Before it was Wichita, it was Indian hunting grounds.
It was a pastoral landscape at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers, with an abundance of fish, deer, elk, antelope, turkey, and buffalo. Indian tribes told the early French explorers the name of the big river was Arkansas or “South Wind.” To the Osage Indians, who came in June and September for the buffalo, the Arkansas was “Ne Shutsa,” the Red River, and the Little Arkansas, “Ne Shutsa Shinka,” Little Red Water.
For millennia, the Osage, the Kaw and the Kiowa came to hunt buffalo, and even the Cheyenne. In 1863, the Wichita Indians moved here from Oklahoma to escape the fighting in the Civil War, and when the war ended they left. In 1865, Kit Carson, Colonel Bent, and other representatives of the government camped a few miles north of the Little Arkansas to conclude a peace treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, numbering more than 4,000, a smaller number of Comanche, and with smaller tribes that included the Wichita, Waco, Caedo, Towakony, and Kechi. For the Indians who still came and the adventures who visited, Jesse Chisholm opened a trading post and told tales of a lost gold mine waiting to be found.
In 1870, Wichita, Kansas was a waking dream. These dreamers included William Greiffenstein (the Father of Wichita), J. R Mead (a Plainsman and author), and Buffalo Bill Mathewson (the original Buffalo Bill, not Cody). From the prairie rose an odd collection of wooden buildings, a livery, a saloon, a general store, and a few homes for the intrepid souls who came believing that the town would become a city, something to be proud of.
Note. J. R. Mead wrote the best book about hunting and trading in the Arkansas Valley before Wichita was born.
Along with these founding fathers came an Irish immigrant, Catherine McCarty and other dreamers. Catherine was the only woman to sign the petition to incorporate Wichita as a city. She brought with her, her young son Billy, who would later be known as the Kid. Contracting tuberculosis, she soon left for New Mexico, died, and Billy became an orphan and an outlaw.
In 1872, when the railroad came to Wichita, the town, now a city of the second class counted 479 voters. This was a threefold increase from the 156 voters of the year before. The next year, Wyatt Earp joined his brother in Wichita and pinned on a badge. His common law wife, a “sporting woman,” operated a brothel across the river in Delano and away from Wichita’s ordinances that Earp was sworn to uphold.
In 1872, the Land Office came to Wichita. And it handled filings for the Osage Indian Trust, Cherokee Strip, and Public lands in southeast Kansas.
This was also the year the cattle from Texas came to the railhead in Wichita though it came for only a short while. But come they did. In 1872, three hundred and fifty thousand head of Texas cattle kicked up dust as they ambled down Douglas Avenue to the tracks, and thirty-five hundred railroad cars were fully loaded to be sent north and east.
William Cutler who detailed the early history described the scene like this:
“The streets clanged with the noisy spurs of Texas cowboys and Mexican ranchmen, while crowds marched along the resounding sidewalks, as motley as could be seen … Texan sombreros and leather leggings, brigandish-looking velvet jackets with bright buttons of the Mexicans, buckskin garments of the frontiersmen, and the highly-colored blankets from a half dozen different Indian tribes — all were familiar sights. And a brass band played from morning until far into the night on a two story platform raised over the sidewalk against a large frame building, still standing, opposite the New York store.”
But the train tracks continued their march south to Caldwell, and west to Dodge City; and farmers and ranchers on a range now fenced with barbed wire protested to the legislature about the “Fever” the Longhorns brought with them. Thus, the Chisholm Trail that crossed Clearwater and wandered down Douglas Avenue soon was gone.
The cowboys left, Wyatt Earp left, the brothels quieted down, and Wichita became civilized. The farms produced wheat, and what was not used in the making of beer was ground into flour. The improved herds of cattle were now raised locally.
By 1880, Wichita had almost reached 5,000 and Sedgwick County almost 20,000.
Abandoned, old, and interesting Kansas 