J.H. Bennet: Early Recollections of Kansas [April on the Prairie, 1857]

Written for the Independent

By J.H. Bennet

Jeremiah Howland “Squire” Bennet wrote captivating reminiscences about early Jefferson County for several county newspapers in the 1870s. Having moved to Kansas Territory near Coal Creek around Grasshopper Falls (now Valley Falls) in 1857, Bennet had a lot of material from which to write his stories. Bennet, a lawyer born in Maine in 1824, worked in various Jefferson County government jobs, including justice of the peace, probate judge, county clerk, county superintendent of public instruction. He lived in Valley Falls and in Oskaloosa – he married Caroline Macomber there – and later at Holton, where he died in 1897. Albert G. Patrick, a Jefferson County newspaper editor who shared Kansas Territory and early Kansas state experiences with Bennet, wrote of his friend: “Bennet had a penchant for county history and probably had more facts stored together than any other man in Jefferson county.  He and [Patrick] often disagreed on some material points, and would have a little spat now and then, but we soon got over our mad fits…”

[Published in The Oskaloosa Independent Sat., April 20, 1878]

It was Thursday, April 7, A.D. 1857; a dull gloomy day, and my first prairie experience, and my first pony-back ride. In the early morning I stepped out of the south door of a little twelve-by-fourteen log cabin at Winchester; or rather where Winchester now is. Behind me was the cabin. It is there yet. A little to the east was a small corral and a frame building, also small, made of cottonwood lumber which had already begun to twist. The building was only partially enclosed. In my immediate vicinity was our own wagon, canvas covered, four yoke of oxen, and my own little bay pony. A little way to the north-west was another prairie schooner, two yoke of oxen, and a saddle mule. For miles around there was nought else, except the brown prairie, just tinted with green grass; yes, there was; a long distance to the north-east there were two black specks which I knew for cabins we had passed yesterday; nearer, and to the north-west, in a slight depression, were five cows, (I remember the number and relative position yet,) probably belonging to the ranch behind me; to south-east the timber on the head-waters of Stranger Walnut [creeks], added to the bare and brown sadness of the outlook. The picture remains with me most vividly, to this day.

Old Elisha Best lived in that house, with his good old wife, as hospitable a couple of pioneers as ever our western borders produced. Our own company were four, Rasselas Monroe, James Curry, Wm. P. Putnam, and the writer.  Some day I will tell you all about them. The other prairie schooner belonged to a young man and his young wife, settlers on the Soldier. They were going east for supplies. Their names dwell not now in my memory. In that little cabin eight of us had slept the profound sleep of peace. I suppose it was the deep sleep and our clear conscience that made the old mother’s coffee, fat bacon, and well browned pan-cakes eaten at breakfast so deliciously sweet.

I had had some experience as a woods man, but none on the prairie. My pony was prairie bred and born, and taught me in an hour that he had better eyes and ears than I had. He could hear a rustle behind me, or see a spotted squirrel ahead, he could see a moving object on the distant horizon, or catch sight of the skulking wolf in the tall grass in the next hollow, long before I could, all day long.

The Rockefeller Experimental Tract, a restored native prairie in south Jefferson County, Kansas, is managed by the Kansas Biological Survey and Center for Ecological Research. https://biosurvey.ku.edu/rockefeller-experimental-tract

I left my company and went south over the trackless prairie, my point of destination being Lawrence. I was wonderfully happy; — was in exuberance of health; — for the first time in my life completely emancipated from office labors; physically puny, but mentally strong, loyal, and true to freedom and the right.

Abundantly familiar with the country afterwards, I can trace with some enthusiasm the line of that morning’s ride. Your readers who live along the route will smile at my earnestness, and wonder at the exuberance of my enjoyment; while to me the very recollection is like knocking the manacles off a life long slavery.

I went nearly south for three miles. I have now forgotten whether the house where Dr. Grower lives was then built, but I think it was not.  I passed east of that and over the present site of J.F. Curry’s house, and about three-quarters of a mile west of N.A. Howard’s present dwelling, and seventy or eighty rods east of Bob Carter’s house; there was a little field of corn about eighty rods east of Spence Bird’s, part of the Holland quarter, and part on the quarter where Bird now lives. I went on the east side by guess, and of course got into the mud. Directly I came out of that hollow I saw the timber to the south-west; where old Billy Meredith, Jim Rickman and Spence Faubion live. I turned thence a little easterly, but was going south when I passed midway between the houses of Wm. Roberts and Tobacco Bell, and still south over the site of Old Slosson’s present residence, and still south to about where Theodore Glynn now lives. For all these ten long miles I had seen no man, no house, no tame animal, no path, no sun. My idea of the direction I was going was of the vaguest kind. Old Billy Meredith and Jim Rickman are there yet. Spence Faubion has gone the way of all the earth. Spence Bird was then but a boy, over in Missouri. Trower, Curry, Roberts, Bell and Howard were unknown to Kansas for years after that.

On making the top of the first wave south of the branch south of Slosson’s, (and I tell you these waves were magnificent and glorious, even in their dull brown,) I saw coming from the low ground, three men with guns, and saw also that they were walking on a well travelled road. In a flash I knew I was on the Lecompton road, the scene of many a Border Ruffian outrage, but with fear and trembling, and vague thoughts of sudden flight, and my pistol just concealed I advanced, three to one; they carried their guns at a trail; I could see their eyes; my own chin quivered; my lips must have been pale; the foremost and the shorter man with the most unmistakable significance hailed me; “Af you please, ‘stranger’ could yees till us how far it is to watther?”

Whole-leaf rosinweed, Silphium integrifolium, https://kswildflower.org/index.php

This man was not the leader of the band. That leader was a tall, powerfully built man, past middle age with an eye and nose like a captured eagle, if I may use the expression. He impressed me as a man of prodigious strength, physically and mentally, the constant exhibition of which it cost him a struggle to suppress. We soon found the water; satchels were opened; tin cups, whiskey bottles, a cold pone, fried pork, and hard tack produced. Mr. Leader showed me a bundle of cuttings from the sumach, red bud, box elder, and hackberry; he also had samples from the gooseberry, and some wild onions. He had a fresh root of rosin weed, and showed me the old stocks and pods. He had one flower, a little pale lily, about a half inch in length, which looked as though perishing with cold. The company was scarcely in keeping with the hour, but it was a first lesson in wild life, and ever so different from what I expected. The old man explained to me the geography of the country between us and Lawrence, told me how to keep on the top of the ridge and thus avoid mud holes, advised me to go back a few miles to a wild prairie Post-Office and inquire which ridge I should take, and finally praised my agility as I mounted my pony on the level prairie. I may say here perhaps, that I kept up this acquaintance for five years, and that the old man died in darkness, cold, and storm, under the bluffs and without shelter, the night after the battle of Shiloh.

Fawn lily, trout lily, dog-toothed violet, Erythronium albidum, https://kswildflower.org/index.php

Following his suggestion I turned back towards Leavenworth for more than three miles, over a bare prairie. That prairie is nearly bare now. Slosson’s can be seen perhaps on the northwest, and I guess Andrus’s on the south-east; and there is also a house on the Walls place. It was still high prairie, though there was quite a body of timber on my left; and turning a point thereof I found a respectable and comfortable looking log cabin, then occupied by William Butler. He was the father of that Butler who afterwards got so badly shot to pieces by Hugh Cameron. Many of your readers will remember the long continued law-suit over this shooting.

Old Butler was then Postmaster. To me he was polite, cheerful, and hospitable. He asked me to stay to dinner, and directed me on my way in plain and easy language. I never saw him afterwards. This house was on or very near the spot where Mrs. Joe Woodhead now lives, and unless I am much mistaken this was the first Postmaster in Jefferson county.

I would like you to go with me the full trip of that day down over the “Reserve,” to witness an actual interview with a herd of wild ponies, to hear and see my first talk with a wild Indian in a language natural and common to all the world, but I fear of tiring. My next chapter will be in a different strain and will address itself only to the locality and people of Oskaloosa.

This story appeared in "Yesteryears" in October 2019.