The Fourth of July in Early Kansas, 1
by Cora Dolbee
May 1939 
(Vol. 8, No. 2), pages 115 to 139
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.
THE Fourth of July was a day of peculiar significance to early Kansas. In preterritorial times it marked the approach or the arrival of explorers and travelers. It found hunters and trappers and traders there in pursuit of pelts; and sometimes it revealed these adventurers as themselves the objects of pursuit by hostile Indians. Many of these early visitors were foreigners who had no more public interest in the birthday of America than did the missionaries, too absorbed in their churchly duties even to allude in diary entry to the politics of the day. After the Louisiana purchase in 1803, however, travelers in the region often kept the national anniversary, by firing salutes, raising the flag, and feasting or drinking as extensively as the uncultivated prairies permitted.
Following the organization of the territory in 1854 Kansas, in both cause and name, became almost as suggestive of American independence as was the anniversary of the nation's birth. Not only in the territory but in the United States at large citizens were annually mindful of the cause to be settled there. Either they hoped in their Fourth of July observances for Kansas' early sharing in their own type of statehood; or they refrained from all celebration of their own blessings out of sympathy for the young territory's uncertain fate. During the first years orators in the North waxed warm over her rights to freedom; and in the South toastmasters greeted her as already secured to slavery. Later, when the question of national union superseded the territorial issue of political self-determinism, Kansas' seven-year struggle for freedom proved but a prologue that had prepared the American mind for the Civil War.
PRETERRITORIAL DAYS IN THE KANSAS REGION
Hurrah! for the prairie and mountain! Hurrah! for the wilderness grand!
The forest, the desert, the fountain! Hurrah! for our glorious land! [1]
The first keeping in the Kansas region of July 4 as a national holiday apparently did not occur until 1804, although different persons are known to have been in the area on earlier anniversaries.
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In 1792 Pedro Vial, Vicente Villanueva, and Vicente Espinosa were prisoners of the Kansas Indians northeast of the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas. [2] In 1802 James Purcell (Pursley) and two companions maintained their personal independence in a knife and gun battle with another Kansas tribe on the Osage river; [3] and in 1803 and 1804 Purcell was hunting and trading on the headwaters of the Arkansas. [4]
Then, in the latter year, as the United States began the exploration of her recently acquired but little known territory, the explorers, Lewis and Clark, made the first holiday observance in Kansas of a Fourth of July. Six members of the party wrote colorfully of the occasion in their journals: William Clark, Merimether Lewis, Charles Floyd, Joseph Whitehouse, John Ordway, and Patrick Gass. The diary of Gass, printed in Pittsburgh in 1807, was the first published account of the expedition. Its entry for July 4, 1804, began, "we fired a swivel at sunrise in honour of the day, and continued our voyage" up the Missouri from Green Point toward what is now Atchison. Joseph Whitehouse noted that the day was "mighty hot when we went to toe the Sand (s)calded our (feet) Some fled from the Rope had to put on Our Mockisons." Clark wrote that they dined on corn. They named two streams, Independence creek and Fourth of July, 1804, creek, now called White Clay creek. Captain Lewis explored the prairies which seemed "butifull" to them all. When Jos. Fields got bit by a snake, Lewis quickly applied barks to the swollen foot. Floyd named the scene of the episode "Fieldes Snake prarie," now the site of Atchison. Ordway described the place as "under the hills." At night they encamped on an "ellivated Situation" "named Old town de Caugh," a deserted Kansas Indian village, where they closed the day with another discharge from their bow piece and "an extra gill of whiskey." [5]
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Between 1804 and 1819 travelers in the region were more numerous, but business in hand preoccupied them to the exclusion of all thought of Independence day celebration. In 1806 American traders were being made captives to Don Facundo Malgares and his 300 Spanish soldiers, en route to the Pawnee Indian village on the Republican; and Indians threatened or took the lives of white men on the Arkansas. [6] In 1807 United States authorities were trying to protect the Indians against the trickery of the Spanish trader Manuel Lisa. [7] In 1810 John Shaw, Peter Spear, and William Miller were hunting beaver on the headwaters of the Arkansas. [8] From July 3 to July 5, 1811, George C. Sibley, Indian factor from Fort Osage, rested at a U-jet-ta [9] Indian camp south of the Arkansas after visiting the salines. [10] A year later Manuel Lisa was keeping two groups of traders among the Arapahos, [11] and ten traders from Fort Osage were crossing the western portion of the region toward Santa Fe. [12] In 1813, Ezekiel Williams, a Missourian who had been trapping in the Rockies, was prisoner of the Kansas Indians; [13] free in 1814, he was again in the area, this time descending the Arkansas river where low water compelled him to cache his furs; at the same time the Phillebert company of eighteen was cacheing its furs in the mountains. [14] In 1816, A. P. Chouteau, returning along the Arkansas with the winter's hunt of himself and Jules De Mun, had
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a severe fight with the Pawnees and then encamped on the Little Arkansas, whence he sent out young men to hunt. [15] In 1817, Chouteau and De Mun were prisoners of the Spanish in Santa Fe, as was David Meriwether in 1819. [16] Many of these travelers were loyal American citizens, but their days were too precarious for holiday keeping of the Fourth.
On July 4, 1819, however, occurred the second festive observance in Kansas of the national birthday. On that day Martin cantonment, Cow island (Isle au Vache), in the Missouri river, used the flag in celebration. [17] Maj. Willoughby Morgan, in command, wrote Gen. T. A. Smith on the morning of the Fourth: "Our colours are flying; and Riley is preparing something to eat-- We shall have a pig with savory [18] tarts to grace the table." Missouri river water and metheglin were the drinks. [19]
In 1820, Maj. Stephen H. Long on his Western expedition had hoped to reach the Rocky Mountains by July 4; but finding themselves still on the plains between the Platte river and the mountains on the day itself, his men determined to refrain from their intended rest and push on, letting an extra pint of maize to each mess and a small portion of whisky be their only recognition of the national anniversary. [20]
Beginning with 1821, when the Spanish dominion terminated in New Mexico, travel across the Kansas plains toward the Southwest increased. Two parties that set out from Arkansas and Missouri for New Mexico in 1821 and traveled much of the way together, parted company on the return journey in 1822, but both spent a weary, hungry July the Fourth within the confines of the present
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state of Kansas. [21] Leaders of the Arkansas party were Hugh Glenn and Jacob Fowler. Thomas James and John McKnight were the dominating spirits of the Missouri group of nine. On "Thursday 4th July 1822" Jacob Fowler wrote of trying to locate wagon tracks on the burned "Pirarie" between Cedar and Turkey creeks, Johnson county. Encamped on July 3 near Olathe, he and his friends made only sixteen miles July 4 along the "mesurey or the Caw River," to Turkey creek near the state line where they stopped for the night. Some of the men who had got lost returned at noon, "there feet Sore and mogersons Woren out." Fowler does not say of what the anniversary repast consisted. The day before, he did write that the party had not much left to eat, but had at night killed a fat elk. [22] The party of James and McKnight which had come eastward a little more slowly since the middle of June reached the Neosho around July 4 where, as James wrote later, "we found corn growing; this was just in the silk without any grain on the ear. We boiled and ate the cob with a hearty relish." Shortly after, Osage Indians from the north hailed them, laughed at their last meal, and led them into the village to a feast of hominy, meat, and bread, made from flour furnished by George C. Sibley at Fort Osage.
Three other groups journeying through the Kansas area July 4, 1822, were the Coopers-Benjamin, Braxton and Stephen, the wagon party of William Becknell, and the party of one Mr. Heath; none of them, seemingly, recorded their keepings of the Fourth. [23]
The Franklin, Mo., party of 81 men, 25 wagons, and 156 horses and mules that set out on May 15, 1824, under the leadership of Augustus Storrs, with $30,000 worth of merchandise, encamped July 3 to July 5 on Cimarron creek, then in the New Mexican province but now within the limits of Kansas or Colorado. M. M. Marmaduke wrote, in his "Journal" of the expedition, that water was remarkably bad and scarce and that the only food for days had been meat of buffalo, antelope, and wild horse. Further west, on July 8, he found grapes and wild currants. [24] On July 4, 1826, James O. Pattie and others were trapping for beaver upon the headwaters of the Arkansas, where, on July 5, in
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an attack by mounted Blackfoot Indians they lost four men and killed sixteen Blackfeet. [25]
On July 4, 1827, the United States surveying expedition of the Santa Fe trail was completing the correction of its survey of 1825. The field notes of Joseph C. Brown, [26] are without dates, but the personal diary of one member of the party [27] shows that the portion checked on Independence day, 1827, was the stretch between Caravan Grove, near present day Olathe, and the Big Blue ford in Missouri. At Caravan Grove on July 3 Brown found the camping ground excellent and the timber plentiful for shelter and fuel. Flat Rock creek, nine miles east, south of present-day Lenexa, had a good ford and adequate wood, water, and grass for camping. Nine miles south of the mouth of the Kansas, the surveyors passed into the state of Missouri and camped at the ford of Big Blue creek on the night of July 4.
Various parties crossed the plains, both to and from New Mexico, in 1828. [28] Alphonso Wetmore, a courier on the Santa Fe trail, was one, but he made no reference to the significance of the day as he entered in his diary for July 4 record of a twenty mile march along the left bank of the Arkansas past Anderson's caches to the ford of the river where he encamped for the night. [29] This stretch of the trail, between Pawnee fork and the Jornada, he described as "the finest natural road in the world." Antelope, fish, and buffalo supplied his meat along the way and he "dressed" his suppers over buffalo fuel.
The next year, 1829, found the caches well bepeopled on July 4, for at 6 p. m. a company of seventy traders with thirty-seven wagons arrived there under military escort of Maj. Bennett Riley, and four companies of the Sixth regiment of the United States infantry. [30] The troops had left Jefferson barracks, May 5, 1829, for protection of the trail and joined the traders in rendezvous at Round (Cara-
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van) Grove June 11. [31] In the group were two celebrated travelers of the prairie, William Waldo and P. St. George Cooke, who have both written of the experience. Cooke made an impressive picture of the 130-mile march in view of the Arkansas, with mile after mile of prairie blackened by buffaloes, only here and there a tree on the river bank, and the tantalizing mirage ever ahead. At the Pawnee fork of the Arkansas on July 1 the troops were put on half rations of flour; the fresh meat of buffalo, hunted and killed daily, became substitute for the expended salt pork. Buffalo dung, when not wet, was the fuel, except for an occasional dead tree. Diarrhoea became general among the men. In consequence of these handicaps, their celebration of the national anniversary was "slight," in the words of Lieutenant Izard, but equal to their means. One gun preceded the morning reveille; the troops had an extra ration of whisky, preceding an eighteen mile march to the caches. There, at dark, an express arrived with mail, nine days from Cantonment Leavenworth. At 8 a. m. July 5, the detachment moved on toward the upper crossing of the Arkansas at Chouteau island, where its services as escort to the traders were to end. [32]
Annually after 1829 the federal government seems to have provided some military escort for protection of Santa Fe trade against Indian depredation. [33] Annually, no doubt, too, the Fourth of July had some observance along the trail, by soldiers on duty there if not by traveling merchants. Full accounts of those escorts, however, are not available.
In 1831, when a number of parties were en route to Santa Fe and Jedediah Smith lost his life at the hands of the Comanches on the Cimarron in June, the rest of his party of eighty-five arrived at their destination in the Mexican capital July 4, before learning of his fate. [34] That same year Josiah Gregg, a month behind the Smith expedition, had got slightly to the southwest of Kansas by July 4.
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Encamped on McNees creek, in what is now Union county, New Mexico, he and his followers began their patriotic demonstration at dawn. The roar of artillery and rifle platoons echoed from surrounding hills, as did the martial music of drum and fife and the enthusiastic huzzas of the people. In American wayfarers on the remote desert, Gregg observed, the anniversary always stirred "heartfelt joy" and "almost pious exultation." [35] Such, however, was not the feeling of the Rocky Mountain expedition of which Zenas Leonard wrote as being then without provisions or game, on the Republican. For days, around July 4, they subsisted chiefly on mussels and small fish. Then the captain ordered two of his best horses killed and the carcasses distributed to each mess. [36]
In 1832, Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary, who had purchased a little land about one mile within Indian territory was erecting "log dwellings," in a wood for his family. [37] This was not far from the site chosen for his mission. In the parties of Nathaniel J. Wyeth and William Sublette that had crossed the mountains and South Pass about July 1 and spent July 4 in swimming their 150 horses across Hoback's river, there was more of melancholy than of joy as they drank the health of their friends and home "in good clear water," that being the only liquor they had. [38]
In 1833, the Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy, "in compliance with invitation. . . went (accompanied by Mrs. M.) to Independence," to deliver an address on July 4 before the Jackson County Temperance Society. [39]
Capt. Clifton Wharton, Company A, U. S. dragoons, left the Santa Fe caravan of 1834 under the command of Josiah Gregg at Camp Livingston on the south bank of the Arkansas on June 27 and turned back toward Fort Gibson. Somewhere between Camp Livingston and the Osage agency which they reached on July 13, the dragoons spent July 4, 1834. [40] This year a second Baptist missionary to Kansas, Jotham Meeker, was at the McCoy mission July 4, where he "engaged in translating an account of the discovery of America &c.
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for the Ottawa first book." [41] The Wyeth party, now two days away from the annual mountain rendezvous on Green river, had liquor kegs to open and allowed its men an abundance. A renewal of the coarse and brutal scenes of the rendezvous ensued. When the "happy" ones reeled into line to fire a volley in honor of the day, the men who were not "happy" had to lie flat on the ground to avoid the bullets careening in every direction. [42]
Events of varying import occurred in the Kansas region in 1835. The Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, of England, spent the day at Fort Leavenworth. The firing of twenty-four guns and an excellent dinner with Madeira and champagne he accepted as "usual commemoration" of the American holiday. Arrival at the post, however, of 150 Pawnee Indians and entry into the mess room of twelve or fourteen warrior chiefs before the dinner was over, was impressive and unusual. Equally surprising was the ease with which the unsophisticated visitors sat down to cigars and wine. After the hosts engaged in choral song, the red brethren, on invitation, rose all at once, tuned mind and lungs to the proper pitch, and let forth a shrill cry that sank to monotonous cadence and rose again in "full chorus of mingled yell and howl." At twilight the Englishman jumped on his horse "to gallop off the effects of wine, noise, and smoke," only to be more startled on his return in the moonlight at seeing amid the white army tents eight or ten blazing fires around which almost naked savages were roasting huge fragments of a recently killed ox. On buffalo skins sat the white men who smoked with them and who soon received hunks of the half-roasted meat. Only the Indians ate with any relish, they even tearing the meat from the bone with their teeth. [43]
Meantime, about twenty-five miles away, at the Baptist mission, Isaac McCoy was writing in his diary, July 4, that one Mr. Blanchard's female cousin, who "had belonged to the Methodist connexion," was this day "united with our Baptist church by experience. Mrs. Blanchard united with us by letter." The next day, Sunday, McCoy rode with his wife to the Shawnee settlement to baptise the young woman received yesterday but Was disappointed to find the Indians so absorbed in council over their government annuity to be re-
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ceived on Monday, that only "a few women attended the Baptism." [44] Jotham Meeker had left the McCoy mission July 1 to visit the Ottawas, whom he found cultivating crops and hunting. They all treated him with great kindness. On July 4 the chief accompanied him to a spring where he selected a place for building the Ottawa mission. [45]
On this same day Capt. Lemuel Ford who had set out from Fort Leavenworth on May 29, 1835, with Col. Henry Dodge on a Western expedition, made two records of the anniversary. Entry for July 4 in his journal reads: ". . . Though we are in the far west & cant join with our families & friends in a land of civilalition in the cellebration of this day, I have not forgotten . . the decleration of American Independence." After a twenty-five mile march up the Platte river bottom, in what would now be the vicinity of Lincoln county, Nebraska, he bathed in the river which was "cool and not more than waste deep." [46] In a second sketch "A Summer Upon the Prairie," also in diary form, Captain Ford told of shooting a fat buffalo cow in a "heard of buffalo" at evening. Officers of the command assembled at the tent of Captain D [uncan] to close the fifty-ninth anniversary of American Independence in a glass of excellent brandy, and Platte water. "After partaking of a soldier's fare each retired to his blanket and bear-skin satisfied." [47]
No one is now known to have kept July 4 as a holiday in Kansas for the next seven years. Jotham Meeker, still at the Baptist mission at Shawnee, spent the day in 1836 hunting horses and attending a monthly concert at the mission house. Daily he divided his time here between services to the Indians and living problems of his own; he was teaching Blackfeather and Bluejacket to write and on the Lord's day, July 3, he attended a religious meeting in Westport and assisted with exhortation and prayer; between times he cut a bee tree and hived the bees. He had neither time nor need for patriotic display. [48]
Meeker's program for 1837 was not dissimilar, but he had now settled among the Ottawas. His own abode was a rough cabin intended for a stable. There the Indians visited him. In his fields
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he grew corn, pumpkins, potatoes, melons, peas, and cabbage. He had bought a bee tree. On July 4 he plowed the corn, hoed the pumpkins and melons, wrote letters, and visited some of the Indians. Again his only manifestation of patriotism was cheerful devotion to duty. [49] Isaac McCoy at Shawnee was less content. His diary entry for the day was a ten-page discourse on his own personal disappointments and on Indian troubles: the June number of the Baptist magazine, just received with annual report of Baptist missions, made no mention of the twenty-year service of himself and wife; often he had felt great anxiety to know how he would obtain bread for the mouths of his family or raiment for their bodies, but in the words he carried with him for comfort he found safety,"Trust in the Lord and do good, . . . and verily thou shalt be fed." The Indian troubles disturbing McCoy were the dissatisfaction of the chiefs, at the council of the Shawnees, in the provisions of the bill for organizing the Indian territory, and the report of a Delaware-Sioux war near the Pawnee villages, the Delawares having brought in the scalps of two Sioux Indians to the Shawnee council. [50]
In 1838 McCoy was on July 4 concluding a six weeks' survey of the half-breed Indian tracts and adjusting Pottawatomie boundaries. [51] Meeker, who had just completed his school building and been interpreting for Doctor Chute who had been vaccinating Indians, spent his holiday shelling corn and visiting. [52]
On Independence day, 1839, the "Putawatomie Temperance Society" came into being. Following a morning meeting of resolutions and four addresses, thirty-six Indians of both sexes signed the temperance pledge, making a total of ninety-four members, twenty-two of whom were Ottawas. Then all of the members partook of a dinner prepared by a few. Jotham Meeker, who had ridden over the day before with sixteen Ottawas, was one of the speakers. On July 5 he celebrated at home by taking "fifty weight of honey from two of my hives." [53] At the far west Thomas Jefferson Farnham, a lawyer from Illinois, seeking both to recuperate his health in the out-of-doors and also to engage in the fur-trade in the Northwest, was, on July 4, approaching Bent's fort, which he reached on the afternoon of July 5 after fatiguing travel. "Our hearts, relieved from the anxieties, . . . leaped for joy as the gates of the fort
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were thrown open, and . . . the hearty Welcome of fellow-countrymen in the Wild Wilderness greeted us. Peace again-roofs again- . . . bread, ah! bread again!" 54 To the north between the main chain of the Rockies and the projecting Wind River mountains, Dr. F. A. Wislizenus Was going With a party to the annual rendezvous of Indians and whites on Green river, still a day's journey ahead. Although he wrote of July 4 as "the great holiday of the United States," only humdrum routine marked the occasion as the men stretched out around the fires, smoked, and in expectation of the morrow's journey, went quietly to sleep. [55]
The year 1840 found sickness so prevalent in the Ottawa mission that Jotham Meeker had to divide his care between the physical and spiritual needs of his following. After spending the week in blistering and bleeding patients, putting drafts on the feet and giving calomel, he devoted Saturday, July 4, to visiting the Well brethren to persuade them to come on the Lord's day, July 5, to "listen" to his sermon on the day of judgment. Chebas, an old juggler, disputed a long time. [56]
In 1841, When the Fourth fell on the Lord's day, the mission held an all-day baptismal service for "three sisters," who had the day before told their "Christian experiences." At 10 a. m. Isaac McCoy preached from the text, "Behold the Lamb of God." After the mission gave out a luncheon, the sixty or seventy attendants formed a procession and marched to the stream nearby singing, in Ottawa, "O for a thousand tongues to sing." McCoy made baptismal remarks; Meeker immersed the three Indian women in the name of the Trinity. "Perfect order prevailed," wrote the latter. "Tears flowed from the eyes of both professors and non-professors." After the immersion the two clergymen administered the Lord's Supper. [57] This same year a Catholic clergyman, P. J. DeSmet, already beyond the Kansas plains in his westward journey, Wrote of approaching Independence Rock, July 4; and, on arrival, July 5, of refraining from crying, "Hurra for Independence," out of deference to a jealous young Englishman. They all cut their names on the south side of the rock "under initials, I. H. S." [58]
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July 4, 1842, found Jotham Meeker at Shawnee mission, en route to Ottawa from a trip in the East. The entire day he gave to duties as treasurer of the institution there. [59] This year, to the north, near the point Where the north and south forks of the Platte river unite, John C. Fremont with an exploring party Was spending the first of four successive Fourths of July in the Kansas region. With salute at daybreak and scanty portions of "red fire-water" served his men, Fremont advanced westward through a short day made memorable by a huge herd of buffalo, estimated at 11,000, and by a festive evening meal of macaroni soup, choice buffalo meat, preserves, fruit cake, and coffee, enjoyed in barbaric luxury on the grass. [60]
The national anniversary had Wide celebration in and around Kansas in 1843. Again Fremont Was approaching the Rocky Mountains on July 4. Arriving with an advance guard at St. Vrain's fort at noon, he accepted the invitation of St. Vrain to join in a feast already prepared for the anniversary. [61] On the same day Theodore Talbot, following in the rear With a detachment of Fremont's men, wrote of killing a buffalo at first shot, "a grand triumph for a tyro like myself." Then he lent his aid in disposing of another. [62] William Gilpin Who was traveling west under the protection of Fremont, spent the Fourth With one of these divisions. [63] At the same time the hunting expedition of Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scotchman, who had joined in the American celebration of the Fourth with the Wyeth party between Green and Bear rivers in 1834, [64] enjoyed a "munificient and magnificent jollification" in the neighborhood of the Sweetwater and the Wind River mountains. The party was "93 strong, well-armed and provisioned." At sunrise three volleys of thirty rifles and three loud cheers saluted the flag, raised in midcamp. Father De Vos, a Catholic priest traveling With the party to the Catholic settlement among the Flatheads, said mass. The formal exercises included an oration by George W. Christy, an ode by M. C. Field, news correspondent of the occasion, and an original song. The dinner, a la bras imperial, given by Sir William, the host, consisted of roast beef, plum pudding, Rhine wine, milk punch,
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Minny Warka, corn dodgers, and buffalo. [65] Wm. L. Sublette was one of the hunting party. [66]
Following on the trail of Sir William Drummond Stewart were Overton Johnson and William H. Winter with twenty emigrants to the Far West. On the fourth day of July they effected a six-day passage of the South fork of the Platte eighty-five miles above the forks. Boats made of green buffalo hides, sewed together and stretched over wagon beds tightly, with the flesh side out, to dry in the sun, and then covered with tallow and ashes conveyed the goods of the company across the stream, here one mile wide. Teams drew the empty wagons across farther down where the water was more shallow. [67]
Meantime, in the eastern part of the region two missionaries pursued their callings on this holiday. Jotham Meeker visited around among the Indians and held a lengthy religious conversation with Pinasukeshikoqua. [68] The Rev. Wm. H. Goode, a Methodist missionary of the frontier conference, was paying a visit early in July, 1843, to the Indian manual-labor school, later known as Shawnee mission. On July 3 the superintendent of this mission took "some forty of his pupils, male and female, to attend a Sunday school celebration at Independence." Well trained in vocal music, these Indian pupils were "calculated greatly to highten the interest of such an occasion." Mr. Goode himself, suffering from an infected tick bite, removed on the Fourth of July to Kansas landing, consisting then of a single log warehouse and dwelling. Here while he waited for a boat to St. Louis, and enjoyed his first taste of buffalo meat, he kept a "mid-night vigil," upon the cause of missions and the saving of souls. [69]
Far to the southwest, on the north bank of the Arkansas, forty miles east of Chouteau's island, Capt. P. St. George Cooke and his dragoons saluted the sun this same July 4 with a shell that exploded across the river, before the annual Santa Fe caravan began its ten-hour crossing into Mexican territory. All day the traders worked in a gale, taking across twenty-four American wagons, thirty-two
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Mexican wagons, and some hundred mules and oxen. In the party were ten American owners, five Mexican owners, sixty-eight armed Americans, and about the same number of armed Mexicans. Floundering incessantly in the water and dashing with wild yells of encouragement to the mules, the Mexicans sounded like a great water fall. The last wagon over, the trading company dispatched a letter of appreciation to Captain Cooke for his efficient protection; and he and the dragoons were free on the morrow to turn back toward Leavenworth. [70]
Capt. Nathan Boone, who had encamped on the south bank of the Arkansas opposite Captain Cooke on June 21 was now at Eagle Chief creek, due west of Avard, Woods county, Okla. Here he kept the Fourth in "roasting fine buffalo meat" and in curing some, while his worn-out teams rested in a grove of elm, hackberry, tallow, and chittim trees. [71]
The national anniversary had little to mark it in Kansas in 1844. Jotham Meeker, whom the Ottawas had permitted on July 3 to select a site for the Ottawa mission, spent the holiday attending a prayer meeting and holding religious talks with Chebas, the juggler, and his wife. [72] Fremont's expedition on its return eastward, reached Bent's fort, July 1, 1844, where they "were saluted with a display of the national flag, and repeated discharges from the guns of the fort, [and] where we were received by Mr. George Bent with a cordial welcome and a friendly hospitality, in the enjoyment of which we spent several very agreeable days." On the Fourth itself "Mr. Bent gave a dinner in commemoration of the occasion to Fremont and his party. Although hundreds of miles separated from their countrymen, yet they sat down to as sumptuous a repast as could be furnished in many towns of the States." [73] Wm. Gilpin who had been with Fremont in 1843 was now between Fort Hall and Fort Bridger at Soda Springs where he and Peg Leg Smith after two days without food, celebrated the Fourth by eating antelope and drinking soda water. [74]
On July 4, 1845, Fremont was again in Kansas, on the first leg of
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another Western tour, when he named a second Kansas stream "Independence creek" in honor of the day. [75] Francois des Montaignes of St. Louis, who kept "veracious memoranda, taken during this expedition," and called "The Plains," described this stream, crossed at evening on July 3 as "a small creek of tolerable water." Camping on a hill beyond, where the grass was good and the wood plentiful, the "patriotic Canadians" at daybreak on July 4 saluted the captain's tent a la mode avec fusil et pistolet. The captain himself appeared in propria persona and distributed a small quantity of firewater by way of "largesse." Remaining encamped for the day, the men concentrated their gun-powder propensities in shooting at a mark for brandy and clothes. Night left the camp "in a mixed condition of gloom, patriotism, pizin, and old clothes." In his diary thereafter, Montaignes denominated this camp "Camp Largesse," but he did not allude to Fremont's christening of the stream "Independence." [76] At the Ottawa mission Jotham Meeker directed ten or twelve brethren to prepare for the quarterly meeting by erecting a large shed with seats, killing a beef, and arranging a baptismal place. The next day he received five persons in baptism and rejected two. [77] To the northwest in the Black Hills Joel Palmer wrote of the beautiful timbered hills with an abundance of red, yellow, and black currants, and some gooseberries; elk, buffalo, deer, antelope, and bear were the meats nature then offered for Independence day choice. [78] On their return from the Far West the detachment of Colonel Kearney alternated long marches over glaring sands and rocks between South Pass and Fort Laramie with rest periods in spots covered with currants, gooseberries, strawberries, and clover. At the request of westward bound emigrants to Oregon, encamped near the soldiers the night of July 3, Colonel Kearney fired the mountain howitzer to announce the Fourth and awakened a glorious confusion of echoes from the granite peaks about. The gun, or the day's ensuing march, prompted a long satire by P. St. George Cooke
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on independence and dependence, political, social, and personal. [79] In the camp of Vasques and Peg Leg Smith on a branch of Green river, Overton Johnson and William H. Winter were this day entertained by tall tales of all the parties the Sioux had cut to pieces thereabouts. [80]
Although Jotham Meeker, arriving again from Boston on July 4, kept the holiday in 1846 by attending a prayer-meeting with the brethren at the Stockbridge mission and sat up "till after midnight conversing &c at Bro. Pratt's," [81] and William Walker, located at the mouth of the Kansas river, rejoiced over the news that the bill for the improvement appropriation for the Wyandots had passed the lower house of congress, [82] most of the demonstration for the Fourth in Kansas in 1846 was by the military. The Mexican war was on. From the first of June the entire eastern frontier was in commotion. Volunteers were organizing and drilling all along the border for the Army of the West. [83] For convenience in camping and marching, "the different companies, squadrons, commissary trains, traders' wagons, et cetera, were strung out many miles" along the Santa Fe trail to be concentrated August 1 within cannon shot of Bent's fort by Col. Stephen Watts Kearney, in command. [84] Although John T. Hughes was the official military biographer of this reconnaissance and J. W. Abert, the appointed observer of natural history for W. H. Emory, topographical engineer, at least six other persons kept elaborate diaries along the way. The writers were at different points along the trail on July 4.
Frank S. Edwards, who traveled from Fish's crossing of the Kaw river to Elm Grove. [85] on July 4, regarded the Kaw as a beautiful stream, "clear as crystal," and the military road from Fort Leavenworth through flower-sprinkled grass high as the backs of horses, as much more attractive than the first view of prairie seen from the trail. [86] Capt. A. R. Johnston, regimental adjutant, assigned to Captain Fischer's company, wrote of a slow, hot journey over the
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same route with the artillery and baggage. Upon arrival at Elm Grove, the men of this company "were permitted to buy liquor from the sutler to celebrate as best they might the national anniversary." In order to set out betimes on July 5, the artificers and carpenters had on the anniversary evening to repair a caisson and wagon tongue and the cooks had to bake bread for an early breakfast. Reveille was to be at daylight at 3:30. [87]
George Rutledge Gibson, a Platte, Mo., volunteer, about a day's journey in advance, wrote of encamping the night of July 3 at Willow Springs, where the only wood for cooking was small willows, and where on the morning of the Fourth the company found itself devoid of spirits or aught else with which "to pay some respect to the day." Pulling up stakes, therefore, the soldiers advanced ten miles to Rock creek, where the water was plentiful but indifferent. From that point on the march became difficult and exhausting. The day was excessively hot. For twenty miles they could find no water. Lame, sick, worn out, the men dispersed over the prairie in search of relief, unable longer to control themselves and thereby increasing their fatigue. Then, finally, Capt. Wm. S. Murphy, in advance on horseback, discovered water at 110 Mile creek and returned with several canteens, resuscitating the faint and enabling many stragglers to reach camp at 110 Mile crossing. [88] Extra mules were sent back for the more feeble. At the end of this thirty-mile march, Gibson wrote "coffee and water made us feel better and the men were soon wrapped in their blankets," too weary to remember the significance of this day they had earlier desired to honor conventionally. [89]
The party to which Lieutenant Abert was attached encamped seven miles beyond Independence creek on the eve of July 4, and on the day itself moved on westward to reach some eminent place in honor of the national anniversary. At five o'clock they arrived at Big John spring where they "luxuriated on the delightful cool water" and reclined under the shade of a tall oak, sub-tegmine querci. The temperature of the water was 53° but of the air above 80°. Further notes tell of primroses, both yellow and white, seen
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nearby, and list the birds about, as brown thrush, king bird, grouse, and quail. [90]
John T. Hughes, described the effect of Independence day upon the troops. In the boundless solitude of the prairie, with only the heaven above and the solid earth beneath, their bosoms swelled with noble impulses and a quenchless love of freedom; "ever and anon the enthusiastic shout, the loud huzza, and the animating Yankee Doodle were heard." After a twenty-seven mile toilsome march across the green plains, in the heat of an almost vertical sun, they pitched their tents at evening twelve miles east of Council Grove on the banks of Bluff creek where grass and fuel were as abundant as the cool spring water. Good humor prevailed throughout the camp. [91]
Between the Cottonwood fork and the Little Arkansas, M. B. Edwards, a private, attributed the "good spirits" with which his company made its twenty-five mile advance "through the hottest day that ever shone," to a keg of whisky procured the night before from Capt. William Waldo, the trader. "In commemoration of the glorious '76," each man had begun the day by drinking his fill. In spite of the holiday rejoicing, Edwards wrote that marching across the plains was not what it was "cracked up to be." Flies and mosquitoes were annoying. Supplies were low. [92] Jacob S. Robinson, who was with the same company, wrote that they had cut their rations one-third; "if we cannot overtake the commissary wagons, we shall have nothing to eat but our horses." [93] Camping on the open prairie at "Good Water" [94] on the night of July 4, the company "ate cold provisions." Here they had their first sight of buffalo grass, short, curly, and thin but nutritious. To Robinson the dry prairie had become monotonous; but Edwards wrote that the moon, shining with the brilliancy of day, made the night beautiful and a gentle breeze was a pleasant end to July 4, 1846.
Still farther west another group had additional trials, recorded in the words of a woman, the chief sufferer, as "a disasterous celebra-
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tion." Encamped on the night of July 3 at Pawnee Rock with a contingent of soldiers was a merchandise train of seventy-five or eighty wagons. With one trader, Samuel Magoffin, was his bride, Susan Shelby Magoffin. On the morning of July 4 while her husband kept watch for Indians with his gun and pistols, she carved her name on Pawnee Rock among the hundreds already inscribed there. She did not do the work well, she wrote, because fear of Indians made her tremble all over. Since the rest of the caravan had gone on its way, the driver for the Magoffins had to hurry to overtake the party at Ash creek. Then at the bank when they failed to take the usual precaution of dismounting and walking down, their carriage was whirled over the verge of the cliff "in a perfect crash." The top and sides were broken to pieces but the passengers were almost entirely unhurt. Mrs. Magoffin, who was herself stunned so that she had to be carried to a shade tree and have her face and hands rubbed with whisky to come to herself, rather rejoiced in the opportunity the occasion afforded to test her husband's oversight and devotion. The scene, however, she described as "a perfect mess, that; of people, books, bottles, . . . guns, pistols, baskets, bags, boxes, and the dear knows what else." [95]
This same day, July 4, 1846, Francis Parkman, with three of his own men, four trappers, and an Indian family of Morin, traversed in sight of the Black Hills "a forlorn and dreary monotony of sunscorched plains, where no living thing appeared, save here and there an antelope flying before us like the wind." Weakened by a recent recurrent illness Parkman seemed to take no thought of the national anniversary, but coming at noon upon a fine growth of spreading trees along Horseshoe creek he flung himself down on the rich, tall grass beneath, "exhausted scarcely able to move." [96] West of Fort Laramie two emigrant parties, one of Edwin Bryant and the other of Lillburn Boggs, ex-governor of Missouri, held a conventional Independence day celebration in a grove. A salute, a procession, the reading of the Declaration, a collation "served up by the ladies," toasts with a discharge of musketry after each, and patriotic songs constituted the program. J. H. Reed, of the Bryant party, had preserved wines and liquors, especially for the occasion. [97]
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On July 4, 1847, Philip Gooch Ferguson, who had just enlisted, was en route from Westport to Fort Leavenworth to report for duty. Camping at Gum spring, near Shawnee meeting house, July 3, he and several other volunteers had breakfast on the Fourth with "an old Frenchman who had an Indian wife and two pretty, half-breed daughters, all belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church." Crossing the Kansas in flat-bottomed boats belonging to the Delawares and Shawnees, the party marched through rough, hilly country to a point four or five miles from the fort. The Kaw had seemed "a clear beautiful stream" to them, refreshing for bathing. Frequently along the road had been squaws with whisky to sell. At night thousands of fireflies made the prairie beautiful. [98] At evening, July 3, another company of the Missouri Mounted Volunteers, going out to take the place of the regular troops still in Mexico, had reached the crossing of the old California trail with the Walnut, about a mile below what is now El Dorado.
There, the next day, according to Capt. J. J. Clark, "the eagle screamed, and salutes were fired, and due honors paid to the warriors of an older day." [99] Three days' journey west of Council Grove this year was a party of traders, too engaged in evading the Indians, apparently, even to note the passing of the national anniversary. In the train were Solomon Houck, R. S. Elliott, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and James Josiah Webb, the latter three of whom have left some account of the trip. [100] Although they were fortunate enough to escape serious depredation themselves, they kept hearing of Indian encounters with the troops advancing westward. One was an attack upon Lt. John Love, and another upon Col. Alton R. Easton, both en route with detachments from Leavenworth to Santa Fe on July 4. [101]
At Wyandot in 1847 William Walker had such a rheumatic affliction in the head as to set him almost distracted. [102] At the Ottawa mission Jotham Meeker had been undergoing dark days, but following extended church meetings, for which the visitors camped around and nearly always supplied their own provisions, his heart was re-
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vived on July 4, the Lord's day, by two requests for reinstatement after confession, and one request for baptism. Two sermons indoors preceded the address to 100 persons at the water. After the baptism Meeker gave the right hand of fellowship to the three Indians just received and administered the "holy sacraments" to fifty native members. [103]
'Independence Day!' Mexico free. `Glory enough for one day!'" wrote William Walker on July 4, 1848.104 Jotham Meeker working in his garden was still devoid of interest in national affairs; threats of some young Ottawas to break their tribal laws, especially those of gambling, did concern him, however, and he noted that the Ottawa nation was to consult together on the subject. [105] Along the Arkansas the volunteers under William Gilpin were still active in defense against continued Indian depredation. [106]
The national anniversary in 1849 was wet in Kansas. Although at the Ottawa mission it rained nearly all day long, Jotham Meeker finished mowing the grass in his dooryard and chicken yard and along the fences in his truck patch. [107] At Wyandot rain fell also at night. "What a day for a celebration!" wrote William Walker, but his is the only allusion to any festive keeping of the occasion in Kansas this year. More serious problems weighed on him, however, as he noted that cholera had broken out afresh this week in Kansas [City]. [108] At Highland, S. M. Irvin, missionary to the Iowa and Sac Indians, recorded morning, noon, and night temperatures of 70°, 86°, and 77°, respectively, with a north wind and clear sky. [109] To the northwest, in the Platte river valley, R. C. Shaw wrote that a California emigrant party ushered in the Fourth by a discharge of firearms, which were ready for use again after a thorough cleaning. [110]
At the Iowa and Sac mission at Highland, in 1850, the Fourth of July temperature readings were 72°, 88°, and 78°, respectively, for morning, noon, and night; a south wind blew and the sky was clear."' Jotham Meeker spent the week of July 4 in preparation for the quarterly meeting at the Ottawa mission; on July 3 he had five bushels of corn ground and he made up a lot of cook pills and
DOLBEE: JULY FOURTH IN EARLY KANSAS 137
anti-cathartic pills, &c.; on July 4 he held religious talks with two persons, attended a prayer meeting, and made further preparations for quarterly assembly on July 6. [112] The cholera had become so prevalent in the Kansas [City] vicinity now that William Walker referred to it daily in the few journal entries he took time to make. On both June 28 and July 5 deaths from it occurred; on July 6 citizens were fleeing from Kansas but "this is folly." [113] The only allusions to patriotic significance of the day again were in the diaries of travelers already well to the northwest. Franklin Langworthy, between Green river and Fort Bridger, spent "this celebrated day" on dry and dusty roads across swells of bleak and barren land. [114] John Steele wrote of an all-day celebration by Western emigrants then approaching the Sweetwater and Independence Rock. Shortly after midnight, July 3, the boys of the writer's own division brought an immense pile of dry sage into the camp and fired it. Volleys with rifles and pistols elicited three hearty cheers, echoed by neighboring trains. With a national salute at dawn, the party started early across the ashy plain, strewn with carcasses of oxen and horses. Encamping at 3 p. m. on the Sweetwater, both men and beasts refreshed themselves at the clear, cool rivulet, and relaxed until 10 p. m., when the camp-fires were replenished and a shout arose rolling from camp to camp. Then a discharge of fire-arms closed the celebration. As the fires waned, only a wolf's plaintive whine broke the stillness. [115] Farther west, near Salt Lake, where wild sage and dust were "about the only thing in the eye," C. W. Smith, of a party rushing to the gold region from Weston, Mo., wrote on July 4, "to the travel-worn emigrant in the eternal Wilds, this day's remembrances hardly stir the sluggish blood." [116] The day when the first ground was broken in St. Louis for the Pacific railroad, "July 4th, Annus Domini, 1851," wrote R. S. Elliott, "was the beginning of a new era of industrial civilization between the Mississippi and the Pacific ocean." [117] People in Kansas, however, were totally unaware of future advantages therefrom awaiting them. Local affairs only concerned them on the holiday. For William Walker, now free of care, the day was a "glorious 4th
138 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
spent in Kansas [City] amongst very good company." [118] Jotham Meeker Was preparing, as usual, for approaching meetings and visiting the sick. On July 4 the Catholic priest, Deuerinck, and one of his servants stopped for the night at the Ottawa mission. [119]
In 1852, William Walker had no thoughts for the Fourth of July, but the community had been saddened two days before by the arrival of "the corpse of Gov. Calhoun, who died on the road from Santa Fe to Kansas." Burial, Walker noted, was to be with Masonic honors.120 The Fourth this year falling on "the Lord's day," the Ottawa mission held a long service of five sermons, by missionaries and by Indians. A congregation of about 100 gave good attention, but the mission had had to drop its midweek prayer meeting for want of interest. [121]
In July, 1853, but little was transpiring in Kansas, aside from the Pacific railroad survey, that could have foreboded the great activity which was to begin in 1854. William Walker had no journal entry at all for the Fourth. [122] Jotham Meeker put in the day setting "types on some school cards, &c." for the school. [123] Thomas Fitzpatrick, Indian agent, who had been at Fort Atkinson since June 1, holding "a talk" with the five Indian tribes of that region and inviting them to be present at the treaty of Fort Laramie the following September, was now journeying back toward headquarters in the escort of Maj. R. H. Chilton, Co. B., of the First dragoons, but no one left any word of their keeping of July 4. [124] Two divisions of the party for exploration of a route for the Pacific railroad, also traversing Kansas now, did mark the day. Notified by a rifle report, at daylight, of the arrival of the national anniversary, the command of Capt. J. W. Gunnison responded with numerous discharges of fire-arms, and set out for the Kansas river for the purpose of crossing to Fort Riley. A pontoon from the fort, placed too low for the light vehicle of the troops, upset, midstream, "a small incident for the 4th of July." The horses swam across. Captain Gunnison was the guest of Capt. C. S. Lovell at the officers' mess at the post through a short nooning. A ferry then conveyed the explorers' wagon across the Republican, and the party proceeded 7.59 miles and encamped at a beautiful spring of delicious, cool water
DOLBEE: JULY FOURTH IN EARLY KANSAS 139
near the Smoky Hill. The division under Lieutenant Beckwith, pursuing the Santa Fe road, camped from July 3 to July 5 in a slightly timbered spot on the Cottonwood fork, seventeen miles from Lost spring. The days were oppressively hot with scarcely a breeze, the thermometer in the shade of a wagon reaching 100° Fahrenheit on July 3. Recent rains had made grazing abundant but had also left pools of water about for the breeding of mosquitoes. Innumerable flies were another annoyance. In spite of the discomforts of the place, the party remained there for the benefit of its animals on July 4; but one of them manifested his own independence by pulling up his picket-pin at the usual hour for marching, and taking the road to the next camping ground, where he joined another train. [125]
Before July 4, 1854, the Kansas area, like the Beckwith mount, was itself to take on individuality. On May 30, 1854, it became an organized territory with definite boundaries. Emerging from the era of un-organization already battle-scarred, as P. G. Lowe once wrote, [126] by trial and trouble, the territory might at once have been allowed the security and freedom of government; but before the next July 4, before May 30 even, actor-settlers were to move upon the scene for roles in a political drama the nation was setting there. Kansas, separated now by lines of latitude and longitude, was to find herself controlled again by the power of the area from which she had but just parted. For the next seven years most of her Independence day acts were result of sectional design or subject for national scrutiny.
Notes
1. Composed for the 1843 celebration of Sir William Drummond Stewart near the Sweetwater and Wind River mountains.-Letter of M. C. Field, Fort Platte, La Ramee fork, July 8, 1843, to "Dear Friends," in New Orleans Weekly Picayune, September 11, 1843.
2. Vial, Pedro, "Journal of the Voyage From Santa Fe del Nuevo Mexico to San Luis de Ylinneses in the Province of Luisiana," in Southwest on the Turquoise Trail, ed. by A. B. Hulbert (Stewart Commission of Colorado College and Denver Public Library, 1933), pp. 52, 53.
3. Pike, Z. M., Exploratory Travels (Lawrence & Co., Denver, 1889), pp. 314-316. Also, Expeditions, ed. by Elliott Cones (F. P. Harper, New York, 1895), 3 vols., v. II, pp. 468, 756-758. Also, Josiah Gregg, "Commerce of the Prairies," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (Arthur H. Clark, Cleveland, 1905), v. XIX, pp. 173, 174. Thwaites cites Chittenden, H. M., The American Fur Trade . . (Press of the Pioneers, New York, 1935), 2 vols., v. II, p. 493, and Missouri Intelligencer, April 10, 1824, as giving "Purcell" as the correct form of the name.
4. Chittenden, op. cit., v. II, pp. 487, 488.
5. Gass, Patrick, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery Under the Command of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clarke of the Army of the United States, From the Mouth of the River Missouri to the Pacific Ocean (Printed for David M'Keehan, Pittsburgh, 1807), p. 20. Also, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1805-1806, printed from the original manuscripts, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Dodd, Mead, & Company, New York, 1904-1905), 7 vols., v. I, pp. 66, 67; v. VI, p. 37; v. VII, pp. 15; 40. Also, Sgt. John Ordway, "Journal, Kept on the Expedition of Western Exploration, 1803-1806," ed. by Milo M. Quails, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Publications, v. XXII, pp. 91, 92.
6. Pike, Exploratory Travels, pp. 188, 362, 363, 370, 371. Also, Zebulon Pike's Arkansaw Journal, ed. by S. H. Hart and A. B. Hulbert (Stewart Commission of Colorado College and Denver Public Library, 1932), pp. 78-82.
7. James, Thomas, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, ed. by Walter B. Douglas (Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1916), pp. 293, 294. Also, Nathaniel Pryor, letter to William Clark, October 16, 1807, in Annals of Iowa, Third series, v. I, pp. 613-620.
8. Shaw, Col. John, "Personal Narrative," in Wisconsin Historical Society's Collections, v. II, pp. 197-232.
9. "U-jet-ta" was Sibley's spelling of the primitive Indian name of the Little Osage nation, recorded in English orthography by Lewis and Clark as "Ood-za-tan."-American State Papers (Indian Affairs, v. I, pp. 707-709). Another variant is "Utsehta," given by F. W. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, Pt. II, p. 877.
10. Sibley, George C., agent of Indian trade and Indian affairs.-"Notes of an Official Excursion from Fort Osage, to the Kansees, Pawnees, Osages, the Grand Saline and Rock Saline, in May, June, and July, 1811," in archives of Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. Typescript supplied by Brenda Richard, assistant archivist. Also, Extract from a journal to the Pawnee and Kansas villages, undertaken by an officer [Sibley], of the Factory on the Missouri."-Written as a letter from Fort Osage, September 4, 1811, to Gen. W. Clark, in Louisiana Gazette, St. Louis, May 16 and 23, 1812. Photostats used.
11. Bolton, Herbert E., "New Light on Manuel Lisa and the Spanish Fur Trade," in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Austin, Tex., v. XVII, pp. 63, 64. Also, Gianini, Charles A., "Manuel Lisa, One of the Earliest Traders on the Missouri River," in New Mexico Historical Review, Santa Fe, v. II, p. 328.
12. James, Thomas, op. cit., appendix, pp. 292, 293. Also, Gregg, "Commerce of the Prairies," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XIX, pp. 175, 176. Also, John C. Luttig, Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri, ed. by Stella Drumm (Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1920), entry of June 4, 1812.
13. Sibley, George C., report to Governor Clark from Fort Osage, in Missouri Historical Society's Collections, v. IV, pp. 199-206. David H. Coyner in The Lost Trappers (Cincinnati, 1847), makes the time of Ezekiel Williams' experience 1807-1809, and puts the cache on the Platte, but the editor of Collections says Coyner's book is now regarded as "a lie with circumstance."
14. Chittenden, op. cit., v. II, pp. 496, 647.
15. Ibid., p. 497. Also, Jules De Man, "Journal, June 15-August 4, 1816," in Missouri Historical Society's Collections, v. V, pp. 323, 324.
16. American State Papers (Foreign Relations, v. IV, p. 207 ff). Also, Thomas James, op. cit., appendix, pp. 294, 295. Also, Chittenden, op. cit., v. H, pp. 498, 499.
17. This is not the first appearance of the flag in Kansas though it is the first positively known use of it in an Independence day celebration. Traders may presumably have brought the flag into the region any time after 1777. The first flag in Kansas, however, of which there is now record, is the one displayed at the Pawnee village on the Republican, September 25, 1806, for the reception of Zebulon M. Pike. "On our arrival," Pike wrote the Hon. Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War, October 1, 1806 (Exploratory Travels, appendix, pp. 362, 363), "we found the Spanish and American flags both expanded in the village." This flag may have been there as early as July 4, 1806. In 1811 George C. Sibley wrote of United States flags in the Indian camps he visited; vide ante, Footnote 10.
18. The Wm. B. Napton typewritten copy of Willoughby Morgan's letter, July 4, 1819, to Gen. T. A. Smith about this event in Manuscript division, Kansas Historical Society, uses "divers" instead of "savory."
19. Morgan, W., letter, Martin cantonment, July 4, 1819, to "Dear General" [Gen. T. A. Smith, Franklin, Mo.], in Manuscript division, Missouri State Historical Society, Columbia. Copy in letter of Floyd Shoemaker, August 9, 1938, to author of this article. George J. Remsburg, in Atchison Daily Globe, July 3, 1907, refers to effect of evening fireworks on Indians at Cow island celebration, but in letter of June 9, 1938, Porterville, Cal., to George A. Root, he says he cannot recall the source of this information. The Morgan-Smith correspondence does not refer to the episode.
20. James, Edwin, Account of [Stephen H. Long] Expedition From Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, 1819-1820 (H. C. Carey, Philadelphia, 1823), 2 vole., v. I, p. 496.
21. James, Thomas, op. cit., pp. 98-108, 176-189.
22. Fowler, Jacob, Journal, narrating an adventure from Arkansas to the Sources of the Rio Grande del Norte, 1821-1822, ed. by Elliott Cones (Francis P. Harper, N. Y., 1898), pp. 170, 171.
23. Chittenden, op. cit., v. 11, pp. 501-504. Also, Fowler, op. cit., p. 154. Also, Thomas James, op. cit., pp. 167, 175. Also, Gregg, loc. cit., pp. 178-180.
24. Storrs, Augustus, "Answers to Queries . ," January 3, 1825; Richard Graham, Answers" ; M. M. Marmaduke, "Journal," in Southwest on the Turquoise Trail, pp. 69, 72, 73, 81-83, 99, 100. Lansing B. Bloom, editor of the New Mexico Historical Review, v. IX, p. 111, doubts that Storrs and Marmaduke were of the same party.
25. Pattie, James O., "Personal Narrative," ed. by Timothy Flint, in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XVIII, pp. 142, 143.
26. Brown, Joseph C., "Field Notes," U. S. surveying expedition of Santa Fe trail, Eighteenth Biennial Report of Kansas Historical Society (1913), pp. 117-125.
27. Sibley, George C., "Diary" of the resurvey of the Santa Fe road in 1827 in Lindenwood collection of Sibley manuscripts. Entry of July 4, 1827. Typescript by Kate L. Gregg used.
28. Chittenden, op. cit., v. II, p. 511.
29. Wetmore, Alphonse, "Diary of 1828," in Southwest on the Turquoise Trail, pp. 188, 189.
30. Izard, Lt. James Farley, adjutant to Maj. Bennett Riley, "Journal" filed in the War Department as of Maj. Bennett Riley, ed. by Fred S. Perrine from photostatic copy, New Mexico Historical Review, v. III, pp. 275-278.
31. Report of John H. Eaton, Secretary of war, to congress, November 30, 1829, and letter of Bennett Riley to Brig.-Gen. H. Leavenworth, November 22, in American State Papers (Military Affairs, v. IV, pp. 154, 277-280). Also, William Waldo, "Recollections of a Septuagenarian," Missouri Historical Society's Publications, Nos. II and HI, pp. 1-18. Waldo says the caravan consisted of sixty men and thirty-six wagons.
32. Cooke, P. St. G., Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Lindsay and Blakiston, Philadelphia, 1859), pp. 44-46.
33. American State Papers (Military Affairs, v. IV, p. 219; v. V, p. 31). Also, Iowa Historical Record, v. VI, p. 453; New Mexico Historical Review, v. XII, PP. 121, 122. Also, John Irving, Jr., Indian Sketches Taken During an Expedition to the Pawnee Tribes (Philadelphia, 1835), 2 vols., v. I, p. 29. Also, Josiah Gregg, loc. cit., pp. 187-193. Both Gregg and his editor, R. G. Thwaites, are mistaken in their assertion that the government supplied protection only in 1829 and 1834.
34. Dale, H. C., The Ashley-Smith Explorations . . . (Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, 1918), pp. 294-299.
35. Gregg, loc. cit., pp. 233, 234.
36. Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Lakeside Press, Chicago, 1934), pp. 6-8.
37. McCoy, Isaac, "Journal," entry of June 13, 1832.-Manuscript division, Kansas Historical Society.
38. Wyeth, John B., "Oregon," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XXI, pp. 60-62.
39. McCoy, Isaac, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1833.
40. Wharton, Capt. Clifton, "Report," campaign of 1834 as escort to the Santa Fe caravan under command of Josiah Gregg, ed. by Fred S. Perrine, "Military Escorts on the Santa Fe Trail," New Mexico Historical Review, v. II, pp. 269-304.
41. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," 1832-1855, entry of July 4, 1834.-Manuscript division, Kansas Historical Society. Entries of July 10, 14, and August 4, indicate Meeker was preparing books to teach the children of the Ottawas, to whom he was to be missionary, to read.
42. Townsend, John K., "Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XXI, pp. 197, 198. Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scotchman already a year in the mountains, joined the Wyeth party at the rendezvous, July 2.
43. Murray, Charles Augustus, Travels in North America During the Years 1834, 1855, and 1836 (Richard Bentley, London, 1839), 2 vols., v. I, pp. 253-256.
49. Ibid, entries of June 18-July 4, 1837.
50. McCoy, Isaac, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1837. 51. Ibid., entries, May 24-July 9, 1838.
52. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1838. :13. Ibid., entries of July 3-5, 1839.
44. McCoy, Isaac, "Journal," entries, July 4, 5, 1835.
45. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries of July 1-4, 1835.
46. Ford, Capt. Lemuel, "Journal," recorded on march of Col. Henry Dodge from Fort Leavenworth, May 29 to September 16, 1835, edited by Louis Pelzer, in Mississippi Valley Historical Review (March, 1926), v. XII, pp. 550-579.
47. Ford, Capt. Lemuel, "A Summer Upon the Prairie," in Overland to the Pacific, ed. by A. B. Hulbert (1934), v. IV, pp. 257-259.
48. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries of July 1-4, 1836.
54. Farnham, Thomas Jefferson, "Travels," in R. G. Thwaites' Early Western Travels, XXVIII, p. 107.
55. Wislizenus, Frederick Adolphus, M. D., A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1839, being a tr. of Ein Ausflug each den Felsen-Gebirgen im. Jahre 1839 (St. Louis, 1840), made by Frederick A. Wislizenus, and pub. by the Missouri Historical Society (St. Louis, 1912), p. 85.
56. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries of July 1-5, 1840. 57. Ibid., entries of July 3, 4, 1841.
58. DeSmet, P. J., "Letters and Sketches," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XXVII, pp. 215, 216.
59. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1842.
60. Abbott, John S. C., Christopher Carson (Dodd, Mead, New York), pp. 217-220. Also, "A Narrative of Adventures and Explorations," in The Daring Adventures of Kit Carson and Fremont (Hurst and Co., New York, c1885), pp. 93, 94, 488.
61. Ibid., p. 198.
62. Talbot, Theodore, Journals, 1843 and 1849-1852, ed. by Charles H. Carey (Metropolitan Press, Portland, 1931), pp. 13, 17; entry of July 4, 1843.
63. Bancroft, H. H., Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth (History Company, San Francisco, 1891), v. I, pp. 522, 523.
64. Vide ante, p. 123.
65. Field, M. C. letter, Fort Platte, La Ramee fork, July 8, 1843, to "Dear Friends," in New Orleans Weekly Picayune, September 11, 1843. Reprinted in Niles' National Register, September 30, 1843, v. LXV, p. 71. Also in New York Weekly Tribune, September 23, 1843. The letter in the Tribune is dated July 8, 1840. M. C. Field, editor of the New Orleans Picayune, traveled to the end of the journey with the Stewart Party.-Cf. Niles' Register, v. LXV; also, H. H. Bancroft's History of Oregon (History Company, San Francisco, 1886), v. I, p. 396, Footnote 6.
66. Johnson, Overton, and Wm. H. Winter, Route Across the Rocky Mountains, reprint by Carl Cannon (Princeton, 1932), p. 5.
67. Ibid., pp. 11, 12.
68. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1843.
69. Goode, Wm. H., Outposts of Zion (Poe and Hitchcock, Cincinnati, 1864), pp. 99, 100.
70. Cooke, Capt. P. St. G., "Journal" (ed. by W. E. Connelley) of an expedition of a detachment of U. S. dragoons from Fort Leavenworth to protect the annual caravan of traders from Missouri to Mexican boundary on road to Santa Fe, May 27 to July 21, 1843, in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, v. XII, pp. 238-241.
71. Boone, Capt. Nathan, "Journal," Chronicles of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, v. VII, p. 92.
72. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1844.
73. Peters, Dewitt C., Kit Carson's Life and Adventures, from facts narrated by himself (Dustin, Gilman, and Co., Hartford, Conn., c1874), p. 219. Also, A Narrative of Adventures and Explorations, p. 488.
74. Bancroft, H. H., Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth, v. I, pp. 529, 530.
75. Abert, J. W., "Notes," in W. H. Emory's Notes of a Military Reconnoissance From Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California (Washington), pp. 393, 394. Colonel Fremont, in Memoirs of My Life (Belford, Clarke, and Co., Chicago, 1887), gives but cursory review of this 1845 trip across eastern Kansas. Independence creek according to Abert is a little more than a day's journey east of Big John spring. The map made by Abort in 1847 to accompany this volume does not show any "Independence" creek. Between the camp of July 3, west of Fish creek, and the camp of July 4, 1846, at Big John spring, the map shows four streams crossed by the expedition: an unnamed branch of Pool creek, Pool creek itself, Bluff creek, and Rock creek, a branch of Bluff. The branch of Pool creek seems most likely the one meant.
76. Montaignes, Francois des, "The Plains," in The Western Journal, St. Louis, New series, v. IV, pp. 224-226, 295.
77. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries of July 4, 5, 1845.
78. Palmer, Joel, "Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains," in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, v. XXX, p. 65.
79. Cooke, P. St. George, Scenes and Adventures in the Army, pp. 368-372, entry of July 4, 1845.
80. Johnson and Winter, op. cit., pp. 148, 149.
81. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry for July 4, 1846.
82. Walker, William, "Journals," ed. by Wm. E. Connelley, in Nebraska State Historical Society's Proceedings, Second series (Lincoln, 1899), v. III, pp. 182, 183, 188.
83. Ibid., pp. 186, 187.
84. Elliott, Richard Smith, Notes Taken in. Sixty Years (R. P. Studley & Co., St. Louis, 1883), p. 223.
85. Fish's crossing was near the mouth of the Wakarusa. Elm Grove, known also as Caravan Grove, Round Grove, and Round Tree Grove, was near Olathe- [Santa Fe trail] Field Notes by Joseph C. Brown," Kansas Historical Society's Eighteenth Biennial Report, p. 117.
86. Edwards, Frank S., A Campaign in New Mexico With Colonel Doniphan (Carey and Hart, Philadelphia, 1847), pp. 24, 25.
87. Johnston, Abraham Robinson, "Journal, 1846," ed. by Ralph P. Bieber, in Southwest Historical Series (Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale), v. IV. pp. 76-78, entry of July 4, 1846.
88. This camp was near the site of present Scranton.
89. Gibson, George Rutledge, "Journal of a Soldier Under Kearny and Doniphan, 1846-1847," ed. by Ralph P. Bieber, in Southwest Historical Series, v. HI, pp. 133-135, entry of July 4, 1846.
90. Abert, J. W., loc. cit., pp. 393, 394. W. H. Emory, the engineer, p. 10, explains that he did not publish his diary of this part of the journey because the way had been so commonly traversed.
91. Hughes, John T., "Doniphan's Expedition," reprinted in W. E. Connelley's Doniphan's Expedition. (Topeka, 1907), pp. 155, 156.
92. Edwards, Marcellus Ball, "Journal, 1846-1847," ad. by Ralph P. Bieber, in Southwest Historical Series, v. IV, pp. 125, 126, entry of July 4, 1846.
93. Robinson, Jacob S., A Journal of the Santa Fe Expedition Under Colonel Doniphan, a reprint ed. by Carl L. Cannon (Princeton, 1932), p. 9, entry of July 4, 1846.
94. Ibid., footnote, p. 9, suggests that this camp was probably at Indian creek, a branch of Turkey creek.
95. Magoffin, Susan Shelby, Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico, diary, 1846-1847 ed by Stella Drumm (Yale Press, 1926), pp. 40-42, entry of July 4, 1846.
96. Parkman, Francis, The Oregon Trail, Sixth edition (Little Brown Boston 1875) pp. 162, 163.
97. Bryant, Edwin, What I Saw in California (Richard Bentley, London, 1849), pp. 100, 101.
98. Ferguson, Philip Gooch, "Diary, 1847-1848," ed. by Ralph P. Bieber, in Southwest Historical Series, v. IV, pp. 22, 23, 294. Ferguson was editor of Miner's Prospect at Potosi, Mo., when he enlisted.
99. Andreas, A. T., History of the State of Kansas (Chicago, 1883), p. 1431, 216-220, 254, 255. Also, James Josiah Webb, "Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 1844-1847," ed. by, Ralph P. Bieber, in Southwest Historical Series, v. I, pp. 31, 298. Even the original account of this trip by J. J. Webb does not allude to July 4. The present owner of the manuscript, Paul Webb, New Haven, Conn., a grandson, suggests that the men along the trail may not have been able to keep accurate track of the days; and that anyway they were probably too busy looking after their scalps to pay any attention to the date of the Declaration of Independence.-Letter, New Haven, Conn., March 24, 1939, to author of this article.
100. Elliott, R. S., op. cit., pp.
101. Ibid Also Thomas Fitzpatrick, letter from Bent's fort, Arkansas river, September .., 18, 1847, to Thomas H. Harvey, St. Louis.-Senate Ex. Doc. No. 1, 30 cong., 1 sess., appendix.
102. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 211, entry of July 4, 1847.
103. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1847.
104. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 254, entry of July 4, 1848.
105. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1848.
106. Bancroft, H. H., Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth, v. I, pp. 544, 545. 107. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1849.
108. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 292, entry of July 4, 1849.
109. Irvin, S. M., "Meteorological Observations at Iowa and Sac Mission," Manuscript division, Kansas Historical Society, readings for July 4, 1849.
110. Shaw, R. C., Across the Plains in Forty-Nine (W. C. West, Farmland, Ind., 1896), p 53.
111. Irvin, S. M., "Meteorological Observations," reading for July 4, 1850.
112. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries July 3-6, 1850.
113. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., pp. 311, 312, entries for June 28, July 5 and 6, 1850.
114. Langworthy, Franklin, Scenery of the Plains, Mountains and Mines, a diary, 1850-1853, ed. by Paul C. Phillips (Princeton, 1932), p. 65, entry of July 4, 1850.
115. Steele, John, Across the Plains in 1850, ed. by Joseph Schafer (Caxton Club, Chicago, 1930), pp. 86, 87, entry of July 4, 1850.
116. Smith, C. W., Journal of a Trip to California, in summer, 1850, ed. by R. W. G. Vail (Cadmus Book Shop, New York, 1920), pp. 67, 68, entry of July 4.
117. Elliott, R. S., op. cit., p. 269.
118. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 327, entry of July 4, 1851.
119. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entries of July 3, 4, 1851.
120. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 353, entry of July 2, 1852. 121. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1852.
122. Walker, William, "Journals," loc. cit., p. 382. 123. Meeker, Jotham, "Journal," entry of July 4, 1853.
124. "Early Military Posts, Missions, and Camps," extract from the New York Tribune, June 22, 1854, in Kansas Historical Collections, v. 1-II, pp, 263-270.
125. Beckwith, Lt. E. G., "Report of Exploration of a Route for the Pacific Railroad," in Pacific Railroad Explorations and Surveys (Washington, 1855), 3 vols., v. II, pp. 10, 16, 21.
126. Lowe, Percival G., "Kansas, as Seen in the Indian Territory," in Kansas Historical Collections, v. IV, pp. 360-366.
