Page:Kansas A Cyclopedia of State History vol 1.djvu/42

 in Kansas. Dr. Thomas Say, the chief zoölogist of the Long Expedition, in writing of his visit to the Kansas village in 1819, said: “They commonly placed before us a sort of soup, composed of maize of the present season, of that description, which after having undergone a certain preparation, is appropriately named sweet-corn, boiled in water, and enriched with a few slices of bison meat, grease and some beans, and, to suit it to our palates, it was generally seasoned with rock salt, which is procured near the Arkansas river. . . . Another very acceptable dish was called lyed corn. . . . They also make much use of maize roasted on the cob, of boiled pumpkins, of muskmelons and watermelons, but the latter are generally pulled from the vine before they are completely ripe.” Dr. Say further states that the young females before marriage cultivated the fields. The agency of the Kansas Indians was established at the mouth of the Grasshopper creek in 1827. Daniel Morgan Boone, the farmer appointed by the government, commenced farming at this point in 1827 or 1828. Rev. Isaac McCoy, in 1835, reported that the government had 20 acres fenced and 10 acres plowed at “Fool Chief's” village, 3 miles west of the present North Topeka. In the spring of 1835 the government selected 300 acres in what is now Shawnee county, and about the same number south of the Kansas River, in the valley of Mission creek and carried on farming on quite an extensive scale. The emigrant tribes from the east who came into Kansas from 1825–1832 were sufficiently civilized to have a knowledge of farming and good farms were cultivated by members of the various tribes and by the white missionaries who settled among them.

The first cultivation of the soil by white men on a scale large enough to be called farming was at Fort Leavenworth in 1829 or 1830; at the mouth of Grasshopper creek by Daniel Morgan Boone; and at the Shawnee mission farm in Johnson county by Rev. Thomas Johnson as early as 1830. Farms were quite common on the Indian reservations, and at the various missions, when Congress passed the bill creating Kansas Territory. The remarkable fertility of the soil of Kansas and its adaptability to agricultural purposes had been experimentally proven and were well known before the territorial bill was passed. Hence, the tide of immigration from 1854 to 1856 was due as much to the natural resources of the land as to the political preferment. The unsettled condition of territorial affairs from 1858 to 1860 was not auspicious for the pursuance of industrial arts. The settlers planted crops but raised barely enough for their own consumption. The United States census for 1860 in its report on Kansas shows 405,468 acres in improved farms and 372,932 acres in unimproved farms, with the cash value of both as $12,258,239. There were then farming implements valued at $727,694; 20,344 horses; 1,496 mules; 28,550 milch cows; 2,155 oxen; 43,354 other cattle; 17,569 sheep; 138,244 swine, and the value of this live stock was $3,332,450. There were 194,173 bushels of wheat; 3,833 bushels of rye; 6,150,727 bushels of Indian corn;