“What was the Santa Fe trail? I have heard you speak of the trail so much and I never knew what you meant.” Katy asked eagerly.
The Captain answered: “The old trans-continental wagon road to the gold fields of California. You know there was a time when Kansas didn’t have anything so civilized as a railroad and people traveled by wagon and horseback–even on foot, all the way to the coast.”
“Yes,” added Ernest, “and lots of them died on the way or got killed by Indians.”
“Indians?” said Katy, “why, we haven’t seen a single Indian and Cousin May said she’d be afraid 185to come out here because there were lots of them still about.”
“Not in this part of Kansas–you needn’t lose any sleep. The Kaw reservation isn’t so very far away and parties sometimes come this way to revisit their old hunting grounds, but the Kaws were a peaceable tribe even in their free days.”
“There are lots of Indian mounds and relics around here,” put in Chicken Little. “Father got those arrow heads, and that stone to pound corn, and his tomahawk heads out of a mound over on Little John.”
“Yes, and there’s a tree on the main street in town that used to be a famous meeting place for the Indians. Oh, we must take you all to see the old Indian Mission. It was used as a fort, too, more than once, they say. The walls are fully two feet thick.”
“Whew, I didn’t know you had so many interesting things round here!” exclaimed Sherm.
“We are so used to them we hardly think of them as being interesting. Have I ever told you about the hermit’s cave?”
“Hermit’s cave? No, where is it?”