Olathe High School - Eagle Yearbook (Olathe, KS)

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many canoes, now puff-pusff boats. Once Wa-zi shoot many deer and buffalo but now Wa-zi homesick, die in this country. Wa-zi want big country, and she stopped. She had lapsed into her Indian language. Going over to Wa-zi svhe placed her arm through his and said, Now that the trader has gone, there is no one left but you. You have many friends, ours are gone. Wa-zi want to go far away: I go, too. And on the following morning the caravan started down the Santa Fe Trail. Eight years has changed the faint path across the prairie that Major Sibley had first sur- veyed into a much-traveled wagon road. This morning two figures on horseback trot- ted slowly after the caravan which was a mile in advance, As they reached the hill that would shut off their view of the old mission, they stopped their horses and looked back. 0-la-thee's eyes rested on the trader's cabin on the bluff. She remembered the kind face of him who had been as as father to her. That cabin, her home! Slhe choked and look- at Wa-zi who was gazing steadfastly at the open clear Kaw valley beneath them. Gla- thee then looked at the two little crosses far away on the river bank. 'Phe morning sun glistened on them and then hid itself behind a cloud. One cross was for a father she could not remember but who had given his life for her, the other for one wiho had taken his place. IVith one last fond look over the Kaw valley and at the old mission the two lone Indians turned their ponies' heads toward the west and silently and slowly rode away from the valley. .-i. .1 'Ilhe afternoon was almost spent when the Caravan stopped to camp on Cedar Creek. 0-la-thee and Wa-zi were about three miles behind the train. Once O-la- tue had suggested to Wla-zi that thy catch up with the train but he replied that While they were on the familiar trail they should travel alone, little realizing that this would be the last time. So they trotted peacefully along by themselves, the caravan always in the distance. Toward evening Wa-zi stopped and said, U0-la-thee I hear shots, and then dis- tinctly across the 'plains could be heard the whistle of bullets. Both W'a-zi and O-la-thee began to move faster and went north of the trail so as to escape the band of Indians. But before they could reach the camp a small band of Indians began to hear down on them from the southwest where they had left the Shawnee camp after a hasty retreat. Instantly Wa-zi recognized them as bad Indians and began to go faster but they were still within rifle shot when a bullet went whizzing over the head of Oela-thee's horse. Turning in his saddle Wa-zi began to shoot, at the same time telling O-la-thee to save her amunition and to hasten to camp. Wa-zi's rifle cracked repeatedly and twice his bullets found a mark. The chase continued. The Indians were fast coming up on Wa-zi whose pony was tired from the long day's travel. He glanced ahead. O-la-thee was fast making toward a clump of trees, tvren of a sudden she stopped, whirled, and started west. Wa-zi was being heavily pressed by the Indians when he heard a shout, from one of his pursuers, and, looking at the clump of trees, from which O-la-the had fled saw several other Indians galloping after her. He kept firing at the Indians until one of their horses jumped in the air and fell. He rode faster and faster and had almost reached O-la-thee wlhen he saw a com- pany of horseman riding madly over the prairie from the west toward him. He tri- umphantly let out a Shawnee warwhoop, for there was safety at last: the caravan had sent out a scouting party. But in the midst of his joy Wa-zi 'heard a Delaware war cry and saw O-la-thee drop from her saddle. The Indians fled when they saw the oncoming scouts. Wa-zi had found O-la- the lying on the prairie grass, the blood oozing forth from a wound in her side.

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Steamboats took the place of canoes. Many cabins were built around the trad- er's post. Soon the white man began to mingle with the Indians and civilization began to belch forth its masses. The trader feared that the Great Spirit looked with disap- proval upon the actions of the pioneers. The trader often talked with O-la-thee of the growing wickedness which the palefaces were gradually spreading among the Indians and longed earnestly for assistance in carrying out his reforms. At length, vhis pray- ers were answered in the unexpected arrival of the Reverend Thomas Johnson, a former friend, who had come to reclaim tlhe savage Indians from his barbarous ways and give him the true understanding of the living God. In the 1830 the mission was built and the sclhool was begun. Many troubles arose because the Indians at first looked suspiciously at the church and the work shops as if they might be other of the White man's evils. O-Ia-thee and the old trader strove to make the Indians understand the good the mission would do for them and their chil- dren. As the mission grew so did the trading post and finally became a village. named Westport. Many more steamboats came after the first one, the Western Engineer, in 1819. A trading route was established between Independence and Santa Fe and many of the Indians took the trail and went further West, out where the white man had not yet penetrated. Mills were built and farms were cultivated near the mission. In 1832 Alexander Jolmson the first white baby the Indians had ever seen, was born at Shaw- nee mission. A year afterwards a tribe of Shawnee Indians journeyed from the Nebraska ter- ritory to the mission and among them was an Indian brave whose name was 'IVa-zi' meaning Bluebird. Often he went to the little mission chapel and there a Shawnee maiden's eyes sought his. Many times the two walked together under the big moon on the lonesome prairie. At last they knew and loved each other and one night in the little chapel the minister at the mission married them. Afterwards they we1'e married again in the Shawnee Camp by t-he medicine man according to the Indian custom. But as the prairie grass turned to corn fields, and cabins replaced the wigwams. while mills made the laughing waters work, the deer and the buffalo had either gone farther West or their bones lay bleaching on the prairie, the wlhite man slowly but sure- ly made his way farther and farther into the region of the Shawnees. Wa-zi grew im- patient and O-la-thee looked with sorrowing eyes, as her favorite hunting ground became the beaten trail of civilization. And so as time took its course, O-la-thee and Wa-zi de- termined that in the spring they would leave and go with their Shawnee kinsmen to the land of the setting sun where they could live in their former freedom. One cold, bleak February night as O-la-thee and VVa-zi were with Rev. Johnson and his wife in the mission, the minister said, recalling his first meeting with the shy Indian maiden and her faithful work among her people, O-la-thee, after all your educa- tion in the white 1nan's ways do you think you can go back to your people and live as they do and be satisfied? O-la-thee was quiet a moment and then said in her soft accented voice, But you don't understand, you can't. Once you have been an Indian, alW'ays that blood will call you and call you back again to the forest and prairies where your fathers once roamed. But, O, don't think I am ungrateful to you and your people for what you have d-one for me Don't you see. can't you understand that my home here is changed. The water, once clear, now muddy: so many people cross the river. Once many wigwams, now houses and cabins. Once many buffaloes and deer, now nothing but rabbits. Once

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Wa-zifVVafzi she faintly called, where are you? and she lay back moan- ing. He lifted her in his arms and she faintly said, Let me see the setting sun. and smiled, Wa-Zi, I api going to the Happy Hunting Ground, I am going to join the trader and my father. Ihate to leave you. I love you so.. Tell the minister and his wife, 'Fare- well.' I'n1 glad VVa-zi, that I am going to die on the prairie, the one place I love so well. Wa-zi, Oh! see the sun is sinking in the West. I am going now to the Great Spirit., Good-bye, Wa-Zi she faintly breathed, Good-bye. And as the sun went down -out of this world, so did the soul of an Indian maiden. An Indian brave bent silently over his lover's body. lying there on the prairie grass. A single, solitary figure left alone on the open plain. The Western sky slowly turned from crimson and gold to a faint purple, then into blue, and finally into the deeper shadows of night. The twilight came, and still the Indian warrior stood, a mute statute moaning for a soul departed, In the stillness of Uhe night the scouts silently one by one came up to the body and removed their hats. A voice from the darkness then otter- ed up a prayer, both for the dead maiden and the grief stricken warrior. It was short. lt was simple. It was the Westerner expression of sympathy for his fellow being. They buried O-la-the, the beautiful on the broad Kansas prairie out under Uhe twinkling stars. Wa-Zi stood by the grave of his lover until the morning light broke over the prairie and then, mounting his horse, wondered whether he should go to the West where his dreams, his hopes and his ambitions led, or return to the mission where but the ashes of a happy life remained, back where the memory of her would haunt him more strongly. He decided to go back to the mission and when he arrived he handed O-la-thee's beads to Mrs. Johnson. There were no words. She knew only too well their meaning, the beads of death. And so the years sped on. Wa-zi stayed at the mission. The new years brought new things. In 1856 Dr. Barton laid out a town site about 25 miles southwest of West- port. One day in early summer he and a party of settlers rode out to see the new city- Wa-zi went along as guide and guard. Wlhen the party reached the ridge. it stopped and gazed at the proposed site in the distance. Each dreamed his own dream of the new city, yet a prairie. As each gave play to his fancy, Wa-zi, their Indian guide, strode forth a little from the rest and stretching out his hands, called softly ill Slwwnee- U'm' thee. Instantly Dr. Barton asked him what the word meant and he replied that its meaning was Beautiful. Dr. Barton at once exclaimed that 'KO-la-t'hee should be the name of the new town. Most of the party thought tlhat the Indian was merely inspired by the beauty of the location and so uttered the word. But there in the Draifie EFHSS stood a little weather worn cross above a little mound of earth that held a meaning f0I' U19 old Indian more sacred than any nature's beauty could inspire. It was to this little cross that Wa-vi paid his tribute and not to the white 1nan's town. PONVRIE DOCTOR