We make grateful acknowledgement to the following for their aid in compiling these pages: B. B. Smyth, D. N. heizer, "Inman's Tales of the Trail," the Newspaper of Barton County, and others who in any way contributed to the success of this work.

PREHISTORIC EARLIEST EXPLORATIONS

The first white man who ever saw the New Kansas was the Spaniard, Coronado (Francisco Velasquez de Coronado) from Mexico, who passed through in the winter of 1541-2 in search of the famous and mythical "Seven Cities of Cibola" in the mythical and unknown province of Quivera. He was accompanied by quite a small army of knights, common Spaniards, and Indians.

The object of the expedition, as was the main object of nearly all early expeditions, was the hope and expectation of finding gold in vast quantities.

Coronado's route lay, as well as can be learned from the most reliable accounts, in a general northeasterly direction, entering the territory near the Medicine Lodge river in Barber County, thence northeasterly across the Arkansas somewhere near Wichita, thence still northeasterly to the Missouri river near the northern line of the State, or the 40th parallel of latitude, between which and the 30th parallel, and between the 95th and 97th degrees of longitude the province of Quivera was supposed to be.

After reaching his most northeasterly point, and meeting with nothing but hardships and disappointment, he returned somewhat the same way he came, though more to the westward.

This expedition having taken place before the settlement of Massachusetts, New York, or any of the Eastern States, it thus appears that Kansas has an earlier history than any of the eastern or northern states, if we may except the incursions made by Norsemen and Icelanders into Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia about the year 1,000, accounts of which, however, are not generally accepted.

The following little poem nicely tells the story and the change in the territory between that early day and 1879:

QUIVERA-KANSAS
1542 1879
Eugene F. Ware, in Ft. Scott Monitor

In the half forgotten era, With the avarice of old, Seeking cities that were told To be paved with solid gold, In the kingdom of Quivera - Came the restless Coronado To the open Kansas plain; With his knights from sunny Spain. In an effort that, though vain, Thrilled with boldness and bravado.

League by league in aimless marching, Knowing scarcely where or why, Crossed they uplands drear and dry, That an unprotected sky Had for centuries been parching.
But their expectations, eager, Found, instead cf fruitful lands, Shallow streams and shifting sands, Where the buffalo in bands Roamed o'er deserts dry and meager.
Back to scenes more trite, yet tragic, Marched the knights with armored Steeds; Not for them the quiet deeds; Not for them to sow the seeds From which empires grow like magic.
Never land so hunger stricken Could a Latin race remould; They could conquer heat or cold- Die for glory or for gold - But not make a desert quicken.
Thus Quivera was forsaken; And the world forgot the place Until centuries apace Came the blue-eyed Saxon race, And it bade the desert waken.
Sturdy are the Saxon faces, As they move along in line; Bright the rolling-cutters shine Charging up the State's incline, As an army storms a glacis.
Into loam the sand is melted, And the blue grass takes the loam Round about the prairie home. And the locomotives roam Over landscapes iron-belted.
Cities grow where stunted birches Hugged the shallow water line, And the deepening rivers twine, Past the factory and mine, Orchard slopes and schools and churches.
We have made the State of Kansas, And today she stands complete; First in freedom, first in wheat, And her future years will meet Ripened hopes and richer stanzas.

But if Coronado failed to discover the "Seven Cities," it was only because he started too soon. Those "seven cities with houses five stories high, and shops in which the workmen work in gold and silver exclusively," are yet to be found on that same identical ground. Those cities are growing. They have not yet reached the wealthy condition pictured out by those early Spaniards, in 1530 to 1540; but it is only a question of time. It remains for some later explorer to discover those rich cities. All the difficulty with Coronado was that he started out several hundred years too early. How long yet will it be before they are discovered?

SUBSEQUENT EXPLORATIONS

The first Americans to visit this region was Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike's exploring party on their way west to the Rocky Mountains in 1806, the same year that Aaron Burr was making Buch grand attempts to "make a settlement on the Washita" in the territory of Louisiana. They followed the trail of Spanish soldiers from the Pawnee village till they lost it among the "numerous buffalo paths between the Smoky and the Arkansaw." Near midnight, on the 13th of October, 1806, the party reached the most northerly bend of the Arkansas river (section 32, 5 or 6 miles east of the city of Great Bend). The party arrived in a drenching rain, and remained two weeks to rest and recruit their animals and lay in a supply of meat. At 10 a. m., October 28th, Pike, with most of his party went west along the north bank of the river, and Lieut-Col. Wilkinson, Pike's superior officer, with a small party, went down the river by boat. However, finding the river unnavigable, they abandoned their boats after going down five or six miles, and landed on the southwest bank of the river, near where the southwestern end of the Ellinwood iron bridge now rests. - From Pike's Expedition.

In 1812 this trail was first traveled with pack mules by McKnight's party.

In 1818 Mr. Bringier came up the Arkansas, and speaks of finding a "large body of blind coal, (anthracite), equal in quality to the Kilkenny, and by far the best he had seen in the United States, immediately on the bank of the Arkansas in latitude 38 deg. and longitude 98 deg." (about the place where Hutchinson now is.)

Marcy's Rep. p. 158, citing Am. Jour. Sci, Vol. 3, P. 80.

In 1820 Maj. Long's expedition passed through toward the west, the object, similarly to that of Lieut. Pike, being to find, if possible, the sources of the Red river of Louisiana.

On August 9th the expedition reached "the narrowest part of the valley, at the great bend of the Arkansas," (the same place that Lieut. Pike stopped, five or six miles east of the city of Great Bend), and finding good food for their horses, staid over the 10th. - Long's Expedition.

In 1821, a pack-mule train, sent out by Cooper & Bucknell of Boonville, Mo.; went through to Santa Fe. This was the commencement of the commerce of the plains.

In 1825, the Santa Fe Trail, a wagon road from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fe, was established by Major Sibley, under an act of congress. - Annals of Kansas.

The trail from the east strikes the Arkansas river half a mile west of Ellinwood. Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, page 313, has the following:

In 1832, Washington Irving visited Kansas as a tourist, came to the Arkansas Valley, and gave this glowing account of its wilderness charms:

"After resuming our march we came in sight of the Arkansas. It presented a broad and rapid stream bordered by a beach of fine sand, overgrown with willows and cottonwood trees. Beyond the river the eye wandered over a beautiful campaign country of flowery plains and sloping uplands, diversified by groves and clumps of trees and long screens of woodland; the whole wearing the aspect of complete and even ornamental cultivation, instead of native wilderness. * * "We were overshadowed by lofty trees, with straight, smooth trunks like stately columns; and as the glancing rays of the sun shone through the transparent leaves tinted with the many-colored hues of autumn, I was reminded of the effect of sunshine among the stained windows and clustering columns of a Gothic cathedral. Indeed, there is a grandeur in our spacious forests of the West that awaken in me the same feeling I experienced in those vast and venerable piles; and the sound of the wind sweeping through, supplies occasionally, the deep breathings of the organ.

"It was a bright, sunny morning with a pure, transparent atmosphere that seemed to bathe the very heart with gladness. Our march continued parallel with the Arkansas through a rich and varied country; sometimes we had to break our way through alluvial bottoms and matted with redundant vegetation, where the gigantic trees were entangled with grape vines hanging like cordage from their branches; sometimes we coasted along sluggish brooks, whose feebly trickling currents just served to link together a successsion of glassy pools imbedded like mirrors in the quiet bosom of the forest, reflecting its autumnal foliage and patches of clear blue sky. Sometimes we scrambled up broken and rocky hills from the summit of which we had wide views, on one side over distant prairies^ diversified by groves and forests, and on the other, rangiug along a line of blue and shadowy hills, beyond the waters of the Arkansas."

In 1846, during the Mexican war, Gen Kearney and Col. Doniphan crossed to Santa Fe and stopped at the "Great Bend," August 18th. A Mormon battalion also went west with their families, and having their ox yokes tied across the bases of the oxen's horns after the primitive style pictured out as having been followed in the east 5,000 years ago. Francis Parkman, Jr., historian, met this "the first army to pass through the Valley" on his return from the Oregon Trail.- Parkman's Oregon Trail.

In 1849, during the California hegira, and subsequently, "the Great Bend" became a noted point on this most noted of highways. For a century, the Great Bend of the Arkansas has been known as the grand feeding ground of the buffalo, and favorite hunting and bloody battle ground of the Indian.