TIME IMMEMORIAL – Great American Desert
Since it was a Great American Desert, there was nothing in Kansas when the first Indians arrived. The first inhabitants came to the desert because they felt overwhelmed living in other places that had things.
Some of these first inhabitants included the Pawnshopee, the Wichita Linemen, and the Apache Webservers.
Some of those early immigrants felt bamboozled, though. See if you can suss out why in this picture:
The place wasn’t a desert after all! There were two rocks!!
1541 – Coronado Explores Kansas
Searching for the Yellow Brick Road, Billy-Bob Coronado scouted around the sweeping plains and undulating fields and folds of Kansas in 1541. After he got tired of searching and searching and finding nothing but wheat farmers, he packed it in and went home.
1806 – Pike’s Pilgrimage
In 1806, Zebulon Walton Pike passed through Kansas and environs and, comparing it in his mind to the luxurious abundance of his verdant home in Virginia, labeled it “The Great American Dessert” on his hastily scribbled and amateurish maps. He named it this because it resembled to him a gooseberry pie (without the gooseberries).
Although a famous explorer, Pike had a terrible sense of direction. Fortunately, one of his fellow travelers had perfect pitch, and could hear the sonar beeps of the north pole emanating through the atmosphere, and always knew exactly where he was. So, when Zeb, leading the way, would lose the track, his friend would call out, “Turn, Pike!”
The never-lost one charged the orientation-challenged Pike two bits every time he had to yell out. That’s the origin of the “Turnpikes” where you have to fork over moolah in order to keep going in the right direction.
Zeb kept walking west until he came across one of the great coincidences of history, a peak (mountain) named for him in Colorado.
1853 – Fort Riley Established
In 1853, ten years after Kansas City was founded, Fort Riley was established on a site recommended by a military officer named Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Fauntleroy (pronounced Font-luh-ROY, not Font-LEE-roy) was a member of the Dragoons, a Dutch version of dragons. The dragoons always carried supplies of macaroons in case they ever got marooned in the Great American Desert. It tended to happen fairly often.
1853 – Definition of “Forever” Changed
In the summer of 1853, George W. Fewpenny, the government’s Commissioner of Indian affairs, took back all but a fraction of the land the Indians had been allowed to keep under a previous deal.
Just a quarter-century earlier, they had been promised this land “in perpetuity.” This means, as long as they have pituitary glands; in other words, “forever.”
This tearing up of old contracts and replacing them with new ones was considered okay, though, because things were tough all over for Kansans. For example, the governor of the State had to live in this old abandoned shack:
1854 – Territoryhood
The Kansas-Nebraska Act re-peeled the Missouri Compromise. This means that the Missouri Compromise, which let Kansas have half of Kansas City while Missouri kept the other half, was peeled again after having already been peeled once.
But what did this re-peeling accomplish? Now each state could decide for itself whether it would grow cotton and eat boiled peanuts, grits, and pecan pie (or not).
Kansas, being a wheat State, decided to stick with plain old stick-to-your-ribs grub, eschewing those fancy-pants entrees.
1855 -- “Border Ruffians”
Starting in 1855, St. Louis (baseball) Cardinals fans began streaming across the border into Kansas, teasing the Kansas City Royals fans because they were new and had never won a World Series.
Local newspaper editorials referred to these Missourians as “Border Ruffians” because they were always shooting the Ruffed Grouse when they crossed over the border, under the pretense that they thought it was open season on them.
Here are some of these arrivals, trying to look like their hero Stan Musial while simultaneously on the lookout for opportunities to rough up some Ruffed Grouse:
“Keep your horse away from my longhorns, you mangy varmint!”
1855 and 1856 – Lawrenceville Attacked
As there were so many Royals fans in Lawrenceville, the “Border Ruffian” Cardinals fans targeted that town as a good location for their over-the-top teasing and ribbing.
Things got so heated at times (imagine if it had been soccer fans!) that president Phil Moore had to step between them to ward off further mayhem:
1856 – John Brown Defends the Royalists
Outraged, upset, and downright “put out” by the ill treatment the Royals fans were receiving at the hands of the Cardinals fans, John Brown (although a Boston Red Sox fan, being a native of Connecticut, which doesn’t have a baseball team and thus has to grasp at straws to find one to follow) made his way to Kansas to defend the Royalists.
At Pottawatomie Creek, Brown and his men caught some Border Ruffians napping and glued them to the trees along the bank using plenty of pine tar. Royals star George Brett later honored Brown’s memory by using pine tar whenever he could.
1867 – Luring the Cattlemen
Stockyards were built in Abilene (Kansas) in 1867 so that Texas cattlemen could get their beeves to market; that same year, by the way, “Beefalo” Bill Cody co-founded Rome, Kansas. It was built in a day, being much smaller than the one in Italy.
From 1867 to 1872, more than three million tail* of Texas longhorn were driven up the Chisholm Trail to the Union Pacific / Kansas Pacific Railroad at Abilene.
* Some people call them “head” of cattle, but each beeve/moo-machine has the same number of heads (one) as it does tails (also one), so they can just as easily be referred to as “tail” of cattle.
Here are some of these tail of cattle getting penned into a corral, or “pen”:
As the super-observant may already know, these pens differ somewhat from fountain pens, which are obviously found in water.
1877 – Nicodemus Founded
The town of Nicodemus was founded in 1877 for Exodusters. Some think the “Exodusters” were those who left the Great Plains in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl, but that is not so.
Exodusters are people who wear dust on the outside of their clothing. As an “exoskeleton” is a skeleton worn on the outside of one’s skin (kind of like Madonna wearing her underwear on the outside, so that it is really her outerwear, and her outerwear thus functions as her underwear), an Exoduster is one who wears dust on the outside of their habiliments.
The reason why those who did this did do this is because they had to walk all the way to Nicodemus. How could it be otherwise that they would pick up some dust along the way?
Below you can see some Exodusters, on their way to claim homesteads in Kansas:
1881 – Carrie Nation Heaves a Brick
Enforced by brick-chucking, tomahawk-wielding Carrie A. Nation, Kansas prohibited the sale of pet rocks in 1881.
This silly fad began in saloons, where people were often “off their game” and their sales resistance was diminished. Ever pragmatic (not seeing the intrinsic value in a pet that didn’t at least bark or rub its innocent behind on a tree), Ms. Nation formed the Anti-Pet-Rock- League to prevent the sale of these noiseless and pointless thingamabobs.
On observing the good effects of this prohibition, the country as a whole rubbed its collective chin and said, “Hey, that’s a good idea!” and banned the sale or manufacture of pet rocks throughout the Nation (get it, Nation?) from 1920 to 1933.
Here’s Carrie with her tomahawk and copy of “The Whole Earth Catalog” (she was a hippie):
Being surveilled by the gov’ment, you can see a tiny prototype of a stealth bomber recording video and audio of domestic terrorist Ms. Nation’s radical hatred for harmless toys
1892 -- “Doolin’ Dalton”
Sometime in 1892 (I don’t know exactly when – I wasn’t alive at the time, and don’t trust what I read in history books), the notorious Dalton Gang rode into Coffeyville for a cup of joe, and then robbed a couple of banks (who can blame them – that’s what they did, that’s who they were – they were bank robbers; they did pay for their java, though, for those who were wondering).
The gang got about $25,000 in 12 minutes. Had they been willing to work that hard for a whole hour, they would have gotten $125,000, which was real money back then. They could have invested in automobiles and aeroplanes, and been set for life.
Instead, they got into an argument with some locals about politics and such, and finally begrudgingly agreed to stick around town – for the rest of their lives.
The Eagles wrote a song about this event, and taught the whole world to sing it – in perfect harmony, even. You know it, right? This is a test.
1900 -- “The Wizard of Oz”
In 1900, at the turn of the Century (the 19th/20th century, that is), a writer who called himself “The Frenchified Tree” (El Frankish Baum) wrote a series of fourteen novels about Australia. One of these was “The Wizard of Oz,” which tells of a St. Louis Cardinals shortstop moving down under to start a sheep station and spend his spare time riding kangaroos and petting wallabys.
In the chief episode of the novel, Dorothy, the protagonist, is flying around in Noah’s Ark and reaches out of the trap door as they skim over the Null Arbor Plain, grabbing a dingo alternately named “Scruffy” and “Toe-Toe”* by the ear:
* Which made no sense, as he actually had more than two toes.
Being intent on the dingo, Dorothy did not even notice her friend Matilda waltzing along a brick road to the southeast.
1918 -- “Spanish” Flu Begins in Kansas
The so-called “Spanish Flu” actually originated in Fort Riley in 1918. From there, it spread worldwide when the boy scouts from that camp went on field trips all throughout the globe, teaching people how to start fires.
1927 – KKK Kicked Out of Kansas
In the early 1920s, the KKK (Krazy Kranky Klutzes) enjoyed a temporary resurgence. They sent 200 “Kleagles” (a weird-looking breed of dog which is a cross between a Karelian Bear Dog and a Beagle) around the country on recruiting trips.
The Kansans, who didn’t even allow pet rocks in their State (and banned cigarettes from 1912 to 1927) were having none of it. They invited the KKK and their funny dogs to leave, post haste.
With the aid of a little level-headed reasoning, the Klutzes and their Kleagles were finally convinced to quit the premises. Recruitment circulars like the one below did not meet with the approbation the “KKK” had hoped for:
1954 – Brown Bored of Education
In 1954, a century after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Buster Brown (grandson of John Brown) got bored at school. This was because he, being a Brown kid, could not hang out with the White, Black, and Redd kids, let alone the Yellow Kid (although he could read about him in the “funny papers”).
Even worse, to Brown’s way of thinking, was that the schools were segregated, gender-wise. He felt no strong desire to show off in school without any girls around. Thus, he lacked motivation, secular-education-wise. What's the point of hamming it up if there's nobody to show off for? he soliloquized.
So, Brown sued the Topeka authorities to get girls mixed in with his class, to make things more interesting.
The “powers that be” are still “deliberating” (milking it out).
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
For “the rest of the story,” the (32-page) complete book “The New All-too-True-Blue History of Kansas” is available here.
The regions of the U.S. have been combined into volumes, too; [State] is included in the volume The New All-too-True-Blue History of the American Midwest
You can listen to this excerpt here:
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”