1
âTHE TWO WERE SOON PRONOUNCED ONEâ
RELIGIOUS, ECONOMIC, AND
SEXUAL EXCHANGE IN INDIAN KANSAS
Clara Gowing, a Baptist missionary in Kansas Territory from 1859 to 1864, attended the marriage of an Indian woman and a white soldier one Saturday afternoon during the Civil War. The couple wedded in haste because the new recruit for the Union army was scheduled to depart Kansas for the battlefield the following day. Though haphazardly assembled, the wedding spectacle impressed Gowing, and she recorded her observations of the ceremony in detail:
Here was a scene for a painterâŠ. The motley group which gathered around the piazza, some dozen or more whites, including one or two military officers; the civilized Indian dressed in neat white costume like the whites; the wilder Indian decked with ribbons and beads of gaudy color, with his leather leggins and moccasins, the shirt collar open, exposing the brown breast; and yellow, black, or dirty white crape shawl tied around the headâŠ. The trio of minister, with groom and bride standing on the piazza, the latter dressed with neatness and taste in white muslin ⊠the whole lighted up a gorgeous September sunset sky, formed a scene not viewed every day.1
The publicly celebrated union of an Indian woman and a white man was not a âscene viewed every dayâ in mid-nineteenth-century America, but red-white sexual and marital exchanges were far from rare in Kansas. White missionaries and fur traders had lived among the Kansas Indians for decades, and the scarcity of white women in the area inevitably led to cross-racial sexual ties. Though some of these ties were undoubtedly forced and unsolicited, it is clear that consensual sexual relations between the two races existed and often facilitated the convergence of two vastly different cultural worlds.2
Gowing closed her report of the wedding ceremony by proclaiming, âThe two were soon pronounced one.â As her narrative suggests, the once-separate Indian and Anglo worlds were moving closer, in proximity if not in culture. But Gowingâs story illustrates only one locus of exchange between native peoples and Anglos as white settlers infiltrated the valleys of the Missouri River and Kansas River after 1820. Indians and whites also forged religious and economic ties and fashioned an uneven and unstable middle ground that was neither wholly Indian nor purely Anglo. Whether by choice or by force, red and white boundaries merged in Indian Territory long before any cries of Bleeding Kansas were made; by examining Anglo-Indian contact in the region, one can conclude that the wound of Bleeding Kansas had several entry points.3
The physical and cultural middle ground created by Anglos and Indians in Kansas carried an important racial component that needs to be explored in order to fully understand race relations in antebellum Kansas. Gowing remarked that the âcivilized Indianâ was dressed in white, whereas the âwilder Indianâ looked âgaudyâ in ribbons and beads, complete with a âyellow, black or dirty whiteâ shawl tied on his head. Gowing equated civilization with whiteness, a distinction made all the easier by the presence of âbrown breastsâ and âwildâ Indians. Her diary illustrates that race relations sustained a less dichotomous tone than has previously been assumed, even in a nation obsessed with differences between whites and blacks and in a region fixated on sectional differences. Events in Kansas suggest that although settlers may have battled over the status of African Americans, they simultaneously united on the ground of white supremacy over Indians. Furthermore, white settlersâ perceptions of and interactions with Kansas Indians played a crucial role in developing white racial identity at midcentury. To ignore the influence of redness on the construction of whiteness and the maintenance of white supremacy and slavery is to overlook a key factor of racial formation in the United States.4
THE BLEEDING BEGINS
Before red and white intersected in Kansas, dozens of Indian tribes, each with its own unique language and culture, came into contact in the Old Northwest and plantation South, as white settlers pushed west of the Appalachians during the decades following the Revolutionary War. Conflict and coordination among tribes and with white settlers ensued, resulting in the social and economic reorganization of several Indian nations. Tribal consolidation and alliances formed new cultural hybrids among Indian groups, and increasing interaction with white settlers augmented this hybridization. The Algonquin-speaking people who traversed this âmiddle groundâ in the upper Great Lakes region would be one of the many consolidated groups of disparate tribes who arrived in Kansas during the three decades preceding the Civil War.5
Tens of thousands of Indians moved to what in 1854 became Kansas Territory. In an action less infamous than the Jacksonian eraâs violent removal of Indians from their native lands in the Southeast to reservations in Indian Territory, the U.S. government âforcefully encouragedâ thousands of Indians from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri to move to eastern Kansas between 1820 and 1860.6 Even before this exodus, several tribes from the East, such as the Iowa, Shawnee, and Delaware, had already infiltrated the region and jockeyed with the resident Kaw, Osage, and Pawnee tribes for land and resources. Citing pressure from settlers in the plantation South and the Old Northwest, Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Clark (of Louis and Clark fame) negotiated several treaties with the Kaws and Osages in 1825. In exchange for financial annuities and agricultural implements, the resident Kansas Indians ceded thousands of acres of their landânot for white settlement but for Indians who had been displaced by violence and white encroachment in the East.7
The Indians who moved to Kansas before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act arrived in the region after decades of encountering white settlers and their cultures and economies back in their home territories. One historian writes, âThese intruders ⊠brought with them syncretic cultures that often included the English language, Christianity or Christian-like religions, modern farming techniques, and sophisticated tools and weapons.â8 Their familiarity with the white world often created tension between these âimmigrant Indiansâ and the resident Osages and Kaws, who had experienced less contact with Anglos. The first blood spilled in the territory was thus Indian, as âoldâ and ânewâ Kansas Indians battled with each other for farming and hunting lands.
Emigrant tribes such as the Delaware and Shawnee enjoyed a strategic advantage over their resident counterparts, such as the Kaw, when dealing with the federal government. The Delaware and Shawnee arrived in Kansas Territory equipped with more than a century of experience negotiating treaties with the federal government and trade agreements with white settlers.9 The reports taken by federal Indian agents on the Delaware reservation reflect the tribeâs familiarity with white ways and note their history of making peaceable treaties with the government. Alfred Cumming, superintendent of Indian affairs for the central region, proudly reported that the Delaware maintained faith in the governmentâs ability to protect Indian rights: âNotwithstanding the lawless intrusions upon their lands by citizens and others, the confidence of the Delawares in the integrity of the Government remains entirely unshaken; far accustomed to an implicit conformity on their part to treaty stipulations, they cannot realize the possibility that the Government will tolerate their violation by others.â10 According to Cumming, the Delaware, âa brave, honorable, and generous race,â had fulfilled their obligations to the government, and they expected reciprocity on the part of the âGreat Father.â These shared expectations arose out of decades of negotiations between the two parties, treaty agreements that had become part and parcel of Delaware life since their initial removal from the coastal regions of the Northeast in the eighteenth century.11
Though the Shawnee began their negotiations with the federal government later than the Delaware, they too benefited from previous interactions with white settlers, missionaries, and officials. In an 1855 letter to George Manypenny, commissioner of Indian affairs, Superintendent Cumming reported that the âShawnees are every where advancing towards a perfect civilization; the sound of the hammer, the saw, and the axe are now ⊠familiar.â12 In his 1857 annual report to the commissioner, Cumming surveyed the status of each of the various tribes residing in Kansas and concluded his report with a generally positive account of the Shawnee Indian Mission and Manual Labor School. âThe Shawnee Methodist Mission was ⊠the largest and best conducted institution of that description in the Indian country,â he wrote.13 The Reverend Thomas Johnson, founder of the mission, reported from the school that the âShawnees, and portions of other tribes, are becoming a working people, and are making considerable progress in the arts of civilized life.â14 Those tribes such as the Shawnee and Delaware who were familiar with the trappings of white society were then more likely to function effectively in treaty negotiations and trade deals.15
The Kaw, Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, and Osage Indians, on the other hand, received the brunt of white criticism, as they vehemently resisted white attempts to encroach upon their lands and challenge their cultural values. Cumming wrote in his 1857 annual report that the Sac and Fox tribe risked extinction if they failed to change their Indian ways: âThis tribe is as barbarous in all their habits as they were twenty-five years agoâŠ. They continue a courageous and intractable peoples, delighting in the chase, and addicted to war,âfirmly opposed to every endeavor to inculcate upon them habits of civilization. They are rapidly diminishing in numbersâŠ. Indeed, if they should die in the same ratio that they have done for some years past, this still brave, and once renowned tribe will soon be exterminated.â16 The Sac and Fox initially refused to allow whites in Kansas to transform their culture and relocate them to reservations. In the process, however, they engaged the white world militarily and lost many of their number to war and disease.
Like the Sac and Fox, the Kansas Kickapoo were known for their warlike stance with whites. Cumming met with Kickapoo chief Machina during his January 1857 visit and found the tribe to be in relatively good condition. However, he mentioned that the Pottawatomies who lived among the Kickapoo were âsober and industriousâ and âfurnish[ed] an excellent example to the Kickapoos,â implying that the Kickapoo needed such examples.17 Both the Kickapoo and the Pottawatomie tribes, however, repeatedly found themselves embroiled in conflict with their white neighbors and earned a reputation with white missionaries and settlers as being particularly stubborn.18
The Osage, too, persisted in their military and cultural antagonism toward white settlers. During the late 1840s the Comanche and Kiowas joined the Osage in attacks on U.S. Army troops who served as military escorts for government wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail.19 In addition to defending their territorial claims in the region, the Osage protected their cultural sovereignty as well. Pioneer Charles M. Chase described the Osage men in Kansas as âthe fiercest looking fellows I have ever seen.â He described their authentic dress in detail: âThe blanket and the breech cloth is their only dress. Their noses and ears are loaded with twinkling trinkets, the heads shaved, leaving a narrow strip of stiff hair a half inch long from the forehead to the crown. Their faces are painted with bright yellow and red.â20 Agent John Whitfield complained about the Kaw and their habit of removing older boys from mission schools, that âinstead of cultivating and improving the education they have received, you see them return with shaved heads, painted faces, and dressed in full Indian costume.â21 These observations were undoubtedly shaped by white prejudices about how âsavagesâ dressed, but many of the Kaw and Osage clearly resisted attempts to impose the visible trappings of white âcivilizationâ on their tribes.
While the resident and emigrant tribes differed in their levels of acceptance and/or rejection of white culture, both groups experienced a significant degree of intermixing with each other, before and after their arrival in Kansas Territory. Thus the boundaries among once-disparate tribes blurred as fragmented and dying tribes joined those bands that exhibited more strength and resilience. As early as 1830, the government recognized that âhalf-breedâ mixes of various Indian ethnic groups would have to be acknowledged in order to apportion land properly for reservations in Kansas. In a July 16, 1830, treaty between the Sac and Fox, the Sioux, and the United States, the âhalf-breedâ band of the Omahas, Ioways, and Otoes received entitlement to a tract of land in northeast Kansas. Twenty-five years later, Commissioner Manypenny suggested that a census be taken of the âhalf-breeds and mixed bloods properly entitled to share in the said reservation,â perhaps implying that the degree to which these tribes intermixed necessitated a frequent review of their members.22
Some tribes, like the Winnebagoes and Sacs, gained notoriety for their willingness to intermarry and combine tribal resources. Superintendent Cumming reported from the Nemaha Agency that âcertain Winnebagoes ⊠have lived for several years and intermarried with that [Sac] band. The agent informs me that these Winnebagoes were invited by the Sac Council to participate in the payment of their annuity.â Cumming strongly recommended that the close interconnections between the two tribes be maintained. âMany marriages connect the Winnebagoes with the Sacs, so that their tribes can only be separated by force,â he claimed, âand if that were used to separate them they would become vagabonds and a burdensome pest to their white neighbors.â23 Apparently, past experience proved that even if the government attempted to force separation of two commingling tribes, the fragmented tribes would loiter and wander throughout the region until reunited with their adopted tribal band.
Like the Winnebagoes and Sacs, the Kickapoos and Pottawatomies shared their resources and land in Kansas. Cumming reported seeing mostly Pottawatomie children at the Kickapoo mission school, and noted that he was not surprised by the tribesâ interconnectedness. He claimed that the Pottawatomies âhold the same relation to the Kickapoos as the Winnebagoes to the Sacs, and in both cases I believe a separation to be inadvisable.â24 Cumming also visited the united tribes of the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Piankeshaw, and Wea Indians; these tribes experienced such a rapid decline in population that consolidation was necessary for their survival. According to Cumming, they successfully defended their rights and established permanent settlements in Kansas, perhaps in part because they joined together in the face of intruding whites who squatted on Indian land.
The practice of intertribal mixing gained so much prominence, even when discouraged by government officials, that Superintendent Cumming recommended that the government officially sanction such behavior. He wrote: âThe custom of inviting individuals of other tribes to participate in their payments even in cases where no consanguinity [exists] ⊠prevails among many of the tribesâŠ. It therefore becomes a matter of policy to tolerate the arrangement they voluntarily entered into; and if tolerated, it ought, in my opinion, to be authorized by order.â25 Cumming recognized that the governmentâs efforts to prevent certain tribes from intermixing were pointless, and under his leadership, the Central Superintendence succumbed to and reluctantly supported the Indian practice of tribal consolidation. As a result of Indian removal and migration, then, the blending of Indian cultures began well before the official arrival of white settlers in 1854.
âGOD WILL JUDGE IN RIGHTEOUSNESSâ
The infiltration of religious missionaries and traders into the region during the 1830s and 1840s facilitated the syncretization of Indian and white cultures. One historian argues that the Kawsmouth settlement, a French/ Indian trading post eventually known as Kansas City, was âthe most promising theater for a mixed-blood colony.â26 The conjunction of the Missouri River and Kansas River provided a strategic and fertile location for the fur trade, for agricultural pursuits, and for bringing a Christian God to the many Indians who resided in and passed through the region.
The Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Moravians, and Presbyterians all established missions amid the eastern Kansas Indians during the 1830s and 1840s. Since their earliest efforts during ...