PRE-HISTORIC RED MAN — CORONADO'S VISIT IN 1541 — NATIVE INDIAN TRIBES — INDIAN CHARACTER — EARLY TRAILS — EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC OCCUPATION OF BUTLER COUNTY — INDIAN RELICS — VILLAGE AND CAMP SITES — INDIAN TRADITIONS — INDIAN IMPLEMENTS.

My friend, Judge V. P. Mooney, has asked me to write a little article on the archaeology of Butler county, Kansas, for his forthcoming "History of Butler County." All I can do is to tell a little of prehistoric man in this territory, by the footprints he has left in and on the soil of this noble country. These ancient men were the ancestors of those found in this land at the dawn of historic time. What kind of men were here when Coronado made his memorable advance into Kansas in the year 1541, in search of gold? He met the Indians of the provinces of Quivira and Harahey, but found no gold. The Indians had represented Quivira to be a land of fabulous wealth, and when the Spaniards found no gold or silver forthcoming they strangled the poor "Turk," the Indian guide. They had made mistakes all around. The Spaniards came to Kansas too soon, and the Indans[sic] should have brought them to the region now known as Butler county, which is the real "land of gold," for the gold can he had through the medium of corn, alfalfa and wheat, cattle, horses and hogs, poultry and kafir, fruit and eggs, and gas and oil. The State of Butler is as grand and productive a country as the sun ever shown upon. A writer has said that "God could have made a better country, but that he never did." The Quivirans, whom Coronado met in 1541, were the ancestors of the modern Pawnee Indians, and the History of Kansas by Clara H. Hazelrigg says that there were three other native tribes, the Kansa, Osage and Padoucas. George P. Morehouse, of Topeka, said: "The earliest recorded accounts represent the Kansa tribe as owner of that imperial pasture now called Kansas. Here the Kansa were born, had lived, acted, and passed on for many generations. Here they had hunted, fished, and fought; here was their home. What an empire, to these first native sons of Kansas? Its ample sustaining resources were on every hand, the secrets of nature, from the wooded

streams and rich bottom lands of the Missouri border, to the vast treeless areas of the great plains, all teeming with game of every character, were to them revealed as an inspiration and an open book."

What caused the Indian to leave Butler county and other parts of Kansas? Was he essentially a bad man? No. The whites have always wanted his good lands, and he was compelled to step down and out. Here is what Frederick S. Dellenbaugh said of Indian character: "He (the Indian) loved his home, his family, as constituted by his social regulations, and his children. As to honesty and dishonesty, the balance was certainly not far from even, average for average, if anything, the Indian had more respect for the ideals of his race than was the case of the white man with reference to his."

Washington Irving said of the Indians' fall: "Civilized society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breathe desolation over a whole region of fertility, it has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life."

From what I know of the demoralization of the historic Indian, I think the prehistoric Red Man of Butler county was probably a man of as good character as the average white man. In the literature pertaining to Kansas I find very little mention made of Butler county. The travel from east to west was north and south of this county. In a map in Vol. 9, Kansas Historical Collections, I find two trails marked, the California trail from southeast corner, to the northwest corner of the county, and the Osage trail to the Arkansas river across the center of

the county from east to west. Bellin's map of Louisiana of 1744 says the country of the Kansa Indians extended from the Missouri river almost to the mountains. Some have said that Butler county was never inhabited by sedentary tribes of Indians, but I think otherwise, as I have explored a good deal of the southern half of the county, and have found much evidence of settled prehistoric occupation, in the valleys of Big Walnut, Little Walnut, Hickory, Picayune, Mephitis Americana and other creeks. I have in my collection of ancient Indian relics numbers of the following implements and weapons: Metates, mano stones, whetstones, rubbing stones, grinding stones, boiling stones, hammer stones, cup stones, anvil stones, stone mauls, arrow shaft rubbers, stone axes, flint spades and hoes, celts, spears, arrows, perforators, drills, whole pipes, pieces of pipes, block of catlinite (pipe material), flint flakes of many colors, flint knives, discs and pieces of broken pottery of many different kinds. William Bass, who lives near Pontiac, has perhaps as varied an assortment as mine, including flint fish hooks, something I have never found. All of the artifacts mentioned, with the manufactures of wood, bark, reeds, fibers, sinews, hides, bones, shell, horn, hair, feathers and other perishable materials, prove that the ancient man of Butler county was a very industrious person indeed. His wife also was always at work, tanning hides, moulding pottery, working in her garden, cooking and manufacturing the first breakfast foods, hominy and succotash. There are village and camp sites on Hickory creek, on the Stebbins ranch, Wellington Sowers ranch, J. C. Getter ranch, Mrs. Benninghoff's farm, H. M. Cotton farm, Pattison ranch, Brown ranch, Mrs. Noe's farm, J. Ellis farm, William Morti ranch and others. On Little Walnut creek, B. F. Yates' farm, Hon. F. Leidy's farm, L. Boelner's farm, Nunes' ranch, F. M. Tabing's farm, Bear ranch, the Marshall Bros. farms, the Dilts and Discon farms, and Joel Parker's farm. On Picayune creek, on the B. F. Rickey farm, and on Mephitis Americana creek, on farm of F. M. Tabing. I presume there are many more places where our red friends lived, and loved, and worked, and sung, and danced, in the days of long ago. On a farm on the Big Walnut river, once known as the Hazelhurst place, now owned by Mr. Taylor, there is an ancient village site about a mile long, which must have once been covered with many lodges; the ground is full of scrapers, chips of flint and pottery sherds. My friend, the late Hon. James R. Mead, of Wichita, expressed the opinion that Butler county was a most desirable place of residence for the aborigine, on account of its numberless creeks and springs, and the purity of its waters. Alas! that the Kansa should have ever exchanged this excellent beverage for piejene (firewater). The Kansa nation had a tradition that prior to the year 1500 their home was near the sea of the rising sun. There is no tradition about the fact that the sun of their destiny is almost set, as in 1907 there were only seventy full-bloods left alive. May the ashes of those who have departed to the Happy Hunting Grounds rest in peace. Butler county must have been a good location

for the man of the Age of Stone, as there is much blue-gray chert or flint, and on Hickory creek there is an abundance of flint nodules of all shapes, from the size of a nutmeg to as large as a man's head, all suitable for the making of flint hardware. Prior to the coming of the paleface the countless herds of Buffalo roamed at will over the prairies. Their bones and teeth are found on campsites on the bottom lands. I have never seen but one whole earthen vessel of Indian manufacture found on this territory. It was a bowl found by Edward Steffen on the Steffen ranch, on Hickory creek, and is now in my collection. The reason that all the pottery is found broken, was that when a Kansa lost his wife by death he would give away or destroy her cooking utensils as a mark of respect. In these days we sometimes hear of men smashing the dishes, not on account of any disrespect to their wives, but on account of the exceedingly bad quality of the booze. I presume that in prehistoric times the dog was much used as a beast of burden. In the year of 1724 M. DeBourgmont, a French military commandant, on the Mis-

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WALNUT RIVER DAM, EL DORADO, KANS.

souri headed a booster trip to the Comanches, to gain their friendship and their trade. On July 7, 1724, he arrived at the Kansa village on the Kansas river, and on July 24 was accompanied by the following numbers of Kansa boosters: "Three hundred warriors, two grand chiefs and fourteen war chiefs, 300 squaws, 500 Indian children, and 500 dogs loaded down with baggage and provisions."

Verily, I say unto you that this was a great dog-trot of 191 years ago. It is needless to say the expedition was a grand success, as any

proposition backed up by Kansas men could not be otherwise. It has sometimes been said that the ancient inhabitants of Butler territory were non-agriculturists, but I think the stone mills, spades and hoes found on the grounds prove that they were farmers to some extent. The ancient Indian, enjoying superb physical and mental health, was a keen observer of all the details of nature. In his rambles in pursuit of game and other travels he never failed to note strange and curious stones and take them to his home for further examination, and to see if they could be made into implements, by either flaking, pecking or grinding. He also knew much more about botany than many of Dr. White's garden-grangers ever learned. (I think Dr. White organized the garden-grangers along some time in the seventies). The Kansa had more religion that most of us, as he connected every mystery in nature with his God, the Great Manitou. In my collection of relics are many so-called cupstones. They are flat stones of flint and limestone, with from one to six or more small saucer-shaped depressions on one or both sides. Some scientists think they were for cracking nuts; others, that they were for making fire by revolution and friction of a stick of wood in the cavities, and as the cavity, when worn too deep, would not work, a new cavity had to be made. I adhere to the fire theory for these reasons: The flint blocks have but one cavity, not being worn out like the soft limestone, and some of the limestone blocks have the cavities so near the edge that a blow hard enough to crack a black walnut would smash the block to pieces. I have a big stone sledge made of a mountain rock, which had been broken in two. One part of this tool was found by the late H. H. Marshall on his farm, the other was found by my son, Louis H. Martin, on the farm of the late Charles Tabing. There are two kinds of implements peculiar to this Buffalo country, they are flint scrapers and four-edged flint knives. The scrapers were used in preparing hides for the tanning process; the four-edged knife is of a long diamond shape, and they are generally very finely chipped.

I have in my collection a piece of iron ore, which had evidently been used as a source of paint, it was found on Hickory creek. Some Indian had fancifully carved on it the face of an otter or some other animal.

W. K. Moorehead, author of "Prehistoric implements," says on page 66: "Taking Manhattan, Kan., as a center, and drawing a circle fifty miles in diameter, an archaeologist will find a local culture somewhat higher than the average plains tribes attained elsewhere. Primarily, they depended on the buffalo, but they also were agriculturists, although on a small scale." I would take the liberty of extending this area at least fifty miles farther to the south of Manhattan, so as to include this great land of Butler, as I have objects in my collection which show absolute perfection in the arts of chipping, grinding, and pecking stone into fine implements. The writer of the foregoing sketch has lived in Butler county for forty-five years, and is profoundly in love with its people, its soil, its trees and its grass. its rivers and its rocks, its sunshine and

its flowers, its past history and its present and future prospects. I have often described it to my friends as a paradise in the center of the United States, and that it really is the heart of the world. Some of these friends sometimes dispute this statement, that Butler county is the cener[sic] of the Unied[sic] States, then W. J. M. comes back with the rejoinder, that there are some rock-ribbed hills on the Atlantic shore, and some sandy stretches on the Pacific which we do not count, and that Butler county is indeed the center of the great United States and the heart of the world.