INDIAN   HISTORY.
 

INDI.\NS  OF  K.VNSAS.

THE earliest European mention of the great tribes or nations whose
homes and hunting-gTOvmils extended over the region afterward
known as the Territory of Kansas, is in the manuscript map of Father
Jacques Jlarcjuette, still preserved at St. Mary's College. Montreal, a fae
simile of which is found in this volume. This map was the result of ob¬
servations made and information gained during the celebrated voyage of
exploration of the Alississippi by Marquette and Joliet in the summer of
1673.

As early as 1641, vague reports of the mighty river on which dwelt the
di'eaded " Nadouessies. of an unknown race and langua.ge," were trans¬
mitted by the young missionaries Charles Raymbault and Isaac Vogues,
to their Superior at Montreal, and, during the next quarter of a century,
venturesome Canadian traders occasionally penetrated far enough into the
Western wilderness to visit the powerful tribe whose home was Ijeyond the
great lake, then without a name. On one occasion, a number of Dahco-
tahs were induced to visit Montreal, and ask that trade might be established
between their nation and the French, and also that missionaries might be
sent into their country.

In the fall of 1658, De Groseilles and a companion, both traders, left
Montreal, and. spending the following winter among the Dahcotahs, re¬
turned in the spring, laden with furs, and related what they had heard of
"the beautiful river, large, broad and deep, which would bear comparison,
the}' say, with our St. Lawrence."

The pious priest. Father Marquette, had long desired to extend his la¬
bors to the more remote tribes, and, in order to fit himself for his eontem¬
plated mission to the Illinois, employed a young lirave of that tribe to
teach him the language. While learning this, he also gained some infor¬
mation from his teaelicr in regard to the wonderful river he so much de¬
sired to explore, and the nations which dwelt toward the west.

In 1670, three years before he started on his voyage of exploration, in
a letter written from La Poiute to Father Francis Le Mercier, Superior of
the mission, after speaking of the work he hopes to accomplish, he relates
what he has heard from his instructor.    Of the Nadouessi he says:

" The Nadouessi are the Iroquois of this country beyond Lapointe,
but less faithless, and never attack till attacked. They lie southwest of
the Mission of the Holy Ghost, and are a great nation, though we have not
yet visited them, having confined ourselves to the conversion of the Otta-
was. They fear the Frenchman because he brings iron into their country.
Their language is entirely difEerent from the Huron (Iroquois) and Algon¬
quin; they have many towns, but they are widely scattered; they have
very extraordinary customs; they principally adore the calumet; they do
not speak of great feasts, and, when a stranger arrives, give him to eat
with a wooden fork, as we would a child. All the lake tribes make war
on them, but with small success. They have false oats (wild rice), use
little canoes, and keep their word strictly." Speaking of the great river,
he says: "Six or seven miles below the Hois is another great river (Mis¬
souri), on which are prodigious nations, who use wooden canoes. We
cannot write more till next year, if God docs us the grace to lead us there."

It was not until the lOth of June, 16T.S, that Father Alarquette, accom¬
panied by Louis Joliet, finally embarked on the river of which he had
dreamed so many years, and which he had determined should bear the
name of the Blessed Lady of the Immaculate Conception, while the savage
nations dwelling along its borders should bow and adore the sacred cross.

Fired by this de\out enthusiasm, the gentle priest descended the river
until the muddy waters of the turbid "Pekitanoui, coming from very far
in the Northwest," mingled with and discolored the majestic river which he
was exploring. Father Claude Dablon. the companion of JIarquette in his
Northern mission at Sault Ste. Marie, in narrating the .story of the expedi¬
tion, says: "5Ian\- Indian towns are ranged along this river (Missouri),
and I hope bj' its" means to make the discovery of the Red or California
Sea."

Aniong the " Indian towns ' noted l)y Alarquette in 1673, as " ranged
along this river," are the Ouemessourit Oli'ssouri), tly; Pewaria (Peoria) and
the Maha (Omaha).

Of the four dominant trit)es or nations that inhal)ited the region sub¬
sequently called Kansas. Father Marquette locates on his map, in relative¬
ly the same postitions thev occupied at the time of the French explorations
early in the eighteentli century, the Kanza, the Ouchage (Osage) and the
Paneassa (Pawnee). The great nation of the Padoucas, dwelling far to
the west, almost at the biise of the mountains, is first mentioned by Du
Ti.ssenet in 1719.

Father Douay. one of the survivors of the last disastrous expedition of
La Salle in 1687, gives some details in regard to the Western Indians: " The
Panimaha," he says, " had but one chief, and twenty-two villages, the least
of which has two hundred cal)ins;" and continues he, "the Paneassa (Paw¬
nee) is not inferior to the Panimalia." Of the Osages he relates that they
"have seventeen villages on a river of their name, which empties into that
of the Massourites, to which the maps have also extended the name of
Osages." The language of nearly all the tribes dwelling on and near the
ili.ssiiuri at this early day, including the Kanzas and Osages, proved that
they belonged to the gica'l Dahcotah family, so much dreaded by the more
easterly Indian tribes.    Du Pratz, one of the earliest French writers on
 

"Louisiana," says the tradition of their emigration from their old home
" to the northward of the gieat lakes," the long journey southward, then-
separation into bands, and settlement on the Missouri and its tributaries,
was familiar to many of the tribes when they first became known to the
French. In this great migration, the Kanzaz and (.)sages formed them¬
selves into distinct bands, and located their villages on the banks of the
Missom-i, the Kansas and the Osage Rivers—the Kanzas (in general terms)
claiming as their country the region from what is now Nebraska, on the
north, to the Arkansas on the south, and west of the Missouri River; and
the Osages claimed an immense region in what is now Alissouri and south
of the river of the same name, their early villages being on the Alissouri
and Osage Rivers, and their hunting-grounds, extending into Kansas.

The Pawnees had their home on the Republican and Platte, and ranged
the central plains for their hunting-grounds, while the Padoucas dwelt near
the head sources of the Kansas River, and roamed over the extreme West¬
ern plains.

How long this vast territory had been peopled by these tribes there is
no certain knowledge; whether they were the "first settlers" in the valleys
and on the plains of Kansas no one can tell; but when the first European
explorers recorded the story of their journey through the country, they say
they found them here, and they mention no other tribes as being " dwell-
ers'in the land." The homes of the wandering Indians of the Western
plains were elsewhere; they rushed down from the mountains toward the
North, and swarmed up from the sultry plains of the South, but, when the
battle or tho chase was over, they disappeared.

As years passed liv. all this was changed. The " great nation of the
Padoucas " ceased to e.xist, and the Pawnees, by war and disease, became
reduced to a feeble remnant of the once powerful nation, and were obliged
to seek protection from those they had once protected. In 1808, the Osages
ceded nearly all their land in Missouri to the United States, and were
granted a large reservation iu what is now Southern Kansas, and when,
in 182.5, a new home was to be found for the Eastern tribes, the lands of
the Kanzas and Osages were fixed upon for that purpose.

THE  WESTERN  OR INDIAN TERRITORY.

During the first quarter of the present century, it became evident that
measures must be adopted by Government for the removal of the Indian
tribes from the older States and Territories, and some plan devised to pro¬
vide them new homes. Their just claim to lands and sovereignty could
not be satisfied east of the Alississippi, or where State claims existed, as the
privilege to fill such defined regions with citizens of organized States had
become incorporated with the Federal compact. The country west of the
State of Alissouri and Territory of Arkansas was exclusively the property
of the General Government, and motives both of expediency and philan¬
thropy were urged to induce the leading statesmen of the time to devise some
well-defined policy whereby such region might be set apart and guaranteed
to the various Indian tribes for a permanent home. Among the earliest ad¬
vocates and warmest supporters of the scheme of Indian removal and colo¬
nization was Rev. Isaac McCoy, long identified with the history of the set¬
tlement of the emigrant Indians in Kansas. In January, 1834. Air. AlcCoy
visited Washington, and, obtaining an interview with Hon. John C. Cal¬
houn, then Secretary of War, presented his views to that distinguished
statesman, and found him then and ever after an earnest and most valua¬
ble supporter of the project.

President Monroe, m his annual message of January 27, 1835, recom¬
mended the colonization of the Indians in these words:

The condition of the aborigines witliin our limits, and especially of those within the
limits of any of the States, merits particular attention. Experience has shown that unless
the tribes be civilized they can never be incorporated into our system in any form whatever.
It has likewise sliown that in the regular augmentation of our population, with the exten¬
sion of our settlements, their situation will become deplorable, if their existence is not men¬
aced. Some well-digested plan, which will rescue them from such calamities, is due to their
rights, to the rights of humanity, and to the honor of the nation. Their civilization is in¬
dispensable to their safety. Difficulties, of the most serious character, present themselves
to the attainment of this most desirable result on the territory on which they now reside.
Between the limits of our present States and Territories, and the Rocky Mountains and
Alexico, there is a vast territory to which they might lie invited with inducements which
might be successful. It is thought if that territory should he divided into districts, by pre¬
vious agreement with the tribes now residing there, and civil government be established
there in each, with schools for every branch of instruction in literature and the arts of civ¬
ilized life, that all the tribes now within our limits might he gradually drawn there. It is
doubted whether any other plan would be more likely to succeed.

On the 17th of Decemlier, 1834, during the same session in which Pres¬
ident Alonroe's message was presented to Congress, the following resolu¬
tion was offered in the House of Representatives, liy Air. Conway, Dele¬
gate from the Territory of Arkansas, which was adopted:

Resolved, That the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire into the ex¬
pediency of organizing ail the territory of the United States, lying west of the State of Mis¬
souri, and Territories of Arkansas and !^[ichigan into a separate territory,'to be occupied
exclusively by Indians, and of authorizing the President of the United States to .adopt such
mejisures as he may think best to colonize' all the Indians of tlie present States and Terri¬
tories, permanently within the same.

Although the Indian emigration bill, as afterward modified, did not
pass until six j-cars later, the question of the removal of the Eastern tribes
seemed from this time to be practically settled, and in the following year,
June, 1825, treaties were made with the Kanzas and Osages for the purchase