A Comparative Look at Accounts of Native American/White Relations on the Kansas Frontier

By Scott Chastain

                When attempting to verify sources for historical purposes, it is often helpful to compare individual accounts of  the events in question.  The more similarities you find in the separate accounts the more, in theory, viable the information under review may be deemed.  Lilla Day Monroe managed to collect eight hundred accounts of pioneer life from the female perspective, mostly during the 1920s.  These were not published at all until her great-granddaughter, Joanna L. Stratton, released  selections of them in Pioneer Women in 1981.  While Mrs. Monroe was collecting her stories, another pioneer woman, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was beginning to write extensively of her own life as a pioneer.  By comparing Wilder’s personal accounts with the accounts of the women in Stratton’s book, focusing on encounters with the Native Americans, I hope to illustrate how these encounters often allowed the settlers to come to view the Native Americans as more humane than they had previously considered.  As Wilder published her account of the Kansas frontier in her 1935 book, Little House on the Prairie, her story would not have been available to the women writing to Mrs. Monroe in the ‘20s, making them reliable as separate accounts of similar events.

                The time frame during which the Ingalls family resided in southeastern Kansas was roughly 1872-73.  By this time many of the tribes of central Kansas encountered by the women in the Stratton book had been relocated to the Indian Territory just south of Independence, along the Verdigris River.  This created several complications in social-relations between the white settlers and the Indians.  Frankly, the Indians were tired of being moved, and being forced to live with other tribes in very close quarters.  Stratton writes, “Disturbed by the sudden influx of Eastern tribes, these native Indians resented an encroachment upon their rightful lands and game reserves.”  Laura reports her father, Charles Ingalls, as commenting, “…they had been moved west so many times that they naturally hated white folks.”

                According to Wilder, Mr. Ingalls had heard directly from a Washington man that the Indian Territory would soon be opened to white settlers.  Going on this word, he moved his family onto the reservation, and he was not alone.  Wilder accounted that there were many other families and bachelors in close proximity to their own log cabin.  As a result of white people invading the only land they had left, the Indians became more and more disgruntled.  Their complaints to Washington seemed to have been heard, as it was reported that the government would be sending soldiers to force the white people to relocate off of Indian land.  This news did not fair well with many white settlers.  Wilder quotes a certain Mr. Scott, whose personal philosophy was “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” as saying, “Lord knows, they’d never do anything with it themselves.  All they do is roam around over it like wild animals.  Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that’ll farm it.  That is only common sense and justice.”

                Apparently the response from Washington was taking too long to be enforced, and the Indians watched as more and more whites moved into the Territory.  Wilder recounts with horror the sounds of a large gathering of tribes along a nearby creek.  Night after night the war-cry was sounded, and the settlers were getting anxious.  Wilder recalls her father stating that the Indians didn’t need guns, as the war-cry was enough to “scare anybody to death.”  Wilder described the sounds as “wild, fast yipping yells,” accompanied by drums, and the dreadful war-cry.  Gertrude Burlingame witnessed a similar tribal war dance, and described the war-cry as “…whoops that nearly shook the ground.”

                Leading up to the events of that war dance near the Verdigris River were many close-encounters between Wilder’s family and various members of local tribes.  On many occasions, Mrs. Ingalls would look up to find an Indian or two inside her cabin.  Mrs. Ingalls was terrified of Indians, especially during the long hours when her husband was off doing work elsewhere.  “I just don’t like them,” was the only reply to little Laura’s inquiries as to the source of this fear.  Recounting an experience with a couple of Indians dressed only in skunk skins, Mrs. Ingalls said, “Oh Charles!  I was afraid!”  The invasion of homes by the Kansa and Osage tribes was a common plight to Stratton’s pioneer women.  Aura Viola St. John wrote, “One day three squaws rode up, jumped off their horses and came right into the house. … They went all around looking at everything…”  Grace Hays Blackburn related her mother’s experiences, “Mother could never quite conquer her fear of the Indians but she became more or less accustomed to their appearance…” 

                One of the visits to the Ingalls’ home was an Osage chief, whom Mr. Ingalls claimed was “no common trash.”  He spoke French, which unfortunately the Ingalls could not.  After dining and smoking with Mr. Ingalls, he left quite peaceably.  This same fellow would have a few more run-ins with the Ingalls, and of no small consequence.  When the Indian war-cry had been occurring over several nights, the chief came riding by the Ingalls’ farm at full gallop.  That night the war-cry was fiercer than ever before.  The next day the tribes began to disperse, and the war dances were at an end.  Mr. Ingalls later ran into an Osage who spoke English in the woods.  “This Indian told him that all the tribes except the Osages had made up their minds to kill all the white people who had come into the Indian country.  And they were getting ready to do it when a lone Indian came riding into their big pow-wow… ‘Soldat du Chêne,’ Pa said his name was.  ‘He kept arguing with them day and night,’ Pa said, ‘till all the other Osages agreed with him.  Then he stood up and told the other tribes if they started to massacre us, the Osages would fight them.’”

                It is clear that the white settlement of Indian Territory almost precipitated a massacre, and the Osage tribes prevented it.  It is little wonder that Charles Ingalls learned to respect them.  After an incident when the family dog, Jack, was blocking the path of an Osage, who politely raised his rifle at Jack to allow Mr. Ingalls to tend to him, Ingalls remarks, “Well, it’s his path.  An Indian trail long before we came.”

                Encounters with the Native Americans often painted a more respectful understanding in other pioneers as well.  Hattie Wilson tells us of how an Osage noted the familial relation between her mother, sister, and niece, “… he pointed to her and said to my mother, ‘She you papoose,’ then to my sister’s baby and said, ‘She you papoose.’  For years I’ve remembered that.”  Delia E. Brown relates the story of Christina Phillips Campbell, “if it hadn’t been for the squaws she does not know how she would have survived.”  Mrs. Campbell also liked to answer the question of whether or not Indians had a sense of humor by recounting an amusing anecdote about how her petticoats made the squaws laugh.

                The Ingalls family received word from soldiers that they would be forced to relocate all white settlers in Indian Territory in conformity to the treaty, and so the Ingalls moved out shortly after the war dance.  Wilder, like the women who stayed behind in other parts of Kansas, no doubt took with her a strong impression that did not conform to her preconceptions of Indians as “wild men with red skins.”  Wilder, like many of the other settlers had learned something of the humanity of the Native American culture.

Works Cited:

Stratton, Joanna L.  Pioneer Women.  Touchstone 1981. New York.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls.  Little House on the Prairie.  Harper & Brothers 1935.  New York.