BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY.
INDEX.
Abner, John W., 534
Adams, John P., 488
Adams, Stark W., 524
Alkire, Charles L., 726
Allen, Edmond W., 755
Allen, Joseph W., 476
Allison, Ralph A., 751
Anderson, George V., 836
Arensberg, L. C., 611
Armstrong, James L., 733
Arthur, Joseph N., 422
Atkin. Paul, 859
Babcock, O. M., 591
Bailey, Willis J., 882
Baldwin, Royal, 830
Ballinger, Thomas E., 600
Ballinger, Samuel E., 648
Barber, Herbert J., 672
Barker, Charles E., 682
Barker, O. O., 761
Barnes, Asa, 715
Barry, John H., 481
Bean, John H., 708
Beard, Frank, 704
Beckman, Carl L., 382
Behen, James E., 796
Belz, John, 884
Best, Aaron S., 379
Beyer, David, 822
Beyer, John, 731
Bilderback, Allen T., 738
Binkley, Fred, 852
Bishop, Frank W., 876
Bishop, Robert F., 596
Blair, Albert H., 454
Blair, John L., 586
Blodgett, Thomas L., 624
Boos, Nicholas, 699
Boyington, Julia E. A., 584
Bradley, Lewis, 819
Brockett, Benton L., 637
Brown, George L., 837
Brown, Thomas, 452
Brown, Walter E., 519
Bullock, Edmund, 847
Burbank, E. G., 520
Burrows, Charles H., 547
Bush, William H., 464
Bushey, Calvin, 871
Buttron, Henry, 472
Buttron, Jacob, 728
Calvert, Alexander H., 747
Calvert, Presley H., 848
Chalfant, W. D., 727
Chandler, Charles A., 716
Cirtwill, Jennie, 712
Clapp, Alva, 447
Clem, William J., 406
Cleveland, Richard B., 834
Cline, Thomas L., 656
Cloyes, Marshall J., 571
Collett, W. B., 612
Collins, Davis W., 832
Conlon, Charles J., 494
Conlon, John F., 495
Cortelyou, Luther, 757
Coupe, Joseph, 375
Cummins, Barney, 445
Curtis, Benjamin P., 531
Davis, Cyrus E., 470
Dawdy, Drennan L., 808
Deutsch, Julius, 523
Donnellan, William R., 538
Dooley, James, 613
Dorssom, George, 468
Drimmel, John, 854
Du Bois, Lewis P., 768
Duncan, John E., 620
Dunlap, Rienzi M., 767
Dysinger, Holmes, 724
Evans, Aaron B., 749
Falk, Charles H., 467
Fankhanel, John, 635
Ferguson, Charles W., 581
Ferris, John, 734
Fiechter, Samuel E., 711
Finnegan, Thomas, 647
Fleming, John, 604
Flynn, J. F., 743
Forbriger, Robert, 658
Fox, Jared C., 408
Frable, Thomas, 359
Fuhrman, Charles H., 460
Fuhrman, Rinhold, 502
Garside, James H., 880
Gault, Thomas O., 495
Gibson, George W., 823
Gibson, Joseph E., 529
Gigstad, Knud G., 439
Gigstad, Ole G., 480
Gilmore, Earl A., 415
Glattfelder, Henry, 741
Glick, George W., 351
Goodwin, George, 833
Gragg, James R., 542
Graner, Henry C., 787
Graner, William H., 784
Greenawalt, Joseph C., 778
Griffin, John, 821
Griffin, Lawrence, 680
Grimes, Robert L., 642
Gundy, Charles T., 565
Guthrie, Warren W., 483
Hackney, Hiram H., 660
Ham, Bishop K., 608
Ham, W. Perry, 702
Hamon, Alferd J., 820
Hansen, H. C., 521
Harvey, Albert B., 440
Harwi, Alfred J., 416
Harwi, Frank E., 419
Hart, Charles C., 792
Hartman, Fred, 797
Hartman, William, 828
Hastings, Z. S., 436
Hawk, John D., 670
Hawk, Lafayette T., 539
Hawk, Rutherford B., 868
Hazel, Ernest C., 744
Hekelnkaemper Brothers, 804
Hendee, George E., 429
Henderson, William, 535
Hetherington, Wirt, 510
Highfill, Thomas, 706
Higley, Clem P., 806
Hines, Michael J., 465
Hixon, Charles L., 577
Holmes, James I., 841
Hooper, Abraham, 616
Hooper, George R., 867
Horan, Michael J., 501
Horner, Thomas E., 527
Howe, Edgar W., 844
Hubbard, Lewis H., 815
Hubbard, William E., 807
Hubbard, William S., 759
Hulings, Mark H., 605
Hunn, Frank J., 824
Hutson, William T., 730
Ingalls, John J., 392
Ingalls, Sheffield, 632
Intfen, Theo, 645
Jackson, Horace M., 353
Jackson, William A., 490
Jackson, Zaremba E., 356
Jewell, Lumas M., 536
Johnson, Charles H., 458
Johnson, George H. T., 456
Jones, Earl V., 582
Kaaz, Julius, 688
Kammer, Karl A., 570
Kanning, Christ, 644
Kaufman, Fred W., 781
Keith, Uri S., 544
Keithline, Andrew, 432
Keithline, Charles J., 630
Kelly, Edward J., 635
King, Richard E., 788
King, Samuel S., 564
Kistler, William D., 430
Klein, Martin, 442
Kloepper, Louis, 580
Koester, Frederick W., 551
Kramer, John A., 883
Kuehnhoff, Henry, 513
Kuehnhoff, Louis R., 567
Kuhn, Julius, 592
Laird, Marcus J., 736
Lange, Arnold, 783
Lange, Charles, 725
Lilly, C. A., 818
Lincoln, Frederick W., 692
Linley, Charles, 461
Linley, Charles H., 610
Loudenback, Henry H., 653
Low, Hal C., 775
Loyd, Samuel L., 686
Lukens, Charles M., 762
McAdam, William, 399
McCullough, Edward B., 599
McInteer, John, 651
McKelvy, William A., 865
Mangelsdorf, Albert H., 852
Mangelsdorf, August, 856
Mangelsdorf, Frank A., 858
Mangelsdorf, William, 850
Markwalt, Amel, 556
Martin, Sidney, 393
Mayhew, Albert E., 372
Miller, John O. A., 791
Moeck, John, 790
Moore, June E., 701
Morrow, James G., 384
Myers, Charles, 552
Nass, John H., 722
Newcomb, Don C., 424
Niemann, Henry, 780
Nitz, William M., 740
North, Howard E., 698
Nusbaum, Leo, 629
Oliver, John R., 626
Orr, Louis C., 381
Orr, James W., 360
Parsons, Peter, 861
Peery, Rufus B., 557
Pennington, James E., 411
Perdue, Edward, 576
Pfouts, Ralph U., 479
Pike, Napoleon B., 516
Pinder, Robert, 675
Pitts, E. P., 634
Plummer, Thomas O., 696
Potter, Thomas J., 677
Power, Grace C., 718
Price, John M., 811
Raterman, John L., 559
Redmond, George W., 689
Remsburg, George J., 508
Remsburg, John E., 504
Reynolds, John A., 838
Robinson, Charles W., 650
Royer, Boyd, 814
Rudolph, Harrison W., 598
Ryan, William, 879
Sanders, Benjamin F., 568
Schaefer, George H. T., 554
Schapp, William, 622
Schiffbauer, Henry, 862
Scholz, George, 526
Scholz, John A., 517
Schrader, George, 729
Schurman, Arthur S., 816
Scoville, Orlando C., 389
Seaton, John, 376
Sharp, Harry L., 512
Sharpless, Ulysses B., 560
Shaw, Benjamin F., 679
Shelly, Edwin T., 843
Shortridge, Alfred, 589
Simmons, Oscar A., 800
Smith, Albert J., 618
Smith, W. H., 473
Smith, Wilson R., 427
Snyder, Mark D., 574
Speck, A. S., 640
Speer, Andrew, 710
Speer, D. Anna, 776
Speer, William F., 846
Stanley, Wilfull A., 497
Stever, Abram, 434
Stoddard, John, 748
Storch, George, 448
Stutz, Christian W., 499
Stutz, Gustave, 695
Stutz, John, 639
Sullivan, John E., 684
Sullivan, John Edward, 765
Sullivan, Roger P., 602
Sutter, Frank, 607
Sutter, Fred, 752
Sutter, William, 840
Symns, Andrew B., 365
Thomas, Robert M., 397
Thompson, George W., 664
Thompson, William H., 720
Tomlinson, B. F., 668
Treat, Thomas C., 458
Trimble, James M., 764
Trimble, Roy C., 492
Trompeter, Joseph, 421
Trueblood, Alva C., 405
Tucker, Thomas W., 742
Valentine, John C., 693
Vansell, Martin C., 873
Veatch, Nathan T., 733
Voelker, Conrad M., 562
Waggener, Balie P., 368
Wagner, Frank J., 827
Walker, Claudius D., 400
Walter, H. B., 803
Warren, William T., 849
Watowa, Frank J., 818
Watowa, Joseph H., 732
Weber, Peter, 594
Wehking, William, 828
Wertz, Frank P., 655
Wheeler, D. N., 514
White, George E., 663
Wilson, James E., 549
Wolf, August J., 826
Woodworth, Edwin S., 772
Woodford, Frank M., 723
Young, William, 794
[Illustration:
TRANSPORTATION FIFTY YEARS AGO
Overland Emigrant and Freight Train, Operated by Sprague & Digan,
Leaving West Main Street, Atchison, Kan., April 1, 1866, en route to
the Far West.
]
History of Atchison County
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGY.
FOSSILS—EVIDENCES OF EARLY ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE—GEOLOGICAL AGES—ROCK
FORMATION—GLACIER PERIOD—MINERALS.
The oldest citizens of Atchison county are the animals and plants whose
fossil remains now lie buried in the solid rocks. These denizens of long
ago, by their lives, made it possible for later and better citizens to
live and flourish in the happy and contented homes of her best citizens
of the present day. Long before man ever saw Atchison county—long before
man lived anywhere upon this earth, the seas swarmed with animal life
and the dry lands supported a fauna and a flora substantially as great
as those of the present time.
In character the animals and plants of those early days were very
different from those of the present time. Almost all of their kind long
ago became extinct. It is only the few who have living representatives
anywhere in the world today, and they are degraded in form and size as
though they had long outlived their usefulness. Some of the animals live
in the waters of distant oceans, such as the brachiopods and other shell
fish; the crinoids or sea lilies, and others of like character. On the
dry land we find a few insects of the cock-roach type and other creeping
things which inhabit dark and damp places, animals of gloom on whose
forms the sunshine of day rarely falls.
The plants, likewise, are degraded in size and form. The modern bull-
rushes of our swamps are descendants of ancient giants of their kind
which grew to ten or twenty times the size of their modern
representatives. The little creeping vines sometimes found in the shaded
forest are lineal descendants of the mighty trees of the forests in the
long ago while materials were gathering for the rock masses constituting
Atchison county.
In order to converse rationally about geological time it has been found
most convenient to divide time into periods in accordance with great
natural events, and to give a name to each period that in some way
expresses something desirable to be known and remembered. Usually
geographic names of areas where rock masses are exposed to the surface
of the ground are chosen, or some favorite geographic term may be used,
and in rare instances some quality name expressive of the character or
composition of the rocks.
Following the best usage of geologists the rocks exposed at the surface
all belong to the age known as the Carboniferous, which lies at the top
of the Palaeozoic, or ancient life rocks. The Carboniferous is divided
and subdivided into a number of divisions, the lowermost of which has
been named the Mississippian on account of their great abundance
throughout the Mississippi valley. Above the Mississippian we find a
mass of alternating beds of shale and limestone and sandstone
aggregating about 2,500 feet in thickness, called the Pennsylvanians, a
term borrowed from the State of Pennsylvania, where rocks of the same
age so abound. Rocks formed during the remainder of geologic time are
not found in Atchison county, except the covering of soil and clay so
abundant throughout the county. An old-time name for the Pennsylvanian
rocks is the coal-measures, a term now on the decline because the newer
names—well, it is newer.
It appears that from the close of the Pennsylvanian time to the present
Atchison county has been dry land. At one time, quite recently, as
geologists reckon time, climatic conditions changed so that the snow
falling during the winter could not be melted during the summer, so that
to the far north great quantities of snow and ice accumulated and
gradually spread over the surface of a large part of North America. One
limb of this ice mass moved slowly southward and covered all of Atchison
county, and much adjacent territory, and brought with it vast quantities
of soil and clay and gravel that the ice sheet, as a great scraper,
picked up from the surface as it came along. When the ice finally melted
this debris was left, like a mantle of snow, covering the entire surface
of Atchison county.
The rocks of Pennsylvanian age have within them much of value
economically. Here and there inter-stratified with the sandstone and
shale are large and valuable beds of coal, as is abundantly shown by the
drilled wells and coal shafts within the county. It is probable that
almost the entire county is underlaid with this same bed of coal, and if
so it is worth substantially as much to the county as is the surface
soil. It lies at so great a depth that it may be mined without any
danger whatever of disturbing the surface.
[Illustration:
Main Building State Orphans’ Home, Atchison, Kan.
]
The large amount of good hard limestone in the county guarantees an
everlasting supply of stone for road making, railroad ballast, crushed
rock for concrete works and all other uses to which such limestone may
be put. With the Missouri river on the eastern boundary carrying
unlimited amounts of sand Atchison county is well supplied with every
material needed for unlimited amounts of mortar construction of all
kinds. Recently, since Portland cement construction has so effectually
replaced stone masonry, this becomes a very important matter.
Should market conditions ever become favorable it is also possible to
manufacture the best grades of Portland cement by properly combining the
limestones and shales of the county. Their chemical and physical
properties are admirably suited for such purposes.
There is a possibility that somewhere within the county oil and gas may
be found by proper prospecting. As no search for these materials has yet
been made it is impossible to say what the results might be. Atchison
county, however, lies within the oil zone that has been proven to be so
much farther south, and until proper search has been made no one can say
that oil and gas cannot be found here also.
CHAPTER II.
PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.
EVIDENCES OF PALEOLITHIC MAN—AN ANCIENT FORTIFICATION—ABORIGINAL
VILLAGE AND CAMP SITES—THE INGALLS AND OTHER BURIAL MOUNDS.
How long the region embraced in Atchison county has been the home of man
is not known, but the finding of a prehistoric human skeleton, computed
by the highest anthropological and geological authorities to be at least
10,000 years old, in the adjoining county of Leavenworth, favors the
presumption that what is now Atchison county was occupied by man at an
equally remote period. Evidences of a very early human existence here
have been found at various times. Near Potter, in this county, the
writer found deep in the undisturbed gravel and clay, a rude flint
implement that unquestionably had been fashioned by prehistoric man,
evidently, of what is known as the Paleolithic period. In drilling the
well at the power house of the Atchison Street Railway, Light and Power
Company, the late T. J. Ingels, of Atchison, encountered at a great
depth, several fragments of fossilized bone, intermingled with charcoal,
evidently the remains of a very ancient fireplace. About 1880, M. M.
Trimmer, an Atchison contractor, in opening a stone quarry at the
northeast point of the Branchtown hill, near the confluence of White
Clay and Brewery creeks, in Atchison, unexpectedly encountered a pit or
excavation, eighty feet long, sixty feet wide, and eighteen feet deep,
in the solid rock formation of the hill. The surface of the hill is
composed of drift or gravel, and the pit had become filled with this
gravel to the original surface, thus obliterating all external evidences
of its existence. The lower layer of stone, about six inches thick, had
been left for a floor in the pit, and in the northwest corner this lower
strata of stone for about four feet square had been removed. Water
issued from the ground at this point indicating that a spring or well,
or source of water supply, had been located here. A careful examination
of the place at the time showed unmistakably that this excavation had
been made by human hands at a very early period and was probably used as
a fortification or defensive work. Prehistoric excavations of this
character, made in the solid rock, are common in Europe, but almost
unknown in America, except in the cases of ancient flint and steatite
quarries, and the absence of either in the Atchison formation, except an
occasional flint nodule, precludes the possibility that this was just an
aboriginal quarry. The Smithsonian authorities at Washington pronounced
the work worthy of careful study, but unfortunately it was obliterated
by the progress of the quarrying. Many weapons and implements of the
stone age have been found in the vicinity of this pit.
Almost the entire surface of Atchison county, particularly where
bordering streams, presents various traces of aboriginal occupancy, from
the silent sepulchers of the dead and the mouldy rubbish of the wigwam,
to the solitary arrowhead lost on the happy chase or the sanguinary war
path. In many places these remains blend into the prehistoric, semi-
historic and historic periods, showing evidences of a succession of
occupancy. For instance we find the Neolithic stone celts or hatchets,
the Neoeric iron tomahawks; fragments of fragile earthenware, mixed and
moulded by the prehistoric potter, and bits of modern decorated
porcelain made by some pale-faced patterner of Palissy; ornaments of
stone, bone and shell; trinkets of brass and beads of glass,
intermingled in confusion and profusion. These numerous relics of
different peoples and periods, showing, as they do, diverse stages of
culture and advancement, warrant the opinion that Atchison county, with
its many natural advantages, was a favorite resort of successive peoples
from time immemorial. Favorably situated at the great western bend of
the Missouri river and at the outskirts of which was one of the richest
Indian hunting grounds in the great wild West, embracing and surrounded
by every natural advantage that would make it the prospective and wonted
haunt of a wild-race, it was a prehistoric paradise, as it is today, a
modern Arcadia.
[Illustration:
State Orphans’ Home, Atchison, Kan.
]
The writer has personally examined hundreds of ancient Indian village,
camp and workshop sites, and opened a number of mounds in Atchison
county. The first ancient mounds ever opened in the county were on a
very rugged hill known as the “Devil’s Backbone,” bordering Owl creek,
and overlooking the Missouri river, in 1891. There were two of them, and
they contained stone sepulchers in which the Indians had cremated their
dead. Other stone grave mounds have been opened on the farms of John
Myers, on Independence creek, in the northeastern part of the county;
Maurice Fiehley, on Stranger creek, near Potter; George Storch, on
Alcorn or Whiskey creek, just south of Atchison, and in several other
places. The most interesting mound ever excavated in the county,
however, was what is known as the Ingalls Mound, on land belonging to
the estate of the late United States Senator John J. Ingalls, on a bluff
of the Missouri river, at the mouth of Walnut creek, about five miles
below Atchison. This mound was discovered by Senator Ingalls at an early
day, and opened by the writer in 1907. It was fifteen feet in diameter,
and was composed of alternate layers of stone and earth one on top of
the other, the remains of several Indians being imbedded in the earth
between the layers of stone. These remains were in a bad state of decay,
most of the bones crumbling while being removed. The bones of each
person had been placed in the mound in compact bundles, which seems to
indicate that they had been removed from some temporary place of
interment, perhaps from dilapidated scaffold burials, and deposited here
in final sepulture. In some of the layers not only the bones but the
rocks and earth were considerably burned, indicating incendiary funeral
rites, while in others there were not the least marks of fire. The
undermost layer, about three feet from the top, was a veritable cinder
pit, being a burned mass or conglomerate of charcoal and charred and
calcined human remains, showing no regularity or outline of skeletons,
but all in utter confusion. A solitary pearl bead was the only object
that withstood the terrible heat to which the lower tier of remains had
been subjected. In one of the upper tiers were the bones of two infants.
With one of them was a necklace of small shells of a species not native
here. With another bundle of bones were two small, neatly chipped flint
knives, a flint scraper, a bone whistle or “call,” several deer horn
implements, and a large flint implement of doubtful usage, known to
archaeologists as a “turtle-back,” because of its shape. With another
bundle of bones, and which they seemed to be clasping, were several
mussel shells, badly decomposed. One small ornament of an animal or bird
claw, several flint arrowheads, and some fragments of pottery, were also
found. In one of the skulls was embedded the flint blade of a war-club.
Thirty-one yards northwest of this mound was found another of less
prominence. It contained a burned mass of human remains, covered with a
layer of about six inches of clay, baked almost to the consistency of
brick. Lack of space forbids a mention of many other interesting
archaeological discoveries made in this county from time to time.
Suffice to say that there is ample evidence that within the borders of
Atchison county there lived and thrived and passed away a considerable
aboriginal population.
CHAPTER III.
INDIAN HISTORY.
HARAHEY, AN INDIAN PROVINCE OF CORONADO’S TIME—THE KANSA NATION—
BOURGMONT’S VISIT IN 1724—COUNCIL ON COW ISLAND IN 1819—THE
KICKAPOO INDIANS.
There is nothing definite to show that Coronado ever reached the
confines of what is now Atchison county in 1541, as some historical
writers have seen fit to state, but there is a probability that the
Indian province of Harahey, which the natives thereof told him was just
beyond Quivira, embraced our present county and most of the region of
northeastern Kansas. Mark F. Zimmerman, an intelligent and painstaking
student of Kansas archaeology and Indian history, has given this matter
much consideration, and is confident that the Harahey chieftain,
Tatarrax, immortalized in Coronado’s chronicles, ruled over this
territory nearly four centuries ago. Until this fact is established,
however, it remains that the Indian history of what is now Atchison
county begins with the Kansa Indians in the early part of the eighteenth
century. At the time of the Bourgmont expedition in 1724, and for some
time before, this nation owned all of what is now northeastern Kansas,
and maintained several villages along the Missouri river, the principal
one being near the mouth of Independence creek, or at the present site
of Doniphan. Here they had a large town. The writer made a careful
examination and fully identified the site of this old town in 1904. The
results of this exploration are given in a pamphlet entitled “An Old
Kansas Indian Town on the Missouri,” published by the writer in 1914.
Another important village of the Kansa was located at the mouth of what
is now Salt creek, in Leavenworth county. Both of these historic
villages were situated right near and at about the same distance from
the present borders of Atchison county. There were several old Indian
villages within the confines of Atchison county, as already stated in
the preceding pages, but whether they belonged to the Kansa or to the
Harahey (Pawnee) is yet a matter of conjecture.
One of these old Kansa towns, evidently the one at Salt creek, was the
site of an important French post. Bougainville on French Posts in 1757,
says: “_Kanses._ In ascending this stream (the Missouri river) we meet
the village of the Kanses. We have there a garrison with a commandant,
appointed as in the case with Pimiteoui and Fort Chartres, by New
Orleans. This post produces one hundred bundles of furs.” Lewis and
Clark, in 1804, noted the ruins of this old post and Kansa village. They
were just outside of the southern borders of Atchison county, near the
present site of Kickapoo.
The Independence creek town, or what is generally referred to by the
early French as “Grand village des Canzes,” seems to have been a Jesuit
Missionary station as early as 1727, according to Hon. George P.
Morehouse, the historian of the Kansa Indians, who recently found in
some old French-Canadian records of the province of Ontario an
interesting fact not before recognized in Kansas history, that the name
“Kansas” was a well known geographical term to designate a place on the
Missouri river, within the present borders of our State, where the
French government and its official church, nearly 200 years ago, had an
important missionary center. Mr. Morehouse says: “It is significant as
to the standing of this Mission station of the Jesuits at Kanzas, away
out in the heart of the continent, that in this document it was classed
along with their other important Indian Missions, such as the Iroquois,
Abenaquis, and Tadoussac, and that the same amount per missionary was
expended. It was ‘Kansas,’ a mission charge on the rolls of the Jesuit
Fathers, for which annual appropriations of money were made as early as
1727. Here some of the saintly, self-sacrificing missionary pioneers of
the Cross must have come from distant Quebec and Montreal, or from the
faraway cloisters of sunny France. What zeal and sacrifice for others!
Is it any wonder that the Kansa Indians always spoke reverently of the
‘black robes,’ who were the first to labor for their welfare in that
long period in the wilderness.”
Just when the Kansa Indians established themselves at the “Grand
Village” at Doniphan, or at “Fort Village” at Kickapoo, is not known.
The first recorded mention of a Kansa village along this section of the
Missouri river is by Bourgmont in 1724. Onate met the Kansa on a hunting
expedition on the prairies of Kansas in 1601, but does not state where
their villages were located. The “Grand Village” was an old one,
however, at the time of Bourgmont’s visit. Bourgmont does not mention
the “Fort Village” at Salt creek, as he surely would had it been in
existence at that time, and it is believed that it was established
later, as it was in existence in 1757, as stated by Bourgainville.
As is a well known historical fact the Spanish attempted to invade and
colonize the Missouri valley early in the eighteenth century. The French
had come into possession of this region in 1682, and M. de Bourgmont was
commissioned military commander on the Missouri in 1720, the French
government becoming alarmed at the attempted Spanish invasion.
Establishing friendly relations with the Indians of this region in order
to have their assistance in repelling any further Spanish advance was
the object of the Bourgmont expedition to the Kansa and Padouca Indians
in 1724. Bourgmont’s party, consisting of himself, M. Bellerive, Sieur
Renaudiere, two soldiers and five other Frenchmen, besides 177 Missouri
and Osage Indians in charge of their own chiefs, marched overland from
Fort Orleans, on the lower Missouri, and arrived at the “Grand village
des Cansez” on July 7, 1724. Here they held a celebration of two weeks,
consisting of pow-wows, councils, trading horses or merchandise, and
making presents to the Indians, several boat loads of the latter, in
charge of Lieutenant Saint Ange, having arrived by river route. On July
24 they “put themselves in battle array on the village height, the drum
began to beat, and they marched away” on their journey to the Padoucas.
The incidents of their march across what is now Atchison county, and
other facts pertaining to this expedition will be found in the chapter
on early explorations in this volume.
According to a tradition handed down from prehistoric times the Kansa,
Osage, Omaha, Ponca and Kwapa were originally one people and lived along
the Wabash and Ohio rivers. In their migrations they arrived at the
mouth of the Ohio where there was a separation. Those who went down the
Mississippi became known as the Kwapa, or “down stream people,” while
those going up were called Omaha, or “up stream people.” At the mouth of
the Missouri another division took place, the Omaha and Ponka proceeding
far up that stream. The Osage located on the stream which bears their
name, and the Kansa at the mouth of what is now the Kansas river. Later
they moved on up the Missouri and established several villages, the most
northern of which was at Independence Creek. At about the close of the
Revolutionary war they were driven away from the Missouri by the Iowa
and Sauk tribes, and they took up a permanent residence on the Kansas
river, where Major Long’s expedition visited them in 1810. They
continued to make predatory visits to the Missouri, however. They
committed many depredations on traders and explorers passing up the
river and even fired on the United States troops encamped at Cow Island.
It was to prevent the recurrence of such outrages that Major O’Fallon
arranged a council with the Kansa Nation. This council was held on Cow
Island August 24, 1819, under an arbor built for the occasion. Major
O’Fallon made a speech in which he set forth the cause of complaint
which the Kansa had given by their repeated insults and depredations,
giving them notice of the approach of a military force sufficient to
chastise their insolence, and advising them to seize the present
opportunity of averting the vengeance they deserved, by proper
concessions, and by their future good behavior to conciliate those whose
friendship they would have so much occasion to desire. The replies of
the chiefs were simple and short, expressive of their conviction of the
justice of the complaints against them, and of their acquiescence in the
terms of the reconciliation proposed by the agent.
There were present at this council 161 Kansa Indians, including chiefs
and warriors, and thirteen Osages. It was afterwards learned that the
delegation would have been larger but for a quarrel that arose among the
chiefs after they had started, in regard to precedence in rank, in
consequence of which ten or twelve returned to the village on the Kansas
river. Among those at the council were Na-he-da-ba, or Long Neck, one of
the principal chiefs of the Kansas; Ka-he-ga-wa-to-ning-ga, or Little
Chief, second in rank; Shen-ga-ne-ga, an ex-principal chief; Wa-ha-che-
ra, or Big Knife, a war chief, and Wam-pa-wa-ra, or White Plume,
afterwards a noted chief. Major O’Fallon had with him the officers of
the garrison of Cow Island, or Cantonment Martin, and a few of those
connected with Major Long’s exploring party. “The ceremonies,” says one
account, “were enlivened by a military display, such as the firing of
cannon, hoisting of flags, and an exhibition of rockets and shells, the
latter evidently making a deeper impression on the Indians than the
eloquence of Major O’Fallon.” A description of Major Long’s steamboat,
built to impress the Indians on this occasion, will be found in the
following chapter on early explorations.
From the Kansa Indians our State derived its name. For more than 300
years they dwelt upon our soil. At their very advent in this region what
is now Atchison county became a part of their heritage and for
generations it was a part of their imperial home.
By the treaty of Castor Hill, Mo., October 24, 1832, the Kickapoo
Indians were assigned to a reservation in northeastern Kansas, which
included most of what is now Atchison county. They settled on their new
lands shortly after the treaty was made. Their principal settlement at
that time was at the present site of Kickapoo, in Leavenworth county,
where a Methodist mission was established among them by Rev. Jerome C.
Berryman, in 1833. There is said to have been a mission station among
the Kickapoos where Oak Mills, in Atchison county, now stands, at an
early day, but nothing definite is known regarding its history, except
that we have it from early settlers that an Indian known as Jim Corn
seemed to be the head man of the band of Kickapoos that lived there, and
that the white pioneers frequently attended services in the old mission
house which stood in the hollow a short distance southwest of the
present site of Oak Mills.
[Illustration:
Wards of the State of Kansas, State Orphans’ Home, Atchison, Kan.
]
During the time that the Kickapoos owned and occupied what is now
Atchison county, they were ruled over by two very distinguished
chieftains—Keannakuk, the Prophet, and Masheena, or the Elk Horns. Both
of these Indians were noted in Illinois long before they migrated
westward and were prominently mentioned by Washington Irving, George
Catlin, Charles Augustus Murray and other distinguished travelers and
authors. Catlin painted their pictures in 1831, and these are included
in the famous Catlin gallery in Washington. Keannakuk was both a noted
chief and prophet of the tribe. He was a professed preacher of an order
which he claimed to have originated at a very early day and his
influence was very great among his people. He died at Kickapoo in 1852
and was buried there. Masheena was a really noted Indian. He led a band
of Kickapoos at the battle of Tippecanoe. He died and was buried in
Atchison county, near the old town of Kennekuk, in 1857. He was born in
Illinois about 1770.
Important seats of Kickapoo occupancy in Atchison county in the early
days were Kapioma, Muscotah and Kennekuk. Kapioma was named for a chief
of that name who lived there. The present township of Kapioma gets its
name from this source. Father John Baptiste Duerinck, a Jesuit, was a
missionary among the Kickapoos at Kapioma in 1855–57. Muscotah was for a
long time the seat of the Kickapoo agency. It is a Kickapoo name meaning
“Beautiful Prairie,” or “Prairie of Fire.” Kennekuk was named for John
Kennekuk, a Kickapoo chief, and son of Keannakuk, the Prophet.
By treaty of 1854 the Kickapoo reservation was diminished and the tribe
was assigned to lands along the Grasshopper or Delaware river. Still
later it was again diminished and they were given their present
territory within the confines of Brown county.
The Kickapoos are a tribe of the central Algonquian group, forming a
division with the Sauk and Foxes, with whom they have close ethnic and
linguistic connection. The first definite appearance of this tribe in
history was about 1667–70, when they were found by Allouez near the
portage between Fox and Wisconsin rivers, in Wisconsin. About 1765 they
moved down into the Illinois country, and later to Missouri and Kansas.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS.
CORONADO IN 1541—THE BOURGMONT EXPEDITION IN 1724—PERIN DU LAC—LEWIS
AND CLARK—FIRST FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION—MAJOR STEPHEN H. LONG—
CANTONMENT MARTIN—ISLE AU VACHE—OTHER EXPLORERS—PASCHAL PENSONEAU—
THE OLD MILITARY ROAD—THE MORMONS.
Some historians (notably General Simpson) in their studies of the famous
march of Coronado in search of the land of Quivira, in 1541, have
brought the great Spanish explorer to the Missouri river, in
northeastern Kansas. The more recent researches of Hodge, Bandalier and
Brower, however, have proven beyond question that Coronado’s line of
march through Kansas was north from Clark county to the Great Bend of
the Arkansas river, and thence to the region northeastward from
McPherson to the Kansas river, between the junction of its two main
forks and Deep creek, in Riley county, where the long lost province of
Quivira was located. Hence, it is no longer even probable that the great
Spaniard on this famous march ever saw the Missouri river region in
northeastern Kansas, much less to have ever set foot upon the soil of
what is now Atchison county, as many have heretofore believed.
The first white men, of whom we have definite record, to visit what is
now Atchison county, were those who composed the expedition of Capt.
Etienne Vengard de Bourgmont, military commander of the French colony of
Louisiana, who, in the summer of 1724, arrived at the Kansa Indian
village where Doniphan now stands, crossed what is now Atchison county,
and made several encampments on our soil. Leaving the Kansa village at
Doniphan on the morning of July 24, en route to the province of the
Padoucas, or what is now known as the Comanche tribe of Indians, in
north central Kansas, Bourgmont and party marched a league and a half
along what is now Deer creek, and went into camp, where they spent the
day. The next day they passed Stranger creek, or what they designated “a
small river,” and stopped on account of rain, until the 26th, when they
proceeded a few miles further, and again went into camp. A thunder-
storm, lasting all the afternoon, compelled them to remain encamped
here. On the 27th they reached a river, which was doubtless the
Grasshopper or Delaware, about four or five miles below Muscotah, where
they again camped, and, on the 28th marched out of Atchison county
somewhere along the southwest border, in Kapioma township. This strange
procession, besides Bourgmont’s force of white men, consisted of 300
Indian warriors, with two grand chiefs and fourteen war chiefs, 300
Indian squaws, 500 Indian children, and 500 dogs, carrying and dragging
provisions and equipments. The object of the expedition was to promote a
general peace among, and effect an alliance between, the different
tribes inhabitating this region. Shortly after leaving Atchison county,
Bourgmont was taken very ill, and was obliged to return to Fort Orleans,
on the lower Missouri. He was carried back across Atchison county to the
Kansa village, on a hand-barrow, and then transported down the Missouri
in a canoe. Upon his recovery he resumed his journey to the Padoucas in
the fall of 1724, coming back by way of the Kansa village and Atchison
county. No doubt other French explorers, traders and trappers, visited
this county at an earlier date than did Bourgmont, but information
concerning them is vague and uncertain.
Perin du Lac, a French explorer, set foot upon the soil of Atchison
county while on an exploring trip up the Missouri in 1802–03. In his
journal, published soon after his return to France, Du Lac mentions that
“three miles below the old Kances Indian village they perceived some
iron ore.” As the “old Kances village” was the one already referred to
as having been at Doniphan, the iron ore discovered by Du Lac must have
been in Atchison county, somewhere in the vicinity of Luther Dickerson’s
old home, where the rocks are known to be strongly impregnated with
iron. Du Lac gathered some specimens of the Atchison county ore, which
he must have lost, for he says in his journal: “I intended to have
assayed it on my return, but an accident unfortunately happening
prevented me.”
In the summer of 1804 the famous “Louisiana Purchase exploring
expedition” of Lewis and Clark passed up the Missouri river, arriving at
the southeast corner of Atchison county on July 3. They passed Isle Au
Vache, or Cow Island, opposite Oak Mills, stopped at a deserted trader’s
house at or near the site of Port William, where they picked up a stray
horse (the first recorded mention of a horse in what is now Atchison
county) and camped that night somewhere in the vicinity of Walnut creek.
The next morning they announced the “glorious Fourth” with a shot from
their gun boat, and there began the first celebration of our Nation’s
birthday on Kansas soil. That day they took dinner on the bank of White
Clay creek, or what they called “Fourth of July creek.” Here Joe Fields,
a member of the party, was bitten by a snake, and Sergeant Floyd, in
commemoration of the incident, named the prairie on which Atchison now
stands, “Joe Fields’ Snake Prairie.” Above the creek, they state, “was a
high mound, where three Indian paths centered, and from which was a very
extensive prospect.” This, undoubtedly, was the commanding elevation
where the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home now stands. On the evening of the
Fourth they discovered and named Independence creek in honor of the day,
and closed the day’s observances with “an evening gun and an additional
gill of whiskey to the men.”
A detachment of Maj. Stephen H. Long’s Yellowstone exploring expedition,
under command of Capt. Wyley Martin, spent the winter of 1818–19 on Cow
Island, which now belongs to Atchison county, and established a post
known as Cantonment Martin. This was the first United States military
post established above Ft. Osage, and west of Missouri Territory. During
that winter Captain Martin’s men killed between 2,000 and 3,000 deer,
besides great numbers of bears, turkeys and other game. The troops that
established this frontier post were a part of the First Rifle regiment,
the “crack” organization of the United States army at that time. In
July, 1819, Major Long arrived at Cow Island. His steamboats were the
first to ascend the Missouri river above Ft. Osage. The next day Colonel
Chambers and a detachment of infantry arrived. Thomas Say and his party
of naturalists, under command of Major Biddle, at about the same time
crossed Atchison county en route from the Kansa Indian village where
Manhattan now stands, and joined Major Long’s party at Cow Island.
Messrs. Say and Jessup, naturalists of the expedition, were taken very
ill and had to remain at the island for some time. Col. Henry Atkinson,
the founder of Ft. Atkinson, and commander of the western department for
more than twenty years, arrived at Cow Island shortly after Major Long.
Maj. John O’Fallon was sutler of the post and Indian agent for the upper
Missouri. On July 4, 1819, the Nation’s birthday was celebrated on Cow
Island. The flags were raised at full mast, guns were fired, and they
had “pig with divers tarts to grace the table.” On August 24 an
important council with the Kansa Indians was held on the island. An
account of this council will be found in the chapter on Indian history
in this volume.
One of the captains who was stationed on Cow Island—Bennett Riley—
afterwards became a distinguished man in the history of this country. He
was the man for whom Ft. Riley was named. He served with gallantry in
the Indian country, the Northwest and Florida. In the Florida war he was
promoted to colonel. In the war with Mexico he became a major-general,
and was subsequently military governor of California. Col. John O’Fallon
entered the army from Kentucky and fought in the Battle of Tippecanoe
under Harrison, where he was severely wounded and carried the scar to
his grave. He had a brilliant military record, and afterwards became one
of the wealthiest and most public-spirited citizens of St. Louis.
Major Willoughby Morgan assumed command of the Cow Island post April 13,
1819. He was also a distinguished officer. When Cantonment Martin was
abandoned in September, 1819, it required a month to transport the
troops from there to Council Bluffs on the steamboats.
One of these boats, the “Western Engineer,” the first that ever touched
the shore of Atchison county, was of unique construction, having been
expressly built for the expedition and calculated to impress the
Indians. On her bow was the exhaust pipe, made in the form of a huge
serpent, with wide open mouth and tongue painted a fiery red. The steam,
escaping through the mouth, made a loud, wheezing noise that could be
heard for miles. The Indians recognized in it the power of the great
Manitou and were overcome with fear.
Cow Island has been a prominent landmark in the West from a very early
period. It was discovered by the early French explorers and called by
them Isle au Vache, meaning Isle of Cow or Cow Island. It was so named
because a stray cow was found wandering about on the island. It is
supposed that this cow was stolen by the Indians from one of the early
French settlements and placed on this island to prevent her escape.
There is a coincidence in the fact that the first horse and the first
cow in what is now Atchison county, of which we have any record, were
found in the same locality. The stray horse picked up by Lewis and
Clark, mention of which is made on a preceding page of this chapter, was
found almost opposite the upper end of Cow Island, on the Kansas shore.
There is a tradition that the French had a trading post on Cow Island at
a very early day.
In 1810, John Bradbury, a renowned English botanist, made a trip up the
Missouri river, and was the first scientist to make a systematic study
of the plants and geological formations of this region. He touched the
shore of what is now Atchison county, and in his book, “Travels in the
Interior of America,” speaks about the great fertility of our soil. He
shipped the specimens collected on this trip to the botanical gardens of
Liverpool, and no doubt many Atchison county specimens were included in
these shipments. The next year H. M. Brackenridge, another explorer,
came up the Missouri and made some observations along our shore.
[Illustration:
Postoffice, Atchison, Kansas
]
The first permanent white settler of what is now Atchison county was a
Frenchman, Paschal Pensoneau, who, about 1839, married a Kickapoo Indian
woman and about 1844 settled on the bank of Stranger creek, near the
present site of Potter, where he established a trading-house and opened
the first farm in Atchison county on land which had been allotted him by
the Government for services in the Black Hawk and Mexican wars.
Pensoneau had long lived among the Kickapoo Indians, following them in
their migrations from Illinois to Missouri and Kansas, generally
pursuing the vocation of trader and interpreter. As early as 1833 or
1834 he was established on the Missouri river at the old Kickapoo town,
later removing to Stranger creek, as aforestated. He became a very
prominent and influential man among the Kickapoos. He long held the
position of Government interpreter that tribe. After the treaty of 1854,
diminishing the Kickapoo reserve, Pensoneau moved to the new lands
assigned the tribe along the Grasshopper river, where he lived for many
years. About 1875 he settled among a band of Kickapoo Indians, near
Shawnee, Indian Territory, where he died some years later. He was born
at Cahokia, Ill., April 17, 1796, his parents having been among the
emigrants from Canada to the early French settlements of Illinois.
In 1850 the military road from Ft. Leavenworth to Ft. Laramie was laid
out by Colonel Ogden. It crossed Atchison county, and over it passed
many important expeditions to the Western plains and mountains, and to
Oregon and California. Before this road was laid out as a Government
highway, the same route had long been traveled as a trail. It was a
great natural highway, being on the “dividing ridge” between the
Missouri and Kansas rivers. Charles Augustus Murray, Francis Parkman,
Captain Stansbury and other noted travelers journeyed over this trail
during the thirties and forties, and in the fascinating volumes they
have left, we find much of interest pertaining to the region of which
Atchison county is now a part. During the gold excitement in California
this old trail swarmed with emigrants seeking a fortune in the West. The
Mormons, the soldiers, the overland freighters, the stage drivers, the
hundred and one other picturesque types of character in the early West
have helped to make the history of this famous old branch of the “Oregon
and California Trail” immortalized by Parkman.
During the days of Mormon emigration a Mormon settlement sprang up a few
miles west of Atchison, and immediately east of the present site of
Shannon, which became known as “Mormon Grove.” The settlement was
enclosed by trenches, which served as fences to prevent the stock from
going astray, and traces of these old ditches may be seen to this day.
Many of the Mormons here died of cholera and were buried near the
settlement, but all traces of the old burial ground have been
obliterated by cultivation of the soil.
CHAPTER V.
TERRITORIAL TIMES.
TERRITORY ACQUIRED FROM FRANCE IN 1803—ORGANIZATION OF TERRITORY—
KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT—IMMIGRATION TO KANSAS—TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT—
FREE STATE AND PRO-SLAVERY CONFLICT—FIRST ELECTION—SECRET
POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS—BORDER WAR ACTIVITIES AND OUTRAGES—
CONTESTS OVER ADOPTION OF CONSTITUTION—KANSAS ADMITTED TO THE
UNION.
Kansas is as rich in historic lore and resources as any other region of
the great West. George J. Remsburg, who has contributed two chapters of
this history, has, with great care and accuracy, put into readable form
an account of prehistoric times, Indian occupancy and the record of
earlier explorers in northeastern Kansas. It is a tale of absorbing
interest to those who would go back to the dawn of civilization here and
study the force and character of men who paved the way for the
developments that came after. To the intrepid Spanish conquerors of
Mexico of the sixteenth century, and the hardy French explorers, two
centuries later, we are indebted for the opening up of the Great
American Desert, into which American pioneers, the century following,
found their way. Thousands of years before these came, Atchison county
had been the abode of hunting tribes and the feasting place of wild
animals. Then came the ceaseless flow of the tide of civilization, which
swept these earlier denizens from the field, to clear it for the
“momentous conflict between the two opposing systems of American
civilization, then struggling for mastery and supremacy over the
Republic.” It was in Kansas that the war of rebellion began, and it was
in the northeastern corner along the shores of the Missouri river—in
Atchison county—“that the spark of conflict which had irritated a Nation
for decades burst into devastating flames.”
It is a delicate task to convey anything approaching a truthful account
of the storm and stress of opinions and emotions which accompanied the
organization of Kansas as one of the great American commonwealths, and
the part played by the citizens of Atchison county in that tremendous
work, but sixty years have served to mellow the animosities and
bitternesses of the past, and it is easier now to comprehend the strife
of that distant day and pass unbiased judgment upon it.
When the United States acquired from France, in 1803, the territory of
which Atchison county is a part, slavery was a legalized institution,
and many of the residents held slaves. In the treaty of cession, there
was incorporated an expressed stipulation that the inhabitants of
Louisiana “should be incorporated into the Union of the United States
and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the
Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and
immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the meantime they
should be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their
liberty, property and the religion which they professed.” Thus it came
to pass for over fifty years after the time that vast empire was
acquired from France the bitter contest between the anti-slavery and the
pro-slavery advocates ebbed and flowed, and amidst a continual clash of
ideas and finally after the shedding of blood, Kansas, and Atchison
county, were born.
It was in the Thirty-second Congress that petitions were presented for
the organization of the Territory of the Platte, viz: all that tract
lying west of Iowa and Missouri and extending west to the Rocky
mountains, but no action on the petitions was taken at that time.
December 13, 1852, Willard P. Hall, a congressman from Missouri,
submitted to the House of Representatives a bill organizing this region.
This bill was referred to the committee on territories, which reported
February 22, 1853, through its chairman, William A. Richardson, of
Illinois. A bill organizing the territory of Nebraska, which covered the
same territory as the bill of Mr. Hall, was met by unexpected and strong
opposition from the southern members of Congress, and was rejected in
the committee of the whole. The House, however, did not adopt the action
of the committee, but passed the bill and sent it to the Senate, where
it was defeated March 3, 1853, by six votes. On the fourteenth day of
December, 1853, Senator Dodge, of Iowa, submitted to that body a new
bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska, embracing the
same region as the bill which was defeated in the first session of the
Thirty-second Congress. It was referred to the committee on territories,
of which Stephen A. Douglas was chairman, on January 4, 1854.
It was during the discussion of this bill that the abrogation of the
Missouri Compromise was foreshadowed. The story of the action of Senator
Douglas in connection with the slavery question has appeared in every
history since the Civil war. It is neither necessary nor proper to dwell
at length upon his career in connection with the history of Atchison
county. However, it was following a bitter discussion of the slavery
question that the bill was passed, creating Kansas a territory. The
provisions of the bill, as presented, were known to be in accordance
with the wishes and designs of all the Southern members to have been
accepted before being presented by President Pierce by a majority of the
members of his cabinet, and to have the assured support of a sufficient
number of Northern administration Democrats, to insure its passage
beyond a doubt. The contest over the measure ended May 27, 1854, by the
passage of the bill, which was approved May 30, 1854, by President
Pierce.
The act organizing Nebraska and Kansas contained thirty-seven sections.
The provisions relating to Kansas were embodied in the last eighteen
sections, summarized as follow:
Section 19 defines the boundaries of the territory; gives it the name of
Kansas, and prescribes that when admitted as a State, or States, the
said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the
Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at
the time of their admission. Also provides for holding the rights of all
Indian tribes inviolable, until such time as they shall be extinguished
by treaty.
Section 20. The executive power and authority is vested in a governor,
appointed by the President, to hold his office for the term of four
years, or until his successor is appointed and qualified, unless sooner
removed by the President of the United States.
Section 21. The secretary of State is appointed and subject to removal
by the President of the United States, and to be acting governor with
full powers and functions of the governor in case of the absence of the
governor from the territory, or a vacancy occurring.
Section 22. Legislative power and authority of territory is vested in
the governor and a legislative body, consisting of two branches, a
council and a house of representatives.
Section 23 prescribes qualifications of voters; giving the right to
every free white male inhabitant, above the age of 21 years, who shall
be an actual resident of the territory, to vote at the first election.
Section 24 limits the scope of territorial legislation, and defines the
veto power of the governor.
Section 25 prescribes the manner of appointing and electing officers,
not otherwise provided for.
Section 26 precludes members from holding any office created or the
emoluments of which are increased during any session of the legislature
of which they are a member, and prescribes qualifications for members of
the legislative assembly.
Section 27 vests the judicial power in the supreme court, district
courts, probate courts and in justices of the peace.
Section 28 declares the fugitive slave law of 1850 to be in full force
in the territory.
Section 29 provides for the appointment of an attorney and marshal for
the territory.
Section 30 treats with the nomination of the President, chief justice,
associate justices, attorney and marshal, and their confirmation by the
Senate, and prescribes the duties of these officers and fixes their
salaries.
Section 31 locates the temporary seat of government of the territory at
Ft. Leavenworth, and authorizes the use of the Government buildings
there for public purposes.
Section 32 provides for the election of a delegate to Congress, and
abrogates the Missouri Compromise.
Section 33 prescribes the manner and the amount of appropriations for
the erection of public buildings, and other territorial purposes.
Section 34 reserves for the benefit of schools in the territory and
states and territories hereafter to be erected out of the same, sections
number 16 and 30 in each township, as they are surveyed.
Section 35 prescribes the mode of defining the judicial districts of the
territory, and appointing the times and places of holding the various
courts.
Section 36 requires officers to give official bonds, in such manner as
the secretary of treasury may prescribe.
Section 37 declares all treaties, laws and other engagements made by the
United States Government with the Indian tribes inhabiting the territory
to remain inviolate, notwithstanding anything contained in the
provisions of the act.
It was under the provisions of the above act that those coming to Kansas
to civilize it and to erect their homes were to be guided.
Edward Everett Hale, in his history of Kansas and Nebraska, published in
1854, says, “Up to the summer of 1834, Kansas and Nebraska have had no
civilized residents, except the soldiers sent to keep the Indian tribes
in order; the missionaries sent to convert them; the traders who bought
furs of them, and those of the natives who may be considered to have
attained some measure of civilization from their connection with the
whites.” So it will be seen that at the time of the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska act, Atchison county was very sparsely settled.
All movements in the territory, or elsewhere, made for its organization,
were provisional, as they were subject to the rights of the various
Indian tribes, whose reservations covered, by well defined boundaries,
every acre of northeastern Kansas, except such tracts as were reserved
by the Government about Ft. Leavenworth, and other military stations,
but with the move for the organization of the territory came an effort
to extinguish the Indian’s title to the lands and thus open them to
white settlers. One of the most interesting books bearing upon the
history of Kansas of that time was “Greeley’s Conflict.” He makes the
following statement with reference to this subject:
“When the bill organizing Kansas and Nebraska was first submitted to
Congress in 1853, all that portion of Kansas which adjoins the State of
Missouri, and, in fact, nearly all the accessible portion of both
territories, was covered by Indian reservations, on which settlement by
whites was strictly forbidden. The only exception was in favor of
Government agents and religious missionaries; and these, especially the
former, were nearly all Democrats and violent partisans of slavery.
* * * * Within three months immediately preceding the passage of the
Kansas bill aforesaid, treaties were quietly made at Washington with the
Delawares, Otoes, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, Shawnees, Sacs, Foxes and other
tribes, whereby the greater part of the soil of Kansas, lying within one
or two hundred miles of the Missouri border, was suddenly opened to
white appropriation and settlement. These simultaneous purchases of the
Indian land by the Government, though little was known of them
elsewhere, were thoroughly understood and appreciated by the Missourians
of the western border, who had for some time been organizing ‘Blue
Lodges,’ ‘Social Bands,’ ‘Sons of the South,’ and other societies, with
intent to take possession of Kansas in behalf of slavery. They were well
assured and they fully believed that the object contemplated and
desired, in lifting, by the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the
interdict of slavery from Kansas, was to authorize and facilitate the
legal extension of slavery into that region. Within a few days after the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, hundreds of leading Missourians
crossed into the adjacent territory, selected each his quarter section,
or a larger area of land, put some sort of mark on it, and then united
with his fellow-adventurers in a meeting, or meetings, intended to
establish a sort of Missouri preëmption upon all this region.”
Immediately following the passage of the territorial act the immigration
of Missourians to Kansas began, and, indeed, before its final passage
the best of the lands had been located and marked for preëmption by the
Missourians. This was true, apparently, in the case of George M.
Million, whom the records disclose was the first settler in Atchison
county, after Kansas was made a territory. Mr. Million was of German
descent and came to the vicinity of Rushville in the hills east of
Atchison from Coal county, Missouri, prior to 1841, where he was married
to Sarah E. Dixon before she was fifteen years old. In 1841 Million
occupied the present site of East Atchison as a farm. At that time the
bottom land just east of Atchison was covered with tall rushes and was
known as Rush bottom. The town of Rushville was originally known as
Columbus, but the name was subsequently changed to Rushville because of
the character of the country in which it was located. During the winter
Million eked out his livelihood by cutting wood and hauling it to the
river bank, selling it in the spring and summer to the steamboats that
plied up and down the Missouri river. Sometime subsequent to 1841,
Million built a flat-boat ferry and operated it for seven or eight years
and did a thriving business during the great gold rush to California. He
accumulated considerable money and later operated a store, trading with
the Indians for furs and buying hemp, which he shipped down the river.
In June, 1854, he “squatted” on the present townsite of Atchison, and
built a log house at the foot of Atchison street, near his ferry
landing, and just opposite his cabin on the Missouri side of the river.
Following Million, in June, 1854 came a colony of emigrants from Iatan,
Mo., and took up claims in the neighborhood of Oak Mills. They were F.
P. Goddard, G. B. Goddard, James Douglass, Allen Hanson and George A.
Wright, but the actual settlers and founders of Atchison county did not
enter the territory of Kansas until July, 1854. On the twentieth day of
that month Dr. J. H. Stringfellow with Ira Norris, Leonidas Oldham,
James B. Martin and Neil Owens left Platte City, Mo., to decide
definitely upon a good location for a town. With the exception of Dr.
Stringfellow they all took claims about four miles southwest of the
present city of Atchison. Traveling in a southwesterly direction from
Platte City the party reached the river opposite Ft. Leavenworth and
crossed to the Kansas side. They went north until they reached the mouth
of Walnut creek, “and John Alcorn’s lonely cabin upon its banks.” They
continued their course up the river until they came to the “south edge
of the rim of the basin which circles around from the south line of the
city, extending west by gradual incline to the divide between White Clay
and Stranger creek, then north and east around to the northern limits of
the city.” It was at this point that the Missouri river made the bend
from the northeast, throwing the point where Atchison is now located,
twelve miles west of any locality, north, and twenty miles west of
Leavenworth, and thirty-five miles west of Kansas City. When they
descended into the valley, of which Commercial street is now the lowest
point, Dr. Stringfellow and his companions found George M. Million and
Samuel Dickson. Mr. Dickson followed Million to Kansas from Rushville,
and while there is some dispute as to who was the second resident in
Atchison county after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the best
authorities lead to the conclusion that to Samuel Dickson belongs that
honor. Mr. Dickson erected a small shanty near the spring, which bore
his name for so many years, on the east side of South Sixth street,
between Park and Spring streets. His house is described as a structure
twelve feet square, having one door and one window and a large stone
chimney running up the outside. As soon as Dr. Stringfellow arrived he
at once commenced negotiations with Mr. Million for the purchase of his
claim. Mr. Million, apparently, was a shrewd real estate speculator and
only surrendered his claim upon the payment of $1,000. Dr. Stringfellow
considered this a very fancy figure for the land, but he and his
associates were firm in their decision of founding a city at this point
on the Missouri river and they gave Mr. Million his price. The
organization of a town company which followed will be discussed in a
subsequent chapter of this territory.
The first territorial appointment for the purpose of inaugurating a
local government in Kansas was made in June, 1854. Governor Andrew. H.
Reeder, of Easton, Pa., was appointed on that date. He took the oath of
office in Washington, D. C., July 7, and arrived in Kansas at Ft.
Leavenworth October 7, becoming at once the executive head of the Kansas
government. Governor Reeder was a stranger to Kansas. With the exception
of Senator Atchison he scarcely knew anybody in Kansas. He was a lawyer
by profession, one of the ablest in the State of Pennsylvania. From
early manhood he had been an ardent and loyal Democrat and had defended
with vigor and great power the principle of squatter sovereignty and the
Kansas-Nebraska bill. He was not a politician and was an able, honest,
clear-thinking Democrat. Upon his arrival in Kansas he set himself at
once to the task of inaugurating the government in the territory.
According to his own testimony before the special congressional
committee appointed by Congress to investigate the troubles in Kansas in
1856, he made it his first business to obtain information of the
geography, settlements, population and general condition of the
territory, with a view to its division into districts; the defining of
their boundary; the location of suitable and central places for
elections, and the full names of men in each district for election
officers, persons to take the census, justices of the peace, and
constables. He accordingly made a tour of the territory, and although he
did not come to Atchison county his tour included many important and
remote settlements in the territory. Upon his return he concluded that
if the election for a delegate to Congress should be postponed until an
election could be had for the legislature, which, in the one case
required no previous census, and in the other a census was required, the
greater part of the session of Congress, which would terminate on the
fourth of March, would expire before a congressional delegate from the
territory could reach Washington. He, therefore, ordered an election for
a delegate to Congress, and postponed the taking of the census until
after that election. He prepared, without unnecessary delay, a division
of the territory into election districts, fixed a place of election in
each, appointed election officers and ordered that the election should
take place November 29, 1854. Atchison county was in the fifteenth
election district, which comprised the following territory: Commencing
at the mouth of Salt creek on the Missouri river; thence up said creek
to the military road and along the middle of said road to the lower
crossing of Stranger creek: thence up said creek to the line of the
Kickapoo reservation, and thence along the southern and western line
thereof to the line of the fourteenth district: thence between same, and
down Independence creek to the mouth thereof, and thence down the
Missouri river to the place of beginning. The place of the election was
at the house of Pascal Pensoneau, on the Ft. Leavenworth and Oregon
road, near what is now the town site of Potter. The election which
followed was an exciting one. Public meetings were held in all of the
towns and villages, at which resolutions were passed against the eastern
abolitionists, the _Platte County Argus_ sounding the following alarm:
“We know we speak the sentiments of some of the most distinguished
statesmen of Missouri when we advise that counter-organizations be made,
both in Kansas and Missouri, to thwart the reckless course of the
abolitionists. We must meet them at their very threshold and scourge
them back to their covers of darkness. They have made the issue, and it
is for us to meet and repel them.”
The secret organizations, of which Greeley spoke, known as the “Blue
Lodges,” “Social Bands,” and “Sons of the South,” became very active,
and knowing the condition of affairs along the Missouri border, and
having learned the needs and wishes of the actual settlers in the
territory, Governor Reeder decided that their rights should not be
jeopardized. Therefore, in ordering an election of a congressional
delegate only, with the idea of a later proclamation ordering a
territorial election of a legislature, he knew that much trouble would
be spared. In his proclamation for the congressional election, provision
was made for defining the qualifications of legal voters, and providing
against fraud, both of which provisions were received with alarm by the
leaders of the slavery Democracy, who, up to that time had hoped that
the administration at Washington had sent them an ally. It was not long
until they discovered that they were mistaken.
The actual settlers of the territory did not evince much interest in the
election. They were all engaged in what appeared to them to be the more
important business of building their homes and otherwise providing
necessities before the approach of winter. There were no party
organizations in the territory. The slavery question was not generally
understood to be an issue. The first candidates to announce themselves
were James N. Burnes, whose name has for sixty years been prominently
identified with the social, political and business history of Atchison
county, and J. B. Chapman. These two candidates subsequently withdrew
from the campaign, and the names finally submitted to the voters were:
Gen. John W. Whitfield, Robert P. Flenneken, Judge John A. Wakefield.
Whitfield ignored the slavery issue during his canvass, but his cause
was openly espoused by the Missourians. Flenneken was a friend of
Governor Reeder, with Free Soil proclivities. Wakefield was an outspoken
Free-Soiler. Hon. David R. Atchison, then a United States senator, and
for whom Atchison county was named, was the head and front of the pro-
slavery movement. He had a national reputation and was a power in the
United States Senate, and won for himself the highest position in the
gift of the Senate, having been chosen president protempore of that body
after the death of Vice-President King. He was loyal to the southern
views regarding slavery and this made him the unquestioned leader of the
party which believed, as Senator Atchison himself believed, that the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill would inevitably result in a slave
State west of Missouri. It was to Senator Atchison that Dr. J. H.
Stringfellow, himself one of the strong leaders of the pro-slavery
forces, looked for inspiration and direction. In a speech Senator
Atchison made in Weston, Mo., November 6, 1854, which was just prior to
the congressional election in Kansas, he said:
“My mission here today is, if possible, to awaken the people of this
country to the danger ahead and to suggest the means to avoid it. The
people of Kansas in their first elections will decide the question
whether or not the slave-holder was to be excluded, and it depends upon
a majority of the votes cast at the polls. Now, if a set of fanatics and
demagogues a thousand miles off could afford to advance their money and
exert every nerve to abolitionize the territory and exclude the slave-
holder, when they have not the least personal interest in the matter,
what is your duty? When you reside within one day’s journey of the
territory, and when your peace, your quiet, and your property depend
upon this action you can without any exertion send five hundred of your
young men who will vote in favor of your institutions.”
On November 28, the day preceding the election, the secret society
voters in Missouri began to cross over into Kansas. They came organized
to carry the election and in such overwhelming numbers as to completely
over-awe and out-number the legal voters of the territory at many of the
precincts. They took possession of the polls, elected many of the
judges, intimidated others to resign and refusing to take the oath
qualifying themselves as voters and prescribe to the regulations of the
election, cast their ballots for General John W. Whitfield and hastily
beat their retreat to Missouri. The whole number of votes cast in that
election was 2,233, of which number Whitfield received 2,258; Wakefield,
248; Flenneken, 305, with twenty-two scattering votes. The frauds which
were at first denied by both the pro-slavery newspapers and General
Whitfield himself, were not long in being discovered.
In the Fifteenth district, of which Atchison county was a part, the
total number of votes cast was 306, of which Wakefield got none;
Flenneken, 39, and Whitfield, 267. The total number of votes given by
the census was 308, and in the majority report of the congressional
committee of the following year 206 illegal votes were shown to have
been cast in that district. However, there was little immediate
disturbance following the election. The settlers continued to busy
themselves in completing their homes and were more interested in
securing titles to their lands than in the future destiny of the
territory.
In the following January and February Governor Reeder caused an
enumeration of the inhabitants to be taken preparatory to calling an
election for a legislature. H. B. Jolly was named as enumerator for the
Fifteenth district and Mr. Jolly found a total of 873 persons in the
district, divided as follows: Males, 492; females, 381; voters, 308;
minors, 448; natives of the United States, 846; foreign born, sixteen;
negroes, fifteen; slaves, fifteen. The date appointed for the
legislative election was March 30, 1855. The proclamation of the
governor defined the election districts; appointed the voting precincts;
named the judges of the election, defined the duties of the judges, and
the qualifications of voters. Thirteen members of the council and
twenty-six members of the house of representatives were to constitute
the legislative assembly of the territory. Atchison was in the Ninth
council district and in the Thirteenth representative district.
Following the precedent established in the election for congressional
delegate the November before the blue lodges of Missouri became active
and large numbers of members of the secret societies of Missouri were
sent into every council and representative district in the territory for
the purpose of controlling the election. They were armed and came with
provisions and tents. They overpowered and intimidated the resident
voters to such an extent that only 1,410 legal votes were cast in the
territory out of 2,905 enumerated in the census.
D. A. N. Grover was the pro-slavery candidate for councilman in the
Ninth Council district with no opposition and he received 411 votes
which was the total number of votes enumerated for that district. H. B.
C. Harris and J. Weddell were the pro-slavery candidates for
representative in the Thirteenth district with no opposition. They each
received 412 votes, being the total number of votes enumerated in the
district.
It was another victory for the pro-slavery sympathizers and the Free
State men were indignant, while on the other hand the pro-slavery
residents, with their Missouri allies, did not conceal their joy, at the
same time admitting frankly the outrages which were practiced at the
polls. The _Leavenworth Herald_ of April 6 headed its election returns
with the following:
“All Hail.
Pro-Slavery Party Victorious.
We have met the enemy, and they are ours.
Veni Vidi Vici!
Free White State Party used up.
“The triumph of the pro-slavery party is complete and overwhelming. Come
on, Southern men; bring your slaves and fill up the territory. Kansas is
Saved! Abolitionism is rebuked. Her fortress stormed. Her flag is
dragging in the dust. The tri-colored platform has fallen with a crash.
The rotten timbers of its structure were not sufficient to sustain the
small fragments of the party.”
The _Parkville Luminary_ which was published in Platte county, Missouri,
very mildly protested against the manner of carrying the election and
spoke in friendly terms of the Free Soil settlers. The following week
its office and place was destroyed by a mob and forced its editors to
flee the country for their lives.
The election of November 29, 1854, so incensed the Anti-Slavery element
that the Free State movement was given a great impetus. A convention of
Free State men at Lawrence June 8, 1855, and the Big Springs convention
September 5, 1855, were the result, and from that date many other public
meetings of Free State men followed. The Free State sentiment fully
crystalized itself in the momentous election of October 9, 1855,
following eight days after the date set by the pro-slavery legislature
for an election of delegate to Congress to succeed J. W. Whitfield, who
had been elected the year before. The first election in 1855 was held
October 1 but was participated in only by pro-slavery men. The abstract
of the poll books showed that 2,738 votes were cast in the territory and
Whitfield received 2,721, of which it is only fair to say that 857 were
declared illegal. In the Free State election Ex-Governor Andrew H.
Reeder received 2,849 votes, of which 101 were cast in Atchison county.
On the same day an election for delegates to a constitutional convention
to be held at Topeka took place and R. H. Crosby, a merchant of Oceana,
Atchison county, and Caleb May, a farmer, near the same place, were
elected delegates.
The returns of the pro-slavery election having been made according to
law, the governor granted the certificate of election to Whitfield, who
returned to Washington as the duly elected delegate from Kansas. The
territorial executive committee, elected at the Big Springs convention,
gave a certificate of election to Reeder. The Topeka constitutional
convention subsequently convened October 23, 1855, and was in session
until November 11. This body of Free State men framed a constitution,
and among other things memorialized Congress to admit Kansas as a State.
It was understood by all that the validity of the work of the convention
was contingent upon the admission of Kansas as a State. Meanwhile the
executive committee of Kansas Territory appointed at the Topeka primary,
September 19, 1855, under the leadership of James H. Lane, continued to
direct and inspire the work for a State government.
As a counter-irritant to the activities of the Free State men, and for
the purpose of allaying the insane excitement of the territorial
legislature, the pro-slavery followers organized a Law and Order party,
which was pledged to the establishment of slavery in Kansas. From
thenceforth it was open warfare between the two great forces contending
for supremacy in the territory. Atchison was the stronghold of the Law
and Order party, as Lawrence was the stronghold of the Free State party.
The Free State party was looked upon by the Law and Order advocates as
made up of revolutionists and the Law and Order party was determined to
bring them to time as soon as possible, but as the members of the Free
State party held themselves apart from the legal machinery devised for
the government of the territory, bringing no suits in its courts;
attending no elections; paying no attention to its county organizations;
offering no estates to its probate judges, and paying no tax levies made
by authority of the legislature, they were careful to commit no act
which would lay themselves liable to the laws which they abhorred. They
settled all their disputes by arbitration in order to avoid litigation,
but as they could build, manufacture, buy and sell and establish schools
and churches without coming under the domination of the pro-slavery
forces, they managed to do tolerably well. Where the inhabitants were
mostly Free State, as in Lawrence and Topeka, conditions were reasonably
satisfactory, but in localities like Atchison and Leavenworth, where the
Law and Order party dominated affairs, the Free State inhabitants were
forced to suffer many indignities and insults.
During the month of August, 1855, a negro woman belonging to Grafton
Thomassen, who ran a sawmill in Atchison, was found drowned in the
Missouri river. J. W. B. Kelley, a rabid anti-slavery lawyer, from
Cincinnati, who became a resident of Atchison, expressed the opinion
that if Thomassen’s negro woman had been treated better by her master
she would not have committed suicide by jumping into the river.
Thomassen was greatly angered at this personal illusion and deluded
himself into believing that if he satisfied his own vengeance he would
at the same time be rendering the pro-slavery party a service. He
therefore picked a quarrel with Kelley and they came to blows, after
which Thomassen’s conduct was sustained by a largo meeting of Atchison
people. While it is said that Thomassen was a larger and more powerful
man than Kelley, the people did not consider this fact, but rather
considered the principle involved, and as a result they commended the
act in the following resolution:
“1. Resolved. That one J. W. B. Kelley, hailing from Cincinnati, having
upon sundry occasions denounced our institutions and declared all pro-
slavery men ruffians, we deem it an act of kindness and hereby command
him to leave the town of Atchison one hour after being informed of the
passage of this resolution never more to show himself in this vicinity.
2. Resolved. That in case he fails to obey this reasonable command, we
inflict upon him such punishment as the nature of the case may require.
3. Resolved. That other emissaries of this ‘Aid Society’ now in our
midst, tampering with our slaves, are warned to leave, else they too
will meet the reward which their nefarious designs so justly merit.—
Hemp.
4. Resolved. That we approve and applaud our fellow-townsman, Grafton
Thomassen, for the castigation administered to said J. W. B. Kelley,
whose presence among us is a libel upon our good standing and a disgrace
to our community.
5. Resolved. That we commend the good work of purging our town of all
resident abolitionists, and after cleaning our town of such nuisances
shall do the same for the settlers on Walnut and Independence creeks
whose propensities for cattle stealing are well known to many.
6. Resolved. That the chairman appoint a committee of three to wait upon
said Kelley and acquaint him with the actions of this meeting.
7. Resolved. That the proceedings of this meeting be published, that the
world may know our determination.”
After the passage of these resolutions they were circulated throughout
Atchison and all citizens were asked to sign the same and if any person
refused he was deemed and treated as an abolitionist. A few days after
this incident Rev. Pardee Butler, a minister of the Christian church,
who was living at that time near the now abandoned townsite of Pardee,
west of Atchison, about twelve miles, came to town to do some trading.
Butler was an uncompromising anti-slavery advocate and never overlooked
an opportunity to make his sentiments known. He had strong convictions
backed by courage, and while he did not seek controversies, he never
showed a desire to avoid them. He was well known in the community as a
Free State man, and so when he came into Atchison after these
resolutions were passed and the town was all excited about them it did
not take him long to get into the controversy and he condemned in strong
terms the outrage upon Kelley and also the resolutions which were
passed. In the course of a conversation which he had at the postoffice
with Robert S. Kelley, the postmaster and assistant editor of the
_Squatter Sovereign_, he informed Mr. Kelley that he long since would
have become a subscriber to his paper had he not disliked the violent
sentiments which appeared in its columns. Mr. Kelley replied: “I look
upon all Free Soilers as rogues and they ought to be treated as such.”
Mr. Butler responded: “I am a Free Soiler and expect to vote for Kansas
as a Free State.” “I do not expect you will be allowed to vote,” was Mr.
Kelley’s reply. On the following morning Mr. Kelley called at the
National hotel, corner of Second and Atchison streets, where Mr. Butler
had spent the night, accompanied by a number of friends and demanded
Butler to sign the resolutions, which of course Mr. Butler refused to
do, and walked down stairs into the street. A crowd gathered and seized
Mr. Butler, dragging him towards the river, shouting that they intended
to drown him. The mob increased in size as they proceeded with the
victim. A vote was taken as to the kind of punishment which ought to be
given him and a verdict of death by hanging was rendered. It was not
discovered until forty years afterwards that Mr. Kelley, the teller,
saved Mr. Butler’s life by making false returns to the excited mob. Mr.
Kelley subsequently was a resident of Montana and gave this information
while stopping in St. Joseph with Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, the former
editor of the _Squatter Sovereign_. Instead of returning a verdict of
death by hanging Mr. Kelley announced that it was the decision of the
mob to send Mr. Butler down the Missouri river on a raft, and an account
of what followed is best given by Rev. Pardee Butler himself:
“When we arrived at the bank Mr. Kelley painted my face with black
paint, marked upon it the letter “R.” The company had increased to some
thirty or forty persons. Without any trial, witness, judge, counsel or
jury, for about two hours I was a sort of target at which were hurled
imprecations, curses, arguments, entreaties, accusations and
interrogations. They constructed a raft of three cottonwood sawlogs,
fastened together with inch plank nailed to the logs, upon which they
put me and sent me down the Missouri river. The raft was towed out to
the middle of the stream with a canoe. Robert S. Kelley held the rope
that towed the raft. They gave me neither rudder, oar nor anything else
to manage my raft with. They put up a flag on the raft with the
following inscription on it:
‘Eastern Emigrant Aid Express.
The Rev. Pardee Butler again for the underground road;
The way they are served in Kansas: Shipped for Boston; Cargo insured.
Unavoidable danger of the Missourians and Missouri river excepted.
Let future emissaries from the north Beware.
Our Hemp crop is sufficient to reward all such scoundrels.’
“They threatened to shoot me if I pulled the flag down. I pulled it
down, cut the flag off the flag staff, made a paddle out of the flag
staff and ultimately got ashore about six miles below.”
The mob was considerate enough to provide Mr. Butler a loaf of bread and
permitted him to take his baggage on board, afterwards escorting him
down the river for some distance.
When Mr. Butler landed he returned overland to his home near Pardee. On
April 30, 1856, he again ventured to make his appearance in Atchison,
where he says: “I spoke to no one in town save two merchants of the
place with whom I had business transactions since my first arrival in
the territory. Having remained only a few minutes I went to my buggy to
resume my journey when I was assaulted by Robert S. Kelley, junior
editor of the _Squatter Sovereign_; was dragged into a grocery and there
surrounded by a company of South Carolinians who are reported to have
been sent out by a Southern Emigrant Aid Society. After exposing me to
every sort of indignity they stripped me to the waist, covered my body
with tar and then for the want of feathers applied cotton wool, having
appointed a committee of three to certainly hang me the next time I
should come to Atchison. They tossed my clothes into the buggy, put me
therein, accompanying me to the suburbs of the town and sent me naked
upon the prairie. I adjusted my attire about me as best I could and
hastened to rejoin my wife and two little sons on the banks of Stranger
creek. It was rather a sorrowful meeting after so long a parting.”
The above incident gives some idea of the prevailing sentiment in
Atchison county during the period beginning in 1854 and ending in 1857.
There was little chance of Free State settlers to avoid trouble except
by discreet silence. It would not be just, however, to fail to disclose
the fact that the Free State men also had their secret organizations.
The Kansas Legion was a military organization for defensive purposes
only. Its members were organized into companies, battalions and
regiments and were officered and armed with rifles and pistols sent from
the East. These organizations were the natural result of the secret pro-
slavery organizations of Missouri and were known to exist to protect the
Free State settlers against the attacks of the Blue Lodges, Sons of the
South, and the Social Bands.
A man by the name of Pat Laughlin became a member of the Kansas Legion
and was very active in organizing companies of that organization at
different points in the territory. He subsequently became a traitor to
his associates and gave out information to the enemy, thereby creating
great indignation among his former friends whom he had betrayed. Later
Laughlin and Samuel Collins, of Doniphan county, became engaged in a
fierce altercation and friends of both parties to the dispute were
present and armed. Laughlin shot Collins and killed him on the spot and
was slightly wounded himself. This affair occurred October 25, 1855. No
attempt was made by the appointed peace officers of the territory to
bring the guilty parties participating in the Pardee Butler outrage or
the murder of Collins to justice. Shortly after Laughlin recovered from
his wound he secured a position in a store in Atchison and lived there
for many years.
This condition of affairs could not long exist without an open rupture
between the two opposing forces and from this time on there was a
succession of personal encounters of wide significance, and in addition
there was the war along the border in which Atchison county played a
conspicuous but not a glorious part. The activities here at that crucial
period were largely in the interest of the pro-slavery forces. It was at
this juncture that the immortal John Brown appeared on the scene to
begin his work of driving the slavery advocates from Kansas and making
it and the Nation free. His first appearance among the Free State men
was December 7, 1855, but he had been in the territory several months
before that with his four sons. John Brown did not reach Atchison county
during his stormy career in Kansas. The nearest he ever came was in 1857
when he passed through Jackson county with a party of slaves which he
was taking from Missouri to Nebraska for the purpose of setting them
free. In the historical edition of the Atchison _Daily Globe_ of July
16, 1894, there appears the following short reference to this excursion:
“In 1857 John Brown made a trip from Missouri into Nebraska with a party
of slave negroes which he intended to set free. His route was through
Jackson county, Kansas, and up by where the town of Centralia now
stands. A lot of the pro-slavery enthusiasts in Atchison heard of the
affair and went out to intercept Brown. They came up with him near
Centralia, but Brown had heard of their coming and captured the entire
party. One of the men in the pro-slavery party was named George Ringo;
afterwards he soldiered with Dwight Merlin in the Thirteenth Kansas and
often talked of the trip to Merwin around their camp fires. Ringo says
that James T. Herford was another member of the pro-slavery party, and a
man named Cook was another. John Brown looked at Cook critically after
the capture and asked his name. Cook said his name was Thomas Porter. “I
believe you are lying. I believe your name is Cook and if I was certain
of it I would kill you,” Brown said. Cook was one of the men accused of
killing Brown’s son at Osawatomie, but Brown was not certain of his
identity and let him go with the others. George Ringo says that Brown
held a prayer meeting in his camp every evening and asked a blessing at
every meal.
“One night when the Atchison party was in the custody of Brown, Brown
asked Jim Herford to pray. ‘I can’t pray,’ Herford replied. ‘Didn’t your
mother teach you to pray?’ Brown inquired. ‘She taught me to say, “Now I
lay me down to sleep,” that was all,’ Herford answered. ‘All right,’
Brown said, ‘get down on your knees and say, “Now I lay me down to
sleep.”’ Herford did as he was requested, being afraid to refuse and
Brown soon rolled himself in a blanket and went to sleep.”
As the activities of Brown increased so likewise the activities of the
pro-slavery forces increased under the leadership of Senator Atchison,
of Missouri, and Dr. Stringfellow, editor of the _Squatter Sovereign_.
The _Squatter Sovereign_, about which more will appear in a subsequent
chapter, was published in Atchison and was largely supported by
government advertising patronage. It was the leading pro-slavery
newspaper organ of the territory. Senator Atchison’s activities were of
the most pronounced sort. He not only urged his Missouri constituents to
invade the territory in all their might and capture the Yankees, but he
went himself. At Platte City, Mo., February 4, 1856, Senator Atchison
made a speech which gives some idea of the language he employed in
urging the people of western Missouri to join in the invading of Kansas.
He said: