It started as an attempt by major railroad companies to race toward the southern line of the new state of Kansas, an eager advance that would bring wealth by connecting dusty cattle towns to major Kansas cities. It included the very wrongs of underhanded political dealings - big payoffs to politicians, influence peddling and egregious, racist lies on the part of a highly partisan press. It ended up in the sad removal of the last Indian tribe that called Montgomery County "home" - the Osage Indians. And, it was everso apparent, even five years before the Drum Creek Treaty of 1870, signed 125 years ago, that the fast progression of settlers into Kansas territory would slowly force the Osages into smaller lands...all in the name of Manifest Destiny. That treaty - inked under a shady oak tree at the Drum Creek Agency southwest of Cherryvale - was one of the last treaties signed in Kansas, and it also would mean that the state no longer would be an Indian Territory, which it had been designated for several decades. Instead, the removal of the Osages, due to the treaty, meant railroads and progress to the early-day prairie settlers. It was those railroads, which bulled their iron way through common decency, that were the inception of many of Montgomery County's communities.

Back in 1865, the State of Kansas was only four years old. Most of the settlement in the state was in the northern and eastern parts, but the views of "progress" would slowly sift southward. After all, few settlers had been attracted to the weeds and cockleburs of southeast Kansas, which then comprised the lands of the Osage Indians.

Those Osages were indigenous to the plains, having slowly evolved from the ancient Siouians who once roamed the prairies. But because of government removal of the Cherokees to Indian Territory, which once included the entire state of Kansas, the Osage lands would become smaller, more concentrated on the most extreme part of Kansas.

By 1865, settlement had extended south of the state's major cities: Topeka, Lawrence and Kansas City. By a treaty signed that year in Canville Trading Post in Neosho County, the Osages agreed to move their claims to a smaller portion of land in what would be Montgomery County. That land, called the Osage Diminished Reserve, would be a rectangle shape - a line south of Wilson County to north of the Kansas Cherokee Strip ( a small 2 1/2-mile wide piece of land extending north from the present Kansas- Oklahoma border), 2 3/4 miles west of Labette County to the Arkansas River. It was during the mid-1860s that the Osages were under great consternation from settlers, many of whom had just finished fighting in the Civil War. The Osages weren't considered a warrior tribe, but did don their fighting colors for just causes.

During the Civil War, 400 Osages joined Union forces, and 400 joined Confederate fighting bands. "it was rough for the Osages during that time," said Shawn Standing Bear, a museum curator at the Osage Tribal Capital in Pawhuska, Okla. "The Osages flew the colors that were convenient at the time. But to the extended settler, those colors didn't mean anything. They didn't know a friendly Osage from a Kiowa or Comanche. "They didn't know bluff paint from war paint." And, so many Indians fell to the hands of the early-day pioneers, fearful that the red skin was synonymous for cruel death. Hence, the white settlers thought, the need to move the tribe away from new settlements.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, famed author of many of the Little House on the Prairie novels, wrote about her family seeing many Osages at her family cabin in Rutland Township. The Ingalls were fearful of the Osages, even though the Indians had never inflicted harm upon the Ingalls family. Yet, the Osages weren't familiar with European-style ways, and the Indians freely went into settler homes, not knowing that their entrance wasn't considered decent. Not only were settlers wanting the Osages moved away, but the railroad companies, especially the Lawrence, Leavenworth and Gulf Railroad, was blazing a trail southward, trying to become the first railroad to reach the Kansas-Indian Territory border. Nothing would stand in the way of the Iron Horses, not even the lands that the federal government had deeded to the Osages.

The Drum Creek Treaty actually has its inception in June 1868 when the Osage agreed in a treaty signed at the Drum Creek Agency, which was at the confluence of Drum Creek and the Verdigris River, to sell 8.03 million acres to the federal government for $1.6 million. A detachment of the U.S. Seventh Calvary was even sent to Drum Creek to help with the treaty signing, which included several dozen Osage chiefs, councilors and subchiefs. But unknown to the Osages or to a majority of the settlers in the area, the treaty was controlled by William Sturgis, who had an interest in the Lawrence, Leavenworth and Gulf Railroad. Whether the railroad company had a blatant influence in the treaty remains unknown, however the railroad would receive the newly acquired Osage land from the federal government without opening it to agricultural settlement, as had been done in all prior treaties. That's where a political fight ensued more fierce than the clashes between white settler and Indian. When the 1868 Drum Creek Treaty eventually went to the nation's capital, a bitter fight was waged between the railroad company and the elected officials who wanted the lands opened to settlement. Settlers from the area protested vehemently that the treaty was a fraud, a way for the federal government to profit greatly without giving settlers a chance to gain their own sense of pride by tilling the virgin prairies.

Newspapers in the region, which had proudly touted the fertile lands in the Osage valleys, claimed the treaty smacked of influence peddling. "The treaty was a premeditated, thoroughly planned and successfully executed, fraud from its incipiency up to the stage of its submission to the United States Senate for ratification," wrote John S. Gilmore in A History of Montgomery County in 1903. "It was even more - a brazen steal, so extensive as to be infamous - and the officials, politicians and leading men who approved or aided and abetted in the attempt to carry it out deserved to be buried so deep under popular obloquy that they would never again publicly show their heads."

When the ratification of the treaty fell upon the shoulders of the U.S. Congress, it would be Kansas Senator Sidney Clarke who would raise the loudest voice, not in the name of the railroad but in the rights of the agrarian settlers. He insisted that the Osage lands be open for settlement instead of deeded to a railroad company. Saying that the sale of the Osage lands to the railroad was an unjustifiable abuse to the settlers, Clarke was able to get the treaty withdrawn from the senate in 1869, shortly after President Ulysses S. Grant had come to the presidency. In return, Clarke in July 1870 would offer an Indian appropriation bill, asking that the Osage Diminished Reserve be open to settlement at $1.25 per acre. Congress quickly ratified Clarke's Indian appropriation bill, and settlement immediately sprang up while the railroad continued its southward progression. President Grant, upon signing the bill, authorized the removal of the Osages to a new home in Indian Territory, now present-day Oklahoma. Clarke's bill was the predecessor to the Drum Creek Treaty of 1870.

Knowing that most of the Indian lands would be gobbled up by settlers, the federal government sent agents, interpreters and attorneys to the Drum Creek Agency in September 1870 to complete the final removal of the Osages from Kansas. Under the terms of the treaty, all of the remaining Diminished Reserve would be sold to the government for $1.25 per acre, and land in the Cherokee Outlet in Indian Territory would be set aside as an Indian nation for the Osages. The first signatures were affixed on the treaty at Drum Creek on Sept. 1, 1870, and it would take 10 days for all of the clan leaders and subchiefs to sign their names on the final treaty. Those major chieftains who signed the treaty were Big Hill Joe, Pina pusha-a, To wand go hee, No-pa-walla Chetopa, Strike Axe, Black Dog, Chin-Cu-a-cah, Wah tan Ca. Government representatives were John D. Long of Maine, John V. Farwell of Chicago, Ill., and Vincent Colyer of New York. Finally, on Sept. 10, 1870, the treaty was complete, and the Osage Indians made a long march, dubbed the Second Trail of Tears, by foot to their new home near Pawhuska. But the treaty did not mean the creation of Montgomery County. In fact, the county was established by law in June 1869, 15 months before the treaty was signed. Townships were formed, settlements that eventually into communities were open - all without the rightful ownership of the Osage lands. Not only did the Osages lose their right to the lands, but U.S. Senator Sidney Clarke was defeated in his Senate seat. After the railroad lost that rich prize in the 1868 treaty, the railroad investors teamed up in the fall elections of 1870 and had Clarke defeated in the U.S. Senate race.

Slowly, the Osages trekked to their new home - passing those camps and settlements that eventually would become Cherryvale, Caney, Independence, Coffeyville, Havana, Liberty and Jefferson. The Lawrence, Leavenworth and Gulf Railroad eventually hit the Kansas-Indian Territory border, although the Katy Railroad had beaten it to the punch. The LL&G laid iron rails in the eastern portion of Montgomery county, creating Cherryvale, Liberty and Coffeyville along its tracks. However, that final treaty that was thought to have ridded the government from the Osage would fall on its face. The new Osage lands in present-day Osage County, Oklahoma, had a tremendous pool of oil under its crust, and the mineral rights belong to each tribal member made the tribe one of the most wealthy in the United States. The development of oil in Osage County after the turn of the century prompted large petroleum developers like Harry Sinclair and Frank Phillips, to vigorously buy leases throughout the Osage region, and the money eventually fell upon the heirs of those Osages who signed their final treaty in Montgomery County 125 years ago.

To this day, only one Kansas Historical Marker, recently pulled from its foundation and removed to a county road east of Independence remind county residents of their connection to the Osage Indians, which once made their nation in Montgomery County. However, motorists going down the highway are unaware of the historical significance but cross the foot paths those Osages took to their new home - 125 years ago.

Return to page.