Hey There Bloggers,
     It's been a while since I added to my blog. Seems as though there are so many things to do, and I have real trouble getting the things done that I have to do; and never seem to find time to do the things I want to do. I'd bet I'm not alone in this view of life! There were a few days that I wanted to blog, but didn't have any good material to blog about then; Oh happy day, I checked out a book from the base library titled: KANSAS The History of The Sunflower State, 1854-2000. p.114,115,116. I haven't read it from cover to cover of course, but in browsing through it's pages I spotted an important name from Wichita's history. It was James Mead. In the couple of pages that I've inspected thus far it gives me some information that I need for my essay. The question is: How did James Mead treat the Indians, especially the Wichita's? What kind of relationship did they have? Had found some info. on that already from other resources. What I found in this book was that a man named General Winfield Scott Hancock of Gettysburg fame was given orders by William Sherman to go and  and threaten the Indians that if they wanted war, they could have it. If they didn't want war they had better stops their "threats and insolence." The Indians had smoked the peace pipe with some  military officers and other government men, saying that they hadn't harmed the white settlers and didn't want to harm anyone, but the buffalo were being killed out at an alarming rate and if that continued they would soon go hungry. They asked that the solders not fire on their young men. Hancock burned a Cheyenne-sioux camp and a confrontation took place with Hancock, Custer, and James Hickok, " Wild Bill Hickok,"along with other men ensued with the Indians on the other side, each group in a single row one facing the other. On the other side; Chief Roman Nose, ( he was known as the Pawnee Killer), leaders of the Sioux and Cheyenne who were dressed in all of their headdresses, feathers, paint etc. I'm not quite clear on what happened, but the Indians eventually just walked off. I found that rather interesting. People like Samuel Crawford, the Governor of Kansas from 1865-1868, didn't like the Indians at all and wanted to see them moved off their land by force.
     Here comes the James Mead part; the book states and I quote; "A contrasting view was held by James Mead. Mr. Mead came to Kansas from Iowa to start up a trading business with the Indians," which we know from reading not only his personal letters but also from other sources of history, that he had a very successful trading and hunting business with the Indians. Mead and Mr Crawford and some other folk thought that those who disliked the Indians exaggerated the danger that the Indians posed. Mead recorded 1867 that "when the Indians were said to be on the warpath, he traveled over the Plains as usual, unmolested. Mead also wrote in 1910 during the Civil War that;  "in the first five or six years after the Indians had left, and the country was open for settlement, I have a record of some twenty men who came to a sudden and violent death. Most of these were no special loss to the country." I believe he was saying that more white people killed other white people than had the Indians when they were there."
     Mr. Mead studied the Indians and their way of life. He collected articles of clothing and their "jewelry/ adornments" and keep notebooks full of pictographs of things he saw on his travels. Wonder if Mr. Mead's notebooks have survived the years and are out there somewhere. hum... There is one unrelated thing that I want to tell you about. In one of the paragraphs above I mentioned Chief Roman Nose. That caught my attention because of a State Park In Oklahoma not farm from my dad's farm that is named Roman Nose State Park and has a big stone image of an Indian's head which I figure is to represent Chief Roman Nose. We went swimming there in a swimming pool that was filled with water from an underground spring, and it was COLD! There wasn't a diving board, but you could dive off of a cliff of natural rock, if you were brave. We had picnics there under the trees and rode paddle boats on the lake. It's a beautiful place, but this is the first time that I've read the name of this chief other than in reference to the park; pretty cool stuff!
That's my story for tonight, so let's call it a wrap.
Cheri