Gove County KS Archives History - Books .....The Indian Occupancy 1930 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/ksfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com July 22, 2005, 6:08 pm Book Title: History Of Gove County, Kansas CHAPTER II THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY This portion of the Great Plains seems to have been claimed by the Pawnees at the time it first became known to the white men. -This tribe was then powerful. One of their principal villages was in Republic county; the Pawnee Trail ran from there south, crossing the Smoky Hill in Ellsworth county; Pawnee Rock, noted as a battle ground, is in Barton county. From these points on their eastern frontier the Pawnees ranged far out on the plains and seemed to have claimed as their own all the territory drained by the Platte and Kansas rivers. They had a village at the junction of the north and south branches of the Platte river, where the city of North Platte, Neb., now stands. In the year 1720 a Spanish expedition-under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Don Pedro de Villazur set out from Santa Fe (now the capital of the state of New Mexico) to visit this village. This expedition marched to the Indian village of El Cuartilejo—which modern research has located on Beaver Creek in the northern part of Scott county, Kansas,—thence directly north to the Pawnee village on the Platte. Here the Spaniards were ambushed by the Indians and all massacred or put to flight (Aug. 16, 1720).* * Note 2. This expedition has nothing to do with the history of Gove county except that its line of march was very near our county and may even have crossed it. It may be, then, that Col. Villazur and his companions, in 1720, were the first white men to see Gove county. The story has been written up by John U. Dunbar in the publications of the Kansas Historical Society; his map shows that the line of march ran very close to the west line of our county. The Pawnees finally lost their power through the ravages of smallpox and war with other tribes, and in 1838 ceded all their lands south of the Platte to the United States. The Kaw Indians also claimed a portion of this country. In 1825 they sold certain of their lands to the United States. The treaty described the northern boundary of the ceded lands in part as follows: "From the source of the Nemaha river thence to the source of the Kansas river, leaving the old village of the Pania (Pawnee) Republic to the west." By the Kansas river was meant the Smoky Hill branch, and this identifies our county as part of the Kaw claim. At this time the government was engaged in moving some of the eastern tribes to new homes in the west, and these treaties with the Kaws and Pawnees were for the purpose of procuring lands for the new comers. The real occupiers of the plains after the supremacy of the Pawnees was broken were the Cheyennes and Arapahoes and their allies the Sioux. The first treaty made by the United States with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1825, was a simple treaty of peace. In 1851 another treaty of peace was made with these tribes. A large emigration from California was then crossing the plains. A council of Indian tribes was called by the government at Fort Laramie, Sept. 17, 1851. Each tribe was assigned boundaries in accordance with its claims. The treaty with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes fixed as their boundaries the Platte river on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, the Arkansas river on the south and for the eastern boundary a line "from the crossing of the Santa Fe road" on the Arkansas in a northwesterly direction to the forks of the Platte. This would include Gove county. The Indians granted the government the right to establish roads and military or trading posts in their territory; in return the government was to pay them $50,000 per annum for fifty years, distributing this sum among the tribes according to their respective numbers. Before many years this treaty was broken and the Indians were ravaging all the frontier settlements of Kansas. But these depredations will be treated of in a subsequent chapter. The Indians have left few traces. One of our streams is called Indian Creek, probably for cause. Cheyenne Creek, which empties into the Smoky from the south, is said to have derived its name from a skirmish which a troop of U. S. Cavalry once had with a band of hostiles near the mouth of the creek. Arrow heads have been found, made of the primitive flint, also some of the iron ones which the savages learned to make after they were able to procure iron from the whites, but these are about all the relics of the aborigines that have ever been found. The Indian population was sparse and perhaps never consisted of anything but scattered hunting parties. If there ever was an Indian village in Gove county it seems to have left no trace of its existence. But the time has now come to tell of the first visit of American white men to our county. How many know that John C. Fremont, "The pathfinder of the Rockies," was in Gove county seventy-five years ago? Additional Comments: History of Gove County, Kansas by W. P. Harrington Gove City, Kan. 1930 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/gove/history/1930/historyo/indianoc4ms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ksfiles/ File size: 5.5 Kb