<< Previous 1 2 3 4  Next  >>

In 1819, the hereditary principal chief was Ca-ega-wa-tan-ninga, but could maintain his authority only by the force of personal qualities; all distinction, civil as well as military, being a reward for bravery or generosity. There were several inferior chiefs, but they possessed little authority.

Like all the Indian tribes, the Kanza believed in a Great Spirit, and had vague ideas of a future life. In their family relations they were more honorable than many of the Eastern tribes. Marriage was celebrated with such ceremonies as served to render the tie more binding, and chastity was one of the requisites to fit a woman for the "wife of a chief, a brave warrior or a good hunter."

Kanza Indians

The Kansas River, 1867 by Alexander Gardner.

About twenty half-breed reservations of one mile square were made "to be located on the north side of the Kansas River, commencing at the line of the Kanza Reservation" (a little west of the present site of North Topeka) "and extending down the Kansas River for quantity."

The tribe also relinquished at this time all claim they might have to lands in Missouri; and in consideration of the cession of land, and relinquishment of such claim, the United States agreed "to pay to the Kanza Nation of Indians $3,500 per annum for twenty successive years, at their villages, or at the entrance of the Kansas River, either in money, merchandise, provisions or domestic animals, at the option of the aforesaid nation; and when the said annuities, or any part thereof, is paid in merchandise, it shall be delivered to them at the first cost of the goods in St. Louis, free of transportation.

In addition to the above-named consideration, cattle, hogs, and implements of agriculture were to be supplied to them, a blacksmith provided, and persons employed to teach them agriculture.

The United States, by its Commissioner, also agreed that "thirty-six sections of good land, on the Big Blue River, shall be laid out under the direction of the President of the United States, and sold for the purpose of raising a fund to be applied, under the direction of the President, to the support of schools for the education of the Kanza children within their nation."

A part of the first payment was made at St. Louis, at the time of the treaty; $2,000 in merchandise and horses being delivered to the deputation of chiefs and warriors present; the remainder was paid at the mouth of the Kansas River, near the present site of Wyandotte, during the year 1825.

The first Kanza Agency was established at what is now East Kansas City, in 1827, Barnett Vasquez being the first agent. The agency was removed to the mouth of Grasshopper Creek the following year, the first payment at that point being in 1829--Daniel McNair, Special Agent and Paymaster. In 1830, Marston G. Clark, Agent; Daniel Boone, farmer; Clemenent Lessent, Interpreter; Gabriel Phillibert, blacksmith; with some of the Kaw half-breeds, were living at the "Stone Agency House," on Grasshopper Creek.

The old Kanza village near the mouth of the Big Blue River was partially abandoned about the year 1830; the tribe, during that year, establishing several villages lower down the Kansas River. The village of American Chief was on the creek of the same name (now Mission Creek), and about two miles south of the Kansas River. This band, of about one hundred, had some twenty dirt lodges, of good size, in which they lived until they removed to Council Grove in 1848. Hard Chief's village, about a mile from the former, was situated on a high bluff on the south bank of the Kansas River, and numbered about five hundred people and eighty-five lodges. It was about a mile and half west of Mission Creek.

The third and largest village, that of Fool Chief, was on the north bank of Kansas River, two or three miles west of where North Topeka now stands. Mr. McCoy, in his "Annual Register of Indian Affairs" for 1835, says the Government of the United States had at that time fenced twenty acres of land, plowed ten acres, and erected for the principal chief a good hewed-log house, at the lower or Fool Chief's village; their smithery, agency house and house for the residence of their teacher of agriculture being within the Delaware country, twenty-three miles east of the Kanza lands. Mr. McCoy gives the whole number of the tribe as about 1,606, their agent then being R. W. Cummings, and their interpreter Joseph James. In 1830, Reverend William Johnson, Howard County, Mo., was appointed, by the Missouri Methodist Conference, missionary to the Kanza tribe. He resided among them two years; was then transferred to the Delaware Mission; thence to the Shawnee, and, in 1835, returned to his labors among the Kanza. In the spring of the same year, the Government farm was removed to the vicinity of the upper villages, three hundred acres being selected for the purpose on the north bank of the Kansas River, just east of the present site of Silver Lake Township, and about three hundred acres in the valley west of Mission Creek and south of the Kansas.

In the summer of 1835, mission buildings were erected on the northwest corner of the farm lying south of the river, afterward Section 33, Township 11, Range 14. The buildings consisted of a hewn-log cabin, two stories high, eighteen feet wide by thirty-six feet long, with smokehouse, kitchen and outbuildings. Mr. Johnson and wife removed into the mission house in September, and for the next seven years labored faithfully for the good of the Kaws. Mr. Johnson died in April, 1842, at the Shawnee Mission, of pneumonia, contracted from the exposure incident to the journey to that place. Mr. Cornetzer, and afterward Reverend George W. Love, had charge of the mission for a short period, but the prosperity of the institution evidently waned from the time of the death of its first efficient missionary, and, after a few years, it was absorbed in the Shawnee Mission. In 1845, Reverend J. T. Peery established a manual labor school on a small scale at the mission, which was continued one year.

Continued Next Page