The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1903-06-05

ed on that story as ancient history
so ancient that it seemed like the
story of another country which
must have existed under different
physical laws than those of the
present. Had we not for forty or
fifty years seen floods come and 60
without damaging our city? What
force was there in legend of the
past to give us fear or warning?"
In his diary William Warner,
chief of the Wyandot Indians and
provisional governor of the terri
tory now comprised in Kansas and
Nebraska, kept barking back to the
great food of 1874. "The spring
of 1874" notes the Wyandot Her
aid, "was warm and dry until May
when it commenced to rain and
continued for SIX weeks-rain fall
ing every day. What is now Kan
sas City, Kas., and Kansas City,
Mo-, was covered with fourteen
feet of water. The Missouri back
ed up to the mouth of Lime creek,
and Jersey creek was backed up to
the crossing in the parallel road. j"
"In 1874" says Mr.. Henry Harvey
in his history Of the Shawnee lndi-
ans" the Indians were visited by
great food which swept off their
houses and large amounts of grain,
and many of their farms were laid
waste" This is corroborated by
Col. S. A. Johnson, now resident
Topeka, who was born at Shawnee
mission in 1892, and also by W. w.
Cone, another historian of the
Shawnee Indians, who says:
"During the food, Major Cum
mings, paymaster of the United
States army, crossed the Kansas
river at ,he present site of Topeka.
He was taken in canoe by the In
dians and he found the north bank
of the stream at the bluffs some five
miles away. The water was twenty
feet deep over the ground where
North Topeka now stands" Great
as was the Topeka disaster of last
week, how much greater would it
have been if the waters had risen
the ten additional feet recorded in
the flood of I8AAf
Some thirty years ago o: P. Ham
ilton. of Salina, told something of
the food of 1874 in a paper written
for the Kansas Historical Society.
"The floods of 1874 of the Lower
Mississippi and the Upper Mis-
souri," he says, "fell first upon the
Kansas plains. Evidences of this
were seen as late as twenty years
ago along the Kansas river and its
tributaries. Eighteen years ago we
were shown by the Papans (French
residents among the Kaw Indians
near Topeka) the high water mark
| of the Kansas river, which had in
undated all the bottoms from eight
TO ten feet. We found on the up
per tributaries plenty of evidence to
sustain the story of the Papans. On
the Soloman river, driftwood and a
carcass (pretty well dried up) were
found lodged in trees at height
that would cover the highest bot
toms several feet. Driftwood was
found along the foot of the bluffs of
the Saline valley indicating the
same high state of water. Evil
dences of great floods were also
found on the Smoky Hill, and the
water must have flooded the pres
ent townsite of Salina by more than
four feet. This great food was
seen by the Indian trader, Bent,
located on the Upper Arkansas,
who at that time was on his way to
Missouri. He had to follow the di-
vides as best he could. He de-
scribes every river as fall from bluff
to bluff.
The recital of this ancient history
is more than interesling-it show:
that the present food is not the ex
tremely rare catastrophe which