CHAPTER XXII

CONFUSION -- DERIVATION AND MEANING -- EARLY OFFICIAL MAPS -- ERRORS -- CONTROVERSY -- MILTON WHITING -- ERRONEOUS PLATBOOKS -- EARLY WRITERS -- LOCATION OF OSAGES -- THE MARAIS DES CYGNES A PART OF BOUNDARY -- A BEAUTIFUL SCENE -- HAPPY HOME -- BIG TREES -- CROOKED STREAM -- DESCRIPTION -- FISH STORIES -- RECLAMATION -- CAPTAIN A. B. DICKEY -- C. G. GREEN -- DRAINAGE COMPANY -- "VALLEY OF THE NILE" -- EXTENSION

As many erroneous notions have arisen from the confusion by early writers of the Osage, the Little Osage and the Marais des Cygnes rivers some comment seems proper, and really important to a right understanding of history as it is written. The words "Marais des Cygnes" are French, and everything indicates that the river was so named by French couriers, hunters or traders long before Capt. Zebulon B. Pike's expedition came up the Osage and pitched camp above its mouth on the Little Osage near the confluence of the Marmiton, in 1806. The name literally means "the marshes of the swans." both being in the plural. For an authoritative and technical explanation of its origin and meaning reference is here made to the letter to the author, to be found elsewhere in the Appendix, from Judge Walter B. Douglas, president of the Missouri Historical Society of St. Louis. He is most competent authority on early Missouri history and a scholar and linguist. We accept his statements, and regard them as important and conclusive so far as they touch this matter.

Investigation of all the early official maps to be found in the State Historical Society at Columbia disclosed the fact that the words "Marais des Cygnes" did not appear on any of them in connection with this river until 1838; and yet the journal of the Harmony missionaries and some of their letters written in 1821 and 1822 designate what Pike called the "North Fork" as the "Marais de cien." So we may reasonably infer, from a date prior to the settlement of the missionary family at Harmony on its bank, that from its junction with the Little Osage, north and northwest it was known as the Marais des Cygnes river by all who were familiar with it, notwithstanding the fact that the early map makers of this region continued to mark it for many years as the Osage river; and some very recent maps of Missouri do so. A striking instance is the official soil survey map of Bates county published by the Government in 1908, which shows this river as the Osage entirely through this county. In response to a letter from the author an explanation will be found in the Appendix in this book from Milton Whiting, chief of Bureau of Soils Survey, United States Agricultural Department, Washington, D.C., February 2, 1918. Touching the controversy as to whether it is the union of the Little Osage with the Marais des Cygnes, or the union of the Marmiton (formerly designated as Manitou creek) and the Marais des Cygnes, which forms the Osage river, the reader is referred again to a former letter of date January 17, 1918, by Milton Whiting in the Appendix of this book which is exhaustive, and seems historically conclusive. It sustains our contention that the current platbooks of both Vernon and Bates counties are erroneous in showing that the Marmiton unites with the Marais des Cygnes to form the Osage river. The fact is the Marmiton flows into the Little Osage river some miles southwest of the confluence of the Little Osage with the Marais des Cygnes, and it ought to be so shown on our platbook, at least, if shown at all, as the Marais des Cygnes for some distance down to its junction with the Little Osage is the line between Bates and Vernon.

All this has to do with the confusion found in the early writers, even some of the Harmony missionary writers being in error. One of the missionaries states that Harmony is "situated on the north bank of the Marais de Cien, a branch of the Osage river, about six miles above its mouth, one mile from the United States Factory, which was built during the last summer and fifteen or twenty miles from the largest of the Great Osage villages." This statement apparently has had more to do in misleading other writers than any other one statement emanating from an apparently authoritative source; but it is impossible to say who is the author of the statement. We infer it was made by the secretary of domestic correspondence of the United Foreign Missionary Board, as it is found in the proceedings of the board at the meeting held in New York City, May 8, 1822, only about eight months after the mission family had become located at Harmony; and it must be remembered that in those days mails were few and early communications from the family possibly were inaccurate and so misled the secretary making the report. As tending to show this the statement is made that Harmony is about "six miles above the mouth of the Marais de Cein" whereas the plat herewith certified by the land office at Washington shows Harmony not to be over three and a half miles from the mouth of the river. The country was wild, and the missionaries may be pardoned for not knowing everything about the country about them in so short a time after their location; and so may the secretary making this report be reasonably excused for saying that Harmony was "fifteen or twenty miles from the largest of the great Osage villages." The fact that the United States Factory was erected the same year, just before the arrival of the missionary family, and just one mile from Harmony, as the secretary states, indicates that the body of the great Osages resided at that time in that vicinity, wherever they may have resided when De Tissenet, the French-Canadian, came up the Osage in 1719, and visited some Indian villages in that section; or when Capt. Z. B. Pike visited the village near the mouth of the Marmiton on the Little Osage river in 1806. It will be noted that De Tissenet's visit was more than a century before the coming of the mission family -- more than two hundred years ago now. The great Osages doubtless moved their chief village many times during the century prior to 1821, and from all the evidence and all reasonable inferences we believe it to be historically true and correct to say that in 1821 the main body of the great Osages resided in what is now Bates county, Missouri, and that at least one of their principal villages was the "one village" mentioned by Sibley as "seventy-eight measured miles directly south" of Ft. Osage, on the Osage river, or within a mile or two of the site of Harmony Mission. To assume that the Osages resided fifteen or twenty miles away in a low, flat, marshy, swampy section of country where neither they nor their children could, only under great difficulties, get to Harmony negatives all the purposes in view by the mission family. Besides the records of the missionaries show that they considered well the choosing of a site, and with the purpose to establish a great school among the great Osages it is unreasonable to suppose that they did not consider the residence of the people whose children they had come to educate. Every fact and every reasonable inference from the facts leads to the conclusion that they settled as nearly as they could in the midst of the homes of the children of the great Osage tribe. No question can arise here about the location of the Little Osage tribe; for these missionaries were sent to the Great or Grand Osage tribe, and very little mention is anywhere made of the Little Osage tribe whose principal dwelling place at that time seems to have been near what was known afterward as Little Osage or Bulltown on the Little Osage river above the mouth of the Marmiton a short distance.

by Lucien Green.

The Marais des Cygnes river flows across the southwest corner of Bates county, and unites with the Little Osage near Papinsville, thus forming the big Osage river which, together with the Marais des Cygnes, forms part of the boundary between Vernon and Bates counties. My first sight of the beautiful valley of the Marais des Cygnes was in the fall of 1874, and from the height of land eight or ten miles north of the river, the vision extended twenty or more miles to the south and fully two hundred feet above the bed of the river, and about one hundred feet above the top of the big timber adjacent. In the spring of 1875, I visited the river and the valley and was charmed with what I saw. The adage, "Distance lends enchantment to the view" did not appeal to me. To one reared among the hills of southern Ohio where the forests confined the landscape to two or three miles and where fifteen or twenty acres of level bottom land were large fields, the sight of several hundred -- perhaps one thousand acres -- in one meadow level as a floor, was a revelation. After seeing these big meadows hundreds of times they have always been beautiful and charming to me. Here where the Osage Indians lived one hundred or two hundred years ago, was a paradise for civilized beings, and it would be almost impossible for a tribe of wild Indians to find a pleasanter or happier home. Here was rich pasture for their ponies, little lakes decorated with beautiful lilies, the waters on their surface carrying flocks of wild fowl, and in their depths schools of choice fish. The forests between the river and the meadows supplied the Indians with bear, deer, coon, opossum, squirrels and other four-footed game for their meat; the groves of pecans, hickory-nuts, hazel nuts and walnuts, with nuts to crack and eat. The Christmas and Thanksgiving turkeys awaited the swift arrows to make them ready for the dusky squaws and maidens to pick and roast over the coals for the feast. Yes, indeed, the wild Indians had "the great Spirit" and why shouldn't they have the fruits of the spirit -- trust, hope and thankfulness.

I looked at the big trees. Here was a giant elm and there a great oak, fit emblems of the Washington Elm and Charter Oak. We tried to girdle some of the trees to estimate their diameter, but like the young man, our arms were too short, and we had no chalk. I found pecans and hickories almost three feet in diameter, burr oaks, cottonwoods and maples four or more feet in diameter. Many large yellow Cottonwood trees grew near the water, where getting them up the bank was a difficult task. I was informed that the river and the land to the top of its banks belonged to the government; also that many of those big cottonwoods had suddenly parted from their stumps and when their tops became detached, floated down to a convenient saw-mill.

The Marais des Cygnes is a very crooked stream, the water flowing to every point of the compass except due west. I visited the river when conditions were different. The low lands were covered with yellow water, the meadows were hidden from view. Armed with a long handled pitchfork, I walked out on a dry point in search of a mess of fish. A chunk, of rotten wood floated by carrying a water snake as a passenger. A big mudcat showed his periscope in search of a frog or young mud hen but quickly submerged when he saw my harpoon poised for a strike. I saw the fan of a big buffalo as it stood on its head and used its tail as a fan to preserve its equilibrium while nosing in the mud for a succulent grass-root. Yes, buffalo fish eat grass, sweet roots, corn and all kinds of bread when they can get it.

Right now I cannot refrain from telling a few fish stories, and they are true ones. Matt Adams, my near neighbor, a good farmer and an expert fisherman and hunter, studied the habits of the buffalo fish. He told me that they went in schools of about the same age and weight; also that during the floods they swam in the same channels that other schools used perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was during the big flood about 1877 or 1878 that Matt set his long trammel net nearly a mile north of Cornland. The next morning the net yielded him sixty-nine buffalo each weighing eight or ten pounds. Another one. Capt. E. P. Henry and P. L. Wyatt. both old Ohio neighbors and friends, went to the river fishing. They used bull-head catfish for bait and they set their trot-lines in what was known as "the big blue hole" a half-mile up the river from Bell's Mill. The next morning when they went to run their lines they took a shotgun in the boat to use in case of emergencies. They took off a fine lot of catfish, some large ones. One very large one refused to be tired out, but after much effort they got it to the top of the water, when one of the fishermen said, "Let's shoot it." "Oh! no," said his companion, "let's take it alive to show our folks at home." While devising plans to get the fish into the boat, it gave a great flop and lunge and broke the hook. Reader, what would you or I have said, thought or done? Henry and Wyatt were different; they didn't say it, think it, nor do it. Another. A few years ago Kansas City fishermen speared a one hundred-twenty-six pound mudcat in the flood waters north of Rich Hill. One more, and many fishermen will vouch for the truth of it. I spent two nights and one day fishing in the river and caught enough little fish -- to give the skillet a delicious odor.

It had long been a problem how to reclaim these bottom lands and add them to the farming area of Bates county. Perhaps to Capt. A. B. Dickey of Athens county, Ohio, belongs the honor of being the pioneer in efforts to reclaim the swamp and overflow lands of the Marals des Cygnes valley and enable it to produce farm crops worth a million or more dollars annually. It was about 1872 that Mr. Dickey came to Bates county to invest in land. Being an ardent sportsman with rod and gun he soon saw the big Goose lake of four hundred acres lying near Cornland, which he purchased along with several hundred other acres, part dry, adjacent. Ditches were cut which removed the surface water but did not fit the land for crops. Levees were built and a large stone gate was erected to keep the water from the Miami from flowing into the lake. But the flood waters were not yet ready to give up their own. Finally G. G. Green, the millionaire patent medicine man of Woodbury, New Jersey, who was a cousin, by marriage, came to the aid of Mr. Dickey. Much money was spent and large levees were built but to no purpose. The big waves from thousands of acres of flood waters washed the levees away. Mr. Dickey traded his equity in the land for a hardware store in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Owners of the overflow lands formed a Drainage Company under a law enacted by the Missouri Legislature for the reclamation of the swamp and overflow lands of the state. A large ditch, with many small ones, was cut which it is believed will add twenty thousand or more acres of land, as rich as the valley of the Nile where Joseph's brothers went to buy corn, to the farming area of Bates county. An extension of this drainage system is in contemplation, along the Osage about ten miles in length to the southeast corner of Bates county, which when completed will add five thousand or more acres to the present crop area. Along the Marais des Cygnes, big farms of hundreds of acres each produce forty bushels of wheat per acre, and three to four tons of alfalfa per acre and the reclaimed land is found to be adapted to the grains, grasses, vegetables and fruits of the most favored sections of the West. With four million, seven hundred fourteen thousand, two hundred forty-eight bushels of corn raised in Bates county in 1917, a dry year, these reclaimed lands with the addition of several thousand acres on the hills and along the many small streams that eventually will be put under cultivation will easily place Bates county to the front among the one hundred fourteen counties of the state in the production of corn, tame hay, and other agricultural productions.