taught the Shawnees of the neighborhood since 1829. This Mission became famous as the meeting place of the first Territorial Legislature, Mr. Johnson himself being President of the first Territorial Council. The fine Kansas county of Johnson was named in his honor.

Rev. Thomas Johnson.

54. Indian Language Written.-But there were many names which should be kept in honor-of Chapman and Vinall, and Robert Simerwell and his wife; Francis Barker and Ira

D. Blanchard, and Mrs. Webster and Miss Harriet H. Morse, and Rev. Moses Merrill and wife; the Hadleys, father and son; the Rev. E. T. Peery and Mrs. Peery; John G. Pratt, who was the printer of the Shawnees and the Delawares; and of Father Gailland, long at the head of the Mission at

Mrs. Robert Simerwell.

St. Mary's.

Robert Simerwell.

All these and many more labored for the Indians. They invented phonetic alphabets, they created written languages. Father Gailland wrote a Pottawatomie dictionary; Father Hoeken published a Pottawatomie prayer book; Father Ponzilione wrote an Osage prayer book.

The first church-going bell that ever sounded in Kansas was a Mission bell. It was brought to the Baptist Mission near the present Mount

Muncie Cemetery, Leavenworth, and hung in the fork of a tree.

SUMMARY.

1. Kansas was originally occupied by four great tribes of Indians: the Osages, the Pawnees, the Kansas, and the Padoucas or Comanches.

2. The Government adopts the policy of removing the eastern and southern tribes to the Territory.

3. Fort Leavenworth was established 1827, Fort Scott 1842, and Fort Riley 1853, to afford protection to the frontier.

4. Missionaries aid in the advance of civilization by reducing the Indian languages to writing.

5. St. Mary's was founded by the Catholics, and Shawnee Mission by Protestants.

CHAPTER VI.

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT.

55. Population Centres.-At the opening of the year 1853, the white population of Kansas was, as it had been for twenty years, concentrated about the forts, trading posts, missions, and reservations, from the Missouri to Council Grove. The population of these centres ranged from ten upwards, the largest number probably being located in and around Uniontown, in what is now Shawnee county. The population was small, scattered, and uninterested in public affairs.

56. Delegate not Received.-There were, from 1852, occasional feeble attempts to induce action at Washington, and, in 1853, Abelard Guthrie was nominated as delegate in Congress by a convention at Wyandotte, while Rev. Thomas Johnson was put in nomination at the Kickapoo village. The latter was elected and went to Washington, but was not received.

57. Douglas' Bill.-The crisis came with the report, on January 24, 1854, from the Committee on Territories, by its chairman, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, of an amended bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, afterward to be known in history as the KansasNebraska Act, though, at the time of its introduction, it was commonly called the Nebraska Bill.

The main feature of this long bill of thirty-eight sections, was, that it abrogated the agreement of the Missouri Com

promise of 1820, prohibiting (as the price of the admission of Missouri as a Slave State) slavery north of the line 36° 30', and, in place of prohibiting, left the question of slavery or no slavery to the people of the respective Territories when they should come to frame their State Constitutions. This bill was discussed in Congress for four months, and passed the Senate at four o'clock on the morning of March 4, 1854, and the House at midnight of May 22d, by a vote of 113 to 100, and was signed by President Franklin Pierce on the 30th of May-since

A Meeker Title Page.

chosen as Decoration Day with all its memories.

58. Opposition to Bill.-The passage of the bill was fought at every step, and its triumph was received throughout the North with demonstrations of grief and anger, because a great number of American citizens, after the experiences of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Dred Scott decision, and the Compromise of 1850, did not believe that the bill meant an honest submission of the question of slavery to the bona fide settlers of Kansas, or meant anything except a determined purpose to force slavery upon Kansas, and upon every Territory of the United States.

59. Author's Motive.- Senator Douglas, himself a native of Vermont, and a Senator from the great Free State

of Illinois, disclaimed this as a purpose, and declared that his main desire was to take from Congress the decision of a local domestic question, and leave it to the people vitally interested. For himself he declared that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down. If the purpose of the enactment was to quiet the agitation of the slavery question, it signally failed. The direct result of the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to bring on a discussion more violent and widespread than had ever been before known in the country. As far as the conflict affected the Nation at large, the details belong to the general political history of the United States. The centre and most perilous spot in the field was soon transferred to Kansas Territory.

60. Derivation of “Kansas."-The Kansas-Nebraska Act defined the boundaries of the new Territory, and gave to it the name of Kansas. The spelling and definition of the word Kansas have been the cause of much discussion. Prof. Dunbar, formerly of Kansas, a most accomplished Indian linguist, states that the name of the Kansas river is derived from the Kansas Indian word Kanza, meaning 'swift."

66

61. Kansas Boundary.-The following are the limits of the Territory as given in the act:

Beginning at a point on the western boundary of Missouri, where the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude crosses the same; thence west on said parallel to the eastern boundary of New Mexico; thence north on boundary to latitude thirty-eight north latitude, thence following said boundary westward to the east boundary of the Territory of Utah, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains; thence northward on said summit to the fortieth parallel of latitude; thence east on said parallel to the western boundary