Good Sunday Evening Dear Bloggers,
This has been a very unusual weekend for me. One of frustration and upset, to say the least. Yesterday around eleven A.M. I had my first and hopefully last auto accident. My car's front end is in pieces and I don't know yet if it's a total loss or not. I fared better than the car, with a few bruises and a hurting neck and back. I don't want to get into the details of the accident, but the fact that I'm somewhat preoccupied with all the implication of being in an accident may keep this post from being my usual bubbly best.
This evening it is my goal to tell you some of the information that is in the personal letters that James R. Mead written to his father, mother and sister. I love to read other peoples mail, but only when it's over a hundred years old! The first letter of Mr. Mead was written at Burlingame,(Berlingame Ks. is a city in Osage Co. Ks., and is part of present day Topeka, according to Wikipedia). dated Nov.7, 1859. The letter is headed, Dear Father and Folks at home:. In this narrative he says and I quote, "I have been very successful as a hunter, having beaten the rest of the company so bad that they actually got mad at me." He goes on to say that he shot 30 buffalo. In the third paragraph of this letter he tries to describe what a buffalo looked like. He said that they looked much different than what he had imagined. He describes his method of stocking buffalo when out on a hunt. He would hid in the tall grasses and shot them as they came by. He said that the sound of the guns didn't seem to scare or startle the other buffalo which made shooting them easy. Some of the other hunters like to use horses and ride into the herd, but no so for Mr. Mead. He bragged to his family that he could usually kill a buffalo with a single shot. (paragraph 3).
In this letter he has some; not so nice things, to say about the Indians. Mr. Mead says, " You never saw the hide of a full sized buffalo; the Indians are too lazy to tan them. They only save the cows and calves". He later changes his mind about the character of the Native American Indians.(paragraph 3). He speaking about the prairie dogs, telling his family of a village of approximately 300 praire dogs that live close to their camp. He says that the prairie dogs eat the green grass and are as fat as butter, and are pretty good eating. This ends this letter to his family back home in Iowa. (http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/90617 - Copyright 2007-2014- Kansas Historical Society).
The next letter was written to his sister. the date is Dec. 25, 1859, Christmas Eve, Somewhere in the West.
He begin with, "My Dear Sister;. In the first paragraph, he tells his sister; whom he doesn't mention by name, how to locate his location on a map. Quoting his words," Look west of Ft. Riley and you will see the Saline River. Then with the scale of miles, measure off 20 on the north side of the river and you have our place exactly." (paragraph 1.)  He tells her about shooting four turkeys, he calls them gobblers and weighed them at 14 pounds each. He talks about some of the other wildlife like rabbits and prairie chickens and squirrels.
He also lists for her the general grocery's he has on hand; flour, meal, tea, coffee, sugar, molasses. (second paragraph). In the third paragraph, he give his reason for being on the Kansas prairie. He says, and I quote; "I hope to make a reasonably sized pile before I return to civilized life. There is a better show for it here than anywhere in the settlements as far as my acquaintance extends. We trade considerably with the Kaw Indians who hunt here in the winters. I could have traded $1000 with them this winter if I had been prepared for it. As it is, we have already got $200 worth of furs from them and may get a good many more before Spring."
He talks about having a lot of buffalo robes that he said," I got a number of them for a peck of corn meal, each." He tells his sister about four copperheads that came down in the summers. At first I thought he was talking about the copperhead snakes, but that didn't make much sense. They were four Indian's who were very fierce, and the hunters were afraid of them, so they built a  bullet-proof "shack" to go into so the Copperhead Indians couldn't get to them. They were planning on giving them a "warm reception, should they trouble us."( Paragraph 3).
In paragraph 4, Mr. Mead talks about the Kaw Indians calling them" lazy, lousy, lying set of thieving rascals, without a grain of manliness about them." As I said before, he changes his mind later on and a notation on this page says that Mr. Mead had only been on the prairie one month when he wrote this letter to his sister.
In the last paragraph, he speaks of the Copperhead Indians again saying that he'd had several good offers from them, but declined. I'm assuming he's referring to trading, since that was what he did. No further mention was made of the four unfriendly Copperhead Indians. He tells his sister that his partner had gone into Burlingame to buy a pound of strychine that had been sent to Mr. Mead and he was also picking up a load of meal. He tells his sister how much he would like to be with the family for the holidays and then tells her about the warm weather they were having in Kansas. It was very dry as they hadn't had rain in six months, but that wasn't a problem for Mr. Mead who didn't want mud, as opposed to anyone who might be trying to farm. He closes his letter with the words," I must close my Christmas Eve letter and bid you goodnite and pleasant dreams and excuse my rambling style as I write just as thots happen to come into my mind. Your affectionate Brother, James." Mr. Mead and I have the same sort of writing style!
(http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/90619/page/2, copyright 2007-2014-Kansas Historical Society.
There a a couple more letters to tell you about, but I believe I will save them for tomorrow night.
As I'm righting this blog, I keep wondering how I will pull all of the information that I'm gathering into an essay. An essay that has the components that are required for the intended criteria. Any "thots" on this would be appreciated. Well fellow bloggers, have a good night and sweet dreams.
Until next time,
Cheri