Tallgrass Prairie - Educational Resources

<body> <font FACE="Garamond"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">History</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human activity in the Kansas Flint Hills can be traced back about 10,000 years. Human use of the area’s natural resources evolved from hunting large and small mammals and gathering wild plants, to the development of ceramic technologies and horticulture, with exchange networks extending well beyond the Plains (ca 6,000 B.C.-A.D.1). Beginning about A.D.1, new subsistence and technological traits developed, including the routine production of ceramics and the use of domesticated plants, and bow and arrow hunting. From about A.D.1000, domesticated plants and associated artifacts reflect a predominantly horticultural existence, and a shift to settled village life (Jones 1999: 6-9, 14-17).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">By A.D.1500 - 1825, efficient horticultural activity was combined with increased bison hunting, almost certainly due to acquisition of the horse by American Indian groups. This was a transition time between the prehistoric past and the era of written history on the Great Plains. This period has clear association with specific American Indian peoples. In the area of the preserve, these include the Wichita, Kansa, Osage, and Pawnee. The movement of these people throughout the Great Plains during this period prevents attribution of specific peoples to fixed locations in the Flint Hills. The Wichita apparently abandoned the northern part of their territory between 1690-1719, moving south to the Arkansas River in present-day Oklahoma. By the first two decades of the 19th century, the western boundary of the Kansa core territory extended nearly to the preserve area. Pawnee and Osage occupation sites have not been discovered in the general area of the preserve, although the region was probably included in their hunting range (Jones 1999; 17-22).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Descriptions by explorers and early settlers across the Great Plains provide important information on American Indian use of the land and its resources, particularly bison, and the use of fire. Indian peoples throughout the Great Plains started prairie fires for a number of reasons, including plant management, grazing improvements, acts of aggression, and communications. There is little evidence, however, to support the idea that Indian people practiced large scale annual burning, or that they intentionally set fires to clear wooded areas. Documented instances described fires that were relatively small in size, while large fires caused by Indian people were either accidents or acts of aggression. Some American Indian groups in the northern Great Plains used fire to limit or control bison in order to predict the animals’ movement the following spring, or to force bison movement towards encampments; however, the negative consequences outnumbered the benefits of the use of such large-scale fire. These fires were dangerous and difficult to control. They also destroyed vegetation, and as a result, drove animals further away from camps. Instead, typical historic references of bison hunting involve tribal groups, as a community, traveling to an area to hunt bison (Moore 1972, Higgins 1986, Arthur 1975, and Evans 1998, personal communication)</font></p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><b><font FACE="Arial" SIZE="5">Historical and Ethnographic Overview</p> </font></b><font FACE="Garamond"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mid-16</font><font FACE="Garamond" SIZE="1">th </font><font FACE="Garamond">and early 17</font><font FACE="Garamond" SIZE="1">th </font><font FACE="Garamond">century Spanish and French explorers provided the first written descriptions of this portion of the central Great Plains and its occupants. Spanish explorers described Wichita tribes in the areas of Cow Creek and the Little Arkansas River, and along the lower Arkansas River. French explorers interested in the fur trade noted both <i>les panis </i>(possibly meaning Pawnee settlements) on a northern tributary of the Arkansas River, and a Kansas village along the Missouri River in northeast Kansas (Jones 1999: 17-22).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">While the Spanish were impressed with the agricultural possibilities of the region, American government-sponsored expeditions two decades later found little of economic value in what was described as the "Great American Desert"-- a description that included all of Kansas (Evans 1939: 39-44, Richmond 1989: 15). Early 19</font><font FACE="Garamond" SIZE="1">th </font><font FACE="Garamond">century perceptions of the plains grassland as an area unfit for agriculture encouraged public opinion on the unsuitability of settling west of the Missouri River. Instead, traders and travelers journeyed through the country, connecting with commercial centers in the Southwest and Far West. One route of predominately commercial use was the Santa Fe Trail, which passed through Council Grove (Richmond 1989: 24, 48).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This constant flow of travelers on the Santa Fe Trail brought an increase in hostilities with the American Indian peoples who were losing control over their lands and homes, and confronting a great increase in disease epidemics. Smallpox, cholera, and dysentery epidemics, among other disease episodes, led to a depopulation of the Kansa tribe by at least two-thirds by 1839.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Alternative land uses evolved with the increase in traffic through the region. American policy makers found the area an important tool in carrying out governmental goals regarding removal of American Indians. In 1825, the same year they allowed Santa Fe traffic through their land, the Osage and Kansa signed treaties whereby they surrendered their traditional lands--nearly 45 million acres-- to make way for relocated western tribes. The Osage cession included the land that now constitutes Chase County and Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. The Kansa cession included some 15 million acres comprising most of the northern half of the state of Kansas. By 1841, 17 reservations were established west of the Missouri. In 1846, the Kansa tribe was persuaded to give up their last 2 million acres in a long strip north of Council Grove, for a reduced reservation of 250,000 acres centered around Council Grove. The resultant "permanent Indian frontier" lasted less than 35 years (Jones 1999: 21, Richmond 1989: 30; Garver 1981: 204-229).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Before Kansas was established as a Territory in 1854, Anglo-American emigrants were moving west, and "squatting" on unsurveyed land. (Evans personal communication 5/19/1998, Register of Deeds, <i>Strong City Independent </i>1881, Shortridge: 1995 18-27, Garver 1981: 524-530). The new arrivals found the region’s tillable and fertile floodplains supported agriculture, and the grasses and forbs nourished their livestock. Trees and native limestone provided construction material.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Pressure for westward expansion increased after the end of the Civil War. It resulted in a complete removal of native populations, the influx of new settlers, and the establishment of a transportation system that would have a broad impact on the region. To legally allow for the sale of public land for settlement and development, additional treaties were signed; these further reduced the amount of land held by tribes. In other cases, tribes sold their land to promoters. By the late 1870s, nearly all of the original inhabitants of the eastern region of Kansas were moved to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma (Davis 1976: 33-34; Evans 1939: 376, Richmond 1989: 41- 43; Garver 1981: 472-543). The last original resident American Indian tribe in Kansas, the Kansa (or Kaw), from which the state took its name, was forced to move to Oklahoma in 1873. A fewof the eastern tribes refused to leave Kansas, however, and they still have reservations in the state. Currently residing in Kansas are the federally recognized Potawatomis, Iowas, and Kickapoos. A group of Wyandots in the Kansas City area are attempting to gain federal recognition as an American Indian tribe. Despite their forced removal, the Kaw still maintain historical and cultural ties to their former reservation lands surrounding Council Grove. The tribal government is currently negotiating to acquire a few acres encompassing the original Kaw Agency site, and they participate in an annual Pow-Wow at Council Grove. Some members of the tribe still retain family history from the area, but the specifics have grown dim since the 1873 removal.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">After 1873, millions of acres of newly opened public land were granted or sold to railroad companies to encourage commercial traffic and development. The railroads in turn sold excess land to obtain capital for building new rail lines across the territory. In this region of the Flint Hills, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe extended a line to Cottonwood Station (Strong City) in 1871. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad was built through Council Grove on its route south. Within a decade of the establishment of the territory, nearly all the land in Chase County was under private ownership.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One result of rail access to the prairie was the slaughter of the plains bison by both market and sports hunters. The estimated number of bison on the Great Plains in the early 1800s prior to their decimation varies from 30 to 75 million (U.S. Department of the Interior 1995, Davis 1976: 106). Within four years of the railroads’ advance and the development of a market in tannable hides, well over four million bison died on the southern plains. In Kansas, the slaughter peaked between 1870-1873, then collapsed (Cronan 1991: 217).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With the annihilation of the bison and removal of most tribes to Oklahoma, the grasslands of eastern Kansas and the Flint Hills became the focus of farming and ranching economies. In the early 1870s, small farmers made up the majority of the Chase County population, and many even cultivated portions of uplands adjoining their lower fields (Hickey and Webb 1987: 249-250). In addition to cattle grazing, early settlers practiced a diversified agriculture, raising crops in small, enclosed holdings on the bottomlands, and running hogs and sheep on the unfenced uplands. With the exception of the floodplains, however, much of the topsoil in the Flint Hills region was considered too thin to support cultivation (Kollmorgen and Simonett 1965 in Hickey and Webb 1987: 244).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An additional hindrance to agricultural development was the lack of a herd law in Chase County. Livestock grazed unrestricted on the uplands (Hickey 1988: 204). Fencing, such as limestone walls or Osage orange hedges, kept livestock out of crop areas (Peters 1989-90 in Yoder 1995: 12). Barbed wire, invented in 1874, would not be widely available or within the means of most Chase County farmers until the 1880s (Isern in Hickey 1988; 205).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 1880s saw the boom of the cattle industry in the Flint Hills, a development integrally related to the availability of the railroad service. For the railroads, transporting cattle from western and southwestern railheads became a primary source of revenue. Flint Hills stockowners and landowners profited from feeding cattle enroute on their shipment east by rail. When the Flint Hills were recognized as a prime place to fatten cattle, livestock came to dominate the agricultural sector. Unfenced grazing practices gave way to grazing in enclosed fields. Herd sizes were reduced, in conjunction with improved care and improved stock quality (Wolfenbarger 1996: 17; Hickey 1988: 206).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Two businessmen who recognized the importance of the grasses in this region were Stephen Jones and Barney Lantry. In the late 1870s, Jones switched from stockraising on the Colorado open range to raising purebred stock in Chase County. From1878 to1886, Jones purchased a number of parcels of land in the county, ranging from small existing farms to tracts of over a thousand acres. Many of the larger tracts of land were obtained from the railroads (Register of Deed<i>s, Strong City Independent </i>1881). He named his property the Spring Hill Ranch and Stock Farm. The 7,000-acre (2,826 hectares) holdings represented the transition from open-range ranching to the more specialized cattle industry which developed on enclosed ranches during the cattle industry’s mature stage. Jones specialized in Hereford, Shorthorn, and Galloway stock, and also raised Hambletonian thoroughbreds, hogs, horses, and sheep. The ranch included over 400 acres (160 hectares) cultivated in a variety of grains, corn, potatoes, tame grass, and fruit trees. Thirty miles (50 kilometers) of stone fence enclosed and subdivided the property. One-half mile (0.8 kilometers) north of the ranch headquarters, Jones donated land for a one-room limestone schoolhouse, commonly known as the Lower Fox Creek School (Snell 1991: 5, 13).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ranching domain represented in the Spring Hill Ranch grew to 15,000 acres (6,056 hectares) with its purchase by neighbor Barney Lantry in 1888. Lantry made his fortune as a railroad construction contractor; included on his Flint Hills property were limestone quarry sites. Although he would purchase the ranch headquarters used by Jones, Lantry's headquarters remained at his Deer Park Place stock farm to the south (Snell 1991: 9-10).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Later owners modified the ranch boundaries over the next several decades. From 1909 to 1935, the Benninghoven family owned 1,080 acres (436 hectares), including the original ranch headquarters. They were the first owners to live in the Spring Hill Ranch house since the Jones family. Debts forced the Benninghovens to sell their land in 1935 to George H. Davis, a prominent grain dealer from Kansas City.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The purchase by Davis reunited the historic Spring Hill/Deer Park Place, along with holdings in five other counties. The subsequent Davis Ranch was the largest holding in the state, totaling over 70,000 acres (28,260 hectares) of ranch land. Under the Davis/Davis-Noland-Merril operations, stock ponds, corrals and spring-fed water troughs were installed across the property. Davis transferred title of the property to his Davis-Noland-Merril Grain Company, although his cattle operation was known as the Davis Ranch. The ranch was a huge feeder calf operation; an average of about 6,000 Hereford calves were shipped by rail to this area of the Flint Hills where they were fed for two years before they were sent to market (Hoots 1998: 6-10; Slabaugh 10/5/1994 interview). As with the earlier Jones and Lantry period, large-scale ranching defined land use under the Davis and Davis-Noland-Merril Grain Company ownership.The proximity to and use of railroads to transport stock continued to play an important role in ranching operations (Quinn Evans 1999; 3-3 to 3-4).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When Davis died in 1955, the ranch name changed to the Davis-Noland-Merril Grain Company Ranch. Prior to his death, Davis reorganized the ranch ownership, placing most of his estate in an educational trust fund, with the remainder divided between specific individuals. In 1975 the business name changed to the Z Bar Cattle Company, and the Chase County ranch property became known as the Z Bar Ranch. In 1985 the company ceased cattle and ranch operations, and the stockholders voted to dissolve the corporation. In 1986 the property was placed in trust with Boatman's First National Bank of Kansas (now Bank of America). The bank's trust department leased the property for seasonal grazing. In 1994, the National Park Trust (NPT), a non-profit land conservancy organization purchased the property. The NPT's mortgage payments on the Z Bar Ranch were eased in 1995 by a $1 million donation by Edward Bass. Bass also paid in advance for a $2 million, 35-year grazing lease on the property. (United States Dept. of Interior 1/28/98, Snell 1991: 12; Rothman and Associates 1999: 199-201; Conard 1998: 47).</p> <p>The preserve represents a unique partnership between NPT, who owns the land, and the NPS, who will serve as the primary managing agency. The legislation permits the NPS to own up to 180 acres (72.7 hectares); the rest will remain in private ownership.</p> </font> </body>