Sledge learned much about the Kansas Territory as he sat listening to the other men at night. The prairie Indians were in the main not to be frightened of, but the Apache and Comanche high plains tribes some 200 or 300 miles on out west were fierce and warlike. The long and lanky Kaw were always wearing a red blanket, but the Delaware were short and stocky and always wore buckskin with moccasins to match. For the first part of the trip they would encounter mostly the familiar Osage and the Kansa who were friendly and quite curious. Here in the eastern Kansas Territory , there appeared to be more to fear for the residents from the pro-slavers or abolitionists than from the all the Indians combined.
Sledge got confused trying to follow all the events that had happened the last two or three years, and it seemed that the appointed governors of the territory could not keep up either. No official lasted long and the Kansas Territory was now known in federal political circles as the “Graveyard for Governors.” There was a pro-slaver convention and the Wakarusa war with anti-slavers then raiding Cass, Bates and Vernon Counties over in Missouri . An anti-slave guy named Lane even had an army, and a fanatic antislavery named John Brown had caused a lot of bloodshed but was run off by a pro-slaver named Atchison , who also had his own army. A place down south called Ft. Scott was kind of truce territory, where they all went from time to time but agreed to leave each other alone when they were in the town. The pro-slaver captain down there was a real crook named Hamilton, who would do anything for money, but the abolitionist main local chap was a man named Montgomery who was a “straight arrow.” At a place up north, the Lane fellow even had a trail named for him and groups of anti-slave people were coming across Iowa , then down through the Nebraska part and had formed up towns like Lawrence and Topeka . The slavers had their towns and a government too, and the Russell who owned part of the freight company was very active and a big pro-slave supporter who lived in pro-slave Leavenworth . The recent anti-slave legislature that had formed now also claimed full territorial governmental authority as well.
Then there was the divorce deal. This politician named Lane had previously tried to divorce his wife; however, the first attempt at forming a government (which became known as the Bogus legislature) and which claimed absolute Territorial power at that exact point in time, could not seem to get around to granting him one. When the abolitionists formed a government of their own the frustrated Lane joined their cause, and was now a man to be reckoned with in Kansas political circles. History would record that Lane, one of the most powerful and violent abolitionists ever, actually joined their movement mostly because he was trying to engineer a favorable divorce for himself. Interestingly enough, Lane's wife took three of their four children back to Indiana where a Judge Pettit was from, and where she sued and was promptly granted a divorce. Indiana had been the easiest place in the country to get a “desertion divorce” for quite some time, and she went back home to get one. Shortly thereafter, and with Pettit's influence, the Kansas Territory became the easiest place ever in America to get such a decree. As the word spread, hundreds of women headed to the City of Kansas with scores of them just hanging around with nowhere to go once they were divorced. Some of these women, like the black headed one on the River Rose, were just beautiful. Damn it, he was going to miss that part. There was plenty of talk about gold in the western mountainous part of Kansas ; in fact they even named a town there Aurora (current Denver area) or something like that. The town's name was supposedly the Latin name for gold. Then just north of Aurora some guy named Gregory had made a real strike and tens of thousands were streaming into a place which quickly became known as Gregory's Gulch.
“They say it is the richest square mile in the world.” (click on corner to see next excerpt)
