Quivira Notes. Celebrating the Buffalo & More! Family Event to be Held at McPherson. Don t Forget! Q u i v i r a C h a p t er, SFTA.

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1 Q u i v i r a C h a p t er, SFTA Quivira Notes Don t Forget! Next Program Saturday October 22, am 4pm Buffalo & More McPherson Museum 1111 East Kansas McPherson, KS Membership Information Annual Membership in the Quivira Chapter: Individual or Family: $10 /yr Annual Membership in the SFTA: Individual: $35/yr Family: $40 /yr For more information: Call or blkcolle@swbell.net Join us on Facebook! Quivira Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association October 2016 Celebrating the Buffalo & More! Family Event to be Held at McPherson Few animals conjure the power and symbolic presence of the North American bison. Buffalo or Bison were an important part of Native American life on the Plains and were also important to the travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. On Saturday, October 22 nd, the Quivira Chapter and the McPherson Museum and Arts Foundation will present Buffalo & More, with events for both adults and children. Several programs and demonstrations will be held throughout the day and attendees have the opportunity to view the Bison exhibit and attend any or all of the events. There is no cost to Quivira Chapter members. So plan to visit the McPherson Museum on October 22 and join us for part or all of this day of celebrating the Buffalo and More! The schedule for Buffalo & More is as follows: ( See page 3 for more information on exhibits and speakers.) 10am 4pm The Bison: American Icon - This exhibit explores the meaning and significance of this iconic creature from the Plains Indian culture of the 1800s through the era of commercial exploitation and the emergence of the bison as a national symbol today 10am 4pm Native Americans in Kansas Paul Carver s Eisenhower Elementary 5th grade class Exhibit Featuring the Wichita Indians 10am Bison: The Mercantile on the Plains Keven Hiebert A presentation on the importance of the buffalo to Native Americans and how they utilized all parts of the buffalo in their daily lives. Items made from the buffalo will be displayed 10am 1pm The Wisdom of Corn Dianna Henry A display and discussion of heirloom corn and the importance of these seeds. 10am 2pm Prairie Craftsman Mike Jose A display the tools and woodworking crafts of the 1800s. Also try your hand at churning butter! 1-4 pm Native American Wood Carvings Robert Button Meet the artist as he shows the techniques he uses to create these works of art. 2pm A Long Way to Santa Fe Fort Larned Ranger Ellen Jones A Traveling Trunk story with artifacts from the time. Ranger Jones tells the story of Robert Earl, a ten-year-old boy who accompanies his father's wagon train from Missouri to Santa Fe in On the way Robert experiences the slow, monotonous travel of the trade caravan interspersed at times with exciting moments

2 QUIVIRA NOTES PAGE 2 Chapter Business Several items of interest to our Chapter were presented at the SFTA board meeting in Larned on September 22nd. As always, membership is a concern. The SFTA would like all chapter members to be a member of SFTA and likewise, SFTA members should be members of a chapter if possible. A look at our bylaws indicates that Quivira Chapter members shall be members of the Santa Fe Trail Association if required by its bylaws. The Santa Fe Trail Association bylaws state that all chapter members are encouraged to be members of the Association. So I am encouraging anyone who is not a member of the SFTA to become one! Now is the time because if you join before December 31st, you will get all the Wagon Tracks issues for 2016 plus you will be a member for all of Basically two years for one! The Quivira Chapter bylaws also state that all officers and directors shall be members in good standing of the Chapter and the Santa Fe Trail Association. So Chapter officer and directors should keep that in mind. Another thing we talked about is whether everyone knows that the Santa Fe National Historic Trail is part of the National Park Service. The National Park Service is our partner and provides and great amount of support and funding for our activities. The SFTA also is encouraging Chapters to get their congressman out on the Trail and show them the Santa Fe Trail in their district. The funding for the National Park Service activities come through Congress so it all goes hand in hand. Larry Short, Vice President of SFTA will be sending me a packet showing the elected officials for our chapter to use in this activity. And finally, if you were not able to attend Rendezvous, you missed a variety of good programs highlighting the women that traveled the Santa Fe Trail. The photo at the right was taken at the dedication of the Susan Shelby Magoffin marker at Ash Creek Crossing. This is the site where her carriage overturned and most probably the cause of her miscarriage later at Bent s Fort. Left: Our own Carolyn Kern, holding microphone, of Ralph s & Kern s Ruts, participated in the panel of modern women who work to preserve, protect and promote their own portion of the Santa Fe Trail. Also pictured are Alexa Roberts, Superintendent of Bent s Old Fort & Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Sites, Faye Gaines, owner, Point of Rocks, NM, and Sharon Haun, President, Heart of the Flint Hills Chapter,

3 QUIVIRA NOTES PAGE 3 Buffalo & More Exhibits and Speakers The Bison: American Icon - The Bison: American Icon exhibit explores the meaning and significance of this iconic creature from the Plains Indian culture of the 1800s through the era of commercial exploitation and the emergence of the bison as a national symbol today. Along the way, The Bison charts the dramatic changes that occurred to the creature and its habitat, and to the people who depended on it for their daily existence. The Bison: American Icon was designed and fabricated by Kauffman Museum and Flint Hills Design, North Newton, Kansas. Native Americans in Kansas. Paul Carver s 5 th Grade class from Eisenhower Elementary School in McPherson has been researching the Native Americans of Kansas. They have completed an exhibit at the McPherson Museum featuring the Wichita Indians. They have made artifacts for the exhibits so be sure to check it out. Bison: The Mercantile on the Plains. Vitally important to both native people of Kansas and the early pioneers to the state, the bison was an economic powerhouse that provided much of what these groups needed to survive. Hear what historical authors had to say about our state mammal. Experience the excitement and danger involved in a horseback buffalo hunt by exploring the weapons used. Examine the materials and construction of stone butcher-in tools, the process of butchering a bison and the challenges of pre-serving, storing, and carrying such a large quantity of meat and hide. Explore the items that were made from the bison: including bladder bags, shoulder-blade hooves, hair cordage, rawhide rope, hoof rattles, tanned robes, clothing, weaponry, bags, and more. Engage the senses and discover the rich history of Kansas through the importance of a oncecommon animal, the economic commodity the bison presented, and why this animal is still important to today s Kansans. Kevin Hiebert is the owner of Bear Paw Traders. The Wisdom of Corn. Dianna Henry has Cherokee, Blackfoot, Oglala/Apache family roots. This has launched her awareness into the amazing world of Spiritual gardening. The seed became very important as our food for soul and body, generation to generation. She began teaching seed saving and spiritual gardening to help others reconnect to Mother Earth and our own Inner Spirit. Many times, the Corn has helped others reconnect to themselves. She actively helps in this search for seeds of our ancestors, and is currently growing the Jim Blaine Bean, from her Grandmother Florence Blain Henry's family. She is currently enjoying living in Esbon, KS and helping others find and grow heirloom heritage seeds. Native American Wood Carvings by Robert Button are on display in the McPherson Museum lobby. Robert Button was previously a farmer in Great Bend, Kansas. As is the case with most Kansas farmers, the winters created idle time. One day early in the 1970s Button came inside to warm up after morning chores, he picked up a block of walnut and began carving. Soon the shape of duck began to form. This was the beginning of Robert's passion for woodcarving and the first of five hundred birds he would carve in a 40 plus year span. Soon after his first carving, Robert began to expand his art from caricatures, to bas-relief carvings, to Native American figurines and symbols, and birds with intricate detailing. To date he has carved 593 figures, the majority of these are birds. His ideas for the carvings came from magazines, birds he observed at Cheyenne Bottoms and from his travels. In order to hone his skills, he would attend a woodcarving seminar or would simply ask for help from his new, found colleagues in the Golden Belt Wood Carvers Association. They met once or twice a week and would share tips, tricks and even tools. In addition to woodcarving Button is involved in the Barton County Historical Society and both the Quivira Chapter and the Santa Fe Trail Association. He also has interests in Barton County archaeological artifacts and local Native American history. Robert and his wife, Coralie, reside in Great Bend, Kansas. A Long Way to Santa Fe. Ellen Jones has been a park ranger at Fort Larned National Historic Site since She has enjoyed 15 years of sharing history in park settings, museums, a historic village, and countless schools. Ellen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech Communications from Missouri Southern State University in She joined the interpretation staff at Carver National Monument and worked there for eight years. After managing the staff and programs at a historic village in Minnesota for three years, Ellen returned to her home state of Kansas and worked part-time at the Santa Fe Trail Center before returning to the National Park Service. The Santa Fe Trail is her favorite topic in history. Prairie Craftsmen include woodworkers and blacksmiths. Mike Jose will display the tools and woodworking crafts of the 1800s. Also try your hand at churning butter!

4 Q U IV I RA N OT E S PAGE 4 Chapter Activities Cow Creek and Buffalo Bill s Well signs are up again! Britt Colle installed the signs on June 4th. The Chapter received complete reimbursement for the damaged signs. Left: Jonelle Hays led attendees on a tour of the Italglio and the Hays Pit House on June 9th. Above: Trail worn by buffalo near the Peverly petroglyphs.

5 Q U IV I RA N OT E S PAGE 5 Chapter Activities Above: The Peverly Petroglyphs. Left: The group admires the sign relating the journey of Coronado in the area. On July 25th, Leo Oliva spoke to a packed house at the joint program in Great Bend. Members of the Barton County Historical Society, the Quivira Chapter and the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter were in attendance. The program was a Kansas Humanities Council program Women Writers on the Santa Fe Trail. Over 50 people attended the program.

6 QUIVIRA NOTES PAGE 6 Buffalo on the Plains From Sketches of Early Days in Kearny County by Virginia Pierce Hicks Kansas State Historical Quarterly, February 1938 (Vol. VII, No. 1) Early settlers relate that herds of buffalo extending as far as the eye could see were roving over the prairies. The meat from these animals was about the only kind to be obtained, although there was some antelope and deer meat. The meat had to be cut, dried, and salted for use. Sometimes as much as a ton was cured. Bill Levitt, one of the first Santa Fe engineers, tells that many times he saw the roof of the dugout shingled with buffalo hams which the train crew ate later with Mr. O'Loughlin in Lakin. There was no eating house here at the time, but Guy Potter soon built one which he sold to Fred Harvey. The manager of the Harvey house obtained here much of the antelope and buffalo meat used in the various houses of the system. Where the Indians killed one buffalo for food, the hide and tongue hunters killed fifty. This slaughter kept up year after year, thousands of hunters being employed to kill as many as they could. The building of the Pacific railroads divided the buffalo into two large herds which ranged on both sides of the Platte river, the estimated numbers of each being about three million. It was never thought by Western men that it would be possible to kill such a number, but by 1875 the southern herd was practically exterminated and this gave rise to a large industry for Lakin. The buffalo bones were gathered and shipped to the East where their principal use was in the making of commercial fertilizer. Each wagonload of bones weighed about three hundred pounds. The average price was six dollars a ton, and hundreds of carloads were shipped. One of the things which most impressed Billy Russell as he first rode into Lakin was the sight of huge piles of bones, perhaps thirty carloads, stacked along the railroad track. Another thing was Harry Browne standing in the store door, no doubt wondering who the tenderfoot might be. Mr. Russell is a native of Boston, and, although he felt quite sure that he could not content himself in Lakin, from that Saturday afternoon until the following Monday morning he became so attached to western Kansas that he has been here continuously since. During the construction of the Santa Fe railroad buffalo were so numerous as to impede work, and on more than one occasion trains were delayed by running into herds. Guy Potter, an early resident of Lakin, was aboard a train which was delayed one hour and forty minutes at Pierceville waiting for buffalo to cross the track. From the caboose that day the brakeman shot thirteen buffalo. Trappers brought in many kinds of hides. They were then given fifty and seventy-five cents for coyote and wolf hides on which bounties are now ten and twelve dollars. It might be imagined that the store keeper's life was dull and prosaic; however, the lines of cattle movement were established so that chuck wagons from the north loaded at Lakin for the roundup on the south, and many times in a single day the clerk was instructed to send bills for one outfit to Chicago, another to Kansas City, and a third to Denver, thus showing the ramifications of the cattle trade. Recently residents of Adobe Walls, Tex., told of driving cattle through Lakin and later making frequent trips with loads of bones and hides which were exchanged for groceries.

7 QUIVIRA NOTES PAGE 7 Garden City Man Traveled the Trail In 1836 Reprinted from the McPherson Weekly Republican (McPherson, Kansas) Fri, Oct 11, 1907 Page 2 A. A. G. Stayton of Lakin, writing to the Garden City Imprint, says: I see in the last issue of the Imprint an account of the proceedings of the old timers at your city last week. I read the proceedings with much interest being an old timer myself. Your speakers seem to know all about the Santa Fe Trail, but not much of the Santa Fe road. The word trail is a misnomer when applied to a great international commercial highway. I will give my knowledge of the Santa Fe road from my personal contact with said road by having traveled over it, lived five years on it, eaten and slept on it. I will refrain from giving any hearsay evidence as hearsay evidence must be taken for what it is worth and no more. My knowledge of the Santa Fe road dates back to 1836 as I then lived on it. [See Editor s note below] I first traveled the road in 1848, also 1849 and At this time the road was about as Captain Pyle described it to the Cimarron crossing but no further. There was an old packers trail to old Fort Bent and on to the mountains but no wagon road. In 1860 I took a government train of 26 freight wagons form Fort Leavenworth to Fort Garland. I asked the commanding officer at Fort Garland. He told me to take the Santa Fe road to Ft. Union thence across the mountains to Loas, thence up the Rio Grande to Garland. If there had been a road up the Arkansas, wouldn t he have told me so and thereby saved 500 miles of travel with a heavily loaded train. Now I will tell you what I know about the road above the Cimarron crossing. When I arrived at Walnut creek with the above mentioned government train for Fort Garland, I met two old mountaineers whom I had known all my life. They asked where I was going. I told them. They asked which way I was going and I told them by Fort Union. They said they would tell me a way I could go and save 500 miles but there were no wagon roads. They told me when I arrived at Cimarron crossing to keep up this side of the river to the mouth of the Huerfano river. There to cross the Arkansas and follow us said river to San Cristo pass, cross the mountains, thence down San Cristo creek to Garland. I took this advice and went this route. Secretary Martin and some of your speakers are laboring under a mis-apprehension of Bent s old fort. I will state how I found it in Governor Bent located his fort by order of the Mexican government to an early day in General Harney in command of Col. A. W. Doniphan s and Col. Stirling Price s regiments stopped for a time at Bent s old fort (my wife s father in Co. A of Col. Price s regiment died there). Bent s old fort was built at the lower end of the big timbers. Governor Bent and his whole party shortly after this wer[e] massacred and his fort destroyed. Afterwards his son built Bent s new fort opposite the mouth of the Picketwire River. In 1860 Major Sturgiss, Commanding a battalion of regular troops bought Bent s new fort and occupied it with his command and maned [named] it Fort Wise, in honor of Gov. Wise of Virginia. It was afterwards calle[d] Fort Lyon. This is the fort Secretary Martin refers to when he says it is 80 miles west of the Kansas west line. The friends who have undertaken to give the history of the Santa Fe trail have their limited knowledge, which only dates back to 1865, a modern date. I have not attempted to go into details but what I have said I know of my personal knowledge. Editor s Notes: The title states he traveled the Trail in However, census records show that Arthur A. G. Stayton was born March 1832 in Tennessee. Bent s Old Fort was built in Mutual respect, intermarriage, and economic interdependence among these businessmen and the Plains Tribes allowed them to trade and live peacefully together. They traded primarily with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes for buffalo robes. Bent s Old Fort became the seat of a trading empire that included forts to the north and south, along with company stores in Mexico at Taos and Santa Fe. During the war with Mexico in 1846, the fort became a staging area for the United States Army of the West. Disasters and disease caused the fort s abandonment in William Bent had known and stayed in this area (Big Timbers) before. In the 1840s he built cabins and a corral on the flats west of the bluff here. In 1853 his new trading fort emerged on the cliffs above the Arkansas River. When the U.S. Army set up here in 1860, the site became the commissary for a military fort that played a pivotal role in the declining relationship between Plains Tribes and the federal government. A military fort was built a mile west of Bent s new fort in 1860 to protect the new settlers. Major John Sedgwick Jr. was given permission to build a stone structure on the river bed just below the bluffs of the new fort s location. The reason was that Bent s new fort had troops and military supplies stationed there. This new Army post was called Fort Wise after the governor of Virginia at the time. The military personnel call it Fort Fauntleroy. In 1861 the name was changed to Fort Lyon after General Nathaniel Lyon who had been killed at the battle of Wilson s Creek in Missouri. William Bent left this stone fort, and returned it to the Army as a storage depot and retired to a farm on the Purgatoire to an area which later became known as Boggsville.

8 QUIVIRA NOTES PAGE 8 The Santa Fe Trail Online Don t forget to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter about Santa Fe Trail activities! You can subscribe by ing Rod Podszus at rodpodszus@gmail.com. For a virtual tour of the Trail, go to where the National Park Service has created an online tour of the Trail. Check out the Santa Fe Trail Association has a Facebook page. The Quivira Chapter s Facebook page is currently Quivira Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association. Join The Quivira Chapter AND the SFTA! All of our members are encouraged to join the SFTA and to seek out new members for both the Quivira Chapter and the Santa Fe Trail Association. Talk to your neighbors, family members, co-workers and anyone else and invite them to join. Consider giving a membership to your family and friends as a gift for a special event. A membership form is included below and you can use it to join both! Quivira Chapter & Santa Fe Trail Association Application for Membership Membership in the Quivira Chapter is just $10 per year for individuals or families. Membership in the Santa Fe Trail Association is $35 per year for individuals and $40 for families. SFTA membership includes a subscription to Wagon Tracks, the SFTA Quarterly publication. Make it easy! Let the Quivira Chapter take care of everything. Make one payment of $45 for individuals or $50 for a family and cover both memberships! Name: Address: City: State: Zip Code: Telephone: Total Amount Submitted $ Membership Type: (Please Circle one) Individual Family Mail to: Quivira Chapter, SFTA c/o Linda Colle, President 724 Penn Drive McPherson, KS Quivira Chapter Single or Family $10 SFTA Single $35 SFTA Family $40 For more information call or blkcolle@swbell.net