Jackson County, Missouri - Chapter 3: The Great Indian Trade, 1881

Chapter 3: The Great Indian Trade

Proposed Remmial of the Indians to the West - The Numbers to be Moved - The Removal - The New Locations - Effects on Western Trade - Founding of Westport - And Concentration of The Trade There.

Having thus briefly sketched the fur trade and its result in the recognition of the advantages of the point at which Kansas City came subsequently to be built, and the recognition of the same advantage by the various exploring parties sent into the unknown west, it comes next in order to state a set of contemporaneous facts which led to a most important increase of the Indian trade of this section and its relations to the future city.

The close of the British war of 18 1 2, which occurred in 181 5, was followed by an immense immigration to the west and northwest during the ten years following. Mr. Schoolcraft, in his history of the Indian tribes, says that no such movement of people into a new country was ever witnessed before in the entire history of the world. This brought the whites into contact with the Indians in the northwestern territory, in the present States of Ohio, Indiana, lUinois and Michigan, and in the southwest in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The indigenous tribes still lived in these localities. This pressure upon the Indians and curtailment of their hunting grounds led to constant conflicts and bloody wars, and the necessity of removing the Indians to more distant localities became every year more apparent, and a policy of that character gradually shaped itself.

Proposal To Remove The Indians To The West

In pursuance of this fact. President Monroe, Jan. 27th, 1825, sent a message to Congress, formally proposing such a course. At the same time Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, furnished Congress with a statement of the numbers and locations of the Indians proposed to be removed. The whole number was 92,664, divided as follows : In Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and New York 13,250, which he proposed should be removed to the country north of Illinois and west of Lake Michigan. In Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi 53,625, which, together with the Wyandottes, Shawnees, Senecas, Delawares, Kaskaskias, Munsas and Eel Rivers of the northwest, 3,082; the Seminoles, in Florida, 5,000, and Dela wares, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Weas, Peorias, lowas, Prankashaws, Quapaws, Osages and Cherokees of Missouri arid Arkansas, he proposed to locate on the territory west of Missouri and Arkansas, occupied at that time by the Osages and Kansas.

Opposition To Removal

This proposition of removal was severely opposed by the people of all the States mentioned. The I,egislatures of some of them adopted resolutions strongly protesting against it, and memorials were sent to Congress from the people protesting against it. Most of the Indians were receiving annuities from the Government, and their trade was a valuable item of business which the people desired to retain. The wildest stories regarding the sterility and uninhabitableness of the country proposed for them were circulated among both whites and Indians, and the communications of Gen. Clark, of Missouri and others well acquainted with the country, from expeditions they had made through it, were inadequate to quiet such misrepresentations. Hence delegations of Indians were sent out to examine it for themselves. Among these delegations was one consisting of representatives of several tribes in the northwest, in charge of Rev. Isaac McCoy, father of our esteemed fellow citizen, John C. McCoy. This party crossed the country to Younger's Ferry, on the Missouri River, at Randolph Bluffs in 1828, and pressed on into the Indian country west of Missouri and Arkansas. This fact is mentioned here because Mr. McCoy several years afterward, in 1831, after the removal of part of the Indians had taken place, caused the establishment of Shawnee Mission, eight miles south of this city, Dr. Johnston Lykins, recently deceased, being placed at its head.

The Removal Authorized

The Government and the Indians having become satisfied of the suitableness of the proposed country. Congress on the 28th of May, 1829, passed an act authorizing President Jackson to cause the removal of the Indians, and to allot the different tribes their portion in the new territory. The Kansas Indians, an indigenous tribe, who occupied a large tract of the country in Missouri and a large part of the State of Kansas extending from the great Nemaha southward, had in 1825 ceded it to the government, so that a part of the land for the new reservation was already in hand. Subsequently in 1833 the Pawnees were induced to relinquish the title to that part of Nebraska lying between the Piatt and the great Nemaha, for the same purpose.

The Removal

In pursuance of the authority given by Congress, President Jackson caused treaties to be made with the Indians for the relinquishment of their eastern reservations and removal to the west. These treaties were made as follows : With the Creeks, April 4, 1832; with the Seminoles, May 9, 1832; with the Appalachicoles, October 11, 1832; with the Chickasaws, October 20, 1832 ; with the Kickapoos of Missouri, October 24, 1832; with the Pottawatomies, of Indiana, October 26, 1830; with the Shawnees and Delawares of Missouri, October 26, 1832; with the Piankashaws and Peorias, October 26, 1832; with the Weas, October 29, 1832, and with the Senecas and the Shawnees of Neosho, October 29, 1632. The removal followed soon after the treaties and by 1836 the Choctaws and Chickasaws, Creeks and part of the Cherokees and Seminoles, the Osages, Quapaws, Senecas, Shawnees, Delawares, Kickapoos, Weas, Peorias, Piankashaws, Kaskaskias and Ottawas, had located on the new reservations. These numbered 37,748, leaving out the Creeks. There were yet to come the Wyandottes, Chippewas, Pottawatomies and part of the Ottawas, beside some of the southern tribes.

The New Location

When these Indians were all located, which occurred soon after 1836, they occupied the territory as follows: Beginning at the Platte River in Nebraska the Otoes occupied the country southward to the Little Nemaha; between Little and Great Nemaha were half breeds ; south of the Great Nemaha arranged in the order here mentioned were the lowas. Sac and Kickapoos, the southern hne of the territory of the latter intersecting the Missouri River at Fort Leavenworth. The Delawares came next with a small river front but extending far back to the west. The Wyandottes occupied a triangular tract bounded by the Missouri River on one side the Kaw on another and a line running diagonally from the Missouri near Fort Leavenworth to the Kaw River at about the same distance as Fort Leavenworth from its mouth. The Pottawatomies lived west of the Wyandottes and south of the Delawares, their territory extending over to the south side of Kaw River. South and east of the Pottawatomies, extending to the Missouri State line were the Shawnees, south of the Shiwnees and on the Osage River were the Weas, Piankaskaws, Peorias, Kaskaskias and a band of affiliated Sacs and Foxes. West of these were the Kaws, and on the south of the Weas were the Miamis. Between these tribes and Fort Scott and extending from the State line on the east to the Vetdigris river on the west, was an unoccupied strip reserved for the tribes of New York. South of this strip and lying along the State line to the Indian Territory was Cherokee country, and west of the Cherokees were the Osages. South of them and in the Indian Territory were the Seminoles, Quapaws and an affiliated band of Shawnees and Senecas. West of these was the larger territory of the Cherokees, and farther south lay the lands of the 'Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws and Chickasaws.

These allotments of land, it will be seen, occupied the entire country southward from the Platte River in Nebraska to the southern line of the Indian Territory, and extending west to the wild Indians of the plains, thus covering the most Nebraska, Kansas and the Indian Territory. In 1836, 45,000 Indians had been concentrated in this territory and there were as many more to come; and they did come soon afterward, making a total of 90,000. Besides these lands they had been given money for their eastern reservations, the total of which was ^26,983,068, which, when they came here was being paid to them in annuities, This made them immensly richer than they had been in the east, and since their trade there was regarded by the people as a valuable thing, it is easy to see that after their removal it was far more valuable.

Effect On Western Trade

The removal of the Indians to this country, from 1832 to 1840, and the trade caused by them as they came into the county, did not immediately effect the French settlement at the mouth of the Kaw, but it greatly stimulated the growth of other places along the border, but none more than the present town of

Westport. Rev. Isaac McCoy, who has already been mentioned in connection with the Indian removal, and the establishment of Shawnee Mission, determined to settle in the country, and so entered the land four miles south of the French settlement, at the intersection of the roads from that settlement and from Independence into the Indian country. This was in 1831. The following year his son, John C. McCoy, who figured so prominently in the early history of Kansas City, estabhshed a trading house at this place, having the Indians to trade with on the one side and the new settlers in Missouri on the other. At that time steamboats were running on the Missouri River, and M. Chouteau of the American Fur company was receiving his supplies from St. Louis by them. These goods were, of course, landed at his warehouse. Mr. McCoy received his first stock of goods in the same way and by the steamer John Hancock, but he caused them to be landed in the woods above Chouteau's house, at about the place where Grand avenue now reaches the river. This was in 1832, and it was the first landing ever made at what afterward became the Kansas City levee.

Westport Founded

In 1833, Mr. McCoy's ideas of his new trading post had become so enlarged that he laid off the ground adjacent to it into town lots and called it Westport. The new town thus founded grew rapidly, and in a short time Messrs. Lucas & Cavanaugh, Capt. John A. Suter, A. G. Boon, Street & Baker, and Alfonda Van Biber had established trading houses and opened an extensive trade with the neighboring Indians. Mr. McCoy being a surveyor was soon induced to accept an engagement from the Government in surveys that were then being made south and west of the river, and hence sold his trading house to Wm. M. Chick. But these were not all ; many others came in from year to year, and among them Messrs. W. G. and G. W. Ewing, who afterward became a most extensive concern.

At this time the principal landing place for goods was at Blue Mills, eight miles below Independence, but the distance made it desirable to the Westport merchants that a nearer- landing place should be had ; hence some of them followed Mr. McCoy's example and caused their goods to be landed at the French settlement, first at Chouteau's warehouse, but afterward higher up the river, as the sequel will show. This was the second recognition of the trade advantages of this point, the settlement of the French here having been the first. But as above stated, the occurrence of these events at Westport had little immediate effect upon the French settlement. It continued as it had been from the first, the center of a most extensive trade conducted with far off Indians by the primitive methods of the early pioneers. The trade at Westport soon became larger, but it was of a different character. It was a point to which the Indians came personally to trade and from whence the government traders with the different tribes were supplied. Westport thus became a great center for this near-by Indian trade for precisely the same reasons, and on precisely the same principles that led M. Chouteau to locate his general agency for the American Fur company on the ground now occupied by Kansas City. It was the most central point that had command of good transportation facilities for receiving supplies, and the development of its trade confirmed the judgment previously exercised by M. Chouteau as to the natural advantages of this angle of the river, as a point of distribution and concentration of trade from the country south and west. ,