road as far as the Arkansas river crossing (in present Oklahoma), he reported it "very nearly finished." Ref: 26th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Doc. No. 89 (Serial 365), p. 41; F. P. Prucha, op. cit., p. 86; KHQ, v. 11, pp. 124, 125.
Late in October (?) 62 Chippewa Indians of the Swan Creek band, conducted from their Michigan homes by Albert J. Smith, arrived at their small (two by six mile) reserve on the Marais des Cygnes (west of the Ottawas' lands), in present Franklin county. In the party were Chief Esh-ton-o-quot (Clear Sky), or Francis McCoonse, his family, some relatives, and a few followers.
Of their journey to "Kansas," no account has been found. Sup't Joshua Pilcher, at St. Louis, learned of their emigration after the Chippewas reached their destination; Abraham S. Schoolcraft and William P. Patrick assisted Smith in conducting the party to the Indian Country.
By report, these Chippewas "immediately began to clear lands and make preparation for building and fencing. The mildness of the climate permitted them to labor uninterruptedly through the winter. ... By the 20th of April, 1840, each head of a family had cleared and fenced and planted a number of acres, and most of them had built comfortable log cabins. . . . The chief had from twelve to fifteen acres enclosed, and had completed a good log dwelling. . . ."
(For the confederation of the Munsee Indians with these Chippewas, in 1859, see December, 1837, annals entry on p. 79; and see, also, August 30, 1837, annals entry on pp. 72, 73. ) Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, p. 60; Report of the Comm'r of
Indian affairs for 1839; Henry R. Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs . . . (1851), p. 670; KHC, v. 11, pp. 314-316; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 126 (Serial 357), p. 8 (lists Smith, Schoolcraft, and Patrick as emigrating officers; and gives October 29, 1839, as the date their service ended).
November (?). Col. S. W. Kearny and five companies of Fort Leaven worth's First U. S. dragoons journeyed to Fort Gibson [Okla.] and home again over the new military road. Factional difficulties in the Cherokee Nation prompted this hasty trip. As Colonel Kearny put it, concisely, in a letter he wrote in December:
"Genl. [Mathew] Arbuckle, assisted by the Arkansas people, tried hard to get up an alarm against the Cherokees. I marched down with 250 Dragoons, found all quiet but the Genl. and then marched home again. Great men have done the same before me. . . ." Ref: 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 1 (Serial 354), p. 56; Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1839 (see Secretary of War J. R. Poinsett's letter of November 9, 1839, to Brig. Gen. Mathew Arbuckle); The Trail Guide (published by the Kansas City posse, The Westerners), v. 1, no. 3 (July, 1956), p. 19 (for quote from Kearny's letter
186 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of December 17, 1839, to Maj. E. A. Hitchcock); Niles' National Register, v. 57 (December 14, 1839), p. 241.
About November 2(?) Nicholas Boilvin (agent to explore lands for a Winnebago reserve) debarked at Westport Landing, Mo., from the Malta. (The Winnebagoes who were to have accompanied him had decided it was too late in the year for such a tour. )
The prospective reserve (suggested by Isaac McCoy) was north of the Delawares, south of the Otoes, and west of the Kickapoos, lowas, and Sacs & Foxes (see map in KHQ, v. 28, facing p. 177 for visual reference). McCoy later wrote: "early in November, I gave direction to a tour of exploration by N. Boilvin, Esq. . . ." and "I spent seven days in the wilderness at the commencement of this tour."
Other facts about the trip can be deduced from Boilvin's expense account. At Westport, on November 9, he settled with Daniel Yoacham (for board and room?). This was likely the starting date of his late-in-the-year overland journey. On November 25 (having concluded his exploration of the prospective reserve?) he paid the Rev. William Hamilton (of the Iowa, Sac & Fox Mission) for expenses "at Great Nemahaw." On November 30 (back at Kansas river?) he paid out nine dollars to "C[yprian] and Frederick] Choteau" for blankets. On December 2 he settled with William M. Chick (at Westport ) a merchandise bill of 235.23, paid "Tom Captain" for the use of a horse for 22 days, and paid Benjamin Lagoterie ( see p. 54 for item on "Lagautherie," an Iroquois) $22 for his services (at a dollar a day?) as guide. On December 21 Richard Brooks received $33 for his services as a "hand" for one month. Ref: Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 26 (for Boilvin's letters of October 20 and November 4, 1839; also McCoy's letter of November 5, 1839, to J. C. McCoy); Isaac McCoy's History of Baptist Indian Missions (1840), p. 558 (for quotes, above); 26th Cong. 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 161 (Serial 378), p. 47 (for Boilvin's disbursements).
November 7. Seven Wyandots from Ohio (described as "Hicks & Co.*) arrived at Westport, Mo., to consider a location for a reserve in "Kansas'* which an earlier delegation (see July 25 entry) had reported as desirable. Probably Francis A. Hicks, aged 39, headed this group, rather than his father Chief John Hicks. U. S. Comm'r William H. Hunter (congressman from Ohio) joined them later in the month, with instructions to purchase land from the Delawares and Shawnees, contingent on the Wyandots' acceptance of it as their future home.
When negotiations ended, in December, both the Delawares and Shawnees had agreed to sell certain acreage from their reserves. But the Wyandots failed to carry the matter further. Four more years elapsed before they made a treaty for removal. Ref: Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs, 1839; Isaac McCoy's History of Baptist Indian Missions (1840), p. 559; KHC, v. 9, pp. 82-85, 225. In the Ewing, Clymer, & Co.
(Westport, Mo.) 1839-1840 account book (microfilm, KHi) an entry under December 10, 1839, is for halters, saddles, bridles, etc. sold to "Hicks & Co. ('Wiandott') . . . Bording at D[aniel] Yoachams."
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 187
November. In his annual report the army's commander-in-chief in Washington listed Fort Leavenworth's garrison as six First U. S. dragoon companies with Col. Stephen W. Kearny's command having an aggregate of 436 (23 commissioned officers and 413 troops). This compared with a six-company aggregate of 329 in 1838 (see p. 161). Ref: 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 1 (Serial 354), table pp. 72, 73.
November 30. Indian department disbursements of this date show payment to the following persons for services to the lowas, and to the Sacs & Foxes in "Kansas/' as fulfillment of some September 17, 1836, treaty terms see pp. 55, 56.
For the lowas: to J. T. V. Thompson "for breaking up and enclosing grounds," $2,800; to W. J. Norris "for live stock," $1,163.62; to R. B. Mitchell "for erection of houses," $3,500; and to Garnet M. Hensley "for a ferry boat," $100.
For the Sacs 6- Foxes: to William J. Norris "for livestock" $1,163.62; to R. B. Mitchell "for erection of houses," $2,100; to J. T. V. Thompson "for breaking up and enclosing grounds," $2,800; also, on November 16, to Garnet M. Hensley "for erection of mills, etc.," $2,786. (This last item may have been for both the Sac & Fox and Iowa mills. ) Ref: 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 161 (Serial 378), p. 55.
BORN: on December 3, at Pottawatomie Methodist Mission, present Miami? county, James Andrew Peery, son of the Rev. Edward T. and Mary S. (Peery) Peery. Ref: Si and Shirley Corn's Our Family Tree (1959), Section IV; U.S. Census, 1850, Jackson County, Mo., Kaw township, no. 86 (for Edward T. Peery family). James Andrew Peery died February 28, 1853.
December 5. Albert G. Wilson was appointed postmaster at Fort Leavenworth. It is probable that Wilson had received appointment as sutler at the military post some weeks earlier.
The preceding postmaster had been Joseph V. Hamilton (see an item on his sutlership in KHQ, v. 28, p. 501; also the April 3, 1838, item on his appointment as postmaster; and the June 27, 1839, item on his appointment as Indian agent at Council Bluffs). According to Col. S. W. Kearny, the Fort Leavenworth council of administration nominated "a Mr. Miller [Daniel Miller?], a young Country Merchant" to succeed Hamilton as sutler, and Miller subsequently was appointed [temporarily?] against Kearny's wishes. But Kearny states: "I insisted upon my right to have a voice in the appointment. . . ." Apparently, then, Albert G. Wilson, was Kearny's choice. Wilson was succeeded in mid-1841 by Hiram Rich. Ref: KHC, v. 1-2, p. 255 (or, v. 7, p. 441); The Trail Guide (Kansas City posse, The Westerners), v. 1, no. 3 (July, 1956), p. 18 (for Kearny's letter of December 17, 1839). For a comment on "Daniel Miller," see KHC, v. 14, p. 649.
December 5(?) With John W. Newcom (a Stockbridge, of Buffalo, N. Y.) as their conductor, a party of Stockbridge and
188 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Munsee Indians from Wisconsin territory arrived at Westport, Mo.; and on December 6(?) reached the Delaware reserve, north of Kansas river.
The Munsees joined their people the 72 Munsees who had come to "Kansas" in December, 1837 (see p. 79) at the "Westfield" settlement (where Muncie, Wyandotte co. is today). Newcom stated 84 Munsees were in his party. Agent R. W. Cummins, in February, 1840, put their number at 105[!] (In September, 1840, he reported the total Munsee population in the Fort Leavenworth Agency as about 183 persons. )
The Stockbridges (84 by Newcom's count; 74 by Cummins' reports), after councils with the Delawares, were given permission to settle on the latter's reserve ( if the Stockbridges would see that the government added a tract of land to the Delawares' original holdings). On February 4, 1840, Cummins wrote that the Stockbridges would "in a few days remove from where they are now encamped and settle near Fort Leavenworth" nearly 20 miles from the Munsees. In September he described the location as "about four or five miles below . . . Fort Leavenworth." Among the heads of families in the Stockbridge emigrating party (as listed on a roll accompanying the Stockbridge and Munsee treaty of September 3, 1839) were: Thomas T. and Eli Hendrick, Robert Konkapot (also, other Konkapots), John W. Newcom (who brought his family from New York, later), Jonas Littleman, Henry Skickett (or "Skiggett," who had been in "Kansas" prior to 1839), Eli Williams, and James Rain (a Munsee, but enrolled with the Stockbridges). Ref: SIA, St. Louis, "Records," v. 7, typed copy, p. 181, v. 8, typed copy, pp. 32-34, 43, 60, 76; Isaac McCoy "Manuscripts," v. 26 (draft of December 26, 1839, letter, and a December 31, 1839, memorandum), v. 27 (January 2, 1840, item); Report of the Comm'r of Indian affairs for 1840 (for Cummins' September, 1840, report); Baptist Missionary Magazine, v. 20 (March, 1840), p. 58; Kappler, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 529-531; Report of the American Board of Comm'rs for Foreign Missions for 1840, pp. 184, 185; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 42 (Serial 355); 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 161 (Serial 378), pp. 54, 55.
Employed in "Kansas" by the Indian Department during all, or part of the year 1839 were the following persons:
FORT LEAVENWOKTH AGENCY Agent Richard W. Cummins; Interpreters Henry Tiblow and Clement Lessert; Blacksmiths Robert Dunlap (for Shawnees), James M. Simpson (for Shawnees), William F. Newton (for Delawares), John Van Horn (for Kansa); Assistant blacksmiths Wilson Rogers (for Shawnees), Benjamin Rogers (for Shawnees), John Pemesco (for Delawares), Charles Fish (for Kansa); Fanner James Hays (for Kansa); Teacher David Kinnear ( for Kickapoos ) .
Within the "discontinued" GREAT NEMAHAW SUBAGENCY John Dougherty, acting, succeeded by Joseph V. Hamilton, acting; Blacksmiths Hiram W. Morgan (for lowas), Stewart M. (or L?) Reynolds (for Sacs & Foxes); Assistant blacksmiths John B. Rubetie (for lowas) and Andrew Gilmore (for Sacs & Foxes); Farmers James Duncan (for lowas) and Benjamin F. Catlett (for Sacs & Foxes); Millers William P. Trippets (for lowas) and D. Smith (for Sacs & Foxes ) .
OSAGE [MARAIS DES CYGNES] RIVER SUBAGENCY Subagent Anthony L. Davis; Interpreter Luther Rice: Issuing agent (at $3 per diem) Andrew H.
KANSAS BEFORE 1854: A REVISED ANNALS 189
Stinson; Blacksmiths Jesse King and Robert Wilson; Assistant blacksmith Andrew Fuller. (The three smiths, all for the Pottawatomies, were appointed April 16, 1839).
OSAGE SUBAGENCY Subagent Congreve Jackson. [No other employees listed.] Ref: 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 126 (Serial 357), pp. 5, 6; 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen Doc. 161 (Serial 378), pp. 42, 43, 50, 55; SIA, v. 7, typed copy, pp. 5, 13, 14, 40; Letters received by OIA (National Archives Microcopy No. 234, Roll 752), R. W. Cummins' return for September 30, 1839.
LOUISE BARRY is a member of the staff of the Kansas State Historical Society.
(Part Eleven Will Appear in the Autumn 1963, Issue)
