Clinton County, Missouri - Chapter 2: Location and Environment, 1923

CLINTOISF COUNTY TAKEN FROM CLAY - NAMED IN HONOR OF DEWITT CLINTON - INDIAN RESERVATION ON THE WEST - NO RIVER FRONTAGE - LACK OF RIVER TRANSPORTATION IN THE EARLY DAYS - REMOVAL OF INDIANS TO THE WEST - ORIGIN OF THE NAME MISSOURI - THE MISSOURI RIVER - STATE¬ HOOD - PLATTE PURCHASE AND CLINTON COUNTY - TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.

Clinton County was carved out of this long border strip of Missouri, called Clay County in 1833, the forty-third county organized, but now leading in certain live stock interests, and ranking high in all agricultural productions.

Settlers of Clay County had pushed over into this part, finding it a beautiful and productive country, and some very good trails were opened up from Liberty, Camden, Fort Leavenworth, and other points on the river.

When the county was set apart and organized it was given the name of Clinton, for DeWitt Clinton, who had been Governor of New York. He had been dead four years, but his name was held fit to be immortalized in this way. And what better tribute, what more lasting monument, than the name attached to one of God's fairest spots. Fair by nature, and by cultivation, and peopled by a class worthy of habitation in such a splendid domain, each year adding step by step in the onward march of culture and prosperity, until a place is held little dreamed of by the namesake of a century ago. Clay now, in 1833, reduced to what is now her limitations, had for her neighbor a part of the Indian land known now as Platte County. It was very desirable land for farming and many whites had gone over and taken up their abode. Fort Leavenworth had been estab¬ lished in 1827, and added the advantage of another trading post.

Clinton County touched Platte and had what is now Buchanan County on her west. Joseph Robideaux had established St. Joseph, a little trading post, in 1827, another point on the river of advantage.

Above Buchanan County were Andrew, Holt, Nodaway and Atchison Counties, all held by the Indians above mentioned, from Iowa line to the far southwest corner of Clay County and out to the Missouri River.

To say the very least, it was fraught with greatest inconvenience, if not danger, for white men to cross this section, as was necessary to reach the river, from Clinton County, though only a good day's drive from points indicated on the river front. Our land was rich and beautiful, but inland. To us the river did not come, with its subtle suggestions of the wild majestic mountains of the West, and the romance of the Indian maidens and their lovers along the purling waters of the infant stream. The touch and personnel of the wonderful Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804 must be upon other shores. And the dreams of the far downstream, with its ever widening yellow waters lapping the feet of an advancing civilization, were not for us.

Though tucked near the elbow of this great artery of travel and commerce, we were denied the river front, with the excitement attending incoming boats, with their word from points downstream, from St. Louis with two ferry landings as far back as 1817, and her people two-thirds French, and New Orleans bright with splashes from Paris and Madrid. Ours were not the picturesque river men with the lore of their calling, nor were we to feel our imaginations burning with high inquisitiveness over the incoming boat. What friend, what immigrant, what treasure, what message? were not often on the lips or minds of the Clintonian. Nor his the burden of the reloading of products, nor his to part with those returning East. liberty, Randolph, Fort Leavenworth and St. Joseph were to feel and know these pleasures and these pangs, and if Clinton County got the experience of river life, it must be a tale twice told, or after a dreary day of travel by pioneer methods.

And however romantic and exciting the event at the front, 40 or 50 miles, or even 30 miles, travel by horseback or with the monotonous cluck of a wagon would dim the clearest impressions of the one most willing to bring home a story new and entertaining, with his load of river town commodities. Clinton County and her neighbors were working and think¬ ing, and increasing in numbers, and there still flowed the river beyond the

The treaty between Missouri and the Indians settling the latter upon the six counties mentioned had been made in Chicago, but not yet ratified, so a correspondence was taken up by which it was hoped to change this wilderness, this home of the red man, and wild beasts of the forest, into homes and farm lands for the needs of the energetic settler, with its highways reaching advantageously the little marts along the 140 miles of river front, and Clinton County was to profit by the change,

Missouri was made a territory of the second grade June 4, 1812. It was divided into five counties, St, Charles, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, and New Madrid. Her population was between 12,000 and 14,000.

It has been the teaching for all these years that Missouri means "Big Muddy" or "Muddy Water," but the Kansas City Star of the summer of 1922 gives the following, which may be well worthy a place on this page: "The 'Colyumist' in the Independence Examiner has gone digging into the back files of the Boonville Democrat and from a paper published in 1897 has discovered that the name Missouri does not mean 'Muddy Water,' as is popularly supposed, but 'Wooden Canoe.' It seems the river was first named Pe-kit-a-noui, an Indian word meaning muddy water, by Mar¬ quette, but in 1712 the name was changed to Missouri because a tribe of Indians of that name lived at the river's mouth. The word Missouri be¬ longs to the Illinois dialect of the Algonquin -Indian language. The tribe known by that name were 'the people who use wooden canoes' to the Indians. - ^Kansas City Star."

The Missouri River has ever been fickle and uncertain in the minute details of its often insiduous windings, has held mainly to a southeasterly course along the western border of what is now Missouri. This great river of 3,000 miles in length, coming on with majestic sweep of yellow waters through a valley of one-half million and more square miles of the greatest and richest cultivated region in the world, descends 7,000 feet in her course from Montana to St. Charles, bisects Missouri, the center state in point of location and admission, holding one-third of her domain in a great crotch with the Mississippi, as this great stream crosses the last state of its wanderings.

Missouri was proclaimed a state Aug. 10, 1821, by President Monroe, and had 17 counties. In January, 1822, Clay County was organized and extended from the middle of the channel of the Missouri River north to the Iowa line, then quite indistinct owing to the wild condition of the country. This made Clay County the whole border land on the west for Missouri.

Platte Purchase and Clinton County. - In January, 1835, the Hon. L. F. Linn, then a United States senator from the State of Missouri, took up correspondence with authorities concerning this little strip of land, miles on its east line, 150 miles on the west, following the meanderings of the river, and 15 miles average breadth. It was fully set forth by the Indian agent, Maj. John Dougherty, that it was not suitable as an Indian reservation, but was necessary additional land for Missouri with the fine natural boundary line of the Missouri River. The several tribes agreed to the idea and were willing to take a like portion of land west of the river.

From the full text of the treaty it is found that the United States through the hands of William Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs, paid the Indians $7,500 in money at the signing at Fort Leavenworth. And the United States promised to furnish the lowas and Sac and Foxes five comfortable houses, break for them 200 acres of ground, furnish them with a farmer, a blacksmith, schoolmaster, and interpreter, agricultural implements for five years, rations for one year, one ferry boat, 100 cows and calves, five bulls, 100 stock hogs, when they required them, to furnish a mill, and $500 on moving expenses.

This record gives it as finished Sept. 17, 1836, signed by William Clark, 27 Indians and 12 witnesses, at Fort Leavenworth. This done and Platte County folk returned to await organization of that county, which had a phenomenal rush. Clinton County folk were free to go across the newly acquired land and to help to make St. Joseph the substantial city it is today, and scatter from Weston, once the far west market and shipping station of the United States, many of her honors and glories to other settlements springing up along the river.