Cass County, Missouri - Chapter 2: Whence Came We, 1917

MISSOURI. "THE CHILD OF THE STORM" - SOURCES OF EARLIEST SETTLERS - MORE AMERICANIZED SETTLERS - THE MISSOURIAN OF TODAY - HIS RECORD - DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS OF THE BORDER AND CIVIL CON¬ FLICTS - EARLY SETTLEMENTS FOLLOWED THE RIVERS - LEWIS AND CLARK S EXPEDITION.

John Scott, the delegate from Missouri Territory, in Congress in 1819, referred to Missouri as "The Child of the Storm." Very aptly was this name applied to the territory he represented. Not only viewing it from the stormy political questions raised when she sought admission to the Union, but also from the class of its early settlers.

The earliest settlers, coming as they did from three distinct sources, each possessing racial peculiarities, habits, prejudices and principles. When this blood was mingled there is no wonder why the offspring should be turbulent, courageous, and at the same time reasonably lovable and firm in their convictions. Convictions with these early adventurers was synonymous with action. The Spaniard came to this new world from his home then deluged with war, reaching the lower Mississippi his adven¬ turous spirit leading him up the "Great River" to our shore. The French¬ man coming by way of the great lakes to the Mississippi River and down to our shores. He, too, came from a country then in the throes of a bloody war.

Then there came a more Americanized people across our eastern mountains, forests and plains to settle beyond the "Great River." These were from the eastern shores of the United States, made up of a people out of the old English and other stocks. These had mingled their blood for quite a century and so amalgamated had become quite a different stock from any of the originals.

Take the offspring of such peoples so mixed in blood, brawn and brain and you have a Missourian. Is it any wonder that today we ask to be shown? Is it any wonder such a peoples met and mastered such political and physical storms as came to them? It was such peoples that furnished soldiers to all the wars of our nation. Scarcely a half century after these early settlers had made their homes west of the "Great River," we see Missourians under Donavan traversing thousands of miles to bat¬ tle for a common country; making marches and fighting battles unpar¬ alleled elsewhere in the history of any country. In the War of the Rebellion the legions from Missouri were marshalled on either side of the struggle. Their deeds of valor are written high in the history and poetry of our country. The character of the early settlers is portrayed in the histories we have of these events. We have a striking description of the hardships endured as well as the social enjoyments of early settlers in two writings of fiction, coming from different views. We refer to Mrs. C. A. Stanley's "Order No. 11" and Mrs. M. H. McCarter's "Walls of Men." One was from a Missouri lady, telling the story from a Southern sympathizer's standpoint, the other from a Kansas lady telling it from a Northerner's standpoint. Each contains much that is purely fiction and both leave much of the truth, plain and simple, not told. Yet each gives enough of the statement from their respective points of view to show the character of their respective people participating in the stirring events of the early war of 1856 on the Missouri-Kansas border. By reading these two books of fiction the present day inhabitant among us can get a clear idea of the character of the western Missouri and eastern Kansas settlers of 1856. Neither were wholly right, yet both honest in their convictions and determined with life and property to uphold their respect¬ ive opinions.

These settlers of Cass County and surrounding country, like their predecessors in the eastern part of our State, followed the rivers. They came up the Missouri River and up the Osage River and their tributaries. This accounts for part of our early settlement coming north from the Osage River region to meet the southward bound from the Missouri river, meeting in their onward march for new homes on the high plane between the two rivers.

Coincident with the purchase of this vast region by the United States was Lewis and Clark's expedition to the Pacific Ocean. On their way up the Missouri they established (in 1804) a fort at the present site of

Sibley, between Kansas City and Lexington. The name Clark was given to honor one of the leaders of the expedition. When a treaty was made by the government with the Osage Indians, the name was changed to Fort Osage. In time the name was changed to Fort Sibley in honor of George C. Sibley, an active army officer of his day. So Fort Clark, Fort Osage and Fort Sibley refer to one and the same place.