Wyandot

Wyandot indians did not have horses. The Indian Expedition had its beginnings, fatefully or otherwise, in "Lane's Kansas Brigade." On January 29, 1861, President Buchanan signed the bill for the admission of Kansas into the Union and the matter about which there had been so much of bitter controversy was at last professedly settled; but, alas, for the peace of the border, the radicals, the extremists, the fanatics, call them what one may, who had been responsible for the controversy and for its bitterness, were still unsettled. James Lane was chief among them. His was a turbulent spirit and it permitted its owner no cessation from strife. With President Lincoln's first call for volunteers, April 15, 1861, Lane's martial activities began. Within three days, he had gathered together a company of warriors,[|83] the nucleus, psychologically speaking, of what was to be his notorious, jayhawking, marauding brigade. His enthusiasm was infectious. It communicated itself to reflective men like Carl Schurz[|84] and was probably the secret of Lane's mysterious influence with the temperate, humane, just, and so very much more magnanimous Lincoln, who, in the first days of the war, as in the later and the last, had his hours of discouragement and deep depression. For dejection of any sort, the wild excitement and boundless confidence of a zealot like Lane must have been somewhat of an antidote, also a.

The first Kansas state legislature convened March 26, 1861, and set itself at once to work to put the new machinery of government into operation. After much political wire-pulling that involved the promise of spoils to come,[|85] James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy[|86] were declared to be elected United States senators, the term of office of each to begin with the first session of the thirty-seventh congress. That session was the extra one, called for July, 1861. Immediately, a difficulty arose due to the fact that, subsequent to his election to the senatorship and in addition thereto, Lane had accepted a colonelcy tendered by Oliver P. Morton[|87] of Indiana, his own native state.[|88] Lane's friends very plausibly contended that a military commission from one state could not invalidate the title to represent another state in the Federal senate. The actual fight over the contested seat came in the next session and, quite regardless of consequences likely to prejudice his case, Lane went on recruiting for his brigade. Indeed, he commended himself to Fremont, who, in his capacity as major-general of volunteers and in charge of the Western Military District, assigned him to duty in Kansas, thus greatly complicating an already delicate situation and immeasurably heaping up difficulties, embarrassments, and disasters for the frontier. Map Showing the Main Theatre of Border Warfare and the Location of Tribes Within the Indian Country The same indifference towards the West that characterized the governing authorities in the South was exhibited by eastern men in the North and, correspondingly, the West, Federal and Confederate, was unduly sensitive to the indifference, perhaps, also, a trifle unnecessarily alarmed by symptoms of its own danger. Nevertheless, its danger was real. Each state gave in its adherence to the Confederacy separately and, therefore, every single state in the slavery belt had a problem to solve. The fight for Missouri was fought on the border and nowhere else. The great evil of squatter sovereignty days was now epidemic in its most malignant form. Those days had bred intense hatred between Missourian and Kansan and had developed a disregard of the value of human life and a ruthlessness and brutality in fighting, concomitant with it, that the East, in its most primitive times, had never been called upon to experience. Granted that the spirit of the crusader had inspired many a free-soiler to venture into the trans-Missouri region after the Kansas-Nebraska bill had become law and that real exaltation of soul had transformed some very mercenary and altogether mundane characters unexpectedly into martyrs; granted, also, that the pro-slavery man honestly felt that his cause was just and that his sacred rights of property, under the constitution, were being violated, his preserves encroached upon, it yet remains true that great crimes were committed in the name of great causes and that villains stalked where only saints should have trod. The irregular warfare of the border, from fifty-four on, while it may, to military history as a whole, be as unimportant as the quarrels of kites and crows, was yet a big part of the life of the frontiersman and frightful in its possibilities. Sherman's march to the sea or through the Carolinas, disgraceful to modern civilization as each undeniably was, lacked the sickening phase, guerrilla atrocities, that made the Civil War in the West, to those at least who were in line to experience it at close range, an awful nightmare. Union and Confederate soldiers might well fraternize in eastern camps because there they so rarely had any cause for personal hostility towards each other, but not in western. The fight on the border was constant and to the death. The leaders in the West or many of them, on both sides, were men of ungovernable tempers, of violent and unrestrained passions, sometimes of distressingly base proclivities, although, in the matter of both vices and virtues, there was considerable difference of degree among them. Lane and Shelby and Montgomery and Quantrill were hardly types, rather should it be said they were extreme cases. They seem never to have taken chances on each other's inactivity. Their motto invariably was, to be prepared for the worst, and their practice, retaliation.

It was scarcely to be supposed that a man like Lane, who had never known moderation in the course of the long struggle for Kansas or been over scrupulous about anything would, in the event of his adopted state's being exposed anew to her old enemy, the Missourian, be able to pose contentedly as a legislator or stay quietly in Washington, his role of guardian of the White House being finished.[|89] The anticipated danger to Kansas visibly threatened in the summer of 1861 and the critical moment saw Lane again in the West, energetic beyond precedent. He took up his position at Fort Scott, it being his conviction that, from that point and from the line of the Little Osage, the entire eastern section of the state, inclusive of Fort Leavenworth, could best be protected.[|90] Fort Scott was the ranking town among the few Federal strongholds in the middle Southwest. It was within convenient, if not easy, distance of Crawford Seminary which, situated to the southward in the Quapaw Nation, was the headquarters of the Neosho Agency; but no more perturbed place could be imagined than was that same Neosho Agency at the opening of the Civil War. Bad white men, always in evidence at moments of crisis, were known to be interfering with the Osages, exciting them by their own marauding to deviltry and mischief of the worst description.[|91] As a tribe, the Osages were not very dependable at the best of times and now that they saw confusion all around them their most natural inclination was to pay back old scores and to make an alliance where such alliance could be most profitable to themselves. The "remnants" of tribes, Seneca, Shawnees, and Quapaw, associated with them in the agency, Neosho, that is, although not of evil disposition, were similarly agitated and with good reason. Rumors of dissensions among the Cherokees, not so very far away, were naturally having a disquieting effect upon the neighboring but less highly organized tribes as was also the unrest in Missouri, in the southwestern counties of which, however, Union sentiment thus far dominated.[|92] Its continuance would undoubtedly turn upon military success or failure and that, men like Lyon and Lane knew only too well.

As the days passed, the Cherokee troubles gained in intensity, so much so that the agent, John Crawford, even then a secessionist sympathizers, reported that internecine strife might at any hour be provoked.[|93] So confused was everything that in July the people of southeastern Kansas were generally apprehensive of an attack from the direction of either Indian Territory or Arkansas.[|94] Kansas troops had been called to Missouri; but, at the same time, Lyon was complaining that men from the West, where they were greatly needed, were being called by Scott to Virginia.[|95] On August 6 two emergency calls went forth, one from Fremont for a brigade from California that could be stationed at El Paso and moved as occasion might require, either upon San Antonio or into the Indian Territory,[|96] the other from Congressmen John S. Phelps and Francis P. Blair junior, who addressed Lincoln upon the subject of enlisting Missouri troops for an invasion of Arkansas in order to ward off any contemplated attack upon southwestern Missouri and to keep the Indians west of Arkansas in subjection.[|97] On August 10 came the disastrous Federal defeat at Wilson's Creek. It was immediately subsequent to that event and in anticipation of a Kansas invasion by Price and McCulloch that Lane resolved to take position at Fort Scott.[|98]

: It would seem to have communicated itself to Carl Schurz, although Schurz, in his Reminiscences, makes no definite admission of the fact. Hay says, "Going into Nicolay's room this morning, C. Schurz, and J. Lane were sitting. Jim was at the window, filling his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplation of a Secession flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria. 'Let me tell you,' said he to the elegant Teuton, 'we have got to whip these scoundrels like hell, C. Schurz. They did a good thing stoning our men at Baltimore and shooting away the flag at Sumter. It has set the great North a-howling for blood, and they'll have it.'

"'I heard,' said Schurz, 'you preached a sermon to your men yesterday.'

"'No, sir! this is not time for preaching. When I went to Mexico there were four preachers in my regiment. In less than a week I issued orders for them all to stop preaching and go to playing cards. In a month or so, they were the biggest devils and best fighters I had.'

"An hour afterwards, C. Schurz told me he was going home to arm his clansmen for the wars. He has obtained three months' leave of absence from his diplomatic duties, and permission to raise a cavalry regiment. He will make a wonderful land pirate; bold, quick, brilliant, and reckless. He will be hard to control and difficult to direct. Still, we shall see. He is a wonderful man."—THAYER, Life and Letters of John Hay, vol. i, 102-103. : In Connelley's James Henry Lane, the "Grim Chieftain" of Kansas, the following is quoted as coming from Lane himself:

"Of the fifty-six men in the Legislature who voted for Jim Lane, five-and-forty now wear shoulder-straps. Doesn't Jim Lane look out for his friends?" : John Brown's rating of Pomeroy, as given by Stearns in his Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, 133-134, would show him to have been a considerably less pugnacious individual than was Lane. : Morton, war governor of Indiana, who had taken tremendous interest in the struggle for Kansas and in the events leading up to the organization of the Republican party, was one of the most energetic of men in raising troops for the defense of the Union, especially in the earliest stages of the war. See Foulke's Life of Oliver P. Morton, vol. i. : Some doubt on this point exists. John Speer, Lane's intimate friend and, in a sense, his biographer, says Lane claimed Lawrenceburg, Indiana, as his birthplace. By some people he is thought to have been born in Kentucky. : As Villard tells us [Memoirs, vol. i, 169], Lane was in command of the "Frontier Guards," one of the two special patrols that protected the White House in the early days of the war. There were those, however, who resented his presence there. For example, note the diary entry of Hay, "Going to my room, I met the Captain. He was a little boozy and very eloquent. He dilated on the troubles of the time and bewailed the existence of a garrison in the White House 'to give éclat to Jim Lane.'"—Thayer, op. cit., vol. i, 94. The White House guard was in reality under General Hunter [Report of the Military Services of General David Hunter, 8]. : Official Records, vol. iii, 453, 455. : A letter from Superintendent W.G. Coffin of date, July, 30, 1861 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Schools, C. 1275 of 1861] bears evidence of this as bear also the following letters, the one, private in character, from Augustus Wattles, the other, without specific date, from William Brooks: || Private

Moneka, Kansas, May 20, 1861. Mr. Dole

Dear Sir, A messenger has this moment left me, who came up from the Osages yesterday—a distance of about forty miles. The gentleman lives on the line joining the Osage Indians, and has, since my acquaintance with him about three years.

A short time ago, perhaps three weeks, a number of lawless white men went into the Nation and stole a number of ponies. The Indians made chase, had a fight and killed several, reported from three to five, and retook their ponies.

A company of men is now getting up here and in other counties, to go and fight the Indians. I am appealed to by the Indians to act as their friend.

They represent that they are loyal to the U.S. Government and will fight for their Great Father, at Washington, but must be protected from bad white men at home. The Government must not think them enemies when they only fight thieves and robbers.

Rob't B. Mitchell, who was recently appointed Maj. General of this State by Gov. Robinson, has resigned, and is now raising volunteers to fight the Indians. He has always been a Democrat in sympathy with the pro-slavery party, and his enlisting men now to take them away from the Missouri frontier, when we are daily threatened with an attack from that State, and union men are fleeing to us for protection from there, is certainly a very questionable policy. It could operate no worse against us, if it were gotten up by a traitor to draw our men off on purpose to give the Missourians a chance when we are unprepared.I presume you have it in your power to prevent any attack on the Indians in Kansas till such time as they can be treated with. And such order to the Commander of the Western Division of the U.S. Army would stop further proceedings.

I shall start to-morrow for Council Grove and meet the Kansas Indians before General Mitchell's force can get there. As the point of attack is secret, I fear it may be the Osages, for the purpose of creating a necessity for a treaty with himself by which he can secure a large quantity of land for himself and followers. He is acquainted with all the old Democratic schemes of swindling Indians.

The necessity for prompt action on the part of the Indian Department increases every day. The element of discord in the community here now, was once, the pro-slavery party. I see their intention to breed disturbances with the Indians is malicious and selfish. They are active and unscrupulous, and must be met promptly and decisively.

I hope you will excuse this, as it appears necessary for me to step a little out of my orders to notify you of current events. I am very respectfully Your Ob't Ser'vt Augustus Wattles, Special Agent

[Indian Office Special Files, no. 201.]

Grand Falls, Newton Co., Mo. Com. Indian Affairs Washington, D.C.

Hon. Sir: Permit me to inform you, by this means, of the efforts that have been and are now being made in Southern Kansas to arouse both the "Osage" and "Cherokee" to rebel, and bear arms against the U.S. Government—At a public meeting near the South E. corner of the "Osage Nation" called by the settlements for the devising of some means by which to protect themselves from "unlawful characters," Mr. John Mathis, who resides in the Osage Nation and has an Osage family, also Mr. "Robert Foster" who lives in the Cherokee Nation and has a Cherokee family endeavored by public speeches and otherwise to induce "Osage", "Cherokee", as well as Americans who live on the "Neutral Lands" to bear arms against the U.S. Government—aledging that there was no U.S. Government. There was 25 men who joined them and they proceeded to organize a "Secession Company" electing as Capt R.D. Foster and 1st Lieutenant James Patton—This meeting was held June 4th 1861—at "McGhees Residence"—The peace of this section of country requires the removal of these men from the Indian country, or some measures that will restrain them from exciting the Indians in Southern Kansas.

Yours Respectfully WM BROOKS.

You will understand why you are addressed by a private individual on this subject instead of the Agent, since A.J. Dorn, the present Indian Agent, is an avowed "Secessionist" and consequently would favor, rather than suppress the move. WM BROOKS. : Ibid., Cherokee, C 1200 of 1861 : Official Records, vol. iii, 405. : Ibid., 397, 408. : Ibid., 428. : Official Records, vol. iii, 430. : Ibid., 446.
 * : Branch to Mix, June 22, 1861, enclosing letter from Agent Elder, June 15, 1861 [Indian Office Files, Neosho, B 547 of 1861].

This site includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied. //The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War, 1919//

**[|Participant in the Civil War]** || || Copyright 2000- by NaNations.com and/or their author(s). The webpages may be linked to but shall not be reproduced on another site without written permission from NaNations or their author. Images may not be linked to in any manner or method. Anyone may use the information provided here freely for personal use only. If you plan on publishing your personal information to the web please give proper credit to our site for providing this information. Thanks!!! || In the late 17th century, elements of the Huron Confederacy and the Petun joined together and became known as the Wyandot (or Wyandotte), a variation of Wendat.[5] The western Wyandot eventually re-formed across the border in the area of present-day Ohio and southern Michigan in the United States. Some descendants of the Wyandot Nation of Anderdon still live in Ohio and Michigan. In 1819, the Methodist Church established its first mission to Native Americans with a mission to the Wyandot in Ohio.[21]

In the 1840s, most of the surviving Wyandot people were displaced to Kansas through the US federal policy of forced Indian removal. Using the funds they received for their lands in Ohio the Wyandot purchased 23,000 acres (93 km2) of land for $46,080 in what is now Wyandotte County, Kansas in the Kansas City, Kansas area from the Delaware who were grateful for the hospitality the Wyandot had shown them in Ohio. It was a more-or-less square parcel north and west of the junction of the Kansas River and the Missouri River.[22]

In June 1853, Big Turtle, a chief of the Wyandot tribe, wrote to the Ohio State Journal regarding the current condition of his tribe. The Wyandot received nearly $127,000 for their lands in 1845. Big Turtle noted that, in the spring of 1850, the tribal chiefs retroceded the granted land to the government. $100,000 of the proceeds was invested in 5% government stock.[23]

Removed from Ohio to the Indian Territory, the Wyandot tribe had founded good libraries along with two thriving Sabbath Schools. They were in the process of organizing a division of the Sons of Temperance and maintained a sizable Temperance Society. Big Turtle commented on the agricultural yield, which produced an annual surplus for market. He said that the thrift of the Wyandot exceeded that of any tribe north of the Arkansas line. According to an 1853 New York Times article, the Wyandot nation was "contented and happy", and enjoyed better living conditions in the Indian Territory than formerly in Ohio.[23]

A United States government treaty ceded the Wyandot Nation a small portion of fertile land located in an acute angle of the Missouri River and Kansas River which they purchased from the Delaware in 1843. In addition, the government granted thirty-two "floating sections", located on public lands west of the Mississippi River. By 1855 the number of Wyandot had diminished to 600 or 700. On August 14 of that year the Wyandot nation elected a chief. The Kansas correspondent of the Missouri Republican reported that the judges of the election were three elderly braves who were trusted by their peers. Some of the floating sections of land were offered for sale on the same day at a price of $800. A section was composed of 640 acres (2.6 km2). Altogether 20,480 acres (82.9 km2) were sold for $25,600. They were located in Kansas, Nebraska, and unspecified sites. Surveys were not required, with the title becoming complete at the time of location.[24]

An October 1855 article in The New York Times reported that the Wyandot were free (that is, they had been accepted as US citizens) and without the restrictions placed on other tribes. Their leaders were unanimously pro-slavery, which meant 900 or 1,000 additional votes in opposition to the Free State movement of Kansas.[25]

In 1867 after the American Civil War, additional members removed from the Midwest to Oklahoma. Today more than 4,000 Wyandot can be found in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma.

The last of the original Wyandot of Ohio was Margaret "Grey Eyes" Solomon, a.k.a. "Mother Solomon". The daughter of Chief John Grey Eyes, she was born in 1816 and departed Ohio in 1843. By 1889 she had returned to Ohio, when she was recorded as a spectator to the restoration of the Wyandot's "Old Mission Church", a Wyandot Mission Church at Upper Sandusky. She died in Upper Sandusky on August 17, 1890.[26].The last Wyandot to live in Ohio was Bill Moose 1836-1937 The Wyandot tribe was anciently divided into twelve clans, or gentes. Each of these had a local government, consisting of a clan council presided over by a clan chief. These clan councils were composed of at least five persons, one man and four women, and they might contain any number of women above four. Any business pertaining purely to the internal affairs of the clans was carried to the clan councils for settlement. An appeal was allowed from the clan council to the tribal council. The four women of the clan council regulated the clan affairs and selected the clan chief. The office of clan chief was in a measure hereditary, although not wholly so. The tribal council was composed of the clan chiefs, the hereditary sachem, and such other men of the tribe of renown as the sachem might with the consent of the tribal council call to the council fire. In determining a question the vote was by clans, and not by individuals. In matters of great importance it required a unanimous vote to carry a proposition. The names of the ancient clans of the Wyandot tribe are as follows: 1. Big Turtle. 2. Little Turtle. 3. Mud Turtle. 4. Wolf.

5. Bear. 6. Beaver. 7. Deer. 8. Porcupine.

9. Striped Turtle. 10. Highland Turtle, or Prairie Turtle. 11. Snake. 12. Hawk. These clan names are all expressed in Wyandot, words so long and hard to properly pronounce that they are omitted here. They are written in what the Wyandot call the Order of Precedence and Encampment, as I have recorded them above. On the march the warriors of the Big Turtle Clan marched in front, those of the Little Turtle Clan marched next to them, and so on down to the last clan, except the Wolf Clan, which had command of the march and might be where its presence was most necessary. The tribal encampment was formed "on the shell of the Big Turtle," as the old Wyandot said. This means that the tents were arranged in a circular form as though surrounding the shell of the Big Turtle. The Big Turtle Clan was placed where the right fore-leg of the turtle was supposed to be and the other clans were arranged around in their proper order, except the Wolf Clan, which could be in the center of the inclosure on the turtle's back, or in front of it where the turtle's head was supposed to be, as it was thought best. In ancient times all their villages were built in this order, and in the tribal council the clans took this order in seating themselves, with the sachem either in the center or in the front of the door of the council chamber. These clans were separated into two divisions, or phratries. The first phratry consisted of the following tribes:

1. Bear. 2. Deer. 3. Snake. 4. Hawk.

The second phratry consisted of the following tribes:

1. Big Turtle. 2. Little Turtle. 3. Mud Turtle. 4. Beaver. 5. Porcupine. 6. Striped Turtle. 7. Highland Turtle, or Prairie Turtle.

The Mediator, Executive Power, and Umpire of the tribe was the Wolf Clan, which stood between the phratries, and bore a cousin relation to each. All the clans of a phratry bore the relation of brothers to one another, and the clans of one phratry bore the relation of cousins to those of the other phratry. Their marriage laws were fixed by this relationship. Anciently a man of the first phratry was compelled to marry a woman of the second phratry, and vice versa. This was because every man of a phratry was supposed to be the brother of every other man in it, and every woman in the phratry was supposed to be his sister. The law of marriage is now so modified that it applies only to the clans, a man of the Deer Clan being permitted to marry a woman of Bear, Snake, Hawk, or any other clan but his own. Indeed, even this modification had now almost disappeared. If a man of the Deer Clan married a woman of the Porcupine Clan, all of his children were of the Porcupine Clan, for the gens always follows the woman and never the man. The descent and distribution of property followed the same law; the son could inherit nothing from his father, for they were always of different clans. A man's property descended to his nearest kindred through his mother. The woman is always the head of the Wyandot family. Five of the ancient clans of the Wyandot are extinct. They are as follows: (1) Mud Turtle (2) Beaver (3) Striped Turtle (4) Highland, or Prairie Turtle (5) Hawk

Those still in existence are as follows: (1) Big Turtle (2) Little Turtle (3) Wolf (4) Deer (5) Bear (6) Porcupine (7) Snake

The present government of the Wyandot tribe is based on this ancient division of the tribes. An extract from the Constitution may be of interest. It was adopted September 23, 1873: It shall be the duty of the said Nation to elect their officers on the second Tuesday in July of each year. That said election shall be conducted in the following manner. Each Tribe (clan), consisting of the following Tribes: The Big and Little Turtle, Porcupine, Deer, Bear, and Snake, shall elect a chief; and then the Big and Little Turtle and Porcupine Tribes shall select one of their three chiefs as a candidate for Principal Chief. The Deer, Bear, and Snake Tribes shall also select one of their three chiefs as candidate for Principal Chief; and then at the general election to be held on the day above mentioned, the one receiving the highest number of votes cast shall be declared the Principal Chief; the other shall be declared the Second Chief. The above-named tribes shall on the above named election day elect one or more sheriffs. The Wolf Tribe shall have the right to elect a chief whose duty shall be that of Mediator. In case of misdemeanor on the part of any Chief, for the first offense the Council shall send the Mediator to warn the party; for the second offense the party offending shall be liable to removal by the Mediator, or Wolf and his Clan, from office. The origin of these clans is hidden in the obscurity of great antiquity. They are of religious origin. We learn something of them from the Wyandot mythology, or folk-lore. The ancient Wyandot believed that they were descended from these animals, for whom their clans were named. The animals from which they were descended were different from the animal of the same species to-day. They were deities, zoological gods. The animals of the same species are descended from them. These animals were the creators of the universe. The Big Turtle made the Great Island, as North America was called, by the Wyandot, and he bears it on his back to this day. The Little Turtle made the sun, moon, and many of the stars. The Mud Turtle made a hole through the Great Island for the sun to pass back to the East through after setting at night, so he could arise upon a new day. While making this hole through the Great Island the Mud Turtle turned aside from her work long enough to fashion the future home of the Wyandot, their happy hunting-grounds, to which they go after death. The sun shines there at night while on his way back to the East. This land is called the land of the Little People, a race of pigmies created to assist the Wyandot. They live in it, and preserve the ancient customs, habits, beliefs, language and government of the Wyandot for their use after they leave this world by death. These Little People come and go through the "living rock," but the Wyandot must go to it by way of a great underground city where they were once hidden while the works of the world were being restored after destruction in a war between two brothers who were gods. All Wyandot proper names had their foundation in this clan system. They were clan names. The unit of the Wyandot social and political systems was not the family nor the individual, but the clan. The child belonged to its clan first, to its parents afterwards. Each clan had its list of proper names, and this list was its exclusive property which no other clan could appropriate or use. They were necessarily clan names. The customs and usages governing the formation of clan proper names demanded that they be derived from some part, habit, action or peculiarity of the animal from which the clan was supposed to be descended. Or they might be derived from some property, law, or peculiarity of the element in which such animal lived. Thus a proper name was always a distinctive badge of the clan bestowing it. When death left unused any original clan proper name, the next child born into the clan, if of the sex to which the vacant name belonged, had such vacated name bestowed upon it. If no child was born, and a stranger was adopted, this name was given to such adopted person. This was the unchangeable law, and there was but one proviso or exception to it. When a child was born under some extraordinary circumstances, or peculiarity, or with some distinguishing mark, or a stranger adopted with these, the council-women of the clan informed themselves of all the facts and devised a name in which all these facts were imbedded. This name was made to conform to the ancient law governing clan proper names if possible, but often this could not be done. These special names died with their owners, and were never perpetuated. The parents were not permitted to name the child; the clan bestowed the name. Names were given but once a year, and always at the ancient anniversary of the Green Corn Feast. Anciently, formal adoptions could be made at no other time. The name was bestowed by the clan chief. He was a civil officer of both his clan and the tribe. At an appointed time in the ceremonies of the Green Corn Feast each clan chief took an assigned position, which in ancient times was the Order of Precedence and Encampment, and parents having children to be named filed before him in, the order of the ages of the children to be named. The council-women stood by the clan chief, and announced to him the name of each child presented, for all clan proper names were made by the council-women. This he could do by simply announcing the name to the parents, or by taking the child in his arms and addressing it by the name selected for it. The adoption of a stranger was into some family by consent, or at the instance of the principal woman of the family. It was not necessary that the adoption be made at the Green Corn Feast. The adoption was not considered complete, however, until it was ratified by the clan chief at the Green Corn Feast. This ratification might be accomplished in the simple ceremonial of being presented at this time to the clan chief by one of the Sheriffs. His clan name was bestowed upon him, and he was welcomed in a few well-chosen words, and the ceremony was complete. Or the adoption might be performed with as much display, ceremony and pomp as the tribal council might, from any cause, decree. The tribal council controlled in some degree the matter of adoptions. In ancient times, when many prisoners of war were brought in it determined how many should be tortured and how many adopted. Lalemant says the original and true name of the Wyandot is Ouendat. In history the Wyandot have been spoken of by the following names:

1. Tionnontates 2. Etionontates 3. Tuinontatek 4. Dionondadies 5. Khionontaterrhonons 6. Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco)

They call themselves:

1. When'-duht, or 2. When'-dooht.

They never accepted the name Huron, which is of French origin. The Wyandot have been always considered the remnant of the Hurons. That they were related to the people called Hurons by the French, there is no doubt. After having studied them carefully for almost twenty years, I am of the opinion that the Wyandot are more closely related to the Seneca than they were to the ancient Hurons. Both myth and tradition of the Wyandot say they were "created" in the region between St. James's Bay and the coast of Labrador. All their traditions describe their ancient home as north of the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In their traditions of their migrations southward they say they came to the island where Montreal now stands. They took possession of the country along the north bank of the St. Lawrence from the Ottawa River to a large lake and river far below Quebec. On the south side of the St. Lawrence lived the Seneca, so the Wyandot traditions recite. The Seneca claimed the island upon which the city of Montreal is built. The Seneca and Wyandot have always claimed a cousin relation with each other. They say that they have been neighbors from time immemorial. Their languages are almost the same, each being the dialect of an older common mother-tongue. They are as nearly alike as are the Seneca and Mohawk dialects. The two tribes live side by side at this time, and each can speak the tongue of the other as well as it speaks its own. When the Wyandot came to the St. Lawrence, and how long they remained there, cannot now be determined. Their traditions say that they were among those that met Cartier at Hochelaga in 1535. According to their traditions, Hochelaga was a Seneca town. It had been the opinion of writers upon the subject that the Wyandot migrated from the St. Lawrence directly to the point where they were found by the French. Whatever the fact may be, their traditions tell a different story. Their route was up the St. Lawrence, which they crossed, and along the south shore of Lake Ontario. They held this course until they arrived at the Falls of Niagara, where they settled and remained for some years. The Wyandot removed from the Falls of Niagara, the site now occupied by Toronto, Canada. Their removal from Niagara was in consequence of the Iroquois coming into their historic seat in what is now New York. This settlement they called by their word which means "plenty," or "a land of plenty." They named it so because of the abundance of game and fish they found, and of the abundance of corn, beans, squashes and tobacco they raised. The present name of that city is only a slight change of the old Wyandot name, which was pronounced "To-run-to." As the Iroquois pushed farther westward, the Wyandot became uneasy because of former wars with them and finally abandoned their country at Toronto and migrated northward. Here they came in contact with the Hurons, who tried to expel them, but were unable to do so. The French found them in alliance with the Hurons, but record that they had but recently been at war with that people. When the Jesuits went among the Hurons the Wyandot were a part of the Huron Confederacy. Their history from this point is well known. If it turns out that there is any reliance to be placed in the traditions of the Wyandot, they were found in their historic seat about one hundred and five years from the time they were first seen by the French at Montreal in 1535. Their migration from the St. Lawrence, by way of the Niagara Falls and Toronto to the Blue Mountains on the shores of the Nottawassaga Bay, occurred after the French first came to Canada. The Wyandot were involved in the general ruin wrought by the Iroquois. The Wyandot came to Kansas from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in the summer of 1843. They stopped about Westport, Mo., and some of them camped on the south and east side of the Kansas River north of the Shawnee line, the land being now in Kansas City, Kansas. By the terms of the treaty made at Upper Sandusky, March 17, 1842, the Wyandot were given one hundred and forty-eight thousand acres of land, to be located in the Indian country which became Kansas. The lands there to be had did not suit them. Their reservation was located on the Neosho. They were far advanced toward civilization, and did not wish to live so far from a civilized community. They had attempted to purchase a strip of land seven miles wide by twenty-five miles long adjoining the State of Missouri from the Shawnee, but that tribe finally refused to sell. The Wyandot justly complained that they had given both the Shawnee and Delaware homes in Ohio, and now neither tribe really desired to sell them a home in the West. But the Delawares did, at length sell them thirty-nine sections in the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, now the eastern part of Wyandotte County, for forty-eight thousand dollars. They moved on this tract in the winter of 1843-44. The first Mission ever founded in the world by the Methodist Episcopal Church was among the Wyandot at Upper Sandusky. This mission was brought bodily to Kansas by the Wyandot. It is now the Washington Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Kansas. The division in the Methodist Episcopal Church caused dissension in the Wyandot nation, and the Church South, in that Nation, organized at that time. This Church also is an active organization in Kansas City, Kansas, at this time. This author had in his collection of historical papers the records of the Sandusky Mission and the documents relating to the separation of the Church in Kansas. By treaty concluded by the Wyandot with the United States at Washington, D. C., January 31, 1855, they dissolved their tribal relations and became citizens of the United States. They took their lands in severalty, and the entire reservation was surveyed and allotted to the members of the tribe as citizens. The titles to the land held in Wyandotte County are based on the U. S. patents to these allotments. The towns of Armstrong, Armourdale, Wyandotte, and old Kansas City, Kansas, were consolidated by act of the legislature into the present Kansas City, Kansas. The unsettled times in Kansas prior to and during the Civil War worked hardship on many of the Wyandot. They lost their property and became very poor. By treaty made February 23, 1867, the Government provided a reservation of twenty thousand acres of land on the Neosho, in what is now Oklahoma, for these Wyandot. They immediately gathered there and resumed their tribal relations. Most of the Wyandot people are now to be found there.

Found on internet.