Squatting Rights?

The Walkers rented all the land they could in western Missouri in 1819, but they were really just squatters since there was no land to purchase and no one could legally sell or even rent land beyond the migration point of Fort Osage according to Calhoun's plan for white settlement.

The land was actually administered by George Sibley who called the Walker area the "Six Mile Country" which extended six miles around the Fort to the west.

George did everything he could to get the Walkers settled - probably so glad to see white folk he didn't care if they were supposed to actually settle on the land or not.

Walker said "it looks like a home, it looks like Kentucky."  I guess that was good enough!

Next time - the cabin the Walkers built...

George and Mary Sibley

George Sibley ran Fort Osage in a proper government manner, with meticulous record keeping and memos, even publishing many essays about natural history, Indian customs, and politics of the frontier.

George married well to a daughter of an important St. Louis politician and businessman.  He built a home on the frontier...and not just any home.  Seems George and Mary thought they were back in Massachusetts society...pianos, fife and drum rooms, eastern style dining, lavish parties, and high fashion for Mary made their lifestyle just bit out of place on the raw frontier of Fort Osage.

Indians, settlers, and military alike though, didn't let that affect the respect and polite treatment that George and Mary Sibley received on the frontier.

Next time -Walkers set up home that first winter...

George Sibley

George Sibley helped Merriwether Lewis construct Fort Osage and was still there when the Walkers arrive.  He held the job of government trader for three years until the factory system was abandoned in 1822, officially ending the federal effort to trade with the Indians.

Sibley remained as a private citizen.  He was a weak frontiersman, a native of Massachusetts where he was more at home in colonial society than on a frontier.  His father was a Revolutionary physician and friend of Thomas Jefferson.  George became highly educated but with little knowledge or talents to use on the early frontier.

One humorous stories of George tells of him deciding that the Indians only hope was to learn white man's ways of farming, so he organized a program to instruct them as respectable farmers.  The Indians didn't want to become respectable white farmers, so after  George spent months teaching  them to plant and harvest, the Indians let their horses feed off the planted field instead, driving George crazy until after several attempts, he gave up.  Good idea George...

Next time - George and Mary, respected residents

Fort Osage

Military trading posts, called "factories" were established during this time from Minnesota to Arkansas for conducting and licensing trade with the Indians, basically controlling them and protecting them from whites and whites from them.

Fort Osage, where Walkers settled was the first post.  Merriwether Lewis not only recommended the site but supervised its construction.

The Osage Indians, were one of, if not the strongest tribes of in the area of Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas when the Walkers arrived.  Fort Osage was a functioning Indian post with seven soldiers stationed there in 1819.

Next time - George Sibley meets Joe

Off the Beaten Path

The Walker family were one of the few families who didn't stop in Franklin to build a family home, but continued another 20 miles further west making their own wagon tracks through the prairie.  They found the Osage Trace Trail  which ran parallel to the river in the south.  With prairie cleanings, large walnut and oak trees,  persimmons and honeybees growing along the creek, the Walkers found their new family settlement.

Trivia:  Indians called the "Honeybee" the white man's fly.

The Walkers settled on the land near Fort Osage where the land was rich in black bear, deer and elk, and just as their grandparents had many years before in the Appalachian Valley, they became the most western permanent settlers in the United States, 30 miles south of present day Kansas City,  20 years before it even existed.

Next time - road bump