The Last American FrontierPaxson, Frederic L. (Frederic Logan)
History
The Last American Frontier
Paxson, Frederic L. (Frederic Logan)
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); West (U.S.) -- History
The five years following the treaty of Prairie du Chien were filled
with active negotiation and migration in the lands beyond the Missouri.
First came the Shawnee to what was promised as a final residence.
From Pennsylvania, into Ohio, and on into Missouri, this tribe had
already been pushed by the advancing frontier. Now its ever shrinking
lands were cut down to a strip with a twenty-five-mile frontage on the
Missouri line and an extension west for one hundred and twenty-five
miles along the south bank of the Kansas River and the south line of
the Kaw reserve. Its old neighbors, the Delawares, became its new
neighbors in 1829, accepting the north bank of the Kansas, with a
Missouri River frontage as far north as the new Fort Leavenworth, and a
ten-mile outlet to the buffalo country, along the northern line of the
Kaw reserve. Later the Kickapoo and other minor tribes were colonized
yet farther to the north. The chase was still to be the chief reliance
of the Indian population. Unlimited supplies of game along the plains
were to supply his larder, with only occasional aid from presents of
other food supplies. In the long run agriculture was to be encouraged.
Farmers and blacksmiths and teachers were to be provided in various
ways, but until the longed-for civilization should arrive, the red man
must hunt to live. The new Indian frontier was thus started by the
colonization of the Shawnee and Delawares just beyond the bend of the
Missouri on the old possessions of the Kaw.
The northern flank of the Indian frontier, as it came to be
established, ran along the line of the frontier of white settlements,
from the bend of the Missouri, northeasterly towards the upper lakes.
Before the final line of the reservations could be determined the
Erie Canal had begun to shape the Northwest. Its stream of population
was filling the northern halves of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and
working up into Michigan and Wisconsin. Black Hawk's War marked the
last struggle for the fertile plains of upper Illinois, and made
possible an Indian line which should leave most of Wisconsin and part
of Iowa open to the whites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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