| 1918 KANSAS AND KANSANS | Chapter 9 | Part 1 |
CHAPTER IX
THE OREGON TRAIL
The origin of the Oregon Trail was exactly the same as that of the Santa Fe Trail. It was the most direct route from the mouth of the Kansas River to the Northwest, which when taken to apply to a region beyond the present Kansas, embraces all the country to the Pacific Ocean, above the State of California. From the mouth of the Kansas River, the route which came to be known as the Oregon Trail was the shortest road to the Platte Valley. The Kansas River does not rise in the Rocky Mountains, the Platte on the north and the Arkansas on the south interlocking in those elevations beyond the head waters of the Kansas. As the Kansas River led to no gaps, passes nor depressions in the great mountain chain, it was not followed to its source by traders, trappers or explorers until its sister rivers had been some years freely traversed. But both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails began in the vicinity of the mouth of the Kansas, and both followed up that stream in their first stages. It was nature, the conformation of the physical features of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain region, which made this necessary. Up the Kansas and its northern tributaries was the shortest routes to the great Platte Valley from the Big Bend of the Missouri, at the mouth of the Kansas, just as up this stream and its southern tributaries led most quickly to the valley of the Arkansas. And both the Platte and the Arkansas led up to passes in the Rocky Mountains. These physical features gave Kansas the first reaches of the two great trails from the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.
The first paths from the mouth of the Kansas River into the Platte Valley were made by the wild denizens of those regions before the appearance of even the Indian. These paths were not continuous the whole distance, but led from valley to valley at many places. When savage man had dispersed himself over the land the most direct of the old animal roads were unconsciously connected and identified as paths from village to village, from tribe to tribe. So were the foundations of the Oregon Trail laid in savagery in the early history of human progress.
When the white man came into these western wilds he, of necessity, followed in the ways of the savage predecessors. And when the white man first came into these Plains and the Mountains beyond no one can now tell. In the subjection of every wilderness there is a preliminary period of individual and largely irresponsible exploration of which no record is ever made. Frenchmen, individuals, and in small parties, wandered, traveled, hunted, traded - all in a petty and insignificant manner - long before the despatch from any settlement or fort of authorized expeditions. They were long previous to Bourgmont or Du Tisne or Pike or Long. Pike notes their presence at the village of the Republican Pawnees. And so, the pioneer white men to thread the mazes of the Plains by the primitive paths which became the Oregon Trail, are swallowed up in obscurity - never to be known.
The love of property has long been the dominating motive and ruling passion of mankind. It is now the instinct of the individual and the policy of the nation to trade. And the development of trade with the savage inhabitants was the motive of the first excursions into the wilderness of the West of which accounts have been preserved. These excursions assumed sufficient proportions to attract public attention immediately after the return of Lewis and Clark from their famous exploration. St. Louis was the head and center of all commercial enterprise for the Missouri River region of that time. Manuel Lisa organized an expedition in 1807 to fix trading stations about the head waters of the Missouri. On his way up that river on this purpose he met John Colter, one of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. That intrepid backwoodsman was induced to enter Lisa's service and return to the mountains as guide to the party. He led Lisa up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn River, where the first trading-post of his venture was established. This point was in the country of the Crows, and the fixing of the post there angered the Blackfeet - a matter which troubled the traders and trappers much thereafter.
In the same year a party was organized at St. Louis for the purpose of escorting the Mandan chief Shahaka back to his village on the Missouri. He had come down with Lewis and Clark under promise that he should be seen safely home again. The party was so fiercely assailed by the tribes of the Upper Missouri that it failed to reach the Mandan villages, and it returned to St. Louis.
Lisa was the only man of prominence who engaged in the fur trade of that period. In 1808 he returned from the founding of his post at the mouth of the Bighorn. In the winter of 1808-9, he organized the Missouri Fur Company. He ascended the Missouri in the spring of 1809 and transferred his post at the mouth of the Bighorn to the Company, returning that year. He made another journey to the same point in 1810. In 1811 he again visited his post on the Yellowstone, arriving at St. Louis on his return in October. He had established trading relations with other tribes in the mountains, and during the winter of 1811-12 he reorganized his company. He visited his trading-houses in the summer of 1812, but did not return to St. Louis that year. On this expedition he established Fort Lisa, in the Omaha Nation, and formed a connection with that tribe which gave him its trade. He returned to St. Louis in June, 1813. The war of 1812 made it dangerous and unprofitable to trade with the savage tribes of the Upper Missouri. In 1814 Lisa was given the post of sub-Agent to the Missouri River Indians above the Kansas River. In this work he spent a year at Fort Lisa, which was about fifteen miles above the present town of Omaha, on the west bank of the Missouri, and three miles above the mouth of the Boyer River. From this point, in the summer of 1815, he led forty-three chiefs and head men of the tribes of the Upper Missouri to St. Louis to make treaties with the United States. His influence brought them to the side of the Americans and prevented them from joining the British. Lisa continued in this trade until his death, which occurred in St. Louis in August, 1820. The Chouteaus had been associated with him in his transaction on the Upper Missouri. They were members of the Missouri Fur Company together, this company succeeding Lisa, Menard and Morrison by purchase. The company was reorganized in 1819 and continued in business some years. None of its transaction had specially to do with the country which became Kansas. But this brief outline of its business was compiled in the belief that an account of the establishment of the fur trade on the Missouri was necessary here. There were other traders on the Upper Missouri during the time that Lisa and his associates were trading there. Crooks and McLellan were the partners of one company. They later became partners of John J. Astor in his Pacific Fur Company, a branch of the American Fur Company. The Astorians organized an overland expedition from St. Louis in 1811. It did not follow the Oregon Trail, as it was then the custom to follow up the Missouri River. Communications overland could not be maintained over the route, and this was one of the serious disadvantages of the Astoria enterprise. It was reserved for later fur traders to begin the use of those primitive roads which later became the Oregon Trail - the natural route - the Imperial Highway.
GEN. HENRY LEAVENWORTH [Copy by Willard of Portrait in Library of Kansas State Historical Society] |
Smith had evidently gone to Fort Leavenworth from the head waters of the Big Blue. It would not have required twelve days to have passed over that distance, so he must have stopped at the fort. The ferry on the Kansas River, where he came up with the messenger to whom he entrusted his letter, was at the trading-house of Cyprian Chouteau, which stood on the south bank of the Kansas River.
Late in October, 1824, General Ashley set out from St. Louis with a party to ascend the Missouri. It seems that this was an overland expedition. James P. Beckwourth was a member of it - his initial trip to the mountains. He says: "We started on the 11th of October with horses and pack-mules. Nothing of interest occurred until we approached the Kansas village, when we came to a halt and encamped." The site of this village would be difficult to determine now, perhaps. It may have been the Kansas town at the mouth of the Big Blue, though it is scarcely probable that Ashley would take a route so far west in ascending the Missouri. Wyeth found the main Kansas village at a point where North Topeka was laid out, and his second journey was in 1834. Frederick Chouteau said the Fool Chief had his village there in 1830. Some part of the Upper village must have removed to the Topeka site as early as 1824, the time of Ashley's expedition. The language of Beckwourth can mean nothing else than that when considered in connection with other facts already established.
At the Kansas town it developed that more horses would be required. It is possible that a change of plan was matured there, for General Ashley seems to have changed his course, striking for the Missouri, possibly going along the Indian trail which came out on that stream at the present town of Atchison. Beckwourth and Moses Harris were dispatched to the Republican Pawnee town on the Republican to buy horses. They found the village deserted, and their journey was fruitless. No food was found at the Republican town, and Beckwourth and his companion set out for the Big Nemeha River, which they reached in a famished condition. From the head waters of that river they went to the trading-house of Ely and Curtis, on the Missouri, near the mouth of the Kansas in what is now Kansas City, Kansas. On the journey down the Missouri Beckwourth was employed by G. Chouteau, as he says, to pack furs during the winter, thus abandoning the intention to reach the mountains that year. This Chouteau establishment must have been the same we found under control of Cyprian Chouteau in 1830.
This incident of Beckwourth is mentioned to show that that route afterwards so much traveled by the way of the Santa Fe Trail, Topeka, and the Big Blue River was well known and perhaps much traveled by experienced hunters and trappers very early in the nineteenth century - at least as early as 1824. Beckwourth evidently passed over much of it in company with Harris, an old-time trapper, in that year.
In 1832, Nathaniel J. Wyeth took his first expedition overland. It passed up the Kansas River, and it almost certainly crossed the Kansas River at the site of the future Topeka. The route it followed was more along the courses of the Kansas and the Big Blue than that later used.
Captain Bonneville's expedition was one of the famed journeys into the Western wilderness. It was organized and carried out with military order and exactness. It was the first to depend on wagons and abandon reliance on pack-horses. It started from St. Louis in the spring 1832. Captain Bonneville left Fort Osage, now Sibley, Jackson County, Mo., early in May. On the 6th of that month he passed the "last border habitation," and on the 12th he reached the Kansas River, opposite the agency of the Kansas Indians. This agency had its origin in a treaty with that tribe made in 1825, by which the Government stipulated to initiate the Indians into the noble art of husbandry. Three hundred cattle, the same number of hogs, five hundred domestic fowls, three yoke of oxen, two carts, and necessary implements were to be furnished. A blacksmith was provided. In pursuance of the terms of this treaty an agency was established in 1827 on the north bank of the Kansas River about two and one-half miles south of the present Williamstown, in Jefferson County. It was about seven miles northwest of Lawrence. Major Daniel Morgan Boone was appointed farmer, and a brother of Governor William Clark, of Missouri, was made the agent. And it was to this point that Captain Bonneville had come on the 12th of May, 1832. On the 13th he made rafts, upon which he crossed his wagons and all other effects over the Kansas River. He found Chief White Plume residing at the agency, and the visit and conversation with that primitive monarch was both interesting and enjoyable. From the agency Captain Bonneville passed over the future Oregon Trail to the Platte Valley and the Rocky Mountains. His wagons were the first to pass over the trail. The only previous wheeled vehicle was the cannon-carriage taken into the Salt Lake Valley by General Ashley in 1826.
There seems to be no definite record of expeditions in 1833 through Kansas over the ways to be known as the Oregon Trail, but that there were such expeditions there is no doubt whatever. Travel was increasing year by year, and there were certainly individuals and small parties of free trappersÑthose hunting for themselves and not for fur companies - ever on the trail to the Rocky Mountains.
In 1834 Nathaniel J. Wyeth made his second advent on the Great Plains. He was accompanied by John K. Townsend, who wrote an account of this, his greatest and most extensive venture in the fur business. He entered what is now Kansas on the first day of May, over the Santa Fe Trail. On the third he reached and traveled on the Oregon Trail. The crossing of the Kansas River, at the site later to become Topeka, was made on the fourth of May. The Kansas Indian town was found to occupy both sides of the river, and the ferry so long famous must have been already established in a thriving business, the goods, wagons, and men being taken over in a "long flat-bottomed boat." Frame houses were found in the Indian town, and a number of white men engaged in farming and cattle-raising are mentioned as living there. The expedition followed almost exactly the future Oregon Trail to the Platte Valley.
The party of Wyeth was immediately behind the large party of William Sublette, then going into the Rocky Mountains on the business of procuring furs.
In the summer of 1834 a Scotchman, Charles Augustus Murray, made a trip over the plains from Fort Leavenworth to the Pawnee villages. He arrived at Fort Leavenworth early in July from St. Louis. At the fort he met a large band of Pawnees and arranged to go back with them to their country.
Sa-ni-tsa-rish, chief of the Grand Pawnees, seems to have been the Indian most depended on for protection and direction. He started in company with the Pawnees on the 7th day of July, going by the way of the Great Nemeha. From that stream his savage company led him to the Big Blue, but to what point on this river can not be made out. It was probably about the present Beatrice, Nebraska. Thence the band struck across the prairies to the Republican, from which they led their guest to the Pawnee towns on the Platte. Several weeks were spent there, when he was escorted back to Fort Leavenworth by a more southern route. Murray did not travel directly over the Oregon Trail, but his tour indicated that the country between the Platte and the Kansas was being gone over in all directions in 1834. Murray wrote a bulky work in two volumes, entitled Travels in North America, describing his trip to the Great Plains with the Pawnees.
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1 Gen. Henry Leavenworth was born
in Connecticut in the closing year of the revolutionary war, 1783. While a boy
he moved to Delaware county, N. Y., where he grew to manhood and secured such an
education as the schools of that new country were able to afford. He afterward
took up the study of law in the office of Gen. Root, of Delhi, and formed a
partnership with his preceptor after his admission to the bar. He soon acquired
a high standing in the legal profession and great popularity throughout Delaware
county.
When the second war with Great Britain was declared in 1812 he helped raise a company and was elected its captain. This was the beginning of his military career. His company was assigned to the 9th regiment of infantry and attached to the brigade commanded by Gen. Winfield Scott. He was active in the campaign in northern New York during his first year of service and was promoted to the rank of major. He was in the campaign for the invasion of Canada from the Niagara frontier, and was in the battle of Chippewa. He was breveted a lieutenant colonel for gallantry on this occasion. He afterward took part in the battle of Lundy's Lane, and so distinguished himself that he was breveted a colonel. After the close of the war Col. Leavenworth took up his residence at Delhi again and was elected to represent Delaware county in the legislature. He was soon after offered a majorship in the regular army and was stationed at Sackett's Harbor. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to the old 5th infantry in 1818. He joined the regiment at Detroit and was soon afterward detailed to command an expedition into the great Northwest. After much active service among the Indians he established a post, now Fort Snelling, near St. Anthony Falls. When the army was reduced in 1821, Col. Leavenworth was transferred to the 6th infantry and placed in command of troops around Council Bluffs and other Iowa points. He was in command of the expedition against the hostile Arickaree Indians in August, 1821, and defeated them in a running fight lasting four days. For distinguished service in this campaign Col. Leavenworth came in for high commendation in the report of Gen. Gaines, and was especially mentioned in both the annual reports of President Monroe and Secretary of War Calhoun. Col. Leavenworth was the originator of the plan to establish schools of instruction for officers and soldiers of the regular army. The idea of military schools, something after the method of the infantry and cavalry school at Fort Leavenworth, was strenuously advocated by him. In this connection it would seem fitting and proper that his body should be buried at the post named in his honor and where a great war college would be located. After considerable correspondence Col. Leavenworth, in conjunction with Gen. Atkinson, was delegated in March, 1826, to select a site for an army school on the west bank of the Mississippi river within twenty miles of its junction with the Missouri. Col. Leavenwolth finally picked out as a suitable place the grounds where Jefferson barracks, near St. Louis, is now located. He started in with a detachment of his regiment to erect a large post and military school buildings. He received very little encouragement in the way of appropriations or aid from Washington. Before the school was fairly well started, Col. Leavenworth was ordered to transfer his troops to points on the upper Mississippi, and the military school plan died and was not revived in a practical manner again until more than fifty years afterward, when Gen. Sherman established the Fort Leavenworth infantry and cavalry school. In March, 1827, Col. Leavenworth received orders to take four companies of infantry and to ascend the Missouri river, and upon reaching a point within twenty miles of the mouth of the Platte river to establish a cantonment. A permanent cantonment was to he located on the left bank. Col. Leavenworth first picked a site near the mouth of the Little Platte, in the Missouri bottoms, opposite Fort Leavenworth. He explored the country and was soon convinced that the land on the east or Missouri side of the river would be flooded during high water, and that it was not advantageous for a permanent post. Without waiting for new orders, he crossed over to the Kansas side and picked the site for a cantonment where Fort Leavenworth is now located. The first camp on the site was pitched May 8, 1827, nearly seventy-five years ago. and it was named "Cantonment Leavenworth." Col. Leavenworth sent a clear and beautiful description of the land and advantages of the new cantonment to Washington, and it was approved by a formal order of the war department in September, 1827. During the next two years many of the soldiers were taken sick and died of malarial fever, mainly for lack of proper medicines to treat the disease, and Cantonment Leavenworth was looked upon as an unhealthy place. In less than two years the garrison was ordered withdrawn to Jefferson barracks. This was in the spring of 1829, and the buildings deserted and were occupied by the Kickapoo Indians. The cantonment was taken possession of the second time in the fall of 1829, about six months after its abandonment, by a new battallion of troops commanded by Col. Leavenworth, in which Gen. Phillip St. George Cooke, afterwards a noted cavalry officer, but then a second lieutenant, was a member. The name of the place was changed from Canton Leavenworth to Fort Leavenworth in general order No. 11 issued February 8, 1832. It was never abandoned as an army post since the time mentioned in 1829, but came near being depopulated of both white men and Indians during a cholera epidemic in 1838. On this occasion a boat came up from St. Louis loaded with troops and settlers. Cholera broke out among them the night the boat tied up at Fort Leavenworth. Many of the passengers on the boat died and were hastily buried in the ground where the commanding officer's residence is located, and the new quarters for lieutenants is going up. The bones dug up recently in making foundations for the new quarters were those of cholera victims. Those of the passengers who did not die were marched into a camp in Salt Creek valley, and when the contagion broke out among the first soldiers in the garrison a panic set in, and practically every person at the fort left and camped in the woods until the ravages of the disease were spent. While stationed at Fort Leavenworth in 1832 Col. Leavenworth was assigned to the command of the Southwestern frontier. He conducted a campaign against the Pawnee Indians, defeating and subduing them. The campaign was a long one, but it was conducted with such skill that he was promoted to be brigadier general as a reward. The news of this promotion did not reach Gen. Leavenworth before his death. He passed away after an illness of a few days while sick in a hospital wagon on Cross Timbers, near the falls of the Washita river, in the Indian Territory, July 29,1834. He was in command of an expedition against a band of hostile Indians at the time he died. His body remained buried at this place for several months, when it was taken across the plains and finally sent to Delhi, N. Y., where it is now buried. - Quoted from an old newspaper clipping. |
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A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans , written and compiled by William E. Connelley, transcribed by Carolyn Ward, 1998.
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