of all eastern tribes of Indians to the west of the Mississippi. Tribe after tribe was thus led to migrate westward, so that by the middle of the Nineteenth Century not a tribe remained in the States. Thus up to the time of the organization of this Territory, the lands of Kansas were held and inhabited solely by Indians, white people being forbidden by the terms of the treaties to settle on them without the consent of the former. This was literally the Indian Territory, and it was the design of the General Government to make it the permanent home of the Red Man.
Fort Scott was made a military post in 1841 to hold the Indians in check. A few Government buildings were erected, which were sold in 1855 for two or three hundred dollars a piece. The American Fur Company formerly had a post there.
From 1843 to 1850 General Fremont made repeated tours through this Territory.
The first train that ever crossed the Plains, over the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific coast, was conducted in 1844 by Mr. Neil Gillem. He set out from Buchanan County, Missouri, with fifty wagons and one hundred men, and went to Oregon. The following year the Mormons assembled near Atchison preparatory to crossing the Plains. They made this their place of rendezvous for all companies going to Salt Lake for several years thereafter. They erected a house here afterwards and opened a farm, which is to this day known as the Mormon farm.
In 1845 the Mexican war broke out and Fort Leavenworth became the gathering point for soldiers and the shipping point for military stores, destined for Mexico. It was across the prairies of Kansas that General Kearney made his celebrated march to Santa Fe. Immediately after the termination of this war gold was discovered in California, and the tide of fortune seekers rolled across this soil. Kansas City, Fort Leavenworth and St. Joseph were the principal points at which the emigrants united into vast caravans, miles in
