Cass County, Missouri - Chapter 42: Reminiscences, Continued, 1917

In the month of April, 1954, I was one of a party of fifteen who camped for a day or two in Cass County, on the south side of Camp Branch, about one-half a mile, or so, from the site of the present Mennonite Church, called Sycamore. We were a party of gold seekers, on our way to California, and driving a herd of beef cattle to sell when we got there. We had started from Cooper County, Missouri. The prairies were green, but grass was short, for it was early in the season. We had come through Rose Hill and across Big Creek bottom, looking out always for good grazing. At our first camping place in Cass we remained for a day or two, because we found no better grass anywhere than was grow¬ ing on the lands now belonging to Oesch, King, Schrock, and the Mark Beamer farm.

About the third day we broke camp, and drove forward in a north¬ westerly direction, passing through Harrisonville, which then was a smaller town than Rose Hill, and continuing our northwesterly course, we passed a little to the south of where Belton now stands, and struck our next camp on the banks of the Blue. At the camp on the Blue, I saw my first Indians. They were dressed in Indian style, but they were civilized Indians from the reservation on the Kaw. I was born in Jackson County, at Independence, in 1834. Doubtless the sight of Indians was common enough at Independence, at the time of my birth, but, before the days my recollection began, I was carried to Cooper County, where there were none.

From the Blue we pointed our cattle northwesterly to the Kaw, which we forded at Wakarusha, where we struck the California trail and followed it with little deviation to the end of our destination in the

Sacramento Valley. Our route ran through South Pass and about eighty miles to the north of Salt Lake. Everywhere the Indians were friendly and in almost every place the grazing was good. Our cattle improved and gained in flesh continually, and were in fine condition for beef upon our arrival in California.

After four years of checkered and varying success, I returned to Missouri in the fall of 1858. I had seen much good country, from the Mississippi to the Golden Gate, and up and down the Pacific Coast; I had beheld visions of magnificence and sublimity, and vales and dells and coves of bewitching beauty, but all things considered, Cass County seemed to suit me better than any other place I had found. Accordingly, in the spring of 1859, I located near Dayton, and planted the first crop I had ever grown on my own account.

In 1854, on my way out, when I first passed through Cass County, already the timber lands had all been entered, and the log houses of pioneers were to be seen along the line where timber and prairie met, but not a single building was visible upon the broad bosom of the gently rolling prairie that stretched away and away on every hand, where deer and antelopes seemed the only occupants. On my return, in 1858, I was amazed to behold the transformation wrought in four short years. Set¬ tlers and speculators had rushed in, and the last of the prairie lands had been entered. Still the virgin prairies stretched out, for miles and miles in every direction, almost unscarred by the plow ; and yet, here and there, on every hand, were to be seen little houses that had sprung up and little fields fenced and broken, and some commodious houses and handsome farms, teeming with abounding crops. Everywhere was to be seen the evidence of the rapid march of the onward rush of conquering civiliza¬ tion.

The deer and the antelope had fled ; comparatively little game of any kind was remaining in the county, excepting rabbits and squirrels and numerous flocks of prairie chickens, and, in the spring seasons and the autumns, tens of thousands of ducks and geese and brants and cranes and swans, as they winged their way North and South. The absence of game, however, was of little significance to me. Although I was reared on the frontier and traversed all the haunts of game in the regions of the West, and had seen, it seems to me, millions of buffalo, and tens of thousands of antelope and innumerable deer, yet never in my life did I kill one of them.

Shortly after my return from the West, I married. The farm I located on near Dayton was close by the farm of Major Ferrell, who was my step-father, but a real father to me. And from that day to this I have continued here in Cass, excepting in the stormy period of the war when everybody had to leave. Here I reared my children, and here I have buried my wife. When my children were married and had gone out for themselves, and my wife and I were left alone, I sold my farm of four hundred and ten acres, lying one mile north and two miles east of Dayton, and have lived at Garden City nearly all of the time since then, visiting sometimes in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Cali¬ fornia, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas. But to me Cass County is the middle of the world.

It was only three years from the time I located in Cass County to the breaking out of the war. My sympathies were with the South, but I was opposed to drawing the sword, and I did not go into the army. All of the barbarisms and terrors and abuses inflicted on the Belgians today are no worse than the horrors endured right here in Cass County. The terrible Turk, the furious Hun, the ferocious Bulgar, the fierce Prussian, are no more brutal than we were among ourselves, brother against brother. In Cass, so close to Osawatomie, the seat of John Brown, all of the lingering bitterness and pent up passion and hate and spite of the border feud were added to the ordinary sufferings and cruelties of war. The Jayhawkers and some of the Bushwhackers and some of the Home Guards vied with one another in diabolic ferocity. Conditions grew worse and worse as the terrible months and weary years wore on. Personal safety compelled me to leave Cass before Order Number Eleven drove every man from his home. I moved into Henry County, but, because of my known sympathies, it soon got too hot for me there. I took to the plains and made my way to Colorado, where I remained until peace was re-established and the frenzy of hate had subsided. Then I returned to Cass and rebuilded my home.

During the whole period of the war, I endeavored at all times to be inoffensive, adhering to my own views without obnoxious antagonisms. Once I got into serious trouble. Osceola was occupied by a portion of General Price's army. A squad of men came through my neighborhood, requisitioning wagons and teams, to move supplies. They seized a wagon belonging to my nearest neighbor, a loyal Union man, who, because of my known political sympathies, appealed to me to exert myself to save his wagon, if possibly I could. I went immediately to see the man com- manding the squad. It so chanced that I recognized him as a man of another neighborhood of Henry. Although I knew who he was, I did not know whether or not he held military commission. I told him if he had orders from his superior to take the wagon, we had nothing more to say, but if it was taken for any other purpose or by any other orders we refused to let it go. He took the wagon. We learned, in a day or two, it was not delivered to the Confederate Army at Osceola, but had been taken ten or twelve miles away and carefully hid. I knew then that the squad was not Confederate soldiers, but a bunch of thieves, masquerading as Bushwhackers, "requisitioning" supplies for their own use. Thereupon, I went straight after the wagon. The man who had taken it was not at home when I got it, but I told his wife who I was and what I was going to do, and then I took the wagon and delivered it to its owner. And next I reported to the Confederate picket stationed at Grand River bridge on the Osceola road. The pickets, of course, were not authorized to take cognizance. However, I told them who the man was, and what he had done, and how he had fraudulently represented himself to be a Confederate officer, charged with requisitioning wagons and teams for General Price's army. At the same time, I represented that when the Confederates had withdrawn from Osceola, the Southern sympathizers would be held responsible and harried for all the brigandage and depredations of irregulars. But this was not the end of it. The thief who had "requisitioned" the wagon reported me to a command of passing Confederate cavalry, and told them I was a Yankee and had robbed him and taken his wagon. They believed his report. A posse of cavalry was sent after me. I was taken prisoner, searched, and ques¬ tioned sharply. I told them the straight of the story. They knew there was a lie out and somebody had told it. They believed I was lying, and decided to deal with me severely. My hands were tied behind my back, the slip knot was drawn close around my neck, the rope was thrown over a limb and pulled taut. I thought sure my end had come, especially as some of the men had evidently been drinking. They said they were going to hang me, and I thought certain they would. Everything was ready for the order to swing me up. And the order was given: "Turn him loose and let him go, he's telling the truth!"

It is now sixty-three years since I first stood upon the soil of Cass. I was a young man then. Now I am old. The last of the pioneers will soon be gone. I count them on my fingers - very few. I glance again toward the golden west; the sun is sinking low. I am eighty-three.