White Plume
Encyclopedia
White Plume also known as Nom-pa-wa-rah, Manshenscaw, and Monchousia, was a chief of the Kaw (Kansa, Kanza) Indians. He signed a treaty in 1825 ceding millions of acres of Kaw land to the United States. Most present-day members of the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma trace their lineage back to him. He was the great-great-grandfather of Charles Curtis
, Vice President of the United States.
and Missouri
and numbered about 1500 persons. White Plume married a daughter of the Osage
Chief Pawhuska. This marriage may have been important in establishing friendly relations between the closely related Kaws and Osage
.
White Plume had five children. His three sons all died when young men. His two daughters, Hunt Jimmy (b. ca. 1800) and Wyhesee (b. ca. 1802) married the French traders Louis Gonville and Joseph James
. Until the United States
acquired Louisiana Territory
from France
in 1803, the Kaw subsisted primarily on buffalo hunting with only limited agriculture. They were dependent on selling furs and buffalo robes to French traders, such as the powerful Chouteau
family, to acquire European goods such as guns. White Plume lived to see the traditional lifestyle of the Kaws become increasingly unsustainable. He attempted to meet the challenges facing the Kaws by cooperation with the U.S. government.
and other American officials, visited New York City
, Baltimore
, and Philadelphia, and performed war dance
s on the White House
Lawn and at the residence of the French Minister. The artist Charles Bird King
painted a portrait of White Plume. He was given two silver epaulette
s as a sign that the U. S. government accepted him as the principal Kaw chief. In reality, however, he never had authority over most members of the tribe.
White Plume came back from Washington convinced that the future of the Kaw, and his own future, was accommodation with the United States. Already eastern Indians were migrating west and occupying lands claimed by the Kaw. The Missouri River
was a highway to fur trappers and traders heading for the Rocky Mountains
. In 1822 the first wagons traveled through Kaw hunting grounds from Missouri to New Mexico
on the Santa Fe Trail
. Many Americans, including the missionary Isaac McCoy
, saw Kansas as the place in which all the dispossessed eastern Indians could be gathered together in an Indian state.
In 1825, White Plume was the principal Kaw chief signing a treaty that ceded 18 million acres (72,843.5 km²) to the United States in exchange for annuities of 3,500 dollars per year for 20 years plus livestock and assistance to enable the Kaw to become full-time farmers. What was left to the Kaw was a sliver of land thirty miles wide extending westward into the Great Plains from the Kansas River valley. To win support for the treaty from the increasingly important mixed bloods, each of 23 mixed blood children of French/Kaw parents received a section of land on the north bank of the Kansas River. (See Half-Breed Tract
s). The immense land giveaway in the 1825 treaty, plus a similar treaty signed by the government with the Osage, opened up Kansas to the relocation, often forced, of eastern Indian tribes. The U.S. would squeeze the Kaw into ever smaller territories. In defense of White Plume, much of the land he ceded was already lost to the Kaw and was being occupied by eastern Indians or White settlers. White Plume probably also foresaw that the Kaw would have to learn to live on much reduced territories and change their emphasis from hunting and fur trading to agriculture. Thus, he chose cooperation as his policy.
. The favoritism, however, shown by the United States to White Plume and the mixed bloods contributed to rivalries for leadership. In the 1820s, the Kaw split into four factions. Not accepting White Plume’s leadership, the three conservative factions continued to live in villages near Manhattan. White Plume and his supporters settled downstream near the Kaw Agency headquarters established near Williamstown, Kansas
in 1827.
The increasing problems of the Kaw were amplified by smallpox
epidemics that swept through the tribe in 1827-1828 and 1831-1832 killing nearly 500 members of the tribe including White Plume’s wife and two of his sons.
In 1827, the U.S. established the Kaw Agency near Williamstown
A Methodist missionary, William Johnson arrived in 1830 to begin a school for Kaw and mixed-blood children. The Kaw Agency was a microcosm of the “careless, indeed illusive” efforts of the U.S. government’s efforts to make Christians and farmers of Indians such as the Kaw who had little desire to be either. Indian Agents, appointed by the government were often corrupt or incompetent. Most agents found reason to be absent from the agency for extended periods of time. Also, in accordance with the treaty, White farmers, teachers, missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, and a blacksmith lived near the agency to "civilize" the Kaw. For a time, the farmer was Daniel Morgan Boone, son of the famous scout, Daniel Boone
. His son, born here August 22, 1828, was the second white child born in Kansas. The Chouteau family established a trading post across the river from the Agency to provide goods to the Kaw in exchange for buffalo robes and furs. An illicit whiskey trade flourished.
A grateful U.S. government built a stone house for White Plume near the agency, but he lived in a traditional lodge because he said the house had "too much fleas." Many of the mixed bloods also lived near the agency, as did a number of French voyageurs who were accustomed to life on the frontier. As the novelist Washington Irving
said, "the old French houses engaged in the Indian trade had gathered round them a train of dependents, mongrel Indians, and mongrel Frenchmen, who had intermarried with Indians."
White Plume was a prominent personality on the frontier in the 1830s and travelers often called on him. The painter George Catlin
described him a "a very urban and hospitable man of good, portly size, speaking some English, and making himself good company for all persons who travel through his country and have the good luck to shake his liberal and hospitable hand." Catlin regretted that he did not have the opportunity to paint White Plume’s portrait.
In his last years, it appears that White Plume, perhaps disillusioned with the results of his accommodation policy, "returned to the old Indian habits." A missionary reported in 1838 that he had died, probably from excessive drinking while on an autumn hunt.
Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis was a United States Representative, a longtime United States Senator from Kansas later chosen as Senate Majority Leader by his Republican colleagues, and the 31st Vice President of the United States...
, Vice President of the United States.
Early life and family
White Plume was born about 1765. The Kaw tribe at that time occupied lands in what became the states of KansasKansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
and Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and numbered about 1500 persons. White Plume married a daughter of the Osage
Osage Nation
The Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
Chief Pawhuska. This marriage may have been important in establishing friendly relations between the closely related Kaws and Osage
Osage Nation
The Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
.
White Plume had five children. His three sons all died when young men. His two daughters, Hunt Jimmy (b. ca. 1800) and Wyhesee (b. ca. 1802) married the French traders Louis Gonville and Joseph James
Joseph James and Joseph James, Jr.
Joseph James is the name of two Kaw/Osage/French interpreters on the Kansas and Oklahoma frontier in the nineteenth century. Both were usually called “Joe Jim” or “Jojim.”-Joe Jim:...
. Until the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
acquired Louisiana Territory
Louisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805 until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed to Missouri Territory...
from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1803, the Kaw subsisted primarily on buffalo hunting with only limited agriculture. They were dependent on selling furs and buffalo robes to French traders, such as the powerful Chouteau
Chouteau
Chouteau was the name of a highly successful French fur-trading family based in St. Louis, Missouri, members of which established posts in the Midwest and Western United States...
family, to acquire European goods such as guns. White Plume lived to see the traditional lifestyle of the Kaws become increasingly unsustainable. He attempted to meet the challenges facing the Kaws by cooperation with the U.S. government.
Treaties
White Plume was first written about as one of the Kaw signatories to an 1815 treaty with the United States. With his daughters married to French traders, White Plume was identified by American officials as more progressive—in their minds—than his leadership rivals among the Kaws. In 1821 he was invited by Indian Superintendent William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) to visit Washington, DC as a member of a delegation of Indian leaders. The group met with President James MonroeJames Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
and other American officials, visited New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, and Philadelphia, and performed war dance
War dance
A war dance is a dance involving mock combat, usually in reference to tribal warrior societies where such dances were performed as a ritual connected with endemic warfare....
s on the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
Lawn and at the residence of the French Minister. The artist Charles Bird King
Charles Bird King
Charles Bird King is a United States artist who is best known for his portraiture. In particular, the artist is notable for the portraits he painted of Native American delegates coming to Washington D.C., which were commissioned by government's Bureau of Indian Affairs.-Biography:Charles Bird King...
painted a portrait of White Plume. He was given two silver epaulette
Epaulette
Epaulette is a type of ornamental shoulder piece or decoration used as insignia of rank by armed forces and other organizations.Epaulettes are fastened to the shoulder by a shoulder strap or "passant", a small strap parallel to the shoulder seam, and the button near the collar, or by laces on the...
s as a sign that the U. S. government accepted him as the principal Kaw chief. In reality, however, he never had authority over most members of the tribe.
White Plume came back from Washington convinced that the future of the Kaw, and his own future, was accommodation with the United States. Already eastern Indians were migrating west and occupying lands claimed by the Kaw. The Missouri River
Missouri River
The Missouri River flows through the central United States, and is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is the longest river in North America and drains the third largest area, though only the thirteenth largest by discharge. The Missouri's watershed encompasses most of the American Great...
was a highway to fur trappers and traders heading for the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
. In 1822 the first wagons traveled through Kaw hunting grounds from Missouri to New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
on the Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...
. Many Americans, including the missionary Isaac McCoy
Isaac McCoy
Isaac McCoy was a Baptist missionary among the Native Americans in present-day Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. He was an advocate of Indian removal from the eastern United States, proposing an Indian state in what is now Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma...
, saw Kansas as the place in which all the dispossessed eastern Indians could be gathered together in an Indian state.
In 1825, White Plume was the principal Kaw chief signing a treaty that ceded 18 million acres (72,843.5 km²) to the United States in exchange for annuities of 3,500 dollars per year for 20 years plus livestock and assistance to enable the Kaw to become full-time farmers. What was left to the Kaw was a sliver of land thirty miles wide extending westward into the Great Plains from the Kansas River valley. To win support for the treaty from the increasingly important mixed bloods, each of 23 mixed blood children of French/Kaw parents received a section of land on the north bank of the Kansas River. (See Half-Breed Tract
Half-Breed Tract
A Half-Breed Tract was a segment of land designated in the western states by the United States government in the 19th century specifically for people of American Indian and European or European-American ancestry, known as mixed bloods. The government set aside such tracts in several U.S...
s). The immense land giveaway in the 1825 treaty, plus a similar treaty signed by the government with the Osage, opened up Kansas to the relocation, often forced, of eastern Indian tribes. The U.S. would squeeze the Kaw into ever smaller territories. In defense of White Plume, much of the land he ceded was already lost to the Kaw and was being occupied by eastern Indians or White settlers. White Plume probably also foresaw that the Kaw would have to learn to live on much reduced territories and change their emphasis from hunting and fur trading to agriculture. Thus, he chose cooperation as his policy.
Leadership
When George Sibley visited the Kaws in 1811, they were living in a single prosperous village of 128 two and three-family bark lodges on the site of present day Manhattan, KansasManhattan, Kansas
Manhattan is a city located in the northeastern part of the state of Kansas in the United States, at the junction of the Kansas River and Big Blue River. It is the county seat of Riley County and the city extends into Pottawatomie County. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 52,281...
. The favoritism, however, shown by the United States to White Plume and the mixed bloods contributed to rivalries for leadership. In the 1820s, the Kaw split into four factions. Not accepting White Plume’s leadership, the three conservative factions continued to live in villages near Manhattan. White Plume and his supporters settled downstream near the Kaw Agency headquarters established near Williamstown, Kansas
Williamstown, Kansas
Williamstown is an unincorporated community in southeastern Jefferson County, Kansas, United States, off U.S. Route 24....
in 1827.
The increasing problems of the Kaw were amplified by smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
epidemics that swept through the tribe in 1827-1828 and 1831-1832 killing nearly 500 members of the tribe including White Plume’s wife and two of his sons.
In 1827, the U.S. established the Kaw Agency near Williamstown
Williamstown, Kansas
Williamstown is an unincorporated community in southeastern Jefferson County, Kansas, United States, off U.S. Route 24....
A Methodist missionary, William Johnson arrived in 1830 to begin a school for Kaw and mixed-blood children. The Kaw Agency was a microcosm of the “careless, indeed illusive” efforts of the U.S. government’s efforts to make Christians and farmers of Indians such as the Kaw who had little desire to be either. Indian Agents, appointed by the government were often corrupt or incompetent. Most agents found reason to be absent from the agency for extended periods of time. Also, in accordance with the treaty, White farmers, teachers, missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, and a blacksmith lived near the agency to "civilize" the Kaw. For a time, the farmer was Daniel Morgan Boone, son of the famous scout, Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
. His son, born here August 22, 1828, was the second white child born in Kansas. The Chouteau family established a trading post across the river from the Agency to provide goods to the Kaw in exchange for buffalo robes and furs. An illicit whiskey trade flourished.
A grateful U.S. government built a stone house for White Plume near the agency, but he lived in a traditional lodge because he said the house had "too much fleas." Many of the mixed bloods also lived near the agency, as did a number of French voyageurs who were accustomed to life on the frontier. As the novelist Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
said, "the old French houses engaged in the Indian trade had gathered round them a train of dependents, mongrel Indians, and mongrel Frenchmen, who had intermarried with Indians."
White Plume was a prominent personality on the frontier in the 1830s and travelers often called on him. The painter George Catlin
George Catlin
George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.-Early years:...
described him a "a very urban and hospitable man of good, portly size, speaking some English, and making himself good company for all persons who travel through his country and have the good luck to shake his liberal and hospitable hand." Catlin regretted that he did not have the opportunity to paint White Plume’s portrait.
In his last years, it appears that White Plume, perhaps disillusioned with the results of his accommodation policy, "returned to the old Indian habits." A missionary reported in 1838 that he had died, probably from excessive drinking while on an autumn hunt.