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THE KANSAS RIVER

© Janette Kenny

In the late 1790s, French military engineer Nicolas de Finiels noted that the Kaw, or Kansas River, was navigable for more than 100 leagues (approximately 350 miles) from its mouth. The first 40 leagues (approximately 140 miles) of the river, named after the native Kansa Indians, were wooded. Then the Kaw stretched westward over the plains.

Looking at a modern map gives the Kansas River a length of 185 miles. So why did de Finiels state it was navigable 165 miles beyond its beginning near Fort Riley?

Take a closer look at a state map and you'll see five major rivers feed the Kansas--Big Blue, Republican, Solomon, Saline, and Smoky Hill. The combined rivers create a 700-mile long waterway that originates on the eastern plains of Colorado and flows easterly to the big bend in the Missouri River near Kansas City.

Indians, using boats made of buffalo skins stretched over wooden frames, had traveled the Kaw for decades, but white men didn't traverse it until 1827 when Daniel Morgan Boone worked as a government farmer alongside the Kansa Indians.

Using keelboats, goods were shipped up river to Stonehouse Creek, a small settlement ten miles north of Lawrence where Boone, agriculturist for the Kansa Indian Agency, moved his agency.

A year later, Colonel Francis G. Chouteau transported supplies from his trading post at Four Houses near the mouth of the Kansas upriver some 15 miles west of Topeka. Records show Four Houses was the first fur depot in Kansas and the first trading post on the Kaw River.

The St. Louis-built keelboats were rigged with one mast and a rudder, though Kaw boatmen found a long oar worked better for steering. On each side were four rowlocks. The decks were eight or ten feet wide and five or six feet deep below deck.

Though the 1831 Peck's Guide to Emigrants stated the Kansas was "a large, bold navigable river," it possessed countless snags and an unpredictable channel. River travel was sparse.

In 1848, two government agents chose a site on the Kansas River for a trading post in the center of the Pottawatomie Indian territory and called the settlement Union Town. As Union Town was a good place to ford the Kansas River, many trails (such as the California/Oregon Trail, the Mormon route, the Santa Fe Trail and the Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley Military Road) met there. Two ferries were established to accommodate the travelers.

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