Kansas 150

Supplement to the Great Bend Tribune Sunday, January 23, 2011

2 n GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011

PHOTO COURTESY THE KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

This illustration from Josiah Gregg’s Commerce on the Prairies depicts a caravan of Americans arriving in Santa Fe, N.M. The Santa Fe Trail, opened in 1821 by William Bucknell, served as a freight route and passed through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. It was made between 1844 and 1845.

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME A tour through Kansas history

T

his year, Kansas marks its Sunday, Jan. 23 – Kansas General History sesquicentennial. That’s a Sunday, Jan. 30 – 1861-1900 fancy word for 150 years, Sunday, Feb. 6 – 1901-1925 and, my, what a 150 years it’s Sunday, Feb. 13 – 1926-1950 been.

Sunday, Feb. 20 – 1951-1975 Kansas became the 34th Sunday, Feb. 27 – 1976-2000 state on Jan. 29, 1861, just as Sunday, March 6 – Business Histories submitted the United States stood on

by businesses the brink of what would be Sunday, March 13 – 2001-2011 the bloody Civil War. In fact, Kansas stood on the front lines of that bitter conflict as it struggled for statehood. The battle between pro- and anti-slavery factions lead to the moniker Bloody Kansas. The lates from Latin as “To the stars through difficulty.”

Sunflower State entered the Union as a free state.

That is exactly where those early explorers and But, long before this, the expanse of rolling hills pioneers went. They took what was once called “the and plains, and flat prairies and river beds that great American desert” and turned it into the nabecame Kansas saw much history unfurl across tion’s breadbasket – from golden wheat to cattle to its vastness. Native American people roamed the black crude oil. region. Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de The Great Bend Tribune is paying tribute to this Coronado lead an expedition into it in the 1540s. rich, colorful history. Over the next eight Sundays, The Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the there will be an installment of “Kansas at 150.” area, which was part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Each installment will cover a different span of time, Since then, countless covered wagons and people bringing to light history, anecdotes, photos and on horse back from all corners of the world venother stories culled from the Barton County Histured to Kansas to carve a life out of the unforgiving torical Society, the Kansas State Historical Society, past issues of the Tribune and a host of local histoland. The state motto “Ad Astra per Aspera” trans-

rians who have lent a helping hand to this massive project.

Not only will the sections touch on the history of our fine state, they will bring out the history and stories of Golden Belt, and how they fit into the complex mosaic known as Kansas.

Below is a breakdown of the issues.

Journey back with us now as we explore out state, our region and, most importantly, our heritage.

Thanks for riding along.

Dale Hogg Great Bend Tribune managing editor

About the cover: Main picture, Kansas Capitol mural painted by artist by David H. Overmyer in 1951 depicting the arrival of Coronado in Kansas in the year of 1541.

The bottom photograph, taken by an unknown photographer in 1860, depicts a train of covered wagons, oxen, and men on horseback setting out from Manhattan. These wagons were a common form of transportation on the plains. Pictures courtesy the Kansas State Historical Society.

Kansas historical timeline This timeline of Kansas history was compiled by Karen Neuforth. The items marked with an (*) are of local/area interest.

• 1541 : Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the Spanish conquistador, visits Kansas, traveling right across what would become Barton County.* • 17th century : Kansa (sometimes Kaw) and Osage Nation (originally Ouasash) arrive in Kansas.

(The Kansa claim that they occupied the territory since 1673.)

• 1719 : First Europeans visit the Northern Pawnees.

• 1724 : French commander at Fort Orleans, Etienne de Bourgmont, visits the Kansas River and establishes a trading post here, near the main Kansa village at the mouth of the river. Around the same time, the Otoe tribe of the Sioux also inhabit various areas around the northeast corner of Kansas.

• End of the 18th century : Kansa and Osage Nation dominant in the eastern part of the state — the Kansa on the Kansas River to the north and the Osage on the Arkansas River to the south. Pawnees were dominant on the plains to the west and north of the Kansa and Osage nations, in regions home to massive herds of buffalo.

• 1803 : Kansas, as part of the Louisiana Purchase, annexed to the United States as unorganized territory.

• 1806 : Zebulon Pike passes through the region, and labels it “the Great American Desert” on his

maps.* 2. 1820s to 1840s : Indian treaties and westward trails • 1820s : Kansas area (by then popularly known as the Great American Desert) is set aside as Indian territory by the U.S. government and closed to settlement by whites.

• 1820: August 9: Major Long’s expedition, searching for the source of the Red River of Louisiana, reached “the northwest part of the valley, at the great bend of the Arkansas.”* • 1821 : After a brief period as part of Missouri Territory, Kansas returned to unorganized status.

• 1821 : Santa Fe Trail was opened across Kansas as country’s transportation route to the Southwest, connecting Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico.* • 1825, June 3 : 20 million acres (81,000 km²) of land ceded by the Kansa Nation to the United States, and the Kansa tribe are thereafter limited to a specific reservation in northeast Kansas.

• 1825, June : Osage Nation was limited to a reservation in southeast Kansas.

• 1825, November 7 : Missouri Shawanoes (or Shawnees) are the first Native Americans removed to the territory by treaty.

• 1826, August: Kit Carson, scout and mountain man, helped perform the first surgery in what would become Barton County, when Andrew Broadus’ arms had to be amputated at Walnut Creek.* • 1827, May 8 : Cantonment Leavenworth, or Fort

Leavenworth, (named in honor of Henry Leavenworth) built just inside Indian territory to guard travelers on the United States’ Western frontier. This was the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state of Kansas.

• 1830 : Indian Removal Act expedites the process of Indian removal.

• 1831, August 30 : Ottawa cede land to the United States and move to a small reservation on the Kansas River and its branches.

• 1832: Author Washington Irving travels through the Arkansas River valley.* • 1832, April 6 : Ottawa treaty ratified.

• 1832, October 24 : U.S. government moves the Kickapoos to a reservation in Kansas.

• 1832, October 29 : Piankeshaws and Weas agree to occupy 250 sections of land, bounded on the north by the Shawanoes; east by the western boundary line of Missouri; and west by the Kaskaskias and Peorias.

• 1833, September 21 : Treaty made with the United States and the Otoe tribe cedes their country south of the Little Nemaha River.

• 1836, September 17 : The confederacy of the Sacs and Foxes in a treaty with the United States moved north of Kickapoos.

• 1837, February 11 : United States agrees to convey to the Pottawatomies an area on the Osage River, southwest of the Missouri River.

See TIMELINE on Page 3

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 3

COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY This postcard depicts Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his team on their search for the fabled city of Quivera. Coronado and his men were among the first of the European explorers to visit the plains. The goal of the early Spanish explorers was to discover riches north of Mexico. Coronado’s 1541 expedition to discover gold in Quivera led him to the area that would later become Kansas.

IN SEARCH OF GOLD

Spanish explorers visits what is now Great Bend on quest for Quivira From Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events ... Volume 2

by Frank Wilson Blackmar, published in 1912.

S

hortly after the discovery of America the Spanish people became imbued with the idea that somewhere in the interior of the New World there were rich mines of gold and silver, and various expeditions were sent out to search for these treasures. As every important event in history is the sequence of some-

thing which went before, in order to gain an intelligent understanding of ’the expedition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, in search of the seven cities of Cibola and the country of Quivira (1540-42), it will be necessary to notice briefly the occurrences of the preceding decade.

Below is an abridged version of expedition historian Pedro de Castaneda’s account: Don Antonio de Mendoza, who became viceroy of New Spain in 1535, appointed his friend, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, governor of the province of New Galicia, situated on the west coast of Mexico, between 25° and

27° north latitude, the new province including the old one of Culiacan. Coronado showed a willingness to assist and encourage Mendoza in the effort to find the “Seven Cities,” and on March 7, 1539, what might be termed a reconnoitcring party left Culiacan under the leadership of Friar Marcos de Niza, with Estevan as guide. Father Marcos had been a member of Alvarado’s expedition to Peru in 1534. Upon reaching a place called Vapaca (in central Sonora”) Marcos sent Estevan toward the north “with instructions to proceed 50 or 60 leagues and see if he could find anything which might help them in their search.”

TIMELINE from Page 2 • 1840s : Section of the Santa Fe Trail through Kansas also used by emigrants on the California Trail and Oregon Trail.

• 1842 : Treaty between the United States and the Wyandots, the Wyandots moved to the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers (on land that was shared with the Delaware until 1843).

• 1846 : Kansa reservation reduced by treaty.

• 1846, August 18: General Kearney and Colonel Doniphan’s troops stop at the “great bend” during the Mexican War.* • 1846, August: Mormon Battalion reaches the “great bend.”* • 1847 : Pottawatomies are moved again, to an area containing 576,000 acres (2,330 km²), being the eastern part of the lands ceded to the United States by the Kansa tribe in 1846.

3. 1850 to 1854 : Native American territory ceded • 1850 : Euro-Americans squatting on Native Americans land clamor for the entire area to be opened for settlement.

• 1851 : Momentum builds to take the land from the Native Americans that they had been promised “permanently.”

• 1851, September 17 : Cheyennes and Arapahoes tribes negotiate with the United States for land in western Kansas (the current state of Colorado).

• 1852 : Congress begins the process of creating the Kansas Territory.

• 1852, December 13 : Representative from Missouri submits a bill organizing the Territory of Platte to the House: all the tract lying west of Iowa and Missouri, and extending west to the Rocky Mountains.

• 1853 : Wyandots attempt to establish a Territorial government in their section of Indian territory.

• 1853 : Wyandots’ convention, composed of thirteen delegates, at which a constitution for their territory is formed.

• 1853, February 10 : House bill referred to the United States House Committee on Territories, and passed by the full U.S. House of Representatives.

• 1853, summer : Eastern Kansas soon to open Acts for white American settlers.

• 1854 : Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company arrange and send anti-slavery settlers (known as “Free-Staters”) into Kansas.

• 1854 : Chippewas (Swan Creek and Black River bands) inhabit 8,320 acres (34 km²) in Franklin County.

• 1854 : Nearly all the tribes in the eastern part of the Territory cede the greater part of their lands prior to the passage of the Kansas territorial act and are eventually moved south to the future state of Oklahoma.

• 1854, March 15 : Otoe and Missouri Indians cede to the United States all their lands west of the Mississippi, except a small strip on the Big Blue River.

• 1854, March 30 : Lands ceded by the Kaskaskias, Peorias, Piankeshaw and Weas.

• 1854, May 6 : Delawares cede all their lands to the United States, except a reservation defined in the treaty.

• 1854, May 6 and May 10 : the Shawnees cede 6,100,000 acres (25,000 km²), reserving only 200,000 acres (809 km²) for homes.

• 1854, May 17 : Iowas cede their lands, retaining only a small reservation.

• 1854, May 18 : Kickapoos cede their lands, except 150,000 acres (607 km²) in the western part of the Territory.

• 1854, May 18 : Lands ceded by the Sacs and Foxes.

• 1854, May 30 : The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law, establishing the Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, which delineate the borders of Kansas Territory set from the Missouri border to the summit of the Rocky Mountain range; the southern boundary was the 37th parallel north, the northern was the 40th parallel north. North of the 40th parallel was Nebraska Territory.

• 1854, June 10 : Missourians hold a meeting at Salt Creek Valley, a trading post three miles (5 km) west of Fort Leavenworth, at which a “Squatter’s Claim Association” is organized.

Reports stated that the city he saw from the top of the hill was “larger than the city of Mexico,” was to awaken the curiosity of the people of New Spain and create a desire to visit the newly discovered region.

In response to this sentiment, Mendoza issued an order for a force to assemble at Compostela, ready to

march to Cibola as soon as the spring of 1540 opened.

Arms, horses and supplies were collected and the greater part of the winter was spent in preparations.

In casting about for a leader the viceroy’s choice fell on Gov. Coronado, a native of Salamanca, who had come to New Spain with Mendoza in 1535. Two years later he

married Beatrice de Estrada, said to be “a cousin by blood of Charles V, king of Spain. About the time of his marriage Mendoza sent him to quell a revolt among the Indians in the mines of Amatapeque, which he did so successfully that the

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4 n GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011

BLAZING TRAILS

Lewis and Clark venture through area headed west The Lewis and Clark Expedition EXCERPT FROM KANSAS: A LAND OF CONTRASTS

BY ROBERT W. RICHMOND

COURTESY PHOTO

Lewis & Clark army expedition soldier re-enactors on the banks of Independence Creek where it empties into the Missouri River near Atchison.

Early in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress for funds to send an exploring expedition from the Missouri River to the Pacific Northwest. When Congress approved, the president chose Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead the party. Four months later, on April 30, representatives of the United States and France completed arrangements for the sale of Louisiana to the U.S., but the American flag was not raised officially over New Orleans until December 20. Included in Jefferson’s great real estate bargain was most of Kansas, leaving only that portion south of the Arkansas River and west of the 10th meridian in Spanish hands.

The Louisiana Territory was mostly unknown to Americans at the time of the purchase. The headwaters of the Mississippi had not been thoroughly explored and most of the Far West was a mystery.

Fur traders had traveled up the Missouri into present North Dakota but most Americans were ignorant of what they had found. The fact that the United States had doubled its size for approximately fifteen million dollars did not impress some

people. One Boston newspaper said that the territory was “a great waste, a wilderness unpeopled with any beings except wolves and wandering Indians.”

Lewis and Clark, with forty-three men, left their camp near St. Louis on May 14, 1804, and on June 26 reached the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers.

There they stayed for three days while they gathered information on the area, including facts about the Kansa Indians. They camped on the north bank of the Missouri on June 29 and the next night stopped on the Kansas side. By July 1 they were opposite the site of Leavenworth and on July 3 they stayed in present Atchison County.

To greet the Fourth of July the explorers fired a shot from the “swivel gun” (a small cannon) on their keelboat. During the day they named two creeks – Fourth of July and Independence – and had one member of the party bitten by a snake. Their camp that night was on the Missouri bank, opposite Doniphan, and they closed the day with another cannon shot and “an extra Gill [measure] of whiskey.” On July 5, 7, and 9, their camps were on the Kansas side but shortly after that they moved beyond the borders of the state. Although the Kansas portion of the famous journey was brief, Lewis and Clark did gather considerable information about eastern Kansas and its inhabitants and they provided a map which, despite its inaccuracies, gave the federal government more data than it previously had.

GOLD from Page 3 following year the viceroy appointed him governor of New” Galicia, as already stated. Castaneda’s narrative says: “There were so many men of such high quality among the Spaniards, that such a noble body was never collected among the Indies, nor so many men of quality in such a small body, there being 300 men. Francisco Vasquez Coronado was captain general, because he was the author of it all.”

In addition to the 300 Spaniards, there were from 800 to 1,000 Indians. Accounts vary in this respect.

Mota Padilla says the expedition consisted of 260 horse, 60 foot, and more than 1,000 Indians, equipped with 6 swivel guns, more than 1,000 spare horses, and a large number of sheep and swine.

Bandolier gives the number of men as 300 Spanish and 800 Indians, and says the cost of equipping the expedition was 60,000 ducats, vast a fortune. On Feb. 23, 1540, Coronado left Compostela with his army and, according to Winship, reached Culiacan late in March. Here the expedition rested until April 22, when the real march to the “Seven Cities” of Cibola began. Coronado “followed the coast, bearing off to the left,” and on St. John’s eve “entered the wilderness—the White mountain Apache country of Arizona.” Mendoza, believing the destination of the expedition to be somewhere near the coast, sent from Natividad two ships, under command of Pedro d’Alarcon, to take to Xalisco all the soldiers and supplies the command could not carry.

As the expedition advanced, detachments were sent out in various directions to explore the country. In June Coronado reached the valley of the Corazones—so named by Cabeza de Vaca because the natives there offered him the hearts of animals for food. Here the army built the town of San Hicronimo de los Corazones (St. Jerome of the Hearts), and then moved on toward Cibola. There has been considerable speculation as to the location of the fabled “Seven Cities,” but the best authorities agree that they occupied the site of the Zuni pueblos in the western part of New Mexico. A map in the 14th annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology shows them there, and Prof. Henry W. Haynes, in an address at the annual meeting of the American Antiquarian Society on Oct. 21, 1881, sums up the arguments in favor of this

location.

On July 7, 1540, Coronado captured the first city, the pueblo of Hawikuh, which he named Granada. After the capture of this place the Indians retired to their stronghold on Thunder mountain.

Coronado reconnoitered the position and on Aug. 3 despatched Juan Gallego with a letter to Mendoza, advising him of the progress and achievements of the expedition.

The army went into winter quarters at Tiguex, near the present city of Albuquerque, and during the winter subjugated the hostile natives in the pueblos of the Rio Grande.

While at Tiguex Coronado heard from one of the plains Indians, a slave in the village of Cicuye, the Stories about Quivira (q. v.). This Indian, whom the Spaniards called “The Turk,” told them his masters had instructed him to lead them to certain barren plains, where* water and food could not be obtained, and leave them “here to perish, or, if they succeeded in finding their way back they would be so weakened as to fall an easy prey”. Winship says: “The Turk may have accompanied Alvarado on the first visit to the great plains, and he doubtless told the white men about his distant home and the roving life on the prairies. It was later, when the Spaniards began to question him about nations and rulers, gold and treasures, that he received, perhaps from the Spaniards themselves, the hints which led him to tell them what they were rejoiced to hear, and to develop the fanciful pictures which appealed so forcibly to all the desires of his hearers.

The Turk, we cannot doubt, told the Spaniards many things which were not true.

But in trying to trace these early dealings of the Europeans with the American aborigines, we must never forget how much may be explained by the possibilities of misrepresentation on the part of the white men, who so often heard of what they wished to find, and who learned, very gradually and in the end very imperfectly, to understand only a few of their native languages and dialects. Much of what the Turk said was very likely true the first time he said it. although the memories of home were heightened, no doubt, by absence and distance. Moreover, Castaneda, who is the chief source for the stories of gold and lordly kings which are said to have been told by the Turk, in all probability did not know any-

thing more than the reports of what the Turk was telling to the superior officers, which were passed about among the ‘common’ foot soldiers. The present narrative (Castenada’s) has already shown the wonderful power of gossip, and when it is gossip recorded twenty years afterward, we may properly be cautious in believing it.”

Whatever the nature of the stories told by the Turk, they influenced Coronado to undertake an expedition to the province of Quivira.

On April 10, 1541, he wrote from Tigeux to the king. That letter has been lost, but it no doubt contained a review of the information he had received concerning Quivira and an announcement of his determination to visit the province. The trusted messenger, Juan Gallego, was sent back to the Corazones for reinforcements, but found the town of San Hieronomo almost deserted. He then hastened to Mexico, where he raised a small body of recruits, with which he met Coronado as the latter was returning from Quivira.

On April 23, guided by the Turk, Coronado left Tiguex, taking with him every member of his army who was present at the time of starting.

The march was first to Sicuye (the Pecos Pueblo), a fortified village five days distant from Tiguex. From this point the route followed by the expedition has been a subject for considerable discussion.

Unquestionably, the best authorities on the Coronado expedition are Simpson, Bandelier, Hodge and Winship, and their opinions have not been sufficiently divergent to affect the general result, so far as concerns Coronado’s ultimate destination.

Gen. Simpson, who devoted much time and study to the Spanish explorations of the southwest, prepared a map of the Coronado expedition, showing that he crossed the Canadian river near the boundary between the present counties of Mora and San Miguel in New Mexico, thence north to a point about half-way between the Arkansas and Canadian rivers, and almost to the present line dividing Colorado and New Mexico. There the course changes to the east, or a little north of east, and continues in that general direction- to a tributary of the Arkansas river, about 50 miles west of Wichita, Kan. Bandelier, in his “Gilded Man,” says the general direction from Cicnye was northeast, and that “on the fourth day he crossed a

river that was so deep that they had to throw a bridge across it. This was perhaps the Rio de Mora, and not, as I formerly thought, the little Gallinas, which flows by Las Vegas. But it was more probably the Canadian river, into which the Mora empties.” The same writer, in his reports of the Hemenway archaelogical expedition, says that after crossing the river Coronado moved northeast for twenty days, when the course was changed to almost east until he reached a stream “which flowed in the bottom of a broad and deep ravine, where the army divided, Coronado, with 30 picked horsemen, going north and the remainder of the force returning to Mexico.

Winship goes a little more into detail than any of the other writers. Says he: “The two texts of the Relacion del Suceso differ on a vital point; but in spite of this fact, I am inclined to accept the evidence of this anonymous document as the most reliable testimony concerning the direction of the army’s march. According to this, the Spaniards traveled due east across the plains for 100 leagues (265 miles) and then 50 leagues either south or southeast. The latter is the reading I should prefer to adopt, because it accommodates the other details somewhat better. This took .them to the point of separation, which can hardly have been south of the Red river, and was much more likely somewhere along the north fork of the Canadian, not far above its junction with the main stream.”

At the time the army divided in May, Coronado reckoned that he was 250 leagues from Tiguex. The reasons for the separation were the scarcity of food for the men and the weakened condition of many of the horses, which were unable to continue the march. During the march to this point a native kept insisting that the Turk was lying, and the Indians whom they met failed to corroborate the Turk’s account. Coronado’s suspicions were finally aroused. He sent for the Turk, questioned him closely, and made him confess that he had been untruthful. The Indian still maintained, however, that Quivira existed, though not as he had described it.

From the time the army divided, all accounts agree that Coronado and his 30 selected men went due north to a large stream, which they crossed and descended in a northeasterly direction for some distance, and then,

continuing their course, soon came to the southern border of Quivira.

Winship says that the army returned due west to the Pecos river. “while Coronado rode north ‘by the needle.’

From these premises, which are broad enough to be safe, I should be inclined to doubt if Coronado went much beyond the southern branch of the Kansas river, even if he reached that stream.”

The “large stream” mentioned in the relations is believed to have been the Arkansas river, which the expedition crossed somewhere near the present Dodge City, Kan., then followed down the left bank to the vicinity of Great Bend, where the river changes its course, while Coronado proceeded in almost a straight line to the neighborhood of Junction City. At the limit of set his journey he up a cross bearing the inscription: “Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, commander of an expedition, arrived at this place.”

His report to the viceroy was coldly received, which seems to have piqued the gallant captain general, as soon afterward he resigned his position as governor of New Galicia and retired to his estates. True, his expedition was a failure, so far as finding gold and silver was concerned, but the failure was not the fault of the commander. On the other hand, the Spaniards gained accurate geographical information—accurate at least for that day—of a large section of the interior of the continent.

Mota Padilla’s account, written in 1742 from records left by Pedro de Tobar at Culiacan, says regarding the failure: “It was most likely the chastisement of God that riches were not found on this expedition, because, when this ought to have been the secondary object of the expedition, and the conversion of all those heathen their first aim, they bartered fate and struggled after the secondary; and thus the misfortune is not so much that all those labors were without fruit, but the worst is that such a number of souls have remained in their blindness.”

Four priests started with the expedition, viz: Father Marcos, who had previously been sent out to find the seven cities of Cibola, Juan de Padilla, Luis de Ubeda and Juan de la Cruz. Father Marcos returned to Mexico with Juan Gallego in Aug., 1541, and is not again mentioned in connection with the expedition.

The other three friars remained as missionaries among the Indians, by whom they were killed.

Father Padilla (q. v.) was killed in Quivira; Father Cruz at Tiguex, and Father Ubeda at Cicuye.

Following the narratives of Castaneda and Jaramillo and the Relacion del Suceso, it is comparatively easy to distinguish certain landmarks which seem to establish conclusively the fact that the terminus of Coronado’s expedition was somewhere in central or northeastern Kansas.

The first of these landmarks is the crossing of the.Arkansas, near where the crossing of the Santa Fe trail was afterward established. The second is the three days’ march along the north bank of that stream to where the river changes its course.

The next is the southwest border of Quivira, where Coronado first saw the hills along the Smoky Hill river, and another is the ravines mentioned by Castaneda as forming the eastern boundary of Quivira, which corresponds to the surface of the country about Fort Riley and Junction City. In addition to these landmarks there have been found in southwestern Kansas several relics of Spanish origin.

Prof. J. A. Udden, of Bethany College, found in a mound near Lindsborg a fragment of Spanish chain mail. W. F. Richey, of Harveyville, Kan., presented to the State Historical Society a sword found in Finney county and bearing a Spanish motto, with the name of Juan Gallego near the hilt. Mr. Richey also reported the finding of another sword in Greeley county—a twoedged sword of the style of the Spanish rapier of the 16th century. And near Lindsborg were found the iron portion of a Spanish bridle and a bar of lead marked with a Spanish brand. In the light of all this circumstantial evidence, it is almost certain that Coronado’s expedition terminated somewhere near the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers.

One sad feature of the expedition was the fate of the Turk, whom Coronado put to death upon finding that the Indiana had misled him, although the poor native’s mendacity had no doubt been encouraged, if not actually inspired, by the covetousness of the Spanish soldiers.

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 5

PAWNEE INDIANS

Republican River was home for the Pawnee

T

COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

A formal portrait of a young, unidentified, Pawnee man. The Pawnee are a native North American tribe that traditionally lived along the Platte, Loup, and Republican Rivers in the central plains. The name Pawnee comes from the pa’-rik-i word meaning horn, a term that was a tribal mark in which the hair was worn in the shape of a buffalo horn.

he Republican River in Kansas is named for one band of Pawnees who occupied this place for hundreds of years.

The Republican band (or Kitkahahkis, which translates “on a hill”) lived in what is north central Kansas and southern Nebraska.

There are four distinct bands of Pawnee people, which correspond to their relative locations: Kitkahahki (Republican, west), Chaui (Grand, middle), Petahauirata (Tappage, east), and Skidi (Wolf, north). These bands lived apart, hunting separately and fighting separate battles. They share kinship with the Arikara and the Wichita.

Pawnee life was influenced by cosmology.

They studied the movement of stars and developed star charts to set their calendar.

The stars helped to guide the class structure, social groups, and religious rituals.

Numbering as many as 20,000 in the early 19th century, the Pawnees lived in villages featuring dome- shaped earth covered lodges. As large as 25 to 60 feet in diameter, the entrances to the lodges faced east.

Extended families lived together in these structures that housed as many as 30 to 50 people. Each earth lodge had a center pit dug three to four feet in diameter that served as a fireplace.

One example of a Pawnee village was located in what is today Republic County.

During at least two settlement periods in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Pawnee people occupied the village before returning north to the Loup River, which translates to “wolf,” in what is today Nebraska. Their relocation may have been the result of conflicts with tribal enemies.

In the spring women planted gardens, producing corn, squash, pumpkins, and beans. During hunting seasons in summer and winter, nearly all members of the village traveled west to follow bison herds, covering as many as 500 miles a year. They used portable housing, pulled on a travois by dog or horse, and camped near grazing areas.

The men were expert hunters and followed a chain of command in targeting, chasing, flanking, and attacking cows or young bulls.

Women processed the kill, drying the meat in preparation for storage, and cleaning the skins to be used in clothing, housing, and supplies. They returned to their villages in autumn when it was time for harvest and in spring at planting time. The vegetables would be preserved in carefully organized

storage pits that could be accessed throughout the year.

The Pawnee gained a reputation for their courage and endurance. They dressed similarly to other Plains Indians, but the men’s hairstyle was unique. Their head was shaven except for a scalp lock, combed erect and curved backward.

The Pawnees participated in several tribal delegations to Washington, D. C., to attempt negotiations. In November 1821 Pawnee, Omaha, Kansa, Otoe, and Missouri leaders met there with President James Monroe.

Sharitarish, the leader of the Grand band of Pawnee, was a member of that delegation.

Colonel Thomas L. McKenney escorted the delegation to the White House. He said that Sharitarish was six feet tall and recalled, “when mounted on the fiery steed of the prairie, was a graceful and very imposing personage. His people looked upon him as a great brave, and the young men especially regarded him as a person who was designed to great distinction.”

Western expansion took its toll on the Pawnee people. Smallpox and cholera, introduced by European explorers, ravaged them.

Conflicts erupted as American settlers began to occupy lands the Pawnees considered hunting grounds. Clashes increased with the Sioux to the north, whose people were being pushed by settlement. The Pawnee lands diminished in negotiations with the U.S. government in 1833, 1848, 1857, and 1872.

They reluctantly agreed to cede their lands in 1875 and move to what is now Pawnee County, Oklahoma. The once numerous Pawnee people were eventually reduced by 1900 to a population of about 600.

Today there are more than 3,000 members of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. A federally recognized government, their headquarters in Pawnee operates a tribal government, two casinos, and a number of businesses.

I know that robes, leggings, moccasins, bear claws, and so on are of little value to you, but we wish you have them and to preserve them in some conspicuous part of your lodge, so that when we are gone and the sod turned over our bones, if our children should visit this place, as we do now, they may see and recognize with pleasure the things of their fathers, and reflect on the times that are past.

— Comments of Sharitarish, Pawnee principal chief, in presenting gifts to President Monroe, 1822, in the White House Red Room.

PAWNEE ROCK

Pawnee Rock most dangerous point on trail

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AMADA KITE Great Bend Tribune

Pawnee Rock, now a landmark, played an important roll in the settlement of the area.

BY ED KNOWLES Tribune Staff Writer

P

awnee Rock, even in its heyday, would have been the least likely candidate for the Eighth Wonder.

In circumference it could never produce more than five acres, and its sheer Dakota sandstone bluffs never towered more than 60 feet. But to the Steadmans, the Beams, the Thompsons, the Kittermans, the Crowders, the Wedels, the Egberts and the countless other travelers along the Santa Fe Trail who stopped in the Rock’s shadow to rest and carve their names, the site must have equalled the grandeur of a Roman Parthenon.

For Pawnee Rock was the most famous landmark along the 780 mile stretch of the fabled trail to Santa Fe. Jutting above the low sandy banks of the Arkansas River, 270 miles west of Independence, the Rock provided a welcome relief for the westwardbound emigrants, sated with the eternal sameness of the Plains.

Many tales of touch-and-go Indian battles, and other do-or-die stands of the white men within sight of the rock, were told about the pioneer campfires. Many of these tales, of course, were woven from fantasy. Some undoubtedly were true.

Among the tales, authentic or otherwise, most often told is the story of Kit Carson and the mule. Carson himself started the story.

One year, when Carson was still a beardless 17-year-old, he accompanied a wagon train west from Missouri along the Trail.

With him was his prize mule. As the train corralled for the night below the Rock, Carson, whose turn it was to stand guard, took up station high on the sheer face of the bluff. As he sat there, alert to any signs of marauding hostiles, his eyes caught a movement in one of the bluff ’s crevices.

When the object reared against the moonlight, Carson was sure he was gazing at an Indian’s headdress. Taking careful aim, Carson squeezed the trigger of his long rifle. The object lurched and rolled down

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AMADA KITE Great Bend Tribune

Shown are views of Pawnee Rock and Arkansas River as they appear today.

PAWNEE ROCK from Page 5 the incline. Carson, who by now had alerted the entire camp, raced after, yelling at the top of his lungs. Suddenly his fright turned to dismay. Looking below him, he saw lying dead on the ground below the bluffs the “Indian” he was sure he had just killed. It was his prize mule.

The origin of the name “Pawnee Rock” is lost in antiquity. Gen. Phillip St. George Cooke, who knew the plains, said the name originated in a battle fought between the Pawnees and the Commanches. The year was 1832. Beseiged by the Comanche hostiles, the Pawnees took refuge in the almost impregnable crevices of the bluff, only to find themselves entirely without water. As their thirst became unendurable, the Pawnees, rather than risk a fight to the river, killed their ponies, one by one and drank the blood. For days they withheld the Commanches until, crazed by thirst, with no more substinence from their mounts, they decided to try and cut their way to water.

Their attempt failed and they were slaughtered to a man.

The Commanches, touched by this display of intestinal fortitude, erected on the Rock’s summit, a tall pyramid of stones in commemoration of their late enemies. For years, according to legend, the mound of stones remained, surrounded by the bleaching skeltons of the brave Pawnees, Hence the name, Pawnee Rock.

As the lumbering Conestogas began to push westward along the Trail, the pioneers began to use the Rock as a giant “guest book,” carving their names in every conceivable nook and cranny on the bluff ’s face. It is difficult to determine just how many names were left for history, but a conservative estimate would number in the hundreds, according to Stanley Vestal, the more noted who left their names on the Rock were Robert E. Lee, then a young officer headed for Mexican War, and Buffalo Bill Cody.

As civilization rolled westward and towns sprang

EMIGRANT INDIANS Indians removed to what became the State of Kansas

T

housands of American Indian tribes were moved to the area that is now Kansas from the East and Great Lakes area. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in the settlement of more than 10,000 American Indians to what is now Kansas. The Kickapoo, originally from Wisconsin, were removed to Kansas in 1832 from Missouri. In 1836 the Iowas from north of the Great Lakes were assigned a reservation in Kansas. In 1838 the Potawatomis began their move from northern Indiana. Treaties with the Sak and Fox of the Mississippi Valley from 1842 to 1861 ceded Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska lands to the United States, leaving small reserves in Doniphan and Osage counties in Kansas.

The Miamis were moved by barge from Indiana in 1846.

COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

A photograph of Al-le-ga-wa-ho, Head Chief of the Kaws. This is a cropped version of a larger group photograph taken at a meeting between Lewis V. Bogy, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Chas. E. Mix, Chief Clerk of the Indian Bureau, and the Sacs and Foxes and Kaws in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, Bogy advised the Sacs and Foxes and Kaws to go to a new home, better adapted to their condition, in the valley of the Canadian River.

MASSACRE AT WALNUT CREEK

up, the Rock suffered accordingly. The railroads, more interested in convenience of travel than history, used the Dakota sandstone bluffs as a quarry to fill their road beds.

Thus, by the turn of the century, much of the rock’s face and summit had been whittled away, obliterating forever many of the carvings.

In 1908 the town of Pawnee Rock, concerned over the defacement, decided to preserve the famous landmark.

The owner of the Rock agreed to turn the site over to the city as a public monument. A granite shaft commemorating the site was erected in tribute to the pyramid of stones erected long before.

On May 24, 1912, in special ceremonies, the shaft was unveiled and the historical site dedicated to the State of Kansas. Thus Pawnee Rock became a lasting memorial to those long ago pioneers, both named and nameless, who, so long ago, passed this way.

KANSAS PETROGLYPHS

Signs cut into the rock tell stories of times long past

P

etroglyphs are pictures or designs that are cut into a rock’s surface. In Kansas most petroglyphs were scratched or incised into exposed bedrock producing figures or designs in outline form. They were made by Native American Indians, Kansas pioneers, and are still being made today. Although they seem to be a permanent form of art, petroglyphs at bedrock locations are subject to erosion; they eventually will be destroyed.

Petroglyphs made by prehistoric and historic Indian people can be recognized partly by their styles and also by the subjects depicted. Men wearing headdresses and carrying shields or spears are found, as are stylized horses and riders. These figures are sometimes arranged as though stories were being told, but more commonly, individual human figures are apparently unrelated to other glyphs at a particu-

lar site. They were created perhaps as expressions of the fierce individualism of Plains Indian warriors.

Other petroglyphs depict animals or animal tracks, such as bison or deer, and a very few depict animal “monsters” that have no living counterparts. Some glyphs are geometric designs of uncertain meaning.

Petroglyphs are found where suitable rock outcrops occur, especially on the sandstone bluffs and cliffs of central and north-central Kansas. Large and small sites have been recorded, but additional petroglyph sites must exist since there are miles and miles of exposed rock faces that have never been examined. Petroglyphs are interesting and oftentimes beautiful traces of the past.

A detailed record of Kansas petroglyphs should be made for future generations before they are eroded away or destroyed by thoughtless persons. Contact the Kansas Historical Society for additional information about Kansas petroglyphs or to report petroglyph locations.

Bones discovered in 1973 were those of massacre victims

I

n April 1973 floodwaters of Walnut Creek, near Great Bend, exposed human bones in the creek bank. The Barton County sheriff was called to the site and he confirmed that several skeletons were present. News broadcasts suggested that an undiscovered mass murder had been revealed. Historical Society archeologists, suspecting that a different story was unfolding, searched 19th century archives and meticulously excavated the skeletons. The remains of 10 adult males were discovered. Steel arrow points, some embedded in human bones, proved that this was indeed a massacre, but not a recent one.

On the night of July 17, 1864, 30 teamsters with 30 wagons were encamped about seven miles east of Fort Zarah, a small military outpost located near the Walnut Creek crossing of the Santa Fe Trail for the protection of wagon trains from attacks by Kiowas, Comanches, and Arapahos. A military escort had accompanied the teamsters to Council Grove but had then returned to Fort Leavenworth with assurances that the trail was safe because of recent treaties.

A band of Kiowas had trouble with soldiers at Fort Larned on July 17 and they stole most of the fort’s

livestock and wounded a soldier. At about 10 a.m. July 18, 125 young Kiowa warriors attacked the 30 wagons that were then about one mile from Fort Zarah. The teamsters had few firearms and no military escort, in spite of the fact that they were under military freighting contracts. The soldiers at Fort Zarah witnessed the battle and attempted a rescue but were forced to turn back when they realized that a larger party of Kiowas was nearby. Albert Gentry, a surviving teamster, was the only armed freighter. With his smoothbore firearm, he accounted for the only Kiowa casualty and escorted a number of teamsters to the fort. Another freighter, armed with a bullwhip, kept the Kiowas at a distance until his small party could reach safety.

When the civilians and soldiers eventually went out to recover the bodies of their slain companions, they found the plundered wagons and 12 seemingly lifeless victims. Ten men were indeed dead, but two were alive, though scalped and severely wounded. The dead were buried in two graves near the crossing and it was these bones that had unveiled the 140-year-old massacre.

Robert McGee, one of the scalped survivors, was 14 years old when the attack took place. He exhibited his scalped skull as a sideshow attraction for many years.

COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Petroglyphs made by prehistoric and historic Indian people can be recognized partly by their styles and also by the subjects depicted.

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 7

THEORIGIN OF KANSAS

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State takes name from Kaw Native American Tribe

he State of Kansas is named for the Native American tribe called the Kansa or Kaw. One of the tribal leaders, Hard Chief, was said to take a hard line when negotiating for his people.

This Kansa chief was one of three Kansa tribal members to sign an 1825 treaty that established villages in present-day Shawnee County. His village was located on a bluff high above the Kansas River.

Because of its location, Hard Chief ’s village survived the floods that destroyed other villages and today is the only intact archeological site of its kind. A few eyewitness accounts of the site have been preserved in historical records. Those records, along with archeological studies, offer a rare opportunity to learn more about the Kansa (Kaw) people in the 1800s.

For generations, the Kaw territory spanned much of northeast Kansas. The 1825 treaty limited lands for the 2,400 members of the tribe. Separate communities were named after three leaders. American Chief ’s Village, the smallest of the three, and Fool Chief ’s Village, the largest, were located to the north and in the lowlands. Hard Chief ’s Village contained 50 to 60 earthlodges for its 600 residents.

The treaty promised the Kaw access to a trading post, government agents, blacksmiths, interpreters, and other services. During the spring and fall each year, the Kaw went on hunting trips in the west. When they returned to the village, the Kaw brought furs and hides to trade.

Life in the villages often was difficult. Smallpox struck in 1833 and probably again in 1838, when 100 of the Kaw people died. Flooding in the spring of 1844 washed away the other two villages. Agent Richard Cummins said the area had been “overflown from Bluff to Bluff, sweeping off all [their] fencing, houses.”

Because there wasn’t a mission school in the area, some of the Kaw children were sent to the Shawnee Mission near Westport, part of present day Kansas City.

After returning from the school, several of these children died. Hard Chief refused to let other Kaw children return to the mission.

In 1834, the U.S. Indian agency closed its local office and with it many of the services. A number of Hard Chief ’s followers moved west, possibly to be nearer to

buffalo country. When a wagon train traveler stopped to view the village in 1839, he discovered that the inhabitants were away hunting.

The villages were abandoned in 1848 after another treaty was finalized. The remaining Kaw residents were removed to the Council Grove area. Hard Chief died sometime in the 1860s. Allegawaho was chief to the Kaw people when the last of their land in Kansas was relinquished in 1872. The 194 remaining Kaw were removed to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, where today the 2,861 members of the Kaw Nation live.

The 1987 archeological excavation on the site of Hard Chief ’s village discovered at least 15 possible houses and revealed that the Kaw were dependent on trade goods.

Items discovered include iron axes, a drawknife, a metal bracelet, projectile points of brass and iron, glass beads, glass bottle fragments, and clay pipe fragments. Animal remains include a horse, deer, dog, bison, turtle, and mussel shell.

Hard Chief ’s village offers a rare combination of written records and archeological resources, giving researchers a better understanding of this Kansa village.

MOCCASINS OF MANY TRIBES TROD THESE PLAINS

BY PAUL CONRAD Former Tribune Editor

D

ad, what Indian tribe lived here before the white man came?”

The question has been asked innumerable times all across the United States, and no less in Barton County than elsewhere. For Central Kansas was Indian Country until 1860, and the Redman was tolerated even into the ‘70s as he watched settlers kill his buffalo and fence his hunting grounds.

For instance, in the spring of 1972, a portion of the Shawnee tribe, numbering about 1,500, came to the Walnut Creek to camp. Don Dodge, a pioneer Barton Countian, tells of the visit: “The few white people here decided it would be a good policy to be friendly with them so they asked the Indians to put on a war dance, which they did, out there in the public square where the GAR monument now stands.

The braves had pans and beat on them for music and really kept pretty good time. They danced first on one foot then on the other, making many fancy maneuvers with their tomahawks and uttering weird yells. The swaying of their bodies kept perfect time to the music, if so it could be called.

“The settlers stood around well armed and ready for immediate action if it should prove necessary but after the dance the merchants brought over flour, beans, bacon, and donated them to the Indians, who took the gifts, grunted with satisfaction and went back to camp.

“I remember one couple in particular. Evidently a young married couple, fine looking, especially the girl.

After the dance, they received a 50 pound sack of flour.

The husband mounted his pony and looking back saw that his young wife was having difficulty in lifting the

COURTESY KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Studio portrait of Alice Pappan and Mandie McCauley, Kansa Indians, grandchildren of Chief Al-le-ga-ma-ho taken in 1904.

flour. So he dismounted and very gallantly lifted the sack of flour and placed insecurely on her shoulders. Then he mounted his pony and joined the rest of the braves. She seemed well pleased to think he had been so thoughtful and considerate of her. The Indians were not very thoughtful of their wives and often cruel to their children.”

Shawnee Were Strangers Dodge was describing a Shawnee visit in the days when Indians were seldom seen in Barton/county. That it was a Shawnee tribe illustrates the difficulty in answering the question, “What Indian tribe lived here?”

For the Shawnees originally lived in what is now Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and South Carolina. Under the

famed Tecumseh they fought William Henry Harrison in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Some splinters of the tribe moved to Missouri when the whites occupied their Ohio lands, and in 1825 they sued for peace and a reservation in Eastern Kansas. Shawnee Mission near Kansas City was the first school in Kansas.

In 1845 part of the Shawnee nation moved into Oklahoma, and in 1869 the main body of the tribe was moved into the Indian territory. Presumably the Shawnees who camped here in 1872 belonged in Oklahoma too.

Most Were Displaced So while Shawnee moccasins trod the Walnut valley

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Moccasins from Page 7 and danced on Great Bend’s courthouse square, it would hardly be accurate to list them as a tribe that lived here. So it was with many of the tribes whose names are so familiar to Kansas. Indeed virtually every tribe of American Indians were displaced at least once as the whites pushed westward.

Delawares, Kickapoos, Miamis, Wyandots, Sac and Fox all came to Kansas under the relentless pressure of white settlement.

And taking Don Dodge’s brief encounter as a point of reference, there were many displacements, treaties, massacres and Indian battles yet to be fought in the Southwest and the Northwest after he watched the Shawnees warily in 1872.

But by that year, Barton County was quite secure from the Indian menace, and redmen were objects of curiosity.

Before the white man began crowding tribe upon tribe, who called this area home? Going back to the white man’s first reference-Coronado-we are given the name “Quivira” as the tribe that maintained a fairly settled resident in Kansas. Coronado crossed Central Kansas in 1541 and left only sketchy records of the tribes which proved so disappointing to him. Historians have interpreted his “Quivira” descriptions to fit either the Wichita tribe of sourtheast Kansas or the Pawnee whose hunting grounds straddled what is now the Kansas-Nebraska line.

Juan de Onate, governor of New Mexico, came to Kansas in 1601, and called the tribe he met the “Escansaques”, which suggests the name of another tribe, the Kanzas. He observed the cultivation of maize, beans, gourds and plums.

The Kanzas occupied land along the Kansas river.

The name “Quivira” disappears in later history of white explorations, and the Kanza tribe, along with the Osages of eastern Kansas, also lost their positions as the whites bought their rights to large areas and moved eastern tribes into their homelands, One other tribe is credited with a Kansas residence in those earliest days-the Padouca or Comanche, whose hunting ground included Western Kansas.

Pawnee Best Known Ask most residents of the Golden Belt area which tribe predominated here and at least half would answer “Pawnee”.

This reaction stems largely from the residue of Indian lore that most influences us now-the n names of geographical locations. “Pawnee Creek”, Pawnee Rock”, Pawnee County”, constitutes the weight of authority.

And to the extent that the Pawnees were native to

northern Kansas and southern Nebraska, and unquestionably ranged this far south to hunt in the fabulous buffalo country of the Arkansas and Walnut valleys, probably they rate the first mentions.

In 1702 Iberville estimated the Pawnee population at 2,000 families. It was at a Pawnee village in what is now Republic County that Lt. Zebulan Pike raised the American Flag in 1806. Subsequently their numbers were decimated by cholera, they were herded north out of Kansas, and finally in 1873 to 1875, moved into the Indian Territory.

But many other tribes at one time or another counted the Walnut Valley and this area as hunting grounds. “Cheyenne Bottoms” suggested the presence of another tribe, and tradition has it the Cheyennes fought a bloody battle with either the Pawnees or the Kiowas for possession of this rendezvous. Blood Creek, flowing into the Bottoms from the west is supposed to have been named from the slaughter that occurred there some 120 years ago. The Cheyennes inhabited the upper Mississippi before the white man came to the Western Hemisphere. They were driven into the black Hills area in a dispute with the Sioux. That’s where Lewis and Clark found them in 1804. Later they drifted south into Colorado, and eventually touched most of the high plains area. They finally were settled on a reservation i n Western Oklahoma.

Kiowas Came from North The Kiowas were frequent hunters in this area during the years just prior to white settlement. Satanta and his warriors plagued the Santa Fe Trail traffic in the 1850s. They too had been displaced by wars, chiefly with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Native once to the region of the upper Missouri and the Yellowstone, they wandered or were driven into Colorado and Oklahoma,. Allied with the Comanches, they raided frontier settlements in Texas and Mexico. In 1965 they joined with the Comanche in a treaty which ceded to the U.S. a large tract of land in Colorado, Texas and southwest Kansas, and three years later they were put on a reservation in the western part of Indian territory.

This treaty series included a gathering of an estimated 13,000 Indians at Fort Zarah in 1866. It also involved an early day Barton County resident whose friendship with Satanta was so important to the final treaty with the Kiowas.

The first of three treaties was signed at Wichita in 1865.

An estimated 5,000 attended this session. Tribes represented were the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Cheyennes,

Arapahoes and the Prairie Apaches. Certain agreements were reached, but since Indian treaties required ratification by the U.S. Senate, the promises made at Wichita were slow coming.

The 1866 meeting at Fort Zarah was largely to distribute goods promised at Wichita. The same tribes were represented, being those occupying most of the high plains area of Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. The Great Bend peace treaty negotiations revolved largely around the quality of goods being delivered to the Indians. Several noted frontiersmen were present as interpreters, and to protest the moldy civil War surplus blankets and poor quality food being turned over to the tribes.

Mathewson Moved In 1867, at the much publicized Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty, the U.S. sought to move the tribes into Indian Territory once and for all. The terms allowed the Indians to hunt buffalo as far north as the Arkansas River. But Satanta did not want to move onto the reservation, and made a long speech in opposition to the proposal,. His list of reasons, and the detail into which he went to express them deserved the special notice of Henry Stanley, a famed writer who covered the negotiations for eastern newspapers and magazines.

Satanta had close friend in William Mathewson, who had established a trading post at the mouth of the Walnut in 1953, and subsequently operated a similar post on cow Creek in what is now Rice County. Mathewson attended Medicine Lodge negotiations as an interpreter.

But the old chief didn’t want to be parted from Mathewson, and insisted that if the Kiowas were to move to Oklahoma, Mathewson move too. So the treaty included a provision that the trader would set up a store on the reservation and spend part of his time there for the first seven years.

This Mathewson did.

The advance of the whites was resisted from time to time by the various Indian tribes that counted this area as some of the best buffalo hunting ground on the plains. Freighters on the fabled Santa Fe Trail fought pitched battles many times in this vicinity. At the same time, whites were able to operate trading posts as such remote points as the Allison ranch on the Walnut, without undue fear of attack.

All in all, in could be said that Kansas, and this area in particular, was occupied by the whites with a minimum of bloodshed.

SCOUTING ADVENTURES IN 1853 Indian fight at the Arkansas

BY JAMES M. FUGATE of Barton County

I

n April, 1853, young, vigorous, and never having seen as much of the world as generally fills, the ambition of fellows in their early days of manhood. I engaged as teamster to drive through with a train of ox-wagons loaded with mer chandise for the Santa Fe trade. We left La Fayette County, Missouri, the 24th day of April; our company comprised 45 men, armed with the old-fashioned long-range rifles, each, a Colt’s navy revolver and bowie knife.

Our teams numbered 210 head of cattle in all.

Kansas was then one vast wild plain,

over which roving bands of hostile Indians. were constantly cutting off emigrant and freight trains on their way to New Mexico and the Californias.

After leaving the settlement some distance, we overtook, twelve men with three wagons, who had discovered there was danger ahead and were awaiting reinforcements before venturing farther.

This increased our fighting force to 57

robust, well-armed men.

Our first serious trouble began after reaching the Arkansas Valley, at a point near where Hutchinson now stands, and where we had gone into camp about noon of May 21st. While at dinner we were suddenly startled by the alarm cry “Indians! “ Before we had got our teams and wagons fairly in corral, they were charg-

ing around us on their horses, yelling and firing like demons. Taken at such a dangerous disadvantage and surprise, we were just in that position which makes men fight with desperation, and instantaneously our rifles were pealing forth their notes of defiance and death to the dusky murderous foe.

We were completely encircled by the savages, who proved to be Comanches, swinging upon the opposite side of their ponies exposing but little of themselves to our aim by firing under their horses’ necks. Their deadly missiles were soon playing havoc among our cattle. The creatures were madly surging and bellowing around, endangering us to a death beneath their feet, worse to be feared within the enclosure than the foe without. This new danger soon drove us outside the enclosure of wagons. in full view of the Indians.

We had now fairly got our hands in and were tumbling their ponies at a rapid rate. Few Indians after their ponies fell, escaped a rifle bullet. The Indians were narrowing their circle until twenty-five yards scarcely intervened between us.

See SCOUTING on Page 9

PHOTO COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

A covered wagon crosses the Arkansas River at Great Bend in 1872.

SANTA FE TRAIL-ONE OF THE HIGHWAYS THAT OPENED THE WEST

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BY ED KNOWLES

he man who holds title to being the first European to follow the rout of the Santa Fe Trail would probably have not been the slightest big interested in the honor. For Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s all-consuming passion was gold, not trail blazing.

It was the pursuit of gold that led men north from Mexico in 1541 in search of the fabled Quivera, which, so he was told, lay like a glittering jewel in the unexplored regions of the Great Plains. And it was his failure to find either the city or the gold that led him-a very disgruntled Spaniard-back along the natural pathway to Santa Fe. The trail itself was known years before the Spaniards ever heard of Mexico or the elusive Quivera. As far back as the 11th century, when our European ancestors were fighting for the Holy Sepulchre in Jeruselum Indians were using the trail’s

convenient pathways on their rambling jaunts across the plains. In academic works, these Indians are referred to as “Mound builders,” due to their habit of caching their material acquisitions in holes covered by large mounds of earth. A more likely term for them would be “Rovers.” For in these mounds have been found copper deposits from Lake Michigan, sea shells from the oceans and quartz from the Rockies, testifying to the extensive travels of these Redmen, who, because they had no means of transportation, walked wherever they went.

Another Name At first called the “Mexican Trace,” the trail acquired national prominence shortly after Napoleon, who, fast losing a grip on his empire, deeded the Louisiana Territory to President Jefferson, In 1806, three years after the purchase, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, ordered to explore the newly acquired land, took a company of soldiers to

See Trail on Page 9

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 9

TRAIL from Page 8 Santa Fe by way of the Trail. On the way he stopped long enough to climb a mountain which now bears his name.

When Pike returned from the region with tales of fabulous prices being paid by the Spaniards in Santa Fe for manufactured goods, speculation-minded businessmen in Missouri and elsewhere began transporting goods by horseback to the city.

But it was not until 1821, when Captain William Becknell proved that commerce was feasible on the Trail, that the “Mexican Trace” came into its own. In that year Becknell returned to Arrow Rock, Mo., after a 48 day trip into the southwest, his saddle bags bulging with Spanish silver and head full of glowing accounts of the profits to be made in the Santa Fe trade.

The news of Becknell’s achievement swept eastward, and in 1825 the U.S. Corps of Engineers sent an expedition into the west to survey a route to Santa Fe. They did their work with remarkable preciseness, marking their surveys at intervals with large mounds of earth for the caravans to follow. Their attention to topographical detail, however, was lacking. They ignored the natural pathway which Mother Nature herself had carved. Therefore, when the caravans began to roll in the spring, they followed the route Becknell had selected.

Signed Important Treaty The surveyor’s mission was not entirely wasted, however.

While on their expedition they held a pow-wow with some Osage Indian chiefs under an oak tree in eastern Kansas, near the Missouri border. This oak tree is still standing and is known as Council Oak. The city, which many years later was built near there is Council Grove.

Under the terms of the treaty which resulted from that pow-wow, the Osages were to allow the wagon trains to pass safely, thus opening the trail for the future influx of land-hungry, money-hungry emigrants.

Unfortunately the more war-like Comanches, Arapahoes, Kiowas and Pawnees sent no representatives to the treaty council. Roaming the Great Plains region, along the Trail, these hostile bands posed a death threat to the lumbering wagons that passed that way. As long as the caravans remained closed up and on the move, the hostiles were hesitant to attack, but let a wagon straggle or become separated from the rest of the train due to a break down and Indians were sure to make an appearance.

Jedediah Smith found that out the hard way. In 1831 Smith commanded a wagon train which started with high hopes and goods-laden wagons for Santa Fe. Half way there, the train took a wrong turn and ended up lost in the desert- like regions of the Texas Panhandle where food was scarce and water only a memory. For three blistering days the caravan toiled along, rolling further into the wild, unexplored regions, inhabited only by scraggly sagebrush and an occasional hunger ravaged buffalo.

Finally in desperation and almost insane from thirst, Smith set out alone to find water. Some miles from the stranded caravan he came upon the twisting banks of the Cimarron River. The creek was sandy-dry, but Smith managed to find a little water by scooping a deep hole in the creek bed. Intent upon slacking his thirst, Smith failed to keep a close watch of his surroundings. A band of Comanches left his body to rot beneath the blazing sun.

From Westport West Franklin, Mo, the original outfitting point for the wagon trains, soon lost its title to Westport (now Kansas City) as the emigrant bearing steamboats pushed further up the Missouri River. During the height of the outfitting seasons, Westport swarmed with humanity.

Along the streets walked the long maned mountain men and trappers; the rich merchants in beaver hats and ruffles; the craggy face buffalo hunters, smelling of last season’s kill; the money hungry French Canadian voyageurs; sombreroed Spaniards; the lard-poor emigrant farmers in faded

jeans;; wide-eyed greenhorns; ladies of fashion in silk and cashmere; other “ladies” whose tastes ran in a different direction. But regardless of station in life all were facing westward, hearing the call of adventure and a new life beyond the sunset.

The caravans usually started in the spring as soon as the grass was high enough to provid grazing for mules, horses and oxen. From Westport, they traveled in a more or less haphazard fashion to the rendezvous point at Council Grove, 145 miles westward. Here on the fringe the emigrants organized themselves into a tight system of command and obeyance. Every man in the train had a vote and the officers were chosen by open balloting. First the Captain. Most likely he was a hardened veteran of the trail, tempered by years of isolation, able to spot “sign” with his eyes closed. One such was Charles Bent, who later established Bent’s Fort on the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail. Another was Kit Carson.

After the captain was selected, the voters next chose a lieutenant, a clerk and three judges to try offenses.

The elections completed, the trail wives turned to repacking and sorting out the contents of their wagons while the men cut extra wagon tongues, spare axle trees, and toughed out a hickory ox bow to be slung beneath the wagon.

Exciting Start In a few days the caravan was ready to start. At daybreak, the captain’s shouted command, “Catch up,” pealed through the camp. Everyman was instantly awake, roping the animals and putting the oxen under the heavy yoke. As each driver took his place on the wagon seat, reins in hand, he called “All set.” When the last driver made that announcement, the captain rode to the head of the wagons and waving his hat above his head, shouted “Stretch out.”

The eight-mule teams and the heavy oxen hunched forward, the wagon wheels creaked into motion and the caravan began to move. There might be 20 wagons in the column, or 100, depending upon the size of the caravan.

The smaller commands moved in double columns; the larger ones in four columns several yards apart. Woven between the columns one was likely to see, vying for a place in the line with cows, horses and dogs, several Dearborn carriages ludicrously out of place among the heavy lumbering Conestogas. Most of the carriages were the personal preferences of the high born ladies, unused to the springless wagons. Others contained invalids, medical outcasts, whose only hope lay in the oft told tales of miraculous cures obtained in the west.

Wide Highway From Council Grove the trail branched out into a broad, highway, 400 yards wide, meandering between the sloping hills and through the rippling grasslands of eastern Kansas.

As the caravan toiled further it encountered the biting dust of the plains, relieved only by a sudden cloudbursts which soon left the trail hub deep in a sea of mud that gripped the wagons wheels like avise. Keeping a little south of west, the train forded a series of small wandering streams that stretched northward like slender fingers: Cottonwood Creek, Turkey Creek, the Little ‘Arkansas and Cow Creek.

Always they must cross the stream before making camp. A sudden rainstorm during the night could flood the creek and delay the caravan for days.

Two-hundred sixty-five miles from the starting point, the caravan struck the first “Big Water”, the big bend of the Arkansas River where the city Great Bend now stands. A few miles further on, jutting toward the sky like a grotesque tombstone, stood Pawnee Rock, fabled in twice-told tales of Indian battles and desperate last ditch stands by besieged men. At that point the caravan halted, usually for a day or two,while the women folk caught up on the family washing and the men made needed repairs on the wagons. Most of them found time to climb the huge outcropping of rock and chisel their names in the stone. In time this rock be-

came a giant “guest book” for those who came this way.

Along North Bank From Pawnee Rock, the trail followed the north bank of the Arkansas for about 200 miles, crossing Ash Creek and Pawnee Forks, and on to the welcoming walls of old Fort Dodge. West of the Fort lay Cimarron Crossing. Once the crossing was reached, the caravan had two choices of travel, the Desert Route, southwest over the sand hills and bleak, arid badlands of the Texas panhandle where Smith had lost his life many years before, or straight west on the Mountain Route, following the curving banks of the Arkansas into the foothills of the Rockies and then south to Santa Fe. Into Santa Fe Once the choice was made the caravans rolled unceasingly, until, after countless ordeals with Indians, thunderstorms, scurvy, floods, thirst, delays and deaths, the train rumbled down the last cactus-dotted slope into the city of quaint adobes and leisure siestas-Santa Fe. With the first introductory shout of the wagon master, the city turned out. There were gaily attired ciballeros, dark eyed senoritas in colorful rebozoes, dashing cabelleros, welcoming “Los Americanos,” Los Carros,” La Caravana.”

From the corner cantinas came the tinkling strains of fandango music while the tangy odor of frijoles filled the desert air. And for the parched travelers, “Meebeso a leetle tiquela,” which left the “Americanos” in just the right spirit for the evenings festivities.

For 20 years this gay scene was repeated countless times as the wagon ruts deepened along nature’s highway to Santa Fe and the vast fabulous land of the southwest became the meeting ground upon which the old clasped hands with the new. How many traveled that way can never be known.

For the spirit of comradeship and mutual enterprise left no time for the keeping of records.

War Cuts Trade Much too soon an ominous dark cloud thrust its ugly head across the southwest-WAR. The Mexicans, long fearful of domination from afar, objected to the U.S. government’s claim to the Republic of Texas. Already blood had been shed at the Alamo and Goliad. Now it was time for other battles; for Buena Vista and Chapultepec.

As war became eminent the Governor of New Mexico closed the Santa Fe Trail. The creaking wheels of the goods laden Conestogas were replaced by the pounding hoofs of calvary horses. As the tide of battle swept northward up through Mexico and into the territory of Texas, the fabled Santa Fe Trail dwindled into insignificance.

Thrusting deep into New Mexico, General Stephen Watts Kearney gradually forced the native New Mexicans into submission. On August 18, 1846, the American flag was hoisted aloft above the Palace of Governors at Santa Fe. New Mexico Territory was now part of the U.S. But in the process of acquiring this claim much of the spirit in which the Santa Fe Trail had been founded was lost. Trade slackened until it became a mere trickle like the last bit of water in a sun-baked creek bed.

Gold provided the final chapter. As the first startling news of California’s fabulous discovery swept eastward, all thoughts turned to the glittering yellow metal which could make one rich with the flick of a shovel. “Californy” and the High Sierras became the goal of the emigrants and Santa Fe no longer heard the rumble of wagon wheels or the shouts of “Welcome Americanos” War and Gold had turned the tide of western expansion and the proud, silver-rich senor must take his place in line with the rest...

The trail would be used briefly in later years as a convenient pathway to the Indian Wars, but its heyday was over, and the deep ruts left by the thousands of Conestogas, stretching 708 miles across the Great Plains, was ready for its page in the history books.

SCOUTING from Page 8 But the motion of their steeds unsteadied their aim until it was but random, while the closer they pressed us the more destructive became every shot we fired, Such fighting could not last long. After the first few rounds the savages mostly substituted the gun with the bow and arrows. Finding themselves getting most terribly worsted in the combat, they made a dash to ride down and tomahawk us all in one death struggle. I tell you, then, we had no child’s play. Outnumbering four or five to one in a hand-to-hand fight to the death, is a serious thing.

We were soon mingling together, but driven against the wagons, we could dodge or parry their blows with the tomahawk, while the rapid flashes from the celebrated “navy” in each man’s hand, was not so easily avoided by the savage warriors. We made the ground too hot for them, and with yells of baffled rage, they broke and fled, carrying off all their killed and wounded but three, which they had to leave.

Now for the first time since the fight began we had time to take in our situation. One of the bravest and best of our comrades, young Gilbert, was shot through the heart while fighting the savages back with clubbed rifle, his revolver having miss fire. He lay as he fell, with his hand clenched around the stock

MYTHOLOGICAL JAYHAWK TOUGH AND REMARKABLE

of his gun as though he would take the weapon with his departed spirit to the other world where he might avenge his death upon the savages, who had paid such a dear penalty for their last work. Many others of our company were wounded, two of them severely. The dead and dying ponies were scattered about on the prairie with the arms and accoutrements of their savage owners about them; while several of our cattle were also dead and dying from wounds made by missiles aimed for us.

The remainder of the day was spent in burying our poor comrade on the spot made sacred by his life’s blood (which we did as well as we could under the circumstances,) caring for our wounded, and gathering up the spoils of the fight. We destroyed everything belonging to the Indians that we could not carry away, and along towards night-fall moved a mile up the river, where we went into camp.

After the excitement consequent upon the fight began to subside, we had much to talk over about our chances of fighting our way with such a small force through the entire boundless plains before us to New Mexico. The future looked hopeless indeed, but J.W. Jones who commanded the outfit, swore he would go to Santa Fe or go to ____, We dare not show the white feather, then.

Celebrate the history of Barton County – home of Cheyenne Bottoms and the most dangerous stretch on the Old Santa Fe Trail

Kansas The ‘Jayhawk’ state.

T

here are several legends of how the bird became the symbol of the state.

This “Jayhawk”, a mythical ornithological miracle, recently was the subject of a essay by Kirk Mechem, former secretary of the Kansas Historical society. Mecham traces the myth back to Indian days when, he says, reports were common that Jayhawks were the first residents of the plains.

“They settled here,” Indians explained, “because the land was flat.

They flew at such great speed that they needed level runways for land-

ing. When the Jayhawks first came to the plains, all the country was a desert without water or vegetation and even without wind. For many moons whenever a Jayhawk wanted a drink he had to fly to the great Lakes. One hot summer day several million Jayhawks stated northeast for water at the same time. The tremendous force of their flight started a strong breeze from the Southwest. From that day the wind has never ceased. Since it blew the first clouds across the plains Indians always credited the Jayhawk with bringing rain and vegetation to Kansas.”

Spaniards of Coronada’s day

See JAYHAWK on Page 14

Great Bend Army Air Field Sooy Oil Test

Barton County Historical Society

Pawnee Rock

Rifleman

620.793.5125

85 S Hwy 281 – PO Box 1091 Great Bend KS 67530-1091 http://bartoncountymuseum.org

10 n GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011

AMADA KITE Great Bend Tribune

Shown is the Arkansas River in Pawnee County. A similar spot on this river was the scene of a battle with Native Americas in 1860.

A BATTLE ON THE RIVER

Fight occurs on Lowrey’s Island near Garfield FROM GOVERNOR ISAAC SHARP’S DIARY

BY MAJOR HENRY INMAN OF LARNED

I

t was a magnificent September day in the early part of that month in the year 1860.

The amber mist of the glorious Indian Summer hung in light clouds over the rippling Pawnee, and the sheen of the noonday sun on the Arkansas made that silent stream, where it broadens out lake-like, towards the now thriving little village of Garfield, sparkle and scintillate until it was painful for the eyes to rest upon. The low group of sand-hills loomed up white and silvery, like the chalk cliffs of Dover. The box-elders and cottonwoods that fringed the tributaries to the rivers were rapidly donning their Autumn dress of russet, and the mirage had already, in the early mornings, commenced its weird and fantastic play with the landscape.

Under the shadow of the bluff, where Larned now reposes so picturesquely, hundreds of buffaloes were grazing, and on the plateau above the crest of the hill, a few sentinel antelopes were guarding their charge, now quietly ruminating their morning’s meal in the ravines. runniug towards the river.

Near where Brown’s Grove is now located, under the grateful shade of the thickest clumps of timber, about forty wigwams were irregularly scattered, and on the hills a herd of two or three hundred ponies were lazily feeding, guarded by half a dozen superannuated squaws, and a troup of dusky little children, who were chasing the yellow butterflies from the now dried and dying sun flower stalks that so conspiciously marked the broad trail to the river.

This beautiful spot was selected by Black Kettle, chief of the Cheyennes, for his winter camp, where only a few weeks previously he had moved from the Canadian, and settled with his band to

hunt on the Arkansas Bottom, and watch his enemies, the Pawnees, who claimed the same ground, and where year after year the most sanguinary battles between the two tribes had been fought. Apart from the remainder of the wigwams, and near the edge of the stream was the magnificent lodge of Yellow Buffalo, the war chief of the Cheyennes.

This lodge was formed of beautifully porcupined and beaded robes, and its interior was graced with a long row of scalps-the trophies of his fame as a great warrior.

On the morning of the date above mentioned, I had reached the Arkansas at a point a few miles east of the mouth of the Pawnee, on my way to Fort Larned from my ranch on Sharp’s Creek, (now in McPherson county,) and when near where Larned now stands I noticed a large body of Indians in a stooping attitude, as though hunting for something, and I supposed them to be some of my Knowa friends on the trail of an enemy. I spurred my horse and rode toward them, when all of a sudden they dropped in the grass, which convinced me of the error of my first supposition.

I was acquainted at that time with nearly all the tribes on the plains, and particularly those who would probably be in that vicinity then, and with a fair knowledge of the Indian character, I readily concluded that mY covey in the grass were a band of “Dog-Soldiers,” of some tribe, either on the war-path against some of the other tribes that roamed in the valley of the Arkansas, or a party to steal horses, and in either event I had nothing to fear, as the report of a gun would be the last thing they would want to hear just then.

So I rode on, and when within a hundred yards or so of the Indians, one rose, and holding both hands up with palms to the front, in his own dialect called my name.

I then felt considerably relieved for I found myself among thirty-two Pawnees, who, as I first

supposed, were there to steal horses from the Cheyennes or Kiowas.

On hearing this fact, I told them that a few miles back on the trail, I had seen a large number of Indians on the high prairie, scatte ed out as if surrounding buffalo, or elk, but that I had seen no game, and now I knew their presence was known to the Arkansas tribes, and that there were so many of these wild Indians that the few Pawnees would all be killed if found. They then told me they wanted to reach the island in the river, and there they could fight all the “Ingins” that would dare come, and if they got to the island before the wild Indians found them, I must go to them and tell them that they were there, and myself come and see the fight. That if I stayed on my horse, either on the east or west side of the island, or on the hill on the northwest, I could see it all and be safe from their bullets; and if they all got killed I should tell their people how grandly and bravely they died.

I left them and went on towards the Fort, and when within three miles of it, met “Yellow Buffalo” with some two hundred of his warriors, with their paint on and beating their drums.

“Yellow Buffalo” was then about thirty years old, and as grand a looking Indians as I ever saw.

I delivered my message from the Pawnees to him, immediately upon which the two hundred warriors raised the war-cry, which echoed and reverberated in all the splendor of its savage grandeur over the prairie, and which none but those who have heard it under such circumstances, can appreciate.

Stung to the heart by my message of defiance, “Yellow Buffalo” appeared the true savage that he was, and the ferocity of his wild nature glared in his eyes as he thought of the deep wrongs done to his tribe by the “dogs of Pawnees!” as he call ed them, and appealed to his men that “now was the time presented to them, to not only reap an adequate revenge, but add lasting

laurels to their wreaths as brave and skilful warriors.”

We were a little south of the old Santa Fe trail, and he ordered his band to turn nearly due south and then we loped off in the direction of the island. As we neared the river bank we saw the last of the Pawnees, who had been watching our approach, plunge into the stream and reach the island in safety, as our advance halted on the spot where now rests the north end of the Larned bridge. It was now about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The Cheyenne dismounted and every tenth man went to the rear to hold tbe horses and guard them from a possillle flank movement on the part of the Pawnees. I was honored by “Yellow Bulfalo” with the privilege of taking care of my own horsewhich I am happy to say I did from a position on the south end of the hill west of town, and as near the river as was prudent for a non-combatant.

Nearly all the Cheyennes were armed with muzzleloading rifles, and a third of them had large Colt’s army revolvers. At the command of their chief, “Yellow Buffalo,” the Cheyennes formed a line of battle, which seemed to extend up and down the river the whole length of the island, while five or six of them acted as flankers. During five or six of them acted as flankers. During to be seen.

In those days the island was covered only with thick willows, which concealed the watchful Pawnees, who were rather better armed than the Cheyennes each having a Spencer carbine and two revolvers, either army or navy pattern, besides their bows and quivers well filled with arrows. When all was in readiness, and “Yellow Buffalo” had made a proper disposition of his forces, he gave the order to charge! Upon hearing his clear voice ring across the prairie, his warriors responded with a most unearthly yell, that seemed to shake even the eternal dunes of sand on the opposite side of the river, and

then rushed into the Arkansas. The water was waist high, and as they advanced they still kept up the infernal yell until they reached within ten feet of the island, when, like a flash of light from a clear sky, came a sheet of flame from the edge of the willows, promptly responded to by the braves in the water.

In an instant however, much to my surprise, the Pawnees delivered from their ranks another volley, followed immediately by the quick sharp crack of revolvers, which seemed to completely overwhelm and discomfort the Cheyennes, all of whom beat a hasty retreat to the main land.

Their war-whoop ceased the instant they commenced their backward march, and in a moment some twenty of the Pawnees appeared above the willows and kept up a well directed fire on their foes, until the latter reached the bank of the river.

In this single charge of the Cheyennes, thirteen were killed and twentythree wounded evincing a coolness and deliberation on the part of the Pawnees, not excelled by the best organized troops. The Cheyennes, in their charge, showed their characteristic recklessness and daring, but which counted for nothing in results, as all the bullets were carried clear over the heads of the Pawnees who were concealed by the friendly willows.

While the main body of the Pawnees were keeping up their almost incessant fire upon the retreating Cheyennes, three or four others rose at opposite ends of the island, and opened with some well delivered shots with their carbines at the Cheyenne flankers, so that the whole number became demoralized, and “ Yellow Buffalo” with all his painted warriors, fled as far back as where the Rev. R. M. Overstreet’s church now stands on Main street, and held a council.

“Yellow Buffalo” then dispatched a messenger for reinforcements, and in about an hour they arrived from sonth of the river to the num-

ber of some four or five hundred, and upon their joining the other, “Yellow Buffalo” made the same disposition of his now augmented forces as he had with his original army, and then turned his command over to “Black Kettle,” who had come on the ground.

“Black Kettle” kept his Indians in close order, and when they reached within shooting distance of the island, the Pawnees opened upon them with a terrible volley, and the most deafening and diabolical yells, and kept it up for at least ten minutes. The poor Cheyennes returned the fire as best they could, but invariably overshot the Pawnees, whom they could not see, so closely were they hidden by the willows.

Meanwhile “Black Kettle” ingloriously retreated, and then “Yellow Buffalo” felt himself no more disgraced than the “head war chief ” and his chosen warriors.

Thus ended this rather remarkable fight. I never could learn definitely how many of the Cheyennes were killed and wounded in the second charge, but the Pawnees told me they were double the number of the first charge, and coming as it did from the victors, I always made a reasonable allowance. The Cheyennes utterly refused to tell me the number of their loss, but I saw their wounded that night, and helped dress most of their wounds. There were twenty-eight in “Black Kettle’s” camp.

On my return from the Fort next day with my mail, the Cheyennes informed me that these same Pawnees charged through the guards, and actually drove off about 200 of the Cheyenne ponies.

The Pawnees assured me they had but forty warriors, all told, and that they lost in killed and wounded but two.

The Cheyennes. stated however, that they found five graves in the sand, under the edge of the water, which they exhumed and left the bodies to rot, and the bones to bleach on the prairie like a coyote.

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 11

AT THE BIG BEND IN THE ARK Famous names abound at Walnut Crossing

BY PAUL CONRAD FORMER TRIBUNE EDITOR

“I

f the hills could talk, what tales they

could tell.”

It has been said of many places. It could be said most appropriately of the soft-low-lying bluffs that edge the Arkansas Valley in Barton County.

For between these hills on the north, and the river on the south, history has flowed for centuries. Like a massive funnel, these two natural features of the prairie have channeled human movement - Indians, explorers, hunters, trappers, traders, the pioneers, the railroad-through this trace.

The hills aren’t high. The river is easily crossed. Yet the relatively narrow strip of ground lying north of the river, between present day Great Bend and Ellinwood, has been a highway of history throughout the recorded travels of man and from all evidences, long before.

Why have such unimposing land features commanded such attention? Probably because on the vast, trackless, treeless plains, the big bend of the Arkansas provided a point of reference for travel. Many explorers who crossed the high plains in the earliest days came upon the broad and sandy Arkansas, the major waterway crossing a mighty sea of grass. They chose, naturally enough, to follow the river, whether they were moving upstream or down. And without notable exception, their decision brought them to the great bend, The river had intercepted then, but it had also provided them with a natural highway, easy to follow, to map, and to find again. Significantly, they all stayed on the north side of the river. It provided easier travel, and due to its grand sweep to the north, it ordinarily intercepted them when they were on its north bank.

We propose here to account for those whose travels brought them to this focal point in Kansas history, In terms of numbers, we will be mentioning only a few of the hundreds of thousands who have passed over this strip of land before it became just another valley of farms. Only these few rated mention in the many histories written about Kansas, the Santa Fe Trail, Barton County, and The West. The others left their mark in the deep ruts that are still visible along the trail. A few are buried in long since forgotten graves.

Franciscon Vasquez de Coronado and his troupe followed the Arkansas in 1541, to a point generally believed to have been Central Kansas. Some say he traveled downstream as far as the Wichita area, others argue his journey led him across Rice county northeast from the big bend in the river. In any account, he is traced through this narrow strip of land. Father Juan Padilla, who accompanied him on the fruitless search for gold, stayed in this area and became a martyr in his efforts to teach Christianity to the Indians.

Juan de Onate, governor of New Mexico, followed the same trace-used for hundreds of years by Indians-on a trip to the village of Quivera in 1601, probably in present-day Republic County. He too passed by the hills that

COURTESY THE KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Pictured is an excerpt from the 1902 plat book. It shows the stretch of the Arkansas River between Great Bend and Ellinwood, in the area of the Walnut Crossing.

look down upon the Bend.

The Spaniards may have traveled these traces many times in the intervening years. Their interest in the Central Plains waxed and waned. It was four Frenchmen who next earned a place in the history of this area. Pierre and Paul Mallet, accompanied by two unnamed friends, set out from Fort Kansas on the Missouri River in 1740.

They traveled west along the Platte to the Rockies, then south, in an effort to establish a route to Santa Fe. Their trip took them well north of the Arkansas River in this area, but they eventually reached Santa Fe. It marked the first exploration by whites tying the Mississippi Valley to the Southwest. The Mallets then traveled along the Arkansas River, passing along the big bend and eventually floating downstream to New Orleans.

In 1792, Pedro Vail was sent from Santa Fe to St. Louis to develop an overland trade. His notes record that “The Arkansas was reached on the 27th day of May at a point in the Great Bend, for the stream flowed east northeast.” On the 29th, his party was captured by Indians, but the group was later released and reached St. Louis. Nothing much came of the trip, however, The Spaniards visited again in 1806, when Lt. Don Malgares was dispatched to halt the westward movement of an American, Lt. Zebulon Pike. Malgares visited the Pawnee Village (located in what is now Republic County) to convince the tribe it should turn the American explorers back.

An old chief, Kiwitaka, disliked the Spaniards, and after they had left he convinced the Pawnees they should accept the Americans. On Sept. 29, 1806, Pike and Kiwiktaka raised the American flag over the village. Pike then traveled to the big bend in the Arkansas, where he dispatched six men to float downstream and map the river to its mouth. Pike and 16 men then traveled west to the Rockies.

In 1812, an expedition was outfitted under the auspices of Robert McKnight, James Beard and Samuel Chambers (about 12 men in all) to carry goods to Santa Fe. They followed Pike’s route, bringing them along our Barton County hills and reached the New Mexican capital in safety. But they

were seized as spies, their goods confiscated, and they remained in jail nine years. Two returned to the U.S, in 1821.

In that year an Ohio merchant named Glenn, took a little caravan along the Arkansas to the mountains, and then south to Santa Fe, “in perfect safety” according to Josiah Gregg in his “Commerce of the Prairies.”

It was in 1821 too that Captain William Becknell passed through this area with four companions, The word spread, and in May of 1822, another Missourian, Col. Cooper, led a packhorse caravan along the trail. He and his band of about 15 men carried four to five thousand dollars worth of goods to Taos, N.M., with complete success.

Beckenll left Missouri on a second trip a month later, determined to beat Cooper to New Mexico. He led his company of some 30 men along the Arkansas to a point in southwest Kansas, where he struck off over the dry plains on a shortcut. The group ran out of water and lost its way. They happened upon a buffalo whose stomach was distended with water. According to Gregg, they killed the buffalo and drank the liquid, then found their way back to the Arkansas and continued their journey to Taos.

Some credit Becknell with introducing wagons to the Santa Fe Trail.

Gregg, who himself traveled the trail in 1831, says in his oft-quoted book that a company of 80 traders left Missouri in 1824. “A portion employed packmules; among the rest were owned 25 wheeled vehicles, of which one or two were stout road-wagons, two were carts, and the rest dearborn carriagesthe whole conveying some $25,000 or $30,000 worth of merchandise.”

Gregg describes this caravan as the first to experiment with wagons, but he is disputed by other writers on the Trails.

In 1825, a party of Army Engineers started a twoyear project, charting the trail, Joseph C.. Brown wrote a report from field notes in 1827.

The Santa Fe traders became more numerous each year. Indian depredations increased also, and several parties were attacked. In 1829 Major Bennett Riley with three companies of infantry and one of riflemen, accompanied the

spring caravan past the big bend as far Chouteau’s Island. From there the traders were to travel without escort. But only seven miles farther, the caravan was attacked by Indians, one man killed and Riley’s men was called in for help.

They arrived promptly and escorted the Caravan on to Sand Creek, where they were sent on their way.

Gregg says Riley’s escort, and one in 1834 under Captain Wharton, “constituted the only government protection ever afforded the Santa Fe trade until 1843.”

One of the unfortunate traders who died on the Trail was Captain Jedediah Smith, who passed through the Valley in 1831.

Actually he didn’t die on the trail. He tried a shortcut and ran out of water.

Indians shot him full of arrows as he was scooping sand from a river bed in the search for water.

Gregg himself rates mention as one who traveled the trail in 1831 and for seven years following.

He wrote his “Commerce of the Prairies” in 1844, with apologies for his ineptness as an author. But he has been quoted continually since as one of the most authoritative writers on the early days of the trail. He wrote specifically of the strip of land from which we are viewing the trail: “Half a day’s drive after leaving this camp brought us to the valley of the Arkansas River. This point is about 270 miles from Independence. From the

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adjacent heights the landscape presents an imposing and picturesque appearance. Beneath a ledge of wave-like yellow sandy ridges and hillocks spreading far beyond, descends the majestic river (averaging at least a quarter of a mile in width). The banks are very low and barren, with the exception of an occasional grove of stunted trees hiding behind a swamp or sand-hill, placed there as it were to protect it from the fire of the prairies, which in most parts keeps down every perennial growth. In many places, indeed, where there are no islands, the river is so entirely bare of trees that the unthinking traveller might approach almost to its very brink without suspecting its presence.”

He wrote, too, of an arm amputation carried out when the caravan reached Walnut Creek. A Mr. Broadus, in attempting to draw his rifle from a wagon muzzle, discharged its contents into his arm. The bone was shattered and the limb developed gangrene.

Broadus at first refused to have the arm amputated, then as his death seemed imminent he begged for the operation. They cut the arm off with a handsaw, a butcher’s knife, and an iron bolt. The bolt, red-hot, was used to sear the stump, which healed well.

Gregg writes that even in 1831 Pawnee Rock was covered with the carved initials of passers-by.

Keepsake Edition(s)

Don Antonia Jose Chavez of New Mexico came through this area in 843 with a small party, bound for St. Louis. He was waylaid by Missouri brigands after he had reached Cow Creek, and was subsequently murdered.

In 1843, with the Mexican War threatening, Capt.

P. St. George Cooke and the U.S. Dragoons escorted Santa Fe Trail traffic through this area. In the next few years the friction between Mexico and the U.S. Pinched off commerce over the trail.

Col., A.W. Doniphan led an expedition of U.S. troops through the valley in 1946, on his way to an eminently successful Mexican War campaign.

Other names familiar in the history of the West are carved on the red sandstone of Pawnee Rock, indicating they traveled between the hills and the Arkansas’ banks.

They included Kit Carson, William (Buffalo Bill) Cody, Colonel Bent and many Army men-Sherman, Sheridan, Harvey, Hancock, Kearney, Miles, Crook, Sumner, Custer, Fremont and Leavenworth.

In the 1850’s, the trail was busy again guiding pioneers west. By that time, the traffic supported a trading post at Walnut Crossing and Barton County had its first residents.

Advertise in the Tribune’s Special Section(s) every Sunday starting Jan. 23 March 13 Call 792-1211

Stories and features for Barton and Pawnee Counties and surrounding areas.

12 n GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011

GREAT BEND Tribune file photos

Above is a view of Fort Larned from 1867. Below is the fort, now a national historic site, as it appears today.

A COLORFUL HISTORY

Pawnee County, Fort Larned have roots in rich past ORIGINS OF PAWNEE COUNTY

BY DAVID CLAPSADDLE

P

awnee County derives its name from the Pawnee River, so called for the Pawnee Indians, indigenous to present Nebraska, who traveled twice annually to the Pawnee River Valley on buffalo hunts. Known in the early nineteenth century as Vulture Creek, Indians of the area called the stream Otter River for the number of those animals living in its environs. Later; it was almost universally called Pawnee Fork. That designation was in reference to its tributarial relationship to the Arkansas River, the confluence of the two streams being just east of present Larned. Near the confluence was the crossing used by early Spanish explorers and later by a myriad of travelers pursing the Santa Fe Trail.

Not far from the crossing, long ago obliterated by the flood waters of the Pawnee and Arkansas, is the Zebulon Pike Plaza situated in the Snack-Lowery Park at the south edge of Larned.

The Plaza was dedicated in October of 2006 on the two hundredth anniversary of Lt. Zebulon Pike’s crossing of the Pawnee during his exploratory expedition to the Southwest. Located at

PHOTO COURTESY THE KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Pictured is Zebulon Pike.

the Plaza is signage with referred to: the 1541 expedition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado en route to the legendary Quivira; the 1852 expedition of Father Juan de Padillo, Coronado’s priest, who returned to present west central Kansas, only to be killed by the native Americans he sought to evangelize; the 1806 expedition of Lt. Fucando Melgares who

was dispatched from Santa Fe to intercept American interlopers into Spanish territory; the 1806 expedition of Lt. Pike which followed Melgares’ tracks to the southwest, in so doing blazing a trail which was to become the legendary Road to Santa Fe; and a number of expeditions, both civilian and military, which followed the trade route to the ancient capital of New

Mexico.

With the organization of the Territory of Kansas in 1854, counties were established in the eastern part of what was previously Indian Territory. As settlement pushed westward, a huge land mass named Peketon County was organized in 1860. The county, which occupied the largely uninhabited southwest quantrant of present Kansas, stretched south to the present Oklahoma line and west to the present Colorado border. Prior to 1861, Kansas Territory reached westward to the Rocky Mountains. Following the territory’s 1861 ascent to statehood, the county was renamed Marion. Finally, in 1872, Pawnee County was carved from the larger land mass. In November of that year, citizens met at Fort Larned and the embryonic town of Larned to elect county officers.

Henry Booth, Post Trader at Fort Larned, elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, later wrote, “There was no clamoring for office, there was more than enough to go around.”

Larned was designated as the county seat.

HISTORY OF FORT LARNED FROM KANSAS: A CYCLOPEDIA OF STATE HISTORY, EMBRACING EVENTS ... VOLUME 2

BY FRANK WILSON BLACKMAR

As the red man retired before the advance of a

superior race, the necessity for the stockade and the blockhouse no longer existed, and the frontier forts gradually fell into decay. A few have been maintained by the government as permanent institutions, not so much as a means of defense against hostile aborigines as for quarters of detachments of the regular army and schools for the soldier.

These permanent army posts are usually elaborate affairs, equipped with approved modern appurtenances for the comfort and convenience of the garrison. Two of them— Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley—are located in the State of Kansas. Following is a brief sketch of each of the principal military posts in the state, and each of which in its day played its part toward making Kansas a great commonwealth.

Fort Larned was established in the fall of 1859.

Capt. George H. Steuart, commanding Company K, First United States cavalry, was sent out with his company to establish a mail escort station on the line of the Santa Fe trail. On Oct. 22 he selected a site on the south bank of Pawnee Fork, 8 miles from the mouth, and his camp was known as “Camp on Pawnee Fork” until Feb. 1, 1860, when it was named “Camp Alert.”

On May 29, 1860, pursuant to General Order No. 14, the post was named Fort Larned. in honor of Col. B. F. Larned, at that time paymastergeneral of the United States army. The reservation included a tract of land four miles square, but the extent was not of-

ficially declared until the issuing of General Order No. 22, from the .headquarters of the Department of Missouri, dated Nov. 25, 1867. The first buildings were of adobe, but in 1867, when the reservation was officially established, sandstone buildings were erected. In the early part of 1870 frame additions to the subalterns’ quarters were built, and further improvements were made in 1872. when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad was completed to the fort. The agency for the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians was maintained at Fort Larned for several years, but it was discontinued in 1868.

Late in the ‘70s it became apparent that the necessity for a military post at this place no longer existed, and in Jan., 1880. Senator Plumb, from the committee on military affairs, recommended the passage of a bill to provide for the sale of the reservation to actual settlers. The bill did not pass at that time, but by the act of Congress, approved Aug. 4, 1882, the secretary of war was directed “to relinquish and turn over to the department of the interior, to the public domain, the Fort Larned reservation, to be sold to actual settlers at the appraised price, not more than a quarter-section to any one purchaser.”

More about the Fort from Tribune files With the start of the Civil War in 1861 Fort Larned took on added importance

See HISTORY, page 13

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 13

BORDER WARS

Slavery disputes and warfare rock early Kansas

T

he U.S. Congress established Kansas Territory in 1854.

Many people who settled in Kansas had strong opinions about slavery. Some supported the use of slaves in the new territory. Others opposed the idea.

Some were abolitionists who wanted to end slavery wherever it existed. These differences of opinion led to heated debates and even battles in Kansas Territory. The conflicts in Kansas and how they were reported in eastern newspapers contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. The first election held in Kansas Territory took place on November 29, 1854, to elect a delegate to Congress.

The election, however, was contested because large numbers of pro-slavery Missourians had crossed the border to vote. It has been estimated that 1,729 out of 2,833 votes were cast illegally.

The same “influx” of voters occurred during the election of members for the first territorial legislature held March 30, 1855. Andrew Reeder, the territorial governor, declared the results void only in the six districts that filed protests, but in the process he alienated proslavery inhabitants as well as the more extreme free staters.

In July 1855, President Franklin Pierce dismissed Reeder as governor and replaced him with Wilson Shannon. Shannon’s term was marked by much of the violence that occurred during the territorial period, although some violence including incidents of “tarring and feathering” had occurred under Reeder. The first major incident during Shannon’s tenure was the “Wakarusa War” that began on November 21, 1855, when Charles W. Dow, a free stater, was killed by Franklin Coleman, a proslavery supporter. When a friend of Dow’s, Jacob Branson, was arrested for attending a free state meeting, a group of antislavery supporters rescued him and took him to Lawrence.

The proslavery Sheriff Samuel Jones of Douglas County asked Governor Shannon for assistance in dealing with this “lawless action.” Free state militia arrived to defend Lawrence while proslavery forces gathered east of the city.

After a week long siege, a truce was negotiated and the forces disbanded.

On May 21, 1856, the “sack of Lawrence” took place. Sheriff Jones destroyed two Lawrence newspaper offices and the Free State Hotel, acting on the authority of a proslavery grand jury indictment that declared them nuisances that might be removed.

He also broke into several stores and burned the home of Charles and Sara Robinson.

John Brown, a radical abolitionist, made his presence in Kansas known a few days later when he led four of his sons and three others in killing five

proslavery men near Dutch Henry’s crossing on Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County. Brown, who had come to Kansas in 1855, used religious and moral reasons to justify his actions.

By 1859 Brown had left Kansas, but in the meantime, he had taken part in the Battle of Black Jack on June 2, 1856, and led free staters in defending the town of Osawatomie from a proslavery attack in August 1856.

The Pottawatomie Massacre, as the Brown killings were known, aroused emotions and distrust on both sides. It was denounced by Southern and even some Northern newspapers. Unable to stabilize the situation, Shannon resigned as governor in August 1856.

Meanwhile, Congress, concerned over events in Kansas, appointed a three-member commission (two free staters and one pro-slavery supporter) to investigate the Kansas troubles and to gather evidence relating to election fraud. The group was in the territory during the spring of 1856 and listened to testimony from over three hundred witnesses in Lecompton, Lawrence, Leavenworth, and Tecumseh. The committee presented its 1,338-page report in July, with the proslavery member filing a minority report disputing the majority’s claims of fraudulent elections.

John W. Geary, who arrived in the territory in September of 1856, replaced Shannon as territorial governor.

He found relatively chaotic conditions with armed bands traveling around the countryside and running settlers out of their cabins. He also found a number of free state prisoners under arrest in Lecompton. Geary was determined to restore order and sought to disband the various militia groups, including a sizable free state force under James H. Lane at Lawrence. In addition, he issued a proclamation calling for all free male citizens between eighteen and forty-five to enroll in the territorial militia instead of in the unofficial units. When the militias failed to disband, Geary called upon U.S. troops to persuade both factions to do so. Though Geary was able to alleviate tensions, he met with hostility when he tried to reform the court system. His life was threatened, and he was unable to get backing from Washington. These events convinced Geary to resign in March 1857.

The last major violent incident, known as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, occurred on May 19, 1858. Proslavery Missourians abducted eleven free state supporters and shot them in a ravine approximately four miles northeast of Trading Post in Linn County.

Five were killed, five were wounded, and one escaped injury by acting dead.

Free state forces followed the attackers into Missouri but were unable to

PHOTO COURTESY KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

John Brown was an abolitionist who used violence to end slavery, lead several antislavery attacks during the territorial period of Kansas. On May 24, 1856, he and his followers brutally killed five proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek in Miami County. He led free state forces at the Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City, Kansas, on June 2, 1856 and at the Battle of Osawatomie on August 30, 1856. Brown’s famous attack, in 1859, on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, would led to a trial and a conviction for death by hanging.

capture them. The incident received a great deal of attention in the eastern press and served to increase tensions at the national level. In Kansas, however, even the proslavery newspapers condemned the massacre. Hopes for peace were furthered when another confrontation, known as the Battle of the Spurs, occurred near Holton but ended without violence. John Brown was involved, and this “battle” marked his last efforts in Kansas. Brown and some of his supporters made a raid into Missouri and freed ten slaves. They were taking the slaves to Canada when

a posse from Missouri pursued them.

The posse caught up with the fugitives near Holton. Amid confusion, no shots were fired and the posse quickly retreated.

By 1859 the tensions between proand antislavery forces had diminished.

Some residents were involved in efforts to draft the Wyandotte Constitution, under which Kansas entered the Union in 1861. Many settlers, however, just worked to improve their farms and build communities.

Article from the Kansas State Historical society.

HISTORY from Page 12 as the single military outpost in Kansas! Planned for a complement of 200 men, the buildings were often half empty, depending on green troops and toward the end of the war between the states, with captured confederate soldiery who had been released from prison camps and were often so weakened they could hardly stand.

Nevertheless, the “Rebs” fought with distinction, even carving their way through a band of Kiowas to reclaim a Confederate battle flag which the luckless redmen had carried away.

An Indian thoughtlessly killed along the Trail often paved the way to continued bloodshed as rookie soldiers quickly became seasoned troopers or dead men as the savages gave no quarter in their efforts to oust the whites from the west.

Excitement enough for even the most foolhardy person was provided in 1863 when several thousand Cheyennes camped outside the fort and one of them was shot dead when a trigger-happy sentry challenged him. The Indians demandeed that the fort’s commander, Col. Henry Leavenworth, send the sentry, 16 year old Isaac H. Marrs out to them. They proposed skinning him alive in retribution for loss of the brave.

After several days’ negotiations had brought only increasing tension, a vol-

unteer sneaked through the Indian lines, reached Fort Zarah and returned with enough troops to scatter the Cheyennes.

Indians became more adept at attacks until, by 1864, the War Department issued an order that no wagon train could move west of Fort Larned unless accompanied by at least 100 mounted troops.

Troops Avoid Combat Even while wagons moved four abreast to give them extra time for corralling in case of attack, there were so tragically few troops that a band of Sioux attacked a party of 60 teamsters camped near Coon Creek, less than a mile from a cavalry unit-killing them all and setting fire to the wagons.

Cavalrymen, caught flatfooted during the blood-letting, allowed the slaughter to continue without firing a shot. Their commander was later court-martialed and cashiered from the service John F. Dodds, chief of scouts for the fort, happened by the massacre scene (west of the present Garfield) several days later.

He found two men stirring on the ground and summoned aid.

One of the survivors, a boy named Robert McGee, had been captured by the raiders and brought before their chief. Little Turtle. The brutal Indian knocked him down with a spear, shot him in the back, ripped off a flap of scalp, speared him twice through the body,

tomahawked him twice across the head, hacked out a rib and left him pinned to the ground with two arrows through his back. During the entire torture scene the lad never lost Consciousness!

Miraculously, the boy recovered and later became a valued scout with frontier officers. His companion who was captured with him succumbed to his wounds.

Fort is Attacked At about the same time as the Coon Creek massacre, Kiowas under Chief Satanta attacked Fort Larned, killed a trooper and stampeded 180 horses and mules.

Braves relentlessly tried to kill every white man who ventured onto the plains.

Finally, Gen. James G. Blunt left Fort Riley with 250 men and borrowed an additional 150 from Colorado. With this striking force he set out, riding at night and hiding during the daytime, to intercept the Indians and beat them at their own game. He found them on a September afternoon and killed several dozen during a four hour fight. Blunt followed the survivors until his exhausted horses faltered and he ordered a retreat to Fort Larned.

Despite a peace treaty negotiated in 1865 between Indians and whites, negotiated by Plainsman Kit Carson, the bloodbath of the plains raged un abatedly. That year in March, Col. Cloud, commandant at Fort

Larned, sent four troopers toward Fort Zarah-only to have one race back within a half hour to announce an ambush along Ash Creek.

Rescuers retraced the route and found the first man on the ground, his body filled with arrows. A mile distant lay another, The Indians had lopped of his hands at the wrist, cut off both feet at the ankles, cut out his heart and scalped him. His body was filled with arrows. Several yards distance lay the third victim. His executioners had removed his heart and laid it atop his corpse. A wolf was shot while scampering away with a severed had.

As they went about their gruesome task of recovering the bodies, troopers were alerted by the sounds of firing near Pawnee Creek. They wen that way and found a wagon train being attacked.

Finally, the War Department decided that wagon trains would rendezvous at the fort and proceed westward in large numbers where strength would add to the overall chances of success. Sometime later, 1,000 wagons, traveling four abreast, moved slowly southwestward toward Santa Fe. No one has ever seen a larger assemblage of wagons or men.

Call for Showdown After six years of almost incessant attacks and counter-attacks, the fort’s personnel continued to hang on grimly-and found

the Indians as persistently defiant as they had been at the beginning.

By 1867 a 2,000-man expedition under command of Gen. Win field Scott Hancock set out for Fort Larned. Hancock’s second in command was Gen. George Armstrong Custer, who later won fame and glory in his last-ditch stand with Sioux at the Little Bighorn in the Dakotas.

Hancock brought with him seven infantry companies, a pontoon train, artillery battery and six companies of cavalry. Accompanying them were artists and writers from eastern newspapers-Henry Stanley of African fame and artist T.R. Davis of Harper’s Weely.

Stanley’s dispatches from Fort Larned made the Indian outpost famous throughout the world. Writing in a style that painted pictures with words, the correspondent told of Hancock’s powwow with the Indian chiefs.

The next morning the vast army moved into the field where they soon found the Indians had drawn battle lines.

Hancock rode out to meet the chiefs who asked for horse on which they could catch up with women and children. later, it was learned the Indians had ridded instead to Smoky Hill River and killed settlers there. The general ordered the Cheyenne camp destroyed. Soldiers, however, discovered the Indians

had left. An old man and a young girl were all who were found. The soldiers fired the camp.

Later, several treaties were signed between white and red men but in 1868 Gen. Phil Sheridan of Civil War fame went to Fort Larned, determined to settle Indian uprisings once and for all. In November Custer, under Sheridan’s orders, killed 100 Indians and destroyed 800 horse of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne camp along the Washitathe battle that was credited with breaking the back of Indian resistance.

After that, Indians were removed to reservations and the necessity for frontier posts diminished.

Finally, all Fort Larned troops were dispatched to Fort Dodge. By 1882 Congress signed into law a bill authorizing sale of Fort Larned equipment to the Pawnee Valley Stock Breeders Association, which used the fort as stock breeding ranch.

June 28, 1902 saw sale of the ranch to E.E. Frizell. His son, E.D. Frizell, guided the ranch’s development until his death in 1956. Mrs. Frizell and her son Robert leased the fort to the Fort Larned Historical Society, a non-profit organization.

The grounds were open to the public May 19, 1957 as a tourist attraction.

14 n GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011

JAYHAWK from Page 8 Mechem explains, were the first white men to hear these stories from the Indians and the following observations by the conquistadores are quoted in the essay: “These incredible birds we first saw on Sts. Peter and Paul day as we crossed the river which lies just below Quivira. They were of all sizes, sometimes appearing in great numbers, then all of sudden not to be seen by the keenest eye, so that the men grew apprehensive, saying they made themselves invisible. This they took to be an omen, but whether for good or ill no one could judge.

“Now that I wish to describe the appearance of these birds it is to be noticed that no two of our soldiers found it possible to agree in any particular. As it seemed to me, they have a narrow short face except for the beak, which is long and grotesque, being yellow in color and curved to a sharp point. The brow of those of the commonest size is two palms across from eye to eye, the eyes sticking out at the side, so that when they are flying they can see in all directions at once. They have long talons, shaped like an eagle’s. These claws are so powerful that many of our men, among which even the priest was one, aver that these birds have been seen to fly off with one of those hump-backed cattle in each claw. (He refers to the buffalo.)

Some, however, deny this, declaring they have webbed feet.

“However this may be,” the Spaniard continues, “there is almost general agreement concerning the tail. This is quite short being a mere tuft of feathers when these birds are in repose. But in flight or when running along the ground-where they out-distance our best horses-they carry it erect like a scorpion. The Indians say this tail is poisonous, declaring that in battle they employ it as a weapon, flying backwards, which they do with the greatest of ease.

“There are some who profess to believe,” he concludes, “that these are the birds Aristophanes described in his comedy, which, living between earth and heaven, forced tribute from both men and gods. Wherefrom it is argued that the squawking of these prairie monsters was merely a demand for tribute. Rather do I believe them to be a species of the Phoenix bird, generated in fire and brimstone, and never ceasing do I offer my prayers of thanksgiving to the virgin, that I was delivered from their country with a whole skin.”

Concluding his essay, Mechem says: “As the myths of the Greeks reflected their humor and idealism, the Jayhawk is peculiarly an expression of the spirit of Kansas.”

COURTESY PHOTO

Even though Fort Zarah had a short life, it saw its share of Indian fights and colorful characters including George Armstrong Custer, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Mathewson, Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, and the great Indian chief Satank, aka Sitting Bear.

FORT ZARAH GUARDED WALNUT CREEK CROSSING DURING INDIAN WARFARE

A

BY EVERETT R. DAVES Former Tribune Staff Writer

shroud of mystery hangs over a plowed field three miles east of Great Bend-the site where old Fort Zarah used to stand. Although the fort was in use for about five years, from 1864 to 1869, lack of previous written history, and time-that age-old dimmer of memories-have clouded the facts and history of the fort.

To the stranger seeking information about Fort Zarah, the battle is long and all uphill. The first big “discovery” is that the fort did not stand at or even near the present Fort Zarah park site.

The second bit of information a person gleans is that the fort was actually on the east of Walnut Creek, and the third is that practically no one can actually pinpoint the ground where the fort once stood.

This writer progressed through the steps mentioned above and a few others before finally finding the exact location.

Early written accounts concerning the location either referred to the “wellknown location of the fort” or pinpointed it by section, range and township numbers onlyu. This doesn’t help too much when you’re trying to locate the spot where a building 50 feet wide by approximately 130 feet long once stood.

Our first break in finding the location came through conversation with Ray

(Jiggs) Schulz, local Great Bend lawyer and president of the newly-formed Barton County Historical Society. Ray had never walked over the area but said he knew right where it was.

We drove to the spot he pointed outit is three-tenths of a mile east of the Walnut Creek bridge on US-56 (exactly that far east of the park site). We walked north of the highway out into a plowed field for about 40 yards where we found a distinct change in color in the plowed earth-indeed a white line about three feet wide and approximately 90 feet long which Ray was sure was the south edge of the fort location. Ray seemed to think this white “line” was due to some clay formations that somehow linked with the remains of south wall of the fort. Running north off this line was another distinct line which ran 40 to 50 feet north which would then indicate the east wall of the fort. There was a north-south line on the west edge of this partial rectangle but it was not straight. Instead it fanned out in a halfcircle.

Disturbing to this writer was the fact that only several yards from this site in the same field to the east, another fanned-out line of white earth and clay was clearly distinctive. Since it is known that the fort consisted of only one sandstone building and a stockade south of the fort; there was no particular connection to this partial rectangle that we viewed as the “floor plan” of Fort Zarah.

Finding Building Materials

However, once inside this rectangle we found with no effort, many pieces of sandstone, some with the white mortar still attached. Ray also picked up at least half a dozen of the large square “nails” or spikes as they were known at that time (1800’s). This evidence convinced this writer we had found the location of the fort and we returned later the same day to do some scouting on our own.

We picked up additional nails, sandstones and several pieces of thick, greenish glass which doubtless were parts of old bottles. Some old crockery was also found, Soon after this, we received a tip that a man who once farmed the land there was still living and could be reached.

We called and talked with Mr. Edward Johnson, 76, 1800 Park, whose father purchased the land from a family by the name of Fry in 1900. Mr. Johnson said that at that time the sandstone foundations of the two cellars and the magazine were still intact although there was not much else left. The one exception was many pieces of heavy tin, parts of the roof that had not been moved when the fort was dismantled. He said that the heavy pieces of tin were hauled to the river and dumped since they were mashed in, bent, and not useful. Some of the pieces were later buried when he and his father filled in the cellars.

Mr. Johnson said that he and his father used the cellars for cow barns for awhile, after constructing a makeshift roof.

We asked Mr. Johnson if any items had been found by him at the old fort location. He said that he had found several small coins, one bearing an 1864 date. He said another person had found a 2 1/2 dollar goldpiece near the fort, bearing the date of 1849. He said he and his father discovered that someone had removed a sandstone in the magazine and had hidden there seven cardboard cartons of army cartridges. He said they later buried these shells when they filled in the fort ruins with dirt.

We told Mr. Johnson at this point that we though we had found the location of the fort and asked him if there was any way we might be sure-if there would be anything left today that we might pick up at the location. He indicated sandstones, old nails and parts of broken bottles might be found there. He said the bottles were exceptionally thick, perhaps half an inch, and that most of them were green in color. (This confirmed our earlier find). He related that he had found many shot or balls evidently used in cap-and-ball weapons.

He also had once found a heavy horse bit with “U.S.” stamped thereon.

Mr. Johnson related that he had found a white rock with a regiment inscribed on it at a location 400 or 500 feet northeast of where an old house once stood just east of the fort location.

A white frame house now sits at the same location. He said he hauled the

See ZARAH on Page 15

GREAT BEND (KAN.) TRIBUNE n SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011 n 15

COURTESY PHOTO

Fort Zarah was established near a ranch (trading post) where the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Walnut Creek. The ranch was established in 1855 and was known as the Allison Ranch, the Peacock Ranch, the Rath Ranch, or the Douglas trading post, depending on who operated it.

ZARAH from Page 14 stone in to near the house but doesn’t remember what happened to the stone. It may still be there.

Although Mr. Johnson indicated the white clay at the spot of the fort had nothing to do with location, we were convinced of the authenticity of the location. He stated the clay was merely a layer that happened to be there and uncovered by bulldozers when US-56 was built. (This would possibly explain the white lines of clay to the east of the fort location). He said the bulldozers removed at least 18 inches of topsoil from the site.

A final clincher on the location came when Mr. Johnson told us the fort location was surrounded by a slight depression or draw. This depression or “creek� has been referred to in writings and was clearly distinguishable on the spot although it is not deep.

Now the History With the location pinpointed, the only thing left was to gather and assemble the history of the fort. This at first seemed it would be easy. But like the location problem, this writer found that an accurate history of Fort Zarah was not easy to come by. Oh, tales of this and that are still told in Barton County; and dairies and other stories concerning the early life near Zarah are available, but nowhere can be found any sort of true history of what went on at the Fort.

This is evidently due to two reasons; first the fort was built in 1864 – an early year for this area – and it was dismantled in 1869, three years before Great Bend became a town. Thus the history was well over before most settlers arrived in this territory.

Secondly, of all the tales and facts concerning the history of the fort that were available back in the 1870’s and later, only a few were ever put on paper.

Mr. Schulz tells us he has microfilm of records completed at the fort, but that they contain mostly rosters and rolls. Many books written about Kansas mention Fort Zarah, but few elaborate. Most tell of passing the fort or some particular battle with the Indians near the fort’s location. And a letter to the National Archives has produced nothing as yet.

The accounts at our disposal concerning this early Fort do, however, provide some interesting reading.

Large Reservation A book “75 Years in Great Bend�, by the Tribune Publishing Company in 1947, reveals that “records of the General Land Office in the National Archives show that the former Fort Zarah Military Reservation contained 3,247-60 acres of land in Townships 19 South of Range 12 West and 19 South of Range 13 West.� A Kansas Historical Marker now located on the park grounds, west of the actual fort site reads: “Fort Zarah – In 1825 the Federal /government surveyed the Santa Fe Trail, great trade route from Western Missouri to Santa Fe. Treaties with the Kansas and Osage Indians safeguarded the Eastern end of the road but Plains tribes continued to make raids. Fort Zarah at this point was one of a chain of forts built on the trail to protect wagon trains and guard settlers. It was established in 1864 by Gen. Samuel R. Curtis and named for his son, Maj. H. Zarah Curtis, who had been killed in the Baxter Springs Massacre Oct. 6, 1863. The fort was built of sandstone quarried in nearby bluffs. Fort Zarah was successfully defended against an attack by 100 Kiowas on Oct. 2, 1868. It was abandoned in 1869.�

The land was first offered for sale to the highest bidder at “public outcry� at the district land office at Salina, Ks. on July 28, 1974. Thomas L. Morris of Barton County purchased the first tract sold, 42.50 acres and paid $4 per acre.

Volume 7, Kansas Historical Collections, page 463, 1901-1902 in a history by Henry Tisdale, says: “1864- The next summer the Indian war broke out. The Indians stole our horses, burnt the ranch and killed the stock tender. After that the government sent some soldiers, one company to a point near where the Walnut creek empties in the Arkansas River, and called it Fort Zarah...Zarah was on the bottom of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers. There was one road up the Arkansas bottom which passed close to the military camp. Another road passed near the bluff and crossed the Walnut about a mile up the stream from the military camp, or Fort Zarah�.

Book on County History In 1912, the Tribune published company published a book on Barton County History. On Fort Zarah, it said: “The site of the fort is well known to all at the southeast of the Walnut (Creek). It stood on a gentle eminence, nearly surrounded by a shallow creek which might easily be made a means of defense by filling with water.�

The fort was built of sandstone, quarried in the neighboring bluffs about three miles to the north. These rocks were mostly of a deep purplish brown, varying to a light brown. They were usually hewn to a pretty smooth face and laid up in the rough, in good solid mortar. The outer walls were about 16 inches thick, the inner walls one foot. The walls inside were all well plastered. The roo of the building was of tin, 116 feet, with an average width of 50 feet. The main portion was divided into 7 rooms, somewhat resembling a “hop-scotch� bed. It was two stories high except 24 feet of the eastern part. The main entrance was at the eastern end, opening into the officers quarters. There was only one window in the entire building and that was at the western end. There were loopholes along the north-west, and south sides. At the southeast and northwest corners there were hexagonal, two story towers, with two sets of loop-holes were arranged in sets of three on a side in each story, and presented a face opening of tow inches wide by 16 inches high, widening in the wall to a breadth of about 16 or 18 inches on the inside. Beneath the rooms running across the ends, there were cellars dug 8 feet deep and walled with stone. To the west, at a distance of 20 feet, was the magazine, which was 12 feet square, and connected with the west cellar by an underground passage 4 feet wide. A short distance to the southeast of the fort stood the guard house, a stone building about 14 feet square.

Reservation Described fort Zarah Military Reservation was established September 30, 1868, by order of the president and surveyed and laid out the same year. It is about two by two and three quarters miles in extent, and reaches from the railroad north to the hills. It contains about 3,698 acres. (Discrepancy here) On February 24, 1871, an act of Congress provided for bringing into market the lands of the Fort Zarah Reservation and on August 11, 1871, “the Surveyor General

was authorized to extend the lines of the public surveys over the same�.

In July, 1874, “the lands having been appraised at from $3 to $10 per acres,� were offered at public sale at Salina, at which sale “only two lots, containing together, 45.20 acres, were sold at $4 per acre, leaving the balance subject to private entry at the appraised value�.

Fort Abandoned The fort was “dismantled� in 1869. Among other work of dismantling was the removal of the tin roof at an expense to the government of $20,000; and the removal of the same to Fort Harker at a further expense of $10,000; fat jobs for some poor contractors. On arrival of the tin roof at Fort Harker, they refused to accept it; so the thing was dumped down on the prairie a short distance form the fort; and it has since done good service in sheltering various settlers on government lands. The original cost of Fort Zarah was $110,000.

After the abandonment of the Fort it became a den of thieves and general rendezvous for bats and marauders. These occupied it day and night by turns, the former biding by day, the latter by night.

Settlements commenced in 1871. Almost immediately the hand of the granger was laid upon it, and it began to disappear little by little. Capt. E. V. Rugar was appointed a marshal to take care of it, which he bravely did by going to California in 1874, and letting the fort take care of itself.

Shortly after the sale of lots mentioned above, Mr. E. C. Sooy put up a notice

Service

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