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301 ATCHISON COUNTY HISTORY. 301 no doubt of a large town or village being there located. Now the question comes up, "When did the Kansas Indians abandon this town, and fo7 what reason?, ,. , , Recollect that the Iowa and Sacs and Fox Indians were Sioux, and by reason of their hving nearer the white settlements procured better fire-arms than the Kansas or Osages could, and they from time immemorial had been at war with the Kansas and Osage tribes. «■ The history of Atchison county Having been ex- amined to procure pointers of interest in regard to Indian history, but finding nothing of importance along that line, here is an incident which makes good reading just fifty years after it has happened. The history of Atchison county asserts the first settler to have been a Frenchman named Pensinau, who in 1837 married a Kickapoo squaw; and in 1854 the first colo- ny of immigrants settled near Oak Mills about twelve miles south of Atchison. The Rev. Pardee Butler settled about twelve miles west of Atchison, and it was in 1855 and 1856 that the following took place: At that date, Atchison was controlled by men who were very bitterly opposed to the abolition of slavery, and it was so hot that the average man did not dare to say he was an Abolitionist; but the Rev. Butler preached and talked against it, and one day in 1865, when in Atchison, a party of thirty or forty men painted an "R" on Butler's face with black paint; then the men took three Cottonwood saw logs and nailed them together with plank, put the reverend gentleman thereon and towed the raft into the middle