Notes of Interest from the book 25 Years Among the Indians and the Bufflalo

I originally got this book on library loan from another library just to see what was said about parts of Kansas that I am really familiar with. And there was - Jewell, Smith, Phillips, Rooks, Osborne, Republic, Graham counties and much more.

It was interesting that I got the library loan from a private university in Alabama which made me research what other libraries had it -- Ive League college libraries, and whole bunch of libraries -- I'll leave the rest of that discovery to my work blog for my library.

This is basically a diary printed into a book. Well written, crisp details, first-hand account about the frontier West.

So here are some interesting things I found from reading this book:

• Sugar Loaf Mound
  Sugar Loaf Mound near the Rooks - Phillips county line was often used as a landmark for buffalo hunters. This leads me to believe that buffalo once roamed around that area then. In fact in his memoir, Mr. Street goes from Hill City towards Sugar Loaf Mound trying to find a buffalo herd.
  
  To those who don't know, Sugar Loaf Mound was within 8 miles, or less, from where I grew up.
• Bow Creek
  Back in those days, Bow Creek was not called Bow Creek. It was called Middle Solomon. So there was a North Solomon, a South Solomon, and a Middle Solomon. I found that interesting as Bow Creek was within a mile of Sugar Loaf Mound, and I grew up calling the stream as Bow Creek.
• Hays
  Hays was a bad, bad village. Mr. Street had served in the army, scouted among the plains, fought in battles, but his day of survival in Hays was an unforgettable experience. By the time he made his only visit to Hays, the railroad was already 125 miles west of Hays in Sheridan. But Hays was inhabited by people tired of following railroad west and decided to stay put, or as Mr. Street described, the worst of society. His morning started with two men shot in his presence and others shot or carved up with a knife. Outside on a sidewalk, he was caught in a crossfire of bullets. In the afternoon, it was quiet as no one was killed, but as the evening came, two soldiers were killed, one with his throat carved and thrown into an empty rail car, and of course other shootings and quarreling were going on. As Mr. Street aptly wrote, "for the one day's experience in Hays, I have never known equal."
• Smith Center
  Mr. Street and a wealthy friend pushed for Gaylord to be the county seat of Smith Center. The temporary seat was in Cedar. As the votes were being counted between Gaylord or Smith Center, the next to last box was opened and counted which placed Smith Center in a slight lead. Mr. Street felt very confident as the last box was from Gaylord until he started seeing smirking going on. The box from Gaylord was opened up revealing absolutely no ballots in the box to be counted. Mr. Street and friend angrily left knowing that the election had been thwarted.
• May-October 1869
  The Cheyennes and the Sioux had raided the White Rock Creek and Republican River area of Republic County killing 7 and capturing two; and then killed a few more down along the Solomon River, and on May 30, killed 13 on the Saline River. [To add context, there was a prominent Indian trail connecting the three rivers in that area in almost a straight line.] Mr. Street answered the call of the militia. Interesting stories including getting trapped in a flash flood at the confluence of White Rock Creek and the Republican; the discovery of the ruins of a Fort Kirwin near the confluence of the Middle and North forks of the Solomon with the stockade burnt to the ground by the Indians; and despite their efforts, the militia never found any marauding groups of Indians. Mr. Street commented, supposed Cheyennes and Sioux, indicating his doubts to the officials reports that there were any.
• Great Spirit Spring (Waconda)
  From the book: "the battalion camped in a large horseshoe bend of the Solomon about one mile west of Waconda. Inside the spring, the water of which was rather brackish, carrying in it considerable salt, the water rises and slowly runs over an oval stone formation, the stone being gradually formed from the salt in the water." Mr. Street observed that the stone formation was about 20 feet high with the spring pool about 30 feet in diameter. The Indians brought gifts to Waconda believing the waters were of medical value.  Mr. Street wisely wrote that the Indians were not going to give up their Waconda without a fight.

My thesis from Kansas University

I wanted to write a blog post about my thesis for my master's at KU.  So this happened during the mid 1980s. I went directly from college to grad school (minus the summer break in between).

First let me digress, that was a weird summer because as soon I got back to Kansas after graduating in Iowa, I was helping my parents pack up the house. I could sense the dread from my parents of moving away somewhere comfortable to a new workplace. It was really weird to move even further east in Kansas.  For my Dad at least, the move became the first time he lived in town. We had neighbors just across the driveway. You could walk down to the post office. But I wasn't in the new town for long, less than two months, and then I moved to Lawrence.  One of my three moves in Lawrence the two years I lived there for master's degree study.

KU was a culture shock for me. I went from a college of 400 students to a university of 25,000 student. I had easy, relaxed living before.

An interesting story about my thesis. This was before Microsoft Word and instead was in the early days of word processing software. I was using Leading Edge to type up my thesis. I gave the floppy disk (yes the 3.5 floppy disk of yore) to the departmental secretary in order to print out three copies for binding. Somehow or another, a mistake was made and a period was inserted after every word! I was beyond words.  The college had to send the disk to the company to fix the issue. It came back fixed and all ended well.

Here is the cover to my thesis: Supervision Practices and Opinions of College Student Newspaper Advisers. If you are ever in Lawrence, it can be found in the archive library.

This thesis reviewed the current legal status of the student press on the college level and surveyed their faculty advisers on the advisers' attitudes and practices concerning censorship of student newspapers.  Information was gathered via mail questionnaires and follow-up mail questionnaires. Each mailing including a self-addressed stamped envelope for easy return. The survey covered 92 colleges around the Lawrence region of the country.

I then wrote five hypotheses about what I would find from the calculations of the surveys. The hypotheses were written and approved by my thesis committee before the surveys were mailed out.

I had to learn very quickly Honeywell computer skills and punch-out cards in order to run cross-tabulations of the survey responses to the questions and then to the related hypothesis. I did significance to chi-square and cross-tabulations through SPSS-X statistical analysis program. Yeah, I had to learn that program really quick as well.

I had help of course. There was a young woman in the KU Statistics Lab who helped me tremendously through the program and data input process. My professor from Westmar had decided to move back to Kansas and he lived very close to Lawrence. He helped me develop the survey tool. I also thanked my parents profusely in my acknowledgements because without them, I would have never found an affordable apartment to move into, nor keep me calm when I thought my thesis had been ruined by the period after every word.

Some more pictures below. One is the thesis title page and the other is one of the many tables depicting cross-tabulation and all of the numbers I dealt with for each question on the survey. This was a massive undertaking but I am very proud of this accomplishment even if it was over 30 years ago!