2017 Spring Newsletter

a nd western Missouri was nearly all covered by Na ve Prairie. That the Buffalo roamed this area and lightening strikes caused the small brush and cider trees to be almost absence due to Prairie fires. Because nine different surveyors worked the area, over a two year period 1855-1856 there are strange absences. Township 17 Range 23 George Foster does not show Paola, but lists Peoria Creek on the west and just east Lykins Improvement above a corn patch and Wea Mission just below it and Wea Village is just north on the small added Paola map. Yet in the next sec on below Paola it states “Road from Miami Mission to Paola”. That survey was by Hough Robertson completed on the same date August 30, 1856 that Osawatomie was burned and sacked by Gen. John Reed’s Missouri military forces. These 50 pages of survey sheets with bo om summaries will be available in the Indian Room map notebook..

The year 1857 seems to be a huge me frame line of change from calm to turbulence. It changed from Prairie, Buffalo and Indians to the influx of 106,000 white se lers in 1859, making Kansas a Free–State. Other important sites on this map of what would soon be Ly kins then Miami County; are the Miami Village, and the Sac and Fox Trail crossing Po awatomie Creek in Sec.17. It is the same rocky crossing the Po awato mie Tribe se led on in 1837. It also includes California Road and the Osawatomie Road to Ft. Sco and many creeks such as Rice, Mound, Turkey, Beaver and Stony. There are over 30 do ed Indian corn-crop patches or Improvements-fields. Map includes Indian Trust Boundary lines and many non-conforming acreage reports. That would be river boundaries and sec ons of more than 640 acres. I will add some important sites to make it more readable. Many other small maps showing early towns, villages, trails and mis sions will accompany this map in anotebook

Lloyd Peckman 3/5/2017.

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