Entitlement has a long history

Zebulon Montgom?ery Pike reputedly passed through this part of the country about a mile and a half east of where I live near 260th and Nighthawk in 1806 on his way to the discovery of Pike?s Peak.

I wasn?t here yet to see him go by.

He?d already passed just west of Marion along the Cottonwood, and was on a route that would have him pass just west of Minnea?po?lis and Mankato, the early 3M company, maybe.

Yes, I?m being facetious, mixing a little fact with fiction, but my point is in part to illustrate just how recent our history is.

We have no entitlement except what our ancestors took and left to us. Perhaps, considering all the Indian precedents, my wife and I ought to go Marion and file some sort of additional claim with the county register of deeds, but it wouldn?t do any good to file that with the original warranty deed.

It?s only as good as what our first ancestral settlers took for us only a few years ago.

This land had a long history before we got here. Even though our tenure seems long compared to a single lifetime, it?s not really very long ago at all.

It?s a little difficult to establish who owned what, even back in Pike?s time. No wonder our ancestors may have literally felt ?to the victor belongs the spoils.?

Local historians have told me that Pike met a party of Cheyenne Indians north of here, probably in the Tampa vicinity.

I don?t know if such a meeting could have worked out.

When Pike began his expedition by boats on July 15, 1806, by his own account he only had about 20 white men, all military, accompanied by about 51 Indians, chiefs, women and children of the Osage and Pawnee tribes who had visited Washington, D.C., after being redeemed from captivity by the Pottawatomies.

Pike was being cautious about meeting the Spanish, white people of another nation. The Indians with him also regarded their tribes as separate nations frequently at war with each other.

The word for Pawnee was synonymous for ?slave? among many of the tribes associated with the Chey?enne and Sioux groups.

Pike wanted the Indians along to create goodwill for the Americans with their tribes. He left the Osage who came with him among their tribesmen in Missouri, but all accounts I found would have had the Pawnee still with him here.

The Cheyenne most likely would have been hostile to a group being accompanied by Pawnee. As near as I can tell, both groups claimed the land here as did the weaker, less numerous Wichita Indians who camped at what is now Marion?s city park at least part of the time.

One account I read said that as the buffalo dwindled in number, the Wichita had to travel to the rear of the Osage on the annual buffalo hunt for protection from the other tribes.

Where the Blue River enters the Kansas River, early white settlers once came across the smoking remains of a village from the conflicts between the Kaw and the Pottawatomie Indians.

The Kaw were forced to become ?mission Indians? at Council Grove. Did they claim this area, too?

Tribal groups in conflict is part of all human history. I myself have English, Scot?tish, German and French-speaking Belgian ancestry, all of which fought each other at times. They were divided into smaller clans and kingdoms that had conflicts even before that.

Pike himself was to die winning the battle for York in Canada against his British cousins in the War of 1812.

I didn?t realize until I worked among some of the tribes in Oklahoma how much they cling to ancestral differences.

A co-worker with Cherokee grandparents told me how his grandparents still refuse to learn English.

An Osage who worked as a consultant to the various Indian nations told me how the Cherokee have a problem with nepotism, for instance appointing a relative with no computer experience as head of a computer center because it was ?his due.?

He laughed, and said I had had a dose of Muscogee culture when the women politely listened to me while the men were gruff, and walked away. The women said thank-you in a very gracious way, but then walked away.

He said the women had culturally given me their due while men in effect were communicating to me, ?What are you talking to me for? That?s mama?s job.?

I met a Kaw female florist in Ponca City with startling blue eyes probably created by contact lens.

She told me she wanted to visit Council Grove to see ancestral land ?her nation? was buying.

?It?s really ours, you know,? she said.

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