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.