9. Evidence of Spanish Exploration.-The Kansas that belonged to Spain and France was not entirely unknown or unvisited. It is believed that Coronado reached the country from New Spain in 1541. Various French and Spanish parties marched to and through the country, in some cases erecting crosses in token of sovereignty. They met the Indians, the Osages, the Pawnees, and the Kansas or Kaws, sometimes in peace, sometimes in war, but these expeditions left no trace behind more than does the fish in the water, the bird in the air.

10. Few Spanish or French Names.-The French trappers and voyageurs gave names to a few of the streams and islands, but neither Frenchman nor Spaniard contributed perceptibly to the nomenclature of Kansas; while to the east of the river in Missouri, French names will remain while water runs in the Chariton, the Femme Osage, the Pomme de Terre, the Moniteau and many more, in Kansas the slight French occupation left few traces on the map. Neither do the Indians who inhabited Kansas seem to have been town-builders or name-givers. If the rivers of Kansas ever bore Indian names, the appellations of most have been changed, or so corrupted as to have become unrecognizable..

SUMMARY.

1. Kansas, except a small portion in the southwest, formed part of Louisiana Purchase.

2. The United States takes possession of Territory, March 10, 1804. 3. Coronado crossed the Territory in 1541.

4. A few points bear French names, given by trappers.

CHAPTER III.

THE DISCOVERED COUNTRY.

11. Lewis and Clark Expedition Planned by Jefferson. With the acquisition of Upper Louisiana by the United States, came the spirit of enterprise and exploration. In the latter direction the new government set the example. Mr. Jefferson was full of interest and curiosity about the new empire of which so little was really known, and wrote with his own hand the directions governing the expedition which was to set out under Capt. William Clark, brother of Gen. George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of Illinois, and Capt. Merriwether Lewis, who had been the President's private secretary. He selected both these guides and leaders from personal acquaintance; both were Virginians, and from his own neighborhood.

12. Reached Kansas River. The expedition reached the rendezvous near St. Louis early in the spring, and before the Spaniards were willing to acknowledge the Missouri as an American river. After the formal transfer the expedition, on the 10th of May, 1804, started up the turbid Missouri, and on June 27th reached the mouth of the Kansas river, landed and made a camp within the present limits of Kansas City, Kan.

13. Independence Day at Atchison.-Proceeding up the stream, the different journals kept by the voyagers noted objects on either shore which may still be recognized by the description. On the 4th of July, 1804, the party landed at or near the present site of Atchison at noon, and made brief observance of their country's natal day. Among those who joined in this first Fourth of July celebration in Kansas, was George Shannon, a brother of Wilson Shannon, afterwards to be a Territorial Governor of Kansas. The party named a small stream near their landing place, Fourth of July Creek, and going on up the river four miles, called another Kansas stream Independence Creek, a name which it bears to this day. So the Fourth of July came to Kansas.

14. Expedition West to Pacific.-A few days later, and the boats had passed beyond the limits of Kansas, and the voyagers were on their way to the "land of the Dakotas," to the unknown springs of the Missouri, to the untrodden passes of the Rocky Mountains, to the far Columbia, on to the sounding surges of the Pacific, to return after two years, with but the loss of a single man in all the perils of the waste and wild, each voyager to his appointed fateWilliam Clark to live for many years a prosperous gentleman and fourth Territorial Governor of Missouri, and Merriwether Lewis to die a mysterious death in a Tennessee wilderness.

15. Pike's Expedition Starts.-On July 16, 1806, two years and two months after the Lewis and Clark expedition. had gone up the Missouri, another expedition left Bellefon

taine under the command of Lieut. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, a young and active officer of the United States Army, who, in the summer of 1805, had departed on an expedition to the head waters of the Mississippi. He had returned to St. Louis in April, 1806, and now, in July, was ordered on a mission destined to last longer, and to be fraught with more important consequences than he could have imagined.

16. Purpose and Route Planned.-His instructions were to take back to their tribe on the upper waters of the Osage river, some Osages who had been redeemed from captivity among the Pottawatomies; then to push on to the Pawnee Republic on the upper waters of the Republican river, then to go south to the Arkansas, and to the Red river, interviewing on the way the Comanches.

17. Osage Village Reached.-Pike followed the Missouri, and turned into the Osage (a continuation of the Kansas Marais des Cygnes), at that time, and for long afterward, a waterway to southern Kansas and Texas. He followed that picturesque stream to the Osage villages near the present line of Kansas and Missouri. He met there a chief named White Hair, who survived to the present generation of Kansas. Procuring horses at the Osage villages, Pike mounted his party of some twenty, officers and soldiers, and a number of Osages, and started to execute the remainder of his mission.

18. Beauty of Kansas Country.-Lieut. Pike entered Kansas in what is now Linn county, and kept on to the southwest, and climbing a high rise, came upon a sight which has delighted millions of eyes since his. "The prairie rising and falling in beautiful swells as far as the