52 Transactions of the Kansas 



been removed to the present Indian Territory. Mr. McCoy was a missionary on 

 the Wabasli and St Jo-eph rivers, in Indiana and Michigan, as early as the year 

 1817. Experience had taught him that contact with frontier white men, gathering 

 in aiound his missionary stations, resulted in undoing the work of education and 

 civilization which he and his associates had for a time accomplished with the In- 

 dians. He became imiiressed with the opinion that their removal to a remote territo- 

 ry would enable the missionary work to have the full effect of christianizing and 

 civilizing the Inihans. He personally presented his views to Secretary, John 

 C. Calhoun, and to Presidents Monroe and John Quincy Adams, all of whom ap- 

 proved the scheme, and commended it to the action of Congress. After its adop- 

 tion, Mr. McCoy was made the agent of the Government, in the assignment of 

 reservations to the several tribes. In the performance of all that work ; first of 

 securing the adoption of his scheme of the policy of the Government, and then of 

 personally efl'ecting the removal and establishing his missionary stations among 

 the Indians, Mr. McCoy displayed the character of a true Christian hero, the like of 

 whom, It seems to me, we have scarcely had upon Kansas soil since his time. The 

 simple narrative of his labors, and of those of his co-laborers, David Lykins, 

 Jotham Meeker, and Robert Simmerwell, as contained in the volume entitled "The 

 History of Baptist Indian Missions," published in 1840, presents examples ot won- 

 derful Christian zeal. Considering that the work done bj-^ these men related to 

 efl'orts for the civilization of people of the American aboriginal race, and that the 

 work pertained to Kansas, an appropriate subject of investigation is here suggested 

 in the anthropological department of this Academy. 



Mr. McCoy made the survey of the Delaware reservation, in the months of 

 October and November, 1830. The flag-staff at Fort Leavenworth was made the 

 initial point of the norihern boundar}' line. The Fort was then merely a military 

 cantonment which had been established five years before. The line was made to 

 tal<e a Uirection west by north for a distance, so as to give the Delawares an outlet 

 to the buffalo plains, shunning the tiien Kaw reservation, afterwards the Potta- 

 watomie reservation. Thence thi- line was extended due westward, till it reached 

 a distance of 200 miles from the Missouri river. During the prosecution of this 

 survey Mr. Mc Coy's party encountered two of those sand and charcoal storms, not 

 uncommon in the early days of Kansas, but now never occurring in the older por- 

 tums of the State, in which the air became so filled with dust and the remains of 

 recently burnt prairie grass that almost the darkness of night came on at midday. 

 He saw and described the Great Spirit Spring, and tells us that the name Wa-kon-da 

 IS a term of the Kansas Indian tribe, meaning Great Spirit Spring. He examined 

 the salines of the Solomon and Saline river country, and otherwise made his survey 

 one of much value in a scientific point of view. 



This historical explanation has been made because the facts mentioned have a 

 scientific bearing ; and they maj' not be known to all, as the book in which they 

 have been found has long been out of print. 



In respect to the Fort Leavenworth mounds, Mr. McCoy says : 



" The ancient artificial mounds and fortifications, so common in the Western 

 States, are seen less frequently as we go west from the Mississippi river, and they 

 disappear in the prairie countrj'^ original to the Indians. About a mile west of Fort 

 Leavenworth, on a hill which commands a fine prospect in every direction, we discov- 

 ered eight mounds near to each other, which from their relative position and their 

 structure, attracted our particular attention. They were about twenty-five feet in. 

 diameter at base, six of them nearly in a direct line, about thirty feet asunder, 

 and the other two were on each side of the line opposite to each other near the 



