KANSAS COLLECTION BOOKS |
INDIAN HISTORY.CONTENTS.
INDIANS OF KANSAS.The earliest European mention of the great tribes or nations whose homes and hunting-grounds extended over the region afterward known as the Territory of Kansas, is in the manuscript map of Father Jacques Marquette, still preserved at St. Mary's College, Montreal, a facsimile of which is found in this volume. This map was the result of observations made and information gained during the celebrated voyage of exploration of the Mississippi by Marquette and Joliet in the summer of 1673. As early as 1641, vague reports of the mighty river on which dwelt the dreaded "Nadouessies, of an unknown race and language," were transmitted by the young missionaries Charles Raymbault and Isaac Vogues, to their Superior at Montreal, and, during the next quarter of a century, venturesome Canadian traders occasionally penetrated far enough into the Western wilderness to visit the powerful tribe whose home was beyond the great lake, then without a name. On one occasion, a number of Dahcotahs were induced to visit Montreal, and ask that trade might be established between their nation and the French, and also that missionaries might be sent into their country. In the fall of 1658, De Groseilles and a companion, both traders, left Montreal, and spending the following winter among the Dahcotahs, returned in the spring, laden with furs, and related what they had heard of "the beautiful river, large, broad and deep, which would bear comparison, they say, with our St. Lawrence." The pious priest, Father Marquette, had long desired to extend his labors to the more remote tribes, and, in order to fit himself for his contemplated mission to the Illinois, employed a young brave of that tribe to teach him the language. While learning this, he also gained some information from his teacher in regard to the wonderful river he so much desired to explore, and the nations which dwelt toward the west. In 1670, three years before he started on his voyage of exploration, in a letter written from La Pointe to Father Francis Le Mercier, Superior of the mission, after speaking of the work he hopes to accomplish, he relates what he has heard from his instructor. Of the Nadouessi he says:
"The Nadouessi are the Iroguois of this country beyond Lapointe, but less faithless, and never attack till attacked. They lie southwest of the Mission of the Holy Ghost, and are a great nation, though we have not yet visited them, having confined ourselves to the conversion of the Ottawas. They fear the Frenchman because he brings iron into their country. Their language is entirely different from the Huron (Iroquois) and Algonquin; they have many towns, but they are widely scattered; they have very extraordinary customs; they principally adore the calumet; they do not speak of great feasts, and, when a stranger arrives, give him to eat with a wooden fork, as we would a child. All the lake tribes make war on them, but with small success. They have false oats (wild rice), use little canoes, and keep their word strictly." Speaking of the great river, he says: "Six or seven miles below the Ilois (sic) is another great river (Missouri), on which are prodigious nations, who use wooden canoes. We cannot write more till next year, if God does us the grace to lead us there." It was not until the 10th of June, 1673, that Father Marquette, accompanied by Louis Joliet, finally embarked on the river of which he had dreamed so many years, and which he had determined should bear the name of the Blessed Lady of the Immaculate Conception, while the savage nations dwelling along its borders should bow and adore the sacred cross. Fired by this devout enthusiasm, the gentle priest descended the river until the muddy waters of the turbid "Pekitanoui, coming from very far in the Northwest," mingled with and discolored the majestic river which he was exploring. Father Calude Dablon, the companion of Marquette in his Northern mission at Sault Ste. Marie, in narrating the story of the expedition, says: "Many Indian towns are ranged along this river (Missouri) and I hope by its means to make the discovery of the Red or California Sea." Among the "Indian towns" noted by Marquette in 1673, as "ranged along this river," are the Ouemessourit (Missouri), the Pewaria (Peoria) and the Maha (Omaha). Of the four dominant tribes or nations that inhabited the region subsequently called Kansas, Father Marquette locates on his map, in relatively the same postitions (sic) they occupied at the time of the French explorations early in the eighteenth century, the Kanza, the Ouchage (Osage) and the Paneassa (Pawnee). The great nation of the Padoucas, dwelling far to the west, almost at the base of the mountains, is first mentioned by Du Tissenet in 1719. Father Douay, one of the survivors of the last disastrous expedition of La Salle in 1687, gives some details in regard to the Western Indians: "The Panimaha," he says, "had but one chief, and twenty-two villages, the least of which has two hundred cabins;" and continues he, "the Paneassa (Pawnee) is not inferior to the Panimaha." Of the Osages he relates that they "have seventeen villages on a river of their name, which empties into that of the Massourites, to which the maps have also extended the name of Osages." The language of nearly all the tribes dwelling of and near the Missouri at this early day, including the Kanzas and Osages, proved that they belonged to the great Dahcota family, so much dreaded by the more easterly Indian tribes. Du Pratz, one of the earliest French writers on "Louisiana," says the tradition of their emigration from their old home "to the northward of the great lakes," the long journey southward, their separation into bands, and settlement on the Missouri and its tributaries, was familiar to many of the tribes when they first became known to the French. In this great migration, the Kanzaz (sic) and Osages formed themselves into distinct bands, and located their villages on the banks of the Missouri, the Kansas and Osage rivers--the Kanzas (in general terms) claiming as their country the region from what is now Nebraska, on the north, to the Arkansas on the south, and west of the Missouri River; and the Osages claimed an immense region in what is now Missouri and south of the river of the same name, their villages being on the Missouri and Osage Rivers, and their hunting grounds, extending into Kansas. The Pawnees had their home on the Republican and Platte, and ranged the central plains for their hunting- grounds, while the Padoucas dwelt near the head sources of the Kansas River, and roamed over the extreme Western plains. How long this vast territory had been peopled by these tribes there is no certain knowledge; whether they were the "first settlers" in the valleys and on the plains of Kansas no one can tell; but when the first European explorers recorded the story of their journey through the country, they say they found them here, and they mention no other tribes as being "dwellers in the land." The homes of the wandering Indians of the Western plains were elsewhere; they rushed down from the mountains toward the North, and swarmed up from the sultry plains of the South, but, when the battle or the chase was over, they disappeared. As years passed by, all this was changed. The "great nation of the Padoucas" ceased to exist, and the Pawnees, by war and disease, became reduced to a feeble remnant of the once powerful nation, and were obliged to seek protection from those they had once protected. In 1808, the Osages ceded nearly all their land in Missouri to the United States, and were granted a large reservation in what is now Southern Kansas, and when in 1825, a new home was to be found for the Eastern tribes, the lands of the Kanzas and Osages were fixed upon for that purpose.
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