History of Gove County, Kansas

HISTORY OF GOVE COUNTY, KANSAS

FOREWORD

This little History was started to while away some idle moments on a farm. Being the first History of Gove County ever written it is not obliged to conform to any established rules and is neither complete or exhaustive. Some time some one will write a bigger and better History and will use this little sketch as one of his sources.

Part One was written in 1920, and brings the history of the county down to the time of its organization. Part Two is written in 1930, and Part One is republished with it.

FOREWORD TO PART ONE, 1920

Though Gove county has had a place on the map for fifty-one years, and has been an organized and self governing body for thirty-three, its history has never been written. The writer several years ago began the collection of materials for such a history; owing to the War and other causes the task is stiil incomplete, but I have concluded to publish a part of the work and finish the book, perhaps, at some future time. The present part will deal with the history of the county from the earliest times till its settlement and organization in 1886. I realize that there must be many inaccuracies, misstatements and omissions in this narrative, and will welcome any helpful criticisms or corrections.

For the benefit of those who do not already know, let it be said that Gove county is a part of the "Louisiana Purchase" bought by President Jefferson from France in 1803. It lies far out on the plains of Kansas, just west of the 100th Meridian, and is crossed by the 39th Parallel. Its altitude is about 3000 feet above sea level; its surface is a great plain somewhat broken in places by the Smoky Hill River and its tributaries which cross it.

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST INHABITANTS

The buffalo and the Indian were the first inhabitants. Gove county was a great buffalo range. Its natural vegetation is the short, curly mesquite grass known as "buffalo grass." The country is full of the spots known as "buffalo wallows." These are shallow depressions, averaging perhaps a rod in diameter, where the buffalo was accustomed to roll and wallow in the dust if the ground were dry or in the mud if the depression happened to contain water. Why he did this is the buffalo's own secret, but it was probably for the same reason that the domestic hen takes a dust bath or our domestic cattle rub against fence posts. With the passing of the buffalo these wallows became again covered with grass, but not with the original buffalo grass. In them the prairie blue stem found lodgment, and the difference in vegetation marks out the spot and makes the buffalo wallow noticeable from a considerable distance. When the sod is still unbroken these spots are found everywhere. Probably there was not a quarter section in the county without its buffalo wallow, and some had scores of them.*

In places on these prairies are found circles of maybe fifty or a hundred yards in diameter where the vegetation is of different species from the buffalo grass within and without the circle; this vegetation "greens up" earlier in the spring than the buffalo grass and then the circle is very conspicuous. Old buffalo hunters say that these rings were made by the buffaloes when a small hera was menaced by an attack from wolves. The cows and calves would bunch up and the bulls would pace round outside them ready to beat off the attack if it should be made; this trampling cut through the sod and killed the buffalo grass, and grass of other species came in.

The buffalo had ceased to exist here before the settlers came. Few persons now living in the county ever saw a buffalo. This is because of the wholesale slaughter of the species which commenced as soon as

*Note 1
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the white man began to appear upon the plains. The buffalo was stupid and inoffensive and fell an easy victim. As the Pacific railroad advanced across the plains its first passengers were the buffalo hunters and its first business was the shipping of buffalo meat. The railroad advertised excursions to the west "to Hunt the Buffalo." The roundtrip from Leavenworth was ten dollars; the railroad reached Gove county in 1868.

The first mention I have found of Gove county towns is as buffalo hunting stations: "Coyote, 336 miles from K. C. Many buffalo are slaughtered here 'and their hides and meat shipped east." "Buffalo, 352 miles from K. C. This being the present center of the buffalo range they are found here in larger quantities than at any other point on the road." "Grinnell, 364 miles from K. C.- two large turf houses built for the purpose of drying buffalo meat."

These items are taken from "Weston's Guide to the Kansas Pacific Railway" for 1872, four years after the railroad reached Gove county.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the buffalo soon disappeared. The number of buffalo hides thrown on the market was enormous. Leather was cheap. It was the fashion in those days to wear high topped boots; now economy compels us to wear low cut shoes. Some of the buf-falo meat was saved-more of it was wasted. A decade or so later the impecunious homesteader gathered up the bones and bought flour with the proceeds. Now nothing remains to testify to the existence of the buffalo except the buffalo wallows and the buffalo horns, which latter have outlasted the bones and are common enough to this day.

Much sorrow has been expressed for the wanton destruction of the buffalo. Perhaps this sympathy has been misplaced. There is a story that the legislature of Texas once had up for consideration a bill for the protection of the buffalo. General Phil Sheridan, then commanding the army on the frontier, appeared before the legislature and

made a speech against the bill. He said in substance "We have got to get rid of the buffalo before we can get rid of the Indian. As long as the buffalo exists the Indian can live and we can't conquer him. When the buffalo is gone we can starve the Indian out." Those who understand the diabolical savagery of the wild Indian on the war path will appreciate the point which the general made. The buffalo had to go before the plains could be made habitable tor the white race.

CHAPTER II
THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY

This portion of the Great Plains seems to have been claimed by the Pawnees at the time it first became known to the white men. .This tribe was then powerful. One of their principal villages was in Republic county; the Pawnee Trail ran from there south, crossing the Smoky Hill in Ellsworth county; Pawnee Rock, noted as a battle ground, is in Barton county. From these points on their eastern frontier the Pawnees ranged far out on the plains and seemed to have claimed as their own all the territory drained by the Platte and Kansas rivers.

They had a village at the junction of the north and south branches of the Platte river, where the city of North Platte, Neb., now stands. In the year 1720 a Spanish expedition under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Don Pedro de Villazur set out from Santa Fe (now the capital of the state of New Mexico) to visit this village. This expedition marched to the Indian village of El Cuartilejo which modern research has located on Beaver Creek in the northern part of Scott county, Kansas, thence directly north to the Pawnee village on the Platte. Here the Spaniards were ambushed by the Indians and all massacred or put to flight (Aug. 16, 1720).*

This expedition has nothing to do with the history of Gove county except that its line of march was very near our county and may even have crossed it. It may be, then, that Col. Villazur and his companions, in 1720, were the first white men to see Gove county. The story has been

*Note 2

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written up by John L5. Dunbar in the publications of the Kansas Historical Society; his map shows that the line of march ran very close to the west line of our county.

The Pawnees finally lost their power through the ravages of smallpox and war* with other tribes, and in 1838 ceded ail their lands south of the Platte to the United States.

The Kaw Indians also claimed a portion of this country. In 1825 they sold certain of their lands to the United States. The treaty described the northern boundary of the ceded lands in part as follows: "From the source of the Nemaha river thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old village of the Pania (Pawnee) Republic to the west." By the Kansas river was meant the Smoky Hill branch, and this identifies our county as part of the Kaw claim.

At this time the government was engaged in moving some of the eastern tribes to new homes in the west, and these treaties with the Kaws and Pawnees were for the purpose of procuring lands for the new comers.

The real occupiers of the plains after the supremacy of the Pawnees was broken were the Cheyennes and Arapahoes and their allies the Sioux. The first treaty made by the United States with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1825, was a simple treaty of peace. In 1851 another treaty of peace was made with these tribes. A large emigration from California was then crossing the plains. A council of Indian tribes was called by the government at Fort Laramie, Sept. 17, 1851. Each tribe was assigned boundaries in accordance with its claims. The treaty with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes fixed as their boundaries the Platte river on the nortn, the Rocky Mountains on the west, the"Arkansas river on the south and for the eastern boundary a line "from the crossing of the Santa Fe road" on the Arkansas in a northwesterly directien to the forks of the Platte. This would include Gove county.

The Indians granted the government the right to establish roads and military or trading posts in their territory; in return the government was to pay them $50,000 per annum for fifty years, distributing this sum among the tribes according to their respective numbers.

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Before many years this treaty was broken and the Indians were ravaging all the frontier settlements of Kansas. But these depredations will be treated of in a subsequent chapter.

The Indians have left few traces. One of our streams is called Indian Creek, probably for cause. Cheyenne Creek, which empties into the Smoky from the soutn, is said to have derived its name from a skirmish which a troop of U. S. Cavalry once had with a band of hostiles near the mouth of the creek. Arrow heads have been found, made of the primitive flint, also some of the iron ones which the savages learned to make after they were able to procure iron from the whites, but these are about all the relics of the aborigines that have ever been found. The Indian population was sparse and perhaps never consisted of anything but scattered hunting parties. If there ever was an Indian village in Gove county it seems to have left no trace of its existence.

But the time has now come to tell of the first visit of American white men to our county. How many know-that John C. Fremont, "The pathfinder of the Rockies," was in Gove county seventy-five years ago.

CHAPTER III
FREMONT IN GOVE COUNTY

John C. Fremont, soldier, explorer and statesman, first candidate of the Republican party for president and familiarly known as the "Pathfinder of the Rockies," made three expeditions to the unexplored regions of western North America between the years 1842-48. At this time the frontier settlements reached only to the Missouri river but the territory of the United States extended westward to the Rocky Mountains and, in the northwest, to the Pacific Ocean. The expeditions of Lewis and Clark in 1804 and Pike in 1805 had given only a vague and imperfect idea of this vast region; so in 1842 Fremont, then a lieutenant in the regular army, was sent out with an exploring party to find out more about the country and the Mexican possessions south and west of it which a strong party in the United States had already determined should be annexed to the States.

Fremont's first trip was up the Re-publican river to the mountains and back by way of the Platte. This expedition, while very interesting, has nothing to do with our history. In the following year he set out again, his instructions being to explore the mountain passes, cross the mountains and go on to California, and to return by some different route. This was one of the greatest exploring expeditions ever made in the history of the world.

He started from Kansas City May 29, 1843, and, thirteen months later, having in the meantime crossed the mountains and tne desert, penetrated to the Pacific, laid out roughly the route which the first great transcontinental railway followed a quarter of a century later, explored the grandest mountain region in North America and the sources of several great rivers-we find him on July 1, 1844, on his return, at Bent's Fort of the present city of Las Animas, Colorado. We will now let Fremont tell the story in his own words. His report is accompanied by an excellent map and is addressed to his commanding officer, the chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers:

"On the 5th we resumed our journey down the Arkansas and encamped about 20 miles below the fort. Agreeable to your instructions which required me to complete as far as practicable our examination of the Kansas, I left at this encampment the Arkansas river, taking a northeasterly direction across the elevated dividing grounds which separate that river from the waters of the Platte. On the 7th we crossed a large stream about forty yards wide and one or two feet deep, flowing with a lively current on a sandy bed. The discolored and muddy appearance of the water indicated that it proceeded from recent rains, and we are inclined to consider this a branch of the Smoky Hill river, though possibly it may be the Pawnee fork of the Arkansas."

The map shows that this stream was the Big Sandy which falls into the Arkansas about twenty-five miles west of the Kansas line. Fremont's route here was through the counties of Bent, Kiowa and Cheyenne in Colorado, and it was in the latter county that he struck both the Big Sandy

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and the Smoky. Kit Carson, the celebrated scout, was a member of Fremont's little party of sixteen horsemen, and he passed very close to or maybe crossed the site of the town of Kit Carson named in his honor. But let us listen to Fremont: "Beyond this stream we traveled over high and level prairies, halting at small ponds and holes of water, and using for our fires the bois de vache,* the country being destitute of timber. On the evening of the 8th we encamped in a cottonwood grove on the banks of a sandy stream where there was water in holes sufficient for the camp. Here several hollows or dry creeks with sandy beds met together, forming the head of a stream which afterward proved to be the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas river."

Fremont's map shows that this camp was made in Colorado about twenty miles west of the Kansas line-July 8, 1844.

"As we traveled down the valley water gathered rapidly in the sandy bed from many small tributaries; and at evening it had become a handsome stream fifty to eighty feet in width, with a lively current in small channels, the water being principally dispersed among quicksands. Gradually enlarging, in a few days march it became a river eighty yards in breadth, wooded with occasional growths of cottonwood. Our road was generally over level uplands bor-dering the river, which were closely covered with a sward of buffalo grass."Fremont's map shows his camp on the 9 th to- have been in Wallace county, Kansas, about eight miles east of the Colorado line. On the 10th he camped somewhere in the neighborhood of the present town of Wallace, and here they stopped over for a day to hunt buffalo. The camp on the 12th was somewhere east of Russell Springs. On the 13th of July he entered Gove county and camped that night somewhere east of Jerome near the mouth of Plum Creek. On the 14th he camped between the Smoky and the mouth of Indian Creek in Larrabee township, not far from Alanthus. But let us let Fremont tell it: "On the 10th we entered again the buffalo range where we had found those animals so abundant on our

*Note 3.

outward journey, and halted for a day among numerous bands in order to make a provision of meat sufficient to carry us to the frontier.

"A few days afterward we were encamped in a pleasant evening on a high river prairie, the stream being less than a hundred yards broad. During the night we had a succession of thuilder storms with heavy and continuous rain, and toward morning the water suddenly burst over the banks, flooding the bottom and becoming a large river five or six hundred yards in breadth. The darkness of the night and incessant rain had concealed from the guard the rise of the water; and the river broke into the camp so suddenly that the baggage was instantly covered and all our perishable collections almost utterly ruined and the hard labor of many months destroyed in a moment."

Now the question arises, did this disaster happen to Fremont within the limits of Gove county? Fremont says it was "a few days afterwards" from the hunt of the 11th. His last camp in Gove county was on the 14th. What did Fremont mean by "a few days?" The term is delightfully indefinite. But till some evidence is brought forward to disprove it I shall claim that it was in Gove county that Fremont encountered the storm that broke up his camp. The conformation of the river bottom in the neighborhood of Alanthus is such that it might easily have happened there. The banks of the river are low and it takes no great rise to put the water over them and cause it to spread out over the bottom the "five or six hundred yards in breadth" mentioned by Fremont. Such a thing has happened frequently within historic times.

The Fremont expedition proceeded down the river and on the last day of July reached "the little town of Kansas on the banks of the Missouri river" now Kansas City. From there it went by boat to St. Louis where the party was disbanded.

The next year this indefatigable explorer was off again on a third expedition more famous than the others, in which he was to again penetrate to the Pacific coast, and, war having broken out, drive the Mexicans from California and eventually return to Washington as the first senator from the new state of Cal-

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ifornia and a candidate for the presidency. But as he went out this time by the Santa Fe Trail and never appeared again along the Smoky his last expedition has no place in our history.