TWEM'Y-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. m 



A DYING RIVER. 



By J. R. MEAD, Wichita. 



The Arkansas is the largest river in the state of Kansas, and was con- 

 sidered a navigable river to the mouth of the Little Arkansas by the United 

 States government. When the county was surveyed its banks were mean- 

 dered, leaving a river bed of 800 or 1,200 feet in width as the property of the 

 general government, and to some extent the river was used in Kansas as a 

 highway of travel and traffic until the coming of the white man, who robbed it 

 of its water, and exterminated the millions of bison and other forms of animal 

 life which once grazed on the bordering luxuriant meadows and quenched their 

 thirst in its ripping waters. The writer's observation of the rivers of Kan- 

 sas only extends back to 1859. At that time, and until some years after the 

 settleinent of the country, the Arkansas was a river in fact as well as in name, 

 usually flowing from bank to bank. From Mr. William Mathewson, a noted 

 plainsman, I learn that as early as 1852 boats were built at Pueblo, Colorado, 

 in which mountain traders and trappers, sometimes in parties of 15 or 20 

 in one boat, with their effects, floated down the swift current of the river 

 to Arkansas, and from 1870 to 1880 boats were built at Wichita to descend 

 the river, some propelled by steam; in one instance two young men built 

 a boat at Wichita and navigated river and gulf to Florida. 



At that time the river had apparently pursued its accustomed way un- 

 changed for centuries; it had well-deflned banks, with a width of 800 to 1,200 

 feet, the river very seldom overflowing the valleys, but a few feet higher 

 than its level. From the state line up to the present county of Reno heavy 

 timber fringed its banks. Occasionally the river was a dry bed of sand above 

 the mouth of the ever-flowing Little Arkansas for a couple of months in the 

 fall. The country adjacent to the Arkansas on either side for many miles 

 is underlaid by a bed of sand in which the waters of the river disappear 

 in a season of drouth, except in deep holes which were below the level of the 

 underflow. Fish gathered in these holes in great numbers, and herds of 

 buffalo traveled up and down the sandy bed hunting for water. Suddenly 

 the sandy bed would again become a river, the rushing water coming down 

 with a front of foam two or three feet deep. The river was dry in the falls of 

 1863 and 1865. In 1867 came a great flood; the river was bank full all the 

 season, and overflowing the adjoining low valleys. Indians crossed their 

 families in tubs made of a single buffalo hide, and swam their horses, and 

 the writer saw a four-mule team and heavy freight wagon swept away by the 

 swift current. But little sediment was deposited on the overflowed lands, 

 but the boiling, rushing water was constantly moving the sandy river-bed 

 towards the Gulf. There was no opportunity for the foi-mation of islands; 

 the sand bars were constantly changing and moving down stream. 



Before the settlement of the country the bordering plains were tramped 

 hard and eaten bare by innumerable buffalo, allowing the rainfall to speedily 

 flow into the ravines and creeks, thence to the river as from a roof. The 

 breaking up of the soil consequent upon the settlement of the country allowed 

 the rainfall to soak into the ground, and the river soon ceased to carry its 

 usual volume of water, not noticeable until about 1880. In addition to this. 



