Chapter IX: Introduction: By Reuben G. Thwaites (7)

For twelve years the village was orderly and quiet. The people liked the Governor who succeeded Piernas, but the next, Don Fernando de Leyba,--"a drunken, avaricious, and feeble-minded man, without a single redeeming qualification," they did not like. He came upon the scene in 1778, at a critical time. The American Revolution was on. The French and Spaniards, hating the English, were inclined to sympathize with the colonists, so far as they knew or cared about things happening so far away. Fearing an attack of English and Indians, the villagers threw up a trench and stockade about the town, having three gates on the sides other than the one on the river, and built a fort in the centre of the city at what is now, approximately, Fourth and Walnut streets, and supplied it with four small cannon and one company of soldiers. The people were afraid to till the fields outside the trench and stockade, and the men who might have braved attack were busy building the defences. In the spring of 1780 fears of a famine forced the men into the fields to plant the spring seeds.

On the morning of May 26, 1780, the attack came. It was led by Canadian-French renegades, the main body being made up of about one thousand Upper Mississippi Indians. The attacking party came from the north, slew forty of the workers, carried fifteen up the river as prisoners, in their war canoes, while the rest made their way back to the fortifications, amid the booming of the cannon, which saved the fort. Leyba, who was drunk, appeared upon the scene, it is said, sprawling in a wheelbarrow and muttering incoherently, after the Indians had been repulsed. He died a month later, covered with ignominy.

The succeeding Lieutenant-Governor, Francisco Cruzat, thoroughly fortified the town, which was never afterwards molested by the savages. While the more extensive fortifications were in process of construction, indeed to the peace of 1783, the price of provisions in St. Louis was high, and visitors from New Orleans, Ste. Geneviève, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and other settlements nicknamed the place "_Pain Court_," or "short of bread." Still, it was a time of prosperity. The town grew, and nothing alarming happened until, in 1785, when the people were terrified by their first sight of the "June rise" of the Mississippi. They saw the great yellow stream spread out over the American Bottoms on the east bank and the Columbia Bottom on the west bank to the north, until it became a vast lake reaching farther than the eye could distinctly see. They saw the mighty flood go raging past, black with the trunks of mighty trees torn up by the wild waters, the villages of Cahokia and Kaskaskia submerged, crops ruined, cattle drowned, and houses melting into the yellow sea. St. Louis was flooded to what is now Main Street, and part of the people were preparing to move farther up the high bank that ran back from the stream, when the waters began to recede, and the anxiety of the town was relieved. The people called this "_l'année des grands eaux_,"--"the year of the great waters." There have been many such floods since, but none more awe-inspiring than this, seen in a setting of virgin wilderness. The flood increased the population of the city, however, for the settlers in the bottoms went to town and joined in its upbuilding. In those days, notwithstanding all the dangers of war and flood, St. Louis seems to have been a gay place. Society was simple, yet retaining an indefinable air of elegance that bore the flavor of old France. Even if they were "short of bread," the people were hospitable, a trait which still persists characteristic and conspicuous. The French element has almost wholly disappeared in newer elements, but there yet lingers, somehow, the atmosphere of deliberate ease among the people, even in the pressure of modern business. So orderly was this frontier town that during the entire period of the French and Spanish dominations but one murder was reported.

Following the annalists we learn that the city's commerce in those early days was much hampered by a band of pirates that infested the river at a place called Grand Tower, midway between the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Lurking at this point, where the stream is very swift, the pirates would dart out and attack the boats plying between New Orleans and St. Louis, kill the boatmen and seize the goods. They secured rich spoil of hides from the down trade, and many luxurious articles from the up trade--treasures even from distant France. One _voyageur_ north bound escaped the pirates through the strategy and courage of a negro who won the confidence of the captors of the barge and the sympathy of two negro slaves of the pirates. At a signal the negroes hurled the buccaneers off the barge, and either shot them or left them to drown. The barge crew then took the boat once more, went back to New Orleans, and told their story to the Governor, who issued an order that all boats leaving for St. Louis should go in company. In obedience in the spring of 1788 ten barges started up the river with crews well armed. Arrived at the rendezvous of the robbers they found none, but they recovered, however, much of the plunder that had been stored away and brought it to St. Louis. The year of their arrival was known for generations as "_l'année des dix bateaux_,"--"the year of the ten boats."

St. Louis traded not only with New Orleans but with Canada as well. The Indians gave no trouble up stream or down. The Spanish Government wanted settlers, and was liberal in granting land. We read that "there were no mails or taverns, but every house was a welcome house to new comers." In 1798 the population of Upper Louisiana was 6028, of whom 1080 were colored. The population had risen in 1804 to 10,340. In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase was made, and in 1804 St. Louis "contained one hundred and eighty houses built of hewn logs and stone, the latter being generally the rendezvous of the most wealthy, and surrounded by a wall of the same material, enclosing the whole block, which continued in use many years, protecting the fine fruit trees, which shaded the mansion." Frame houses became fashionable after the transfer to the United States. "There were but one bakery, two small taverns, three blacksmiths, two mills, and one doctor in the town." Coffee and sugar were $2.00 per pound, and everything else was costly in proportion. The United States took possession March 10, 1804, when Major Amos Stoddard assumed the duties of Governor of Upper Louisiana. Then history began to make quickly.

Near St. Louis, Lewis and Clark organized their expedition via the Missouri and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean, departing in May, 1804. In August Lieutenant Zebulon Pike started to explore the Mississippi to its source. The Mississippi was opened up to free navigation. General William Henry Harrison came from Indiana to preside over the district. He was succeeded by General James Wilkinson, and the region formerly known as the District of Louisiana became known as the Territory of Louisiana. Later a strangely handsome, dark, romantic man, much honored by every one and indescribably fascinating in manner, visited the town and was fêted. He was entertained by General Wilkinson, through whom it is believed the authorities at Washington first learned of that vast, vague treason which Burr--for it was he--conceived in his restless brain. Wilkinson was later appointed to watch Burr and was succeeded as Governor by Captain Meriwether Lewis, fresh from his adventures in the mysterious Northwest. A ferry had been established in 1797, and at the same spot there is to-day a ferry operating, one of the most profitable of the vested interests of St. Louis. The post-office was established in 1804. In 1810 the population was fourteen thousand. In 1808 was founded the first newspaper, which exists to-day as the _St. Louis Republic_, a daring enterprise begun when the whole country was suffering from the embargo and non-intercourse with England. The great New Madrid earthquake shook the little city in 1811. The battle of Tippecanoe had been fought a little before the earthquake, and in the same year appeared the first steamboat in Western waters. In 1813 the Territory of Louisiana became the Territory of Missouri, and in June of that year the Bank of St. Louis was founded. The year before that the Governor of the Territory had gathered in the city of St. Louis the chiefs of the Great and Little Osages, the Sacs, Foxes, Delawares, and Shawnees, made peace with them, then conducted them to Washington, arriving there just before the declaration of war against Great Britain, in time to conclude a peace which saved the country from any such conspiracy as had been formed among the Indian tribes to the east, under the leadership of the great Tecumseh.

Being a frontier town, St. Louis was of course a resort for trappers and traders but, unlike the frontier towns of to-day, not for desperadoes. The early settlers seem to have stamped upon the place its distinctive quality of quietness. Here the North American Fur Company had its headquarters for a long time, and from this point the adventurous subordinates of John Jacob Astor went forth in all directions in search of peltries. One of these, a Colonel Russell Farnum, leaving St. Louis afoot reached Behring Strait in 1813-14, crossed over the ice, traversed Siberia and, arriving at St. Petersburg, was presented to the Emperor. This memorable journey was the wonder of Europe at the time, for Farnum went from St. Petersburg to Paris and then came home by way of New York. He wrote a record of his adventures and sent it to a New York publisher but it was lost and the writer died before he could again transcribe his narrative.

The War of 1812 with Great Britain for a time was of small concern to St. Louis. Later, however, the Indians of Missouri were armed by the people and pitted against the Indians employed by the British. The trading-posts in which St. Louis was interested extended twelve hundred miles to the north and there agents from St. Louis counter-plotted against the British. The Yanktons and Omahas were matched by the Americans against the Iowas and several battles were fought in which the British-bought savages were worsted. The war coming to an end, Indian hostilities ceased and the fur trade throve under the peace. Rivals to the American Fur Company were started. The business expanded, and soon the necessities of commercial intercourse led to the organization of two banks, the second of which, known as the Bank of Missouri, was organized February 1, 1817. Inflation was the order of the day. The town took on airs of magnificence and extravagance. Wealth accumulated so rapidly that some seemed at a loss to spend it, and gave entertainments in which the tasteful and the barbaric were strangely mingled. The United States held sales of public lands and there were "rushes" such as we have seen in recent years in Oklahoma. Building was undertaken in a lordly fashion and extravagant prices were asked for everything. The demand for money was so great that recourse was had to lotteries to raise funds for an academy at Potosi, to provide fire-engines for the city, to erect a Masonic Hall. The lotteries soon got into politics and were not dislodged until late in the seventies, after a fight not unlike that waged for many years in Louisiana. It was in 1817 that the Legislature of Missouri established the public-school system and incorporated the institution which persists to-day in the St. Louis Board of Education, though it was many years before there was a public school in the city. In the same year, in St. Louis, Thomas H. Benton, afterwards United States Senator from Missouri for thirty years, leaped into notice, engaged in a quarrel with Charles Lucas, United States Attorney for the Territory of Missouri, and in a duel across the river, or rather on an island in the river that has since become joined to the Illinois shore, killed him. The place where the duel was fought became the rendezvous for duellists and was called "Bloody Island." In 1817 the first Bible Society in the Territory of Missouri was formed. The inflation of the day ended as usual in collapse, but St. Louis and Missouri suffered less harm than other sections.

When, in 1818, the Territory of Missouri applied for admission to the Union the slavery question arose. There was a slight preponderance of sentiment in favor of slavery, but very slight. The Missouri Compromise left its mark on Missouri and St. Louis. The State was always regarded, however its representatives stood, as doubtful on the slavery issue. From 1820 to the breaking out of the Civil War it was always a compromise State and in that war it was ever between two fires, furnishing soldiers in startling abundance to each side and sympathizing with both. St. Louis suffered in that long drawn out situation. A paralyzing incertitude was bred in the city's mind, even toward progress. The people, especially the French, did not take kindly to steamboats. "When Missouri was admitted to the Union," says Elihu Shepard, "there was no steamboat owned in the State and but one steam mill." The assessed valuation of the town property was less than $1,000,000 and the whole corporation tax less than $4000 per year while Missouri remained a territory. The town contained six hundred houses, one third of which were of stone or brick, the remainder wooden, one half of which were framed. The population was estimated at five thousand, one fourth of whom were French. The estimated annual value of the trade was $600,000. Steamboats from the Ohio River took the carrying trade between St. Louis and New Orleans, and the imports were estimated at $1,000,000. All these conditions, while due in some measure to the extreme conservatism and self-satisfaction of the dominant French element, were undoubtedly due in larger measure to the hard times that prevailed when Missouri became a State. St. Louis was incorporated as a city December 9, 1822. A spice of adventure always entered into the then predominant business of the community, for the fur companies fought with each other, and all of them made common cause against the great Hudson Bay Company in the North, with its headquarters in Canada. The people of that time thought little of distances which even now seem great. Traders and trappers went without hesitation through the wilderness to the very surf of the Pacific and the people of the city never dreamed that what we now call Yellowstone Park was very far away. Often enough the adventurous commercial traveller who left St. Louis came back without his scalp or never came at all. The city was picturesque. Men clad in buckskin and carrying rifles in their hands elbowed representatives of first families attired in the fashion that came from Paris, via New Orleans, or consorted with red Indians in paint and feathers--and too often, too, in liquor. St. Louis and Missouri were "big" in politics about that time. Missouri was for Clay, but Missouri's representative did not vote for him and John Quincy Adams was chosen President. After this Missouri became a Jackson State, and committed herself to the South.

A patch of color in the drab details of the history of St. Louis for the few years after the incorporation was the visit of Lafayette to the city on April 29, 1825, and his sumptuous entertainment by the enthusiastic inhabitants, most of whom, probably, loved the Frenchman more than the friend of Washington. In June, 1825, the first Presbyterian church was consecrated by Rev. Solomon Giddings, who "had a very respectable congregation" for a city which was preponderantly French and Roman Catholic. The French language was spoken in the homes of half the families of the town. There were less than a dozen German families in a city which now is more distinctly Teutonic than any other in the country, except Milwaukee. The slavery issue was all the while growing, and in 1828 there was formed at St. Louis a branch of the American Colonization Society, the purpose of which was to further the settlement of free blacks in Liberia. Many of the largest slave-owners in the city and State were members and officers of the society. Between 1820 and 1831, a progressive movement started. The new Court House was dedicated in 1829, and the work of opening and paving streets was pushed with energy. The old French families resented the new life and moved into the country. The pace was too fast for them. The hunters, trappers, _voyageurs_ and bargemen began to disappear. The city took on a truly American aspect, but the increase of population was slow. Between 1820 and 1830, the population increased only 2000, but between 1830 and 1840 the increase was nearly 10,000, reaching the total of 16,649.

Gradually Americanism made its impress. The wharf was lined with steamboats and the levee with great stores. Steam ferryboats multiplied. The city became a great river town, second in importance only to New Orleans. The lead mines to the south of the city were productive. Manufactures of various sorts sprang up. An insurance company was incorporated. Prosperity was checked by fear of the great Black Hawk, who, at the head of the Sac and Fox Indians, took the war-path in Illinois. Immigration and transportation of goods to and from the North was checked till Black Hawk was defeated and his tribe transported to the other side of the river, where the influence of Great Britain could not reach them. No sooner, however, had the city recovered from its slight panic than there came another and graver excitement, another lull in business. Jackson's bank veto was the cause. As if this were not enough to discourage the community, along came the cholera, which in five weeks destroyed four per cent. of the population. Cholera has reappeared since, from time to time, the most serious visitation being in 1866, but the city as it grew began to pay attention to the sewage question and in half a century had perfected such a sewer system as is not surpassed in any city in the world. In 1835 the City Council sold the town Commons, a tract of about two thousand acres, and devoted nine tenths of the proceeds to street improvements and one tenth to the public schools, and from this small beginning arose the system which to-day directs the education of the children of a city of 575,000 inhabitants. In 1829 the St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution, was founded, which has been since a centre of higher education for the sons of the well-to-do Roman Catholics of the entire South and Southwest. Considerably later was founded the institution now Washington University, one of the best endowed educational establishments in the country, with a manual training department famous the world over, and with its Mary Institute for girls ranking with the best seminaries of the country. At an early day the Roman Catholic religious sisterhoods of charity and instruction established branches here. The Sisters of Charity founded a hospital in 1832, aided by the liberality of John Mullanphy, which has been in continuous service ever since. The Sisters of the Visitation came later and established their convent for the higher education of girls and did for the girls of the West and South what the St. Louis University did for the boys. Still later came the establishment of medical colleges, one in connection with the St. Louis University, and later the institutions founded by McDowell and Pope, from which grew the swarm of large medical and surgical colleges which now make St. Louis one of the most important centres of medical education in the land.

Events moved rapidly after 1835. The growth of river traffic was steady. The drift of emigration westward was beneficial to St. Louis in every way. Men and money flowed in from the East and the South. There were rumors of railroads, and, in April, 1835, a convention was held by representatives of eleven of the most populous counties of the State to take steps to induce the construction of railroads in the State and to and from the city. The modern spirit manifested itself in every direction, and the year 1836 found the people regarding St. Louis as a metropolis, though in that year occurred an incident demonstrating that the taint of barbarism lingered to some extent among the people. A negro who had stabbed a constable was seized by a mob and tied to a tree and burned to death, amid a chorus of execrations,--an episode only too frequently duplicated in different sections of the country of late years. At this time St. Louis had 15,000 inhabitants, but it was not till the year following that a theatre was known. In the same year a brick fire-engine house was built, and leading citizens were proud to be members of the company and "run with the machine."

St. Louis was much interested in the Texan war of independence, and from its stores supplies went to the followers of Houston, while many of the younger men of the community left to join the Lone Star warriors in their struggle. Later, when the war with Mexico began, there were multiplied activities in the city, because the Government here outfitted many of its troops. Here next were heard the first mutterings of the storm that broke in 1861. Elijah P. Lovejoy, anti-slavery in sentiment, edited the _St. Louis Observer_. On the night of July 21, 1836, persons unknown broke into the publishing room and wrecked the establishment, scattering the type into the street. No one was punished for the offence. Lovejoy went to Alton, where later he was slain by fanatical opponents of his abolitionism, who unwittingly wrote his name high on the list of the martyrs to freedom. St. Louis had its first daily mail September 20, 1836, and on the same day the _Missouri Republican_ commenced the publication of a regular daily edition. In 1837 Daniel Webster was banqueted, and it was estimated that there were more guests at the banquet than there were inhabitants of the city when Lafayette was fêted twelve years before.

Following in quick succession, events too numerous to be recapitulated marked the history of the town. In spite of floods and cholera and a great fire, which swept away the business portion of the city, the community went steadily ahead. The gold-fever helped St. Louis, for the Argonauts going overland outfitted here, as in very recent years their fellows bound for the Klondike and Cape Nome outfitted at Seattle. As the West built up St. Louis builded too. Something substantial from the westward-moving stream always found its way into the coffers of the St. Louis merchants. The prosperity and power of the South lent prestige to the city. The city was a great cotton market. It had a vast trade up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, up and down the Ohio and the Tennessee. The fleets of steamboats at the wharves grew in size, until, old inhabitants say, there were three or four miles of them at the river front at one time, being loaded and unloaded day and night by singing negroes. As agriculture grew in importance, St. Louis became a great wheat market, a great market for cattle and swine, horses and mules. Its manufactures in every line throve, as well they might, for it was the great depot of the West, with a straightaway water route to the sea. There was plenty of work, plenty of money, and more than plenty of pleasure. The society of St. Louis was exclusive and magnificent. The ante-bellum balls were gorgeous affairs. The women were beautiful, of the Southern type, and when it was desired to say of one of them that she was royally bejewelled, a common phrase used was "She wore a nigger on every finger." Steamboatmen, planters, slave-traders, merchants dealing in cotton or in sugar, spent money like water. The town was, as we say in these days, wide open, and of a perilous liveliness, for the incoming Northerners and Easterners were never equal to the task of suppressing what the New England American regards as vices not to be temporized with. The brightness and gayety, however, did not wholly conceal the dread of the sorrow that was to come. St. Louis was, for the most part, intensely Southern; but the Revolution of 1848 had brought to this country and to St. Louis a great number of Germans, who were set against slavery and secession. The storm broke, and the breaking was a severe setback to St. Louis, whose prosperity was founded chiefly on that of the South. Its sympathies, through social, political, business ties, were mainly with the South. The war destroyed business. St. Louis, if not the enemy's country, was strongly suspected of disloyalty, and for a time it seemed as if war would smite the city itself, while there hung in the balance the decision of the alternative of Governor Claiborne Jackson of Missouri that he would "take Missouri out of the Union or into hell." Feeling ran high in the community. Almost a battle was fought on its outskirts. St. Louis had bitter experiences of martial law, while its commercial activities seemed to be mostly controlled by people who had government contracts. Here, where Grant had been known as a none too tidy farmer, his name was loathed, as was Lincoln's, by the larger element, while the Germans were profoundly loyal. The misfortunes of the South were unfortunate for St. Louis in every instance, and when the scourge of war passed, the region whence St. Louis had drawn most of its wealth was devastated, and the sceptre of trade passed to the North. As the fortunes of St. Louis declined from these causes, they and other causes operated to push Chicago to the front, even though, when Chicago had been twice visited by fire, St. Louis, as the greater city, made large contributions to the relief of the sufferers. St. Louis did not go backward, but the country to the north recovered from the war and improved more rapidly than that to the south and southwest, and the northern and western trade went to Chicago. St. Louis managed, in the face of such obstacles, to hold its own. The work of expansion and extension of improvement went steadily ahead, though with great conservatism. The boom idea, that grew after the war, was never hospitably entertained in St. Louis, though the manufacturers and merchants found a new trade and strenuously developed it in the new Southwest. The southwestern railway systems began to take shape, and the prosperity of St. Louis came back in great measure late in the eighties. The great St. Louis bridge had been opened in 1874, and the city was put in touch with the East, but the greater movement of the country's wealth and energy was being felt in the territory that was out of trade touch and political sympathy with the field in which St. Louis was once supreme. Nevertheless St. Louis added to her beauties steadily. She acquired Forest Park, the greatest natural public city park in the country, after Fairmount in Philadelphia, also O'Fallon Park, but little less magnificent. Through the philanthropic generosity of Henry Shaw she acquired Tower Grove Park, which is perhaps the finest specimen of the park artificial to be found anywhere. Later, Mr. Shaw left to the city by will his botanical garden, an institution famous the world over for its collection of plants of almost every species. The city paved all its downtown streets with granite, and later its outlying streets with asphalt, erected a new custom house, a Four Courts Building, stupendous water-works, and constructed a gigantic extension of the sewer system. The development of the system of street railway transportation in St. Louis was more rapid and more perfect than in any other city in the world. A new mercantile library was built and the public-school library was made free. Churches increased in great numbers. Schools multiplied and were overcrowded in places where within twenty years had been quarry ponds and cow pastures. The growth of business, the multiplication of banks, the overspreading of the population since 1880, has been bewildering in its progress, and remains so, in spite of the fact that there has been all this time in process of building, directly across the river, a sort of overflow city of sixty thousand people. The city lost its river trade but has made up for it in utilization of the railroads, and is now preparing again to use the mighty, free, natural highway for the transportation of products to the world at large. St. Louis, so often thought of as slow, has really grown with phenomenal rapidity. It is one of the wealthiest cities in the country, a city of homes, and a city of perhaps more beautiful homes widely distributed in different sections than are to be found elsewhere. The wealthy men of St. Louis are almost all young men. The greater fortunes in St. Louis, with but few exceptions, have been made within the past twenty years, and many of them in the last ten years, and these now utterly eclipse the fortunes that have been handed down from the earlier days. The city has to-day a population of 575,000. In the suburban territory there are over 700,000 more people in close relationship daily and almost hourly with the business and social life of the city. The "slow old town" is not so slow when it is remembered that within one year after a cyclone swept it in May, 1896, there was not a trace of the visitation. Its conservatism is very real, but it is not stagnation. St. Louis has gone on with its work, even though war and the industrial tendencies consequent on war, and the political and social drift growing out of war have been in opposition to the city's progress. The city has built steadily but well, passing through the panic of 1893 without a single failure. The earlier history of the town shows how the conservatism so thoughtlessly derided came to be ingrained in the life of the city. It shows, too, the pertinacity which has made St. Louis the fourth city in the Union, in defiance of the disaster that befell its prestige in the great war, and in defiance too of the circumstance that the new popular national activities generated after that great conflict found their most congenial field in regions practically out of reach of, and wholly antipathetic to the interests of the chief city of Missouri. The new South and the new Southwest mean a new St. Louis. And we shall see what the new St. Louis means when the city expresses its higher and better self in the Exposition with which its people purpose to celebrate the purchase, by the United States, in 1803, of the Louisiana Territory.

KANSAS CITY

THE CENTRAL CITY

BY CHARLES S. GLEED

In early literature and in early United States Indian treaties the Indian word "Kansas" appears as Caucis, Konza, Konseas, Kons, Kanzaw, Kanzau, Kaw, and Kanzas. Kansas, meaning smoky, was the name of a tribe of Indians still existing in the Indian Territory and it came to be applied to all the country west of the Missouri River over which the tribe roamed (the country which is now largely in the State of Kansas), and also to its chief river.

There are two Kansas Cities, one in Missouri, the other in Kansas. The Kansas City in Missouri was named after the Kansas Indians, the Kansas River, the Kansas country, or all of them. The Kansas City in Kansas was named after the Kansas City in Missouri. The two cities are one except in law and the line dividing them is not discoverable except by the surveyor. The Kansas City in Kansas was made up of a number of small towns the chief of which was Wyandotte. It was thought that the Kansas town would be helped by adopting the good name belonging to the Missouri town. The Kansas City in Kansas has about 60,000 people; the Kansas City in Missouri has about 225,000. The former is the largest city in Kansas, while the latter is the second city in Missouri. In this sketch the two towns are considered as one.

Among large cities Kansas City is central, for the exact centre of the United States is about two hundred miles west in Kansas. At the point where Kansas City is located, the Kansas or "Kaw" River coming from the west empties into the Missouri River coming from the North. The Kansas-Missouri State line runs south from near the junction of the two rivers. In the angles formed by this junction are very high hills, almost mountains. Standing on the high point close in the southern angle, one may look away for ten to twenty miles to the north and the east along the valley of the Missouri and to the west along the valley of the Kansas. It is in these valleys and on these miniature mountains that the city is built. The parts in the valleys present no special difficulties to the town builder, but in the higher parts almost every difficulty is presented. The hills are composed of rocks which must be blasted, and of yellow clay. The original bluffs are cut by numerous ravines leading towards the rivers, and those streets running parallel with the rivers and therefore crossing the ravines are necessarily in many cases very steep. This topographical situation has required the removal of enormous quantities of earth and rock, the filling of great ravines, and the artificial establishment of the grades of streets. This rendered the city unsightly through its earlier years, but the unsightliness is rapidly giving way to great beauty and picturesqueness.

The first plat of the "Town of Kansas" was filed in 1839. It included the land bordering the Missouri River some distance south and east of the mouth of the Kansas River and bounded by the river, the present Second Street, the present Delaware Street, and the present Grand Avenue. There was no technical incorporation, and the common name of the place was at first Westport Landing--this being the river landing for the trading post called Westport, four or five miles south of the river.

In 1850, the County Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence, created the "Town of Kansas" as an incorporation governed by a Board of Trustees. The first board, appointed February 4, 1850, failed to act and on June 3d of the same year another board was appointed, composed of William Gillis, Madison Walrond, Lewis Ford, Bennoist Troost, and Henry W. Brice. This board controlled the town until the Legislature of Missouri, February 22, 1853, granted the right of incorporation to the city of Kansas. From the small original town, by one addition after another, has grown a city covering an area of nearly one hundred square miles.

Long before any incorporation or any platting of town sites there was much activity in this locality. Judge E.P. West, an eminent local geologist, produces indisputable evidence in the shape of stone arrow-heads and spear-heads found on the present town site that the place was inhabited at least 21,000 years ago. The local museum contains a great number of specimens of flint and stone work indicating to geologists and archæologists the presence of races dating back many centuries.

In 1825, the Jesuit Fathers penetrated all parts of the wilderness surrounding what is now Kansas City. They were doubtless the first white settlers and in all probability they had only the usual purpose, zeal in propagating the religion of their fathers. They are known to have built a small log house in the neighborhood of the northern part of what is now Troost Avenue. It was as much a church as a dwelling, for here the tribes to whom they had come attended religious service. In 1835 a missionary named Father Roux established the first actual church in this locality. There were many trappers and hunters of the French-Canadian type who had intermarried with the Indians. In 1835 Father Roux purchased of a Canadian some forty acres on the hill adjoining the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, almost exactly in the centre of the present city, and in 1839 was instrumental in having a log church built on a part of the land situated between what are now Eleventh and Twelfth Streets on Penn Street. Here for a period of at least twenty years a congregation composed largely of French Canadians and the children of the French and Indian intermarriages worshipped together. In 1845 Father Bernard Donnelly was made pastor of all Western Missouri, and ministered to the Indians and whites alike. Through his efforts a brick church was erected on the corner of what are now Eleventh Street and Broadway, and from 1857 to 1880, when he retired from active work to die a few months later at the age of eighty, he devoted himself entirely to his priestly duties. The church and the city owe an unmeasured debt of gratitude to this unselfish and lovable man.

Questions of transportation have been of overwhelming interest to the people of Kansas City from the beginning. The first crossing of the Missouri River at this point was established in 1836 by the operation of a flatboat at the mouth of the "Kaw." The Rev. Isaac McCoy and his son established the ferry and operated it until 1854. Then came the horse-power ferryboat, and the steam ferryboat. In due time full-fledged steamboats made their appearance on the Missouri. Westport Landing, by reason of a rocky bank and deep water in front of it, afforded an excellent landing. Here were unloaded the goods for the great Indian and Mexican trade of the West, and from here were shipped eastward wool, furs, buffalo robes, and other products of the region. Immigration overland to Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Mexico, and California came to this point in boats and then went westward by the old Santa Fé trail. From about 1850 to the coming of the railroads, from six to ten boats daily came to this landing. In 1857, during the nine months of navigation, no fewer than fifteen hundred boats arrived and departed. Some of them were palatial structures, judged even by the standard of to-day, and many of them were magnificently furnished and equipped to care for passengers.

One of the early features of the travel and traffic between Kansas City and the West was the old Concord Coach and another was the ox and mule wagon known as the "Prairie Schooner." The coaches carried from ten to fifteen passengers, and the passengers as a rule carried from two to a dozen weapons of defence against the Indians. At one time the fare per passenger from Westport to Santa Fé, New Mexico, was $175 in gold, and the schedule time was thirteen days and six hours. The trip involved travelling night and day, asleep and awake, without stopping except for meals. The "Overland Mail Express Company" maintained an office for years on the Levee, and for carrying mails received $172,000 a year. Mail, passengers, and express matter usually yielded from $5000 to $6000 a trip.

In 1843, the Mexican trade from this point was suspended by Santa Anna, who closed the northern port of entry. As soon, however, as the embargo was removed, trade revived and greatly increased. At this time Atchison, Leavenworth, St. Joseph, and Omaha entered upon the same business, but until the Civil War commenced Kansas City retained most of the trade. A book published in 1843 shows the tonnage between Kansas City and Mexico to have increased from 15,000 tons in 1822, to 150,000 tons in 1837, the increase being fairly uniform over the entire period. In 1850, 600 wagons began the overland trip from Kansas City; by 1855 the trade had grown to a total valuation of at least $5,000,000, and by 1860 had still further increased to a point which attracted national attention. In that year a correspondent sent by the _New York Herald_ to study the statistics of the business, reported that there were shipped from Kansas City in that year 16,439,134 pounds of freight, employing 7084 men, 6147 mules, 27,920 yoke of oxen and 3033 wagons, to which should be added the statistics of the trade with the towns of Kansas and Nebraska. This, for that time, enormous bulk of business, passed over the Santa Fé trail which is now almost exactly the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad.

At the close of the Civil War in 1865, during which Kansas City, in common with all the border towns of Missouri and Kansas, was disturbed by the conflict, a tremendous immigration began to flow westward through the city. Railroad enterprises in Kansas and beyond were opening up the country for settlement, and the families of those who had lately been engaged in war rushed westward to take up the vacant lands offered them.

The first railroads entering the city were the Hannibal & St. Joseph (which is now a part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system) and the Missouri Pacific--the first entering from the direction of Chicago, and the last from the direction of St. Louis. The first built to the west was the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, afterwards known as the Kansas Pacific, now a part of the Union Pacific.

Railroad building in the country immediately tributary to Kansas City became active at the close of the Civil War, and has continued until the present time (1901), when two new main lines are under construction towards the city. The railway companies with lines entering Kansas City now are the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the Wabash, the Chicago & Alton, the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the St. Louis & San Francisco, the St. Joseph & Grand Island, the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis, the Kansas City Southern, the Chicago & Great Western, the Kansas City & Northern, the Union Pacific, the Suburban Belt, and the Kansas City Belt.

Nowhere in the United States can be seen a better demonstration of the wonderful development of the transportation system of the country. Besides its trunk-line railroads the city has two belt railway systems and numerous private tracks, so that its equipment for industrial work is unexcelled. Its street-railway system of nearly two hundred miles is one of the finest in America. The tracks and the equipment are thoroughly modern in every respect.

The first newspaper published in Kansas City was a weekly called the _Kansas Ledger_. It was established in 1851, but was sold in about fifteen months, and then sold again and removed to Independence. The city after the death of the _Ledger_ was for eighteen months without a newspaper office. In September, 1854, the _Kansas City Enterprise_ made its appearance, edited by W.A. Strong, D.K. Abeel having charge of the publishing department. In August, 1855, the _Enterprise_ was bought out by R.T. Van Horn, who assumed editorial control in October. In January, 1857, Mr. Abeel purchased a half-interest in the paper and in the following October the _Enterprise_ became the _Western Journal of Commerce_, a larger and greatly improved sheet. The _Kansas City Journal_ grew out of this and at once began to assume the high position among the great dailies of the country which it has since maintained. Theodore Case, in his history of Kansas City, a volume of some seven hundred pages, says of the _Journal_ in 1888 what may well be repeated to-day:

"There is one feature that has always characterized this paper,
a never-failing devotion to home and local interests, and an
unyielding faith in the destiny of the city, that has made it,
more than any other interest, the builder and architect of the
present City of Kansas. It has furnished more information,
historical, statistical and commercial in regard to Western
Missouri, the great western plains and the mountains, their
trade, resources and capabilities, than any other paper in the
Mississippi Valley, and when the history of the New West comes
to be written, it is to its columns that the historian will
turn for its earliest facts and figures."

Colonel R.T. Van Horn continued to be the chief owner and editor of the _Journal_ until 1896, besides attending to his duties as Congressman and in other important relations. As the "Grand Old Man" of Kansas City, he is to-day quietly enjoying the fruits of his long and honorable labors.

The only other Kansas City newspaper besides the _Journal_ in existence at the close of the war was the _Daily Kansas City Post_ (German) started in the latter part of 1858, with August Wuerz, Sr., as its first editor. Mr. Wuerz was a strong abolitionist and so aroused the antipathy of the pro-slavery element that he was forced to abandon the city in 1860. He crossed over to Wyandotte (now Kansas City, Kansas), published the _Post_ there for nine months, and then returned to Kansas City. The first democratic daily established here after the war was the _Advertiser_, which appeared in 1865. It was succeeded in 1868 by the _Kansas City Times_, which was issued by the proprietors, Messrs. R.B. Drury & Co. Varying fortune marked the paper until 1878, when, under the management of Messrs. Munford, Munford & Hasbrook, it attained a high standing among the dailies of the country. Of the papers which at about this time shared the honor of representing Kansas City should be named the _Kansas City News_, an evening paper, which suspended after a four years' existence; the _Evening Mail_, an evening democratic paper, which came into existence in 1875 and which, after frequently changing its proprietors, became, in 1882, the property of the owner of the _Kansas City Star_, Mr. W.R. Nelson. The _Kansas City Star_ achieved remarkable success in the hands of Mr. Nelson, and now occupies a leading place among the dailies of the city and the country, giving as it always has its best efforts towards the upbuilding and expansion of the city. Another evening paper which has shown evidence of the growth of the city by its own substantial growth, is the _Evening World_, which, established in 1894, continues to rank well among the papers of the city. Vicious newspapers have never been permitted to flourish in Kansas City.

What may be called the real-estate history of Kansas City is peculiarly interesting. In the year 1830 James H. McGee built a log cabin for a residence near what is now the corner of Twentieth and Central Streets. He made the first kiln of brick west of Independence, built the first brick residence in Kansas City, and furnished the bricks for Father Donnelly's chapel chimney. Mr. McGee acquired by purchase nearly all the land between the towns of Kansas City and Westport, and his name and that of his family is to-day so associated with the record of the city's development that it cannot be lost. The first working town company was formed in 1846 and was composed of men whose names subsequently were conspicuous in the city's history. They were H.M. Northrup, Jacob Ragan, Henry Jobe, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, Fry P. McGee, W.B. Evans, W.M. Chick, and J.C. McCoy. It is said that about 150 lots were then sold at an average price of $55.65 per lot. This was the nucleus of the old town and the beginning of its most picturesque history as a real-estate market. In the years between 1878 and 1888 (the "boom" period) the city grew extraordinarily, the excitement over real-estate transactions reaching a point probably unprecedented in this country. An enormous acreage of what never can be anything but farm land was platted and sold as city property, and prices for all classes of real estate reached figures which will probably never be reached again, at least until the city has a population greater than now seems possible.

At the close of the war in 1865, Kansas City had three banks, one insurance company, one daily and two weekly English newspapers, one German weekly and one bi-monthly medical journal. The churches were two Methodist, one Baptist, two Presbyterian, one Roman Catholic and one Christian. There were two lodges of Masons, two of Odd Fellows, one of Good Templars, a Turn Verein, a Shamrock Benevolent Society, a girl's school, a rectory school, and a German school. The census of 1860 showed a population of 4418. Now the city stands first among the cities of the land in the agricultural implement trade, first in the Southern lumber trade, second in the live-stock trade, first in the horse and mule trade, second as a railroad centre, second in the meat-packing business, tenth in bank clearings, nineteenth in the value of its manufactures. It has 50 public-school buildings, 626 teachers and 34,142 pupils. It has the second largest park system in the country, having over 2000 acres. It handled in 1900 $130,824,270 worth of live-stock; 32,625,850 bushels of wheat; 7,290,000 bushels of corn; 3,035,600 bushels of oats; 156,000 bushels of rye, and 12,000 bushels of barley. It did a wholesale business of $265,000,000, its packing houses turned out $100,000,000 worth of products, slaughtering 1,000,000 cattle, 2,900,000 hogs and 650,673 sheep. Its bank clearings were $698,755,530. Its banking and trust company capital was $8,000,000; it had two hundred miles of paved streets, twenty-seven grain elevators with a storage capacity of 6,484,000 bushels.

On the non-material side the city has made a progress even more remarkable. It is not devoted entirely to money-getting. The humanities have been remembered. There are some thirty-four hospitals, asylums, and benevolent homes. It has eight hospitals proper for the reception of the sick, disabled, and diseased, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company maintaining one. There are five children's homes, and one industrial home. There are three homes for the aged, one of which is for colored people entirely. There is one convent and an institution each for the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy, besides others of lesser importance. In some cases the buildings may not be pretentious, but they are all ample in size, and in many instances would not discredit the cities of the largest population. The exceptional intelligence of the people is proved by other unmistakable signs. Strong, clean newspapers, beautiful opera houses, first-class hotels, hundreds of churches, modern schools, great libraries, charming clubs, beautiful parks and streets, fine hospitals, fine public buildings, admirable public utilities, and above all an enormous proportion of beautiful homes,--these are some of the signs that tell of the fruition of the highest hopes of the hardy pioneers who first gave battle to savagery and the wilderness at this point.

That the city has a much greater growth before it is the opinion of all who are familiar with the conditions there. The vast agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing region surrounding it and directly tributary to it for a thousand miles in every direction is sure to push it steadily forward among American cities until it ranks at last with Boston, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

OMAHA

THE TRANSCONTINENTAL GATEWAY

BY VICTOR ROSEWATER

Now a city of 100,000 population, with prosperous suburbs that make it the business centre for 175,000 people, Omaha is the outgrowth of the Nebraska & Council Bluffs Ferry Company. This company was organized under the incorporation laws of Iowa, in 1853, to carry on the lucrative ferriage traffic for transcontinental pilgrims in quest of the gold-fields of California that had been begun two years previously by a halted gold-seeker, Brown by name, who saw more gold in paddling passengers across the murky Missouri than in washing the yellow sands near Sutter's mill.

As an adjunct to the ferry, the company staked out a claim adjacent to its west landing directly opposite Council Bluffs, and employed Alfred D. Jones, a young civil engineer, to lay out a town site which on pretentious paper was invested, without particular thought or design, with the name Omaha, from the tribe of Indians that was wont to camp upon the creek brushing its north boundary. The survey was conducted in June and July of 1854, and the adoption of the name was doubtless suggested by the fact that a month or more before the representative in Congress for the State of Iowa had prevailed upon the Post-Office Department to issue a commission to Mr. Jones as postmaster at Omaha City, which at that time must have existed solely in his prolific imagination. Postmaster Jones carrying the post-office around with him in his hat is a reminiscence founded on actual fact and not in fancy.