The Great American Desert
At one period after the
geography of the West was fairly well known, all the country embraced in
the State of Kansas was supposed to be unfit for habitation—at least unfit
for habitation by a civilized people. This erroneous conception of the
country continued down to comparatively recent times. And even when the
State was first settled it was not thought that the western portion of it
would ever become an agricultural country. This false impression resulted
from an inexact knowledge of the regions extending from the Missouri River
to the Pacific Ocean. That deserts existed in those countries—and do still
exist—must be admitted. The writers and geographers of those days did not
know the exact locations of those desert wastes. They were supposed to
begin at the Missouri River and to be continuous to the Rocky Mountains,
while in fact they principally began with those mountain ranges and lay to
the west of them. That there were sandy wastes eastward from the Rocky
Mountains is well established, and to this day there are extensive
districts along the Arkansas River in Kansas, designated as "Sand Hills."
Perhaps Lieutenant Pike was to some extent responsible for the legend "The
Great American Desert," which adorned the maps of the school Geographies
published in the early part of the nineteenth century. His reports are
extremely interesting, and they were widely read. And they were consulted,
no doubt, by the authors of those same Geographies. His language is not
ambiguous, and neither is it exact in all mentions of localities.
Especially is this true of his summing up. In the following instance,
however, he is definite enough in his designation.
In this western traverse of Louisiana, the following general observations
may be made; viz: that from the Missouri to the head of the [Little] Osage
river, a distance in a straight line of probably 300 miles, the country
will admit of a numerous, extensive and compact population; thence, on the
rivers Kansas, La Platte, Arkansaw, and their various branches, it appears
to me to be only possible to introduce a limited population on their
banks. The inhabitants would find it most to their advantage to pay
attention to the multiplication of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats, all
of which they can raise in abundance, the earth producing spontaneously
sufficient for their support, both winter and summer, by which means their
herds might become immensely numerous; but the wood now in the country
would not be sufficient for a moderate share of population more than 15
years, and it would be out of the question to think of using any of it in
manufactures; consequently, the houses would be built entirely of
mud-brick [adobe] like those in New Spain, or of the brick manufactured
with fire. But possibly time might make the discovery of coal-mines, which
would render the country habitable.
In reasoning as to the cause of the absence of timber from the prairies,
he so wrote that a confusion of localities was possible in the minds of
readers—and even students.
Numerous have been the hypotheses formed by various naturalists to account
for the vast tract of un-timbered country which lies between the waters of
the Missouri, Mississippi, and the Western Ocean, from the mouth of the
latter river to 48º north latitude. Although not flattering myself to be
able to elucidate that which numbers of highly scientific characters have
acknowledged to be beyond their depth of research, still I would not think
I had done my country justice did I not give birth to what few lights my
examination of those internal deserts had enabled me to acquire. In that
vast country of which I speak, we find the soil generally dry and sandy,
with gravel, and discover that the moment we approach a stream the land
becomes more humid, with small timber. I therefore conclude that this
country never was timbered; as, from the earliest age the aridity of the
soil, having so few water-courses running through it, and they being
principally dry in summer, had never afforded moisture sufficient to
support the growth of timber. In all timbered land the annual discharge of
the leaves, with the continual decay of old trees and branches, creates a
manure and moisture, which is preserved from the heat of the sun not being
permitted to direct his rays perpendicularly, but only to shed them
obliquely through the foliage. But here a barren soil, parched and dried
up for eight months in the year, presents neither moisture nor nutrition
sufficient to nourish the timber. These vast plains of the western
hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of
Africa; for I saw in my route, in various places, tracts of many leagues
where the wind had thrown up the sand in all the fanciful form of the
ocean's rolling wave, and on which not a speck of vegetable matter
existed.
While it is not likely that he had seen "Tracts of many leagues where the
wind had thrown up the sand in all the fanciful form of the ocean's
rolling wave" at any point in the country which later became known as the
"Prairies" of the "Prairies region" his final conclusion might lead any
student of his travels having no other source of information to think he
had:
But from these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the
United States, viz.: the restriction of our population to some certain
limits, and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so
prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontiers will through
necessity, be constrained to limit their extent on the west to the borders
of the Missouri and Mississippi, while they leave the prairies incapable
of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country.
The school geographies were based on such information as Pike and other
explorers furnished. Having had no personal experience on the Western
prairies they were unable to say just what bounds these deserts had and
where they were in fact located. There are extensive deserts in the
Southwest now—in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other states. There
are immense tracts covered with drifting sand and cacti; horned toads and
rattlesnakes. But if water for irrigation can be developed those deserts
become fertile fields and blooming gardens.
An examination of the old maps in the school geographies of the first half
of the nineteenth century reveals "The Great American Desert" in various
localities and with ever varying bounds. A Modern Atlas on a New Plan to
Accompany the System of Universal Geography, by William Channing
Woodbridge, Hartford, Oliver D. Cooke & Co., 1831, was largely used
throughout the country in its time. In it the Map of the United States
shows "The Great American Desert" extending from the west line of Arkansas
Territory and of Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. And from the Platte to
the Red River. On the desert, as thus defined, is marked this inscription:
"The desert is traversed by herds of Buffaloes & wild Horses & inhabited
only by roving tribes of Indians." And this map marks all the country of
the United States west of the Mississippi except Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Missouri, as "Missouri Territory."
By the year 1839, the "desert" had contracted its bounds. In that year was
published in New York, Smith's Atlas, Designed to Accompany the Geography,
by R. S. Smith, A. M. On the Map of the "United States and Texas," the
"Great American Desert" is delineated as embracing the Panhandle portion
of Texas and the country west of the 101st meridian to the Rocky
Mountains—and from the Arkansas to the Platte, following the North Fork of
the Platte. The country west of the Arkansas and Missouri, and between the
Platte and the Texas line, is called the "Indian Territory." The north
line of Texas was then as now, except that it reached the Arkansas, which
it followed to the source. A part of the country north of the Platte along
the Missouri—the reservations of the Omahas and Loup Pawnees—was also
included.
The descriptions found in these school books, or those they were de signed
to accompany, never failed to compare "The Great American Desert" with the
"Great Sahara" of Africa, as witness this from the Elements of Geography,
by Benjamin Workman, A. M., Philadelphia, 1814:
"West of the Mississippi, and south of the Missouri, there is a vast
extent of un-timbered country, of a barren sandy soil, which had some
resemblance to the deserts of Africa."
In A System of Modern Geography for Schools, Academies and Families, by
Nathaniel G. Huntington, A. M., Hartford, 1836, there is an account of the
"Missouri Territory" a part of which is as follows:
"This territory is a vast wilderness, resembling a desert, extending from
the state of Missouri and the river Mississippi, to the Rocky Mountains.
It is a region of open elevated plains, generally destitute of forest
trees, and interspersed with barren hills.
"It is inhabited almost exclusively by various tribes of Indians, and
traversed by herds of wild horses and buffaloes, which in some instances
range by thousands in a drove, appearing almost to cover the face of the
ground."
There is an important map, as pertaining to this subject, in the History
of American Missions to the Heathen from their Commencement to the Present
Time, Worcester, Spooner & Howland, 1840. Upon that map there is drawn a
line marking the "Western Boundary of Habitable Land." That line passes
through what is now Kansas a little west of Wichita. It may be reasonably
concluded that the author of the map supposed the line to represent the
east boundary of "The Great American Desert."
In some of the books published in the period of "The Great American
Desert" there were pictured caravans crossing the deserts in much the same
fashion that travelers were represented on the African deserts, except
that there is an absence of camels. And even this feature might have been
added. In 1857 the general Government bought a number of camels to be used
on the deserts of Arizona and California, and their employment there was
only prevented by the coming of the Civil War. It is said that these
desert animals were abandoned, but lived and increased in a wild state,
becoming in some parts of the Southwest a common nuisance.
It is interesting to note the persistency of the idea that the country
known as the Great Plains was a sandy desert. And it is curious to observe
the ignorance of the West remaining in the Eastern States to this day. In
1867 some capitalists there were offered some very valuable mining
property in Colorado. Colorado! Was there such a country? Not a dollar
would they venture until a mining expert should be sent to investigate.
Mr. A. W. Hoyt was dispatched on that business, and one injunction laid
upon him was to ascertain for a certainty if there was in fact any such
place as Colorado Territory. And he reported to his employers on that
country, affirming that it existed, and saying that "The Great American
Desert" was almost impassable to man or beast. And in 1878 Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher wrote of "riding night and day across the great desert plains."
Even good old Horace Greeley, always a friend of Kansas, wrote a chapter
on "The American Desert." He made a tour of the West in the summer of
1859. The inhabited districts of Kansas he found attractive enough. But
when these were passed he wrote a memorandum of the diminishing comforts
of life for the patrons of his Tribune, as follows:
I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its
lowest round. If the Cheyennes—thirty of whom stopped the last express
down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from
it—shall see fit to capture and strip us, we shall probably have further
experience in the same line; but for the present the progress I have made
during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of human
existence may be roughly noted thus:
May 12th.—Chicago.—Chocolate and morning newspaper last seen on the
breakfast-table.
23d.—Leavenworth.—Room-bells and baths make their final appearance.
24th.—Topeka.—Beef-steak and wash-bowls (other than tin) last visible.
Barber ditto.
26th.—Manhattan.—Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the blessings
that "brighten as they take their flight." Chairs ditto.
27th.—Junction City.—Last visitation of a boot-black, with, dissolving
views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by.
28th.—Pipe Creek.—Benches for seats at meals have disappeared, giving
place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn) write
our letters in the express-wagon that had borne us by day, and must supply
us lodgings for the night.
The depths of desolation were not experienced until his arrival on the
upper reaches of the Republican. On the 2d of June he penned a
communication from Station 18, P. P. Express Company, in which he said:
The clouds which threatened rain at the station on Prairie-Dog Creek,
whence I wrote two days ago, were dissipated by a violent gale, which
threatened to overturn the heavy wagon in which my fellow-passengers and I
were courting sleep—had it stood broadside to the wind, it must have gone
over. It is customary, I learn, to stake down the wagons encamped on the
open prairie; in the valleys of the creeks, where the company's stations
are located, this precaution is deemed superfluous. But the winds which
sweep the high prairies of this region are terrible; and the few trees
that grow thinly along the creek-bottoms rarely venture to raise their
heads above the adjacent bluffs, to which they owe their doubtful hold on
existence.
For more than a hundred miles back, the soil had been steadily
degenerating, until here, where we strike the Republican, which had been
far to the north of us since we left it at Fort Riley, three hundred miles
back, we seem to have reached the acme of barrenness and desolation. We
left this morning, Station 17, on a little creek entitled Gouler, at least
thirty miles back, and did not see a tree, and but one bunch of low shrubs
in a dry water-course throughout our dreary morning ride, till we came in
sight of the Republican, which had a little—a very little—scrubby
cotton-wood nestled in and along its bluffs just here—but there is none
beside for miles, save a little lurking in a ravine which makes down to
the river from the north. Of grass there is little, and that little of
miserable quality—either a scanty furze or coarse alkaline sort of rush,
less fit for food than physic. Soil there is none but an inch or so of
intermittent grass-root tangle, based on what usually seems to be a thin
stratum of clay, often washed off so as to leave nothing but a slightly
argillaceous sand. Along the larger water-courses—this one especially—this
sand seems to be as pure as Sahara can boast.
The dearth of water is fearful. Although the whole region is deeply seamed
and gullied by water-courses—now dry, but in rainy weather mill-streams—no
springs burst from their steep sides. We have not passed a drop of living
water in all our morning's ride, and but a few pails full of muddy
moisture at the bottoms of a very few of the fast-drying sloughs or sunken
holes in the beds of dried-up creeks. Yet there had been much rain here
this season, some of it not long ago. But this is a region of sterility
and thirst. If utterly unfed, the grass of a season would hardly suffice,
when dry, to nourish a prairie-fire.
Even the animals have deserted us. No buffalo have been seen this year
within many miles of us, though their old paths lead occasionally across
this country; I presume they pass rapidly through it, as I should urgently
advise them to do; not a gray-wolf had honored us with his company
to-day—he prefers to live where there is something to eat—the prairie-dog
also wisely shuns this land of starvation; no animal but gopher (a little
creature, between a mouse and a ground-squirrel) abounds here; and he
burrows deep in the sand and picks up a living, I cannot guess how; while
a few hawks and an occasional prairie-wolf (cayota) lives by picking here
and there a gopher. They must find him disgustingly lean.
I would match this station and its surroundings against any other scene on
our continent for desolation. From the high prairie over which we approach
it, you overlook a grand sweep of treeless desert, through the middle of
which flows the Republican, usually in several shallow streams separated
by sand-bars or islets—its whole volume being far less than that of the
Mohawk at Utica, though it had drained above this point an area equal to
that of Connecticut. Of the few scrubby cottonwoods lately cowering under
the bluffs at this point, most have been cut for the uses of the station,
though logs for its embryo house are drawn from a little clump, eight
miles distant. A broad bed of sand indicated that the volume of water is
sometimes a hundred-fold its present amount, though it will doubtless soon
be far less than it now is. Its average depth cannot now exceed six
inches. On every hand, and for many miles above and below, the country
above the bluffs is such as we have passed over this morning. A dead
mule—bitten in the jaw this morning by a rattlesnake—lies here as if to
complete the scene. Off the five weeks old track to Pike's Peak, all is
dreary solitude and silence.
The Cimarron runs through the southwest corner of Kansas. Max Greene
explored in that region at an early date, and here is the account he wrote
of that stream in his The Kansas Region.
Toward the rising sun swells out the easternmost barrier of the Rocky
Mountains, the long-extending Ratone, with its porticos of columnar quartz
leading to kiosks of slumbrous cedar, by whose springs the dust-stained
pilgrim rests and had sweet thoughts of home and friends afar. Here, from
the cool embrasures, a yellow and scorched eternity of plain meets the
view. So flat is it, you may wander, day after day, without once meeting
an elevation perceptibly overtopping the rude mound which marks the
emigrant's grave, until, at last, lured on by the vapory tricks of the
mirage, you stand where that desert mockery of a river, the Cimarron,
seams the dead, unsmiling level. You look down into that soundless stream
of crystal air, and strange, solemn emotions thrill you, as though you
trod with regal Ulysses his shadowy glens beneath the low-eaved sky of
Cimmeria. You descend the bank and walk the bottom of a sunken river.
Miles away, on either side, are the bluffs of projecting nodules of clay,
wearing the black and fallen look of deserted forts, and here and there
are inlets of dry arroyos pouring in their lesser currents of nothing, A
dread of demonry comes over you, and you stagger on like a sick man in a
dream. The limber serpent glides from your path. You pause where the acrid
fountlet bubbles up and sinks back again beneath the shadow of the
silver-margined euphorbia—the one beautiful flower on the bosom of
desolation. Thus sifts the broad and deep but viewless Cimarron through
quicksands, or gathers in lakes of sunless caverns down where eyeless
gnomes hold vigil in the center of the earth, anear the iron-pillared
throne of cloudy and formless Demogorgon. If there be a vein of
supernaturalism in you, the voiceless appealing of these wizard regions
will bring it to the surface of your nature.
In 1836 Irving wrote his Astoria. He had something to say of the "Great
American Desert." It is quoted here to show how extensive the idea of that
mythical land was down to that time:
Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far west; which
apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life. Some
portions of it along the rivers may partially be subdued by agriculture,
others may form vast pastoral tracts, like those of the east; but it is to
be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the
abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of
Arabia; and, like them be subject to the depredations of the marauder.
Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in geology,
the amalgamation of the "debris" and "abrasions" of former races,
civilized and savage; the remains of broken and almost extinguished
tribes; the descendants of wandering hunters and trappers; of fugitives
from the Spanish and American frontiers; of adventurers and desperadoes of
every class and country; yearly ejected from the bosom of society into the
wilderness. We are contributing incessantly to swell this singular and
heterogeneous cloud of wild population that is to hang about our frontier,
by the transfer of whole tribes of savages from the east of the
Mississippi to the great wastes of the far west. Many of these bear with
them the smart of real or fancied injuries; many consider themselves
expatriated beings, wrongfully exiled from their hereditary homes, and the
sepulchres of their fathers, and cherish a deep and abiding animosity
against the race that had dispossessed them. Some may gradually become
pastoral hordes, like those rude and migratory people, half shepard, half
warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of upper Asia,
but, other, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted
on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their
marauding grounds, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking
places. Here they may resemble those great hordes of the north; "Gog and
Magog with their bands" that haunted the gloomy imaginations of the
prophets. "A great company and a mighty host, all riding upon horses, and
warring upon those nations which were at rest, and dwelt peaceably, and
had gotten cattle and goods."
It was but the lack of truth about the portions of Kansas set down as a
part of "The Great American Desert" which caused the errors to be spread
broadcast. If the facts could have been known the geographers would have
put the desert districts back of the Rocky Mountains where they may still
be found. The two great divisions of Kansas, as applied to natural
productions, are well defined. They are separate, one from the other, and
entirely unlike in physical aspect. They are the Prairies and the Great
Plains. The Prairies extend from the Missouri border to an irregular line
passing through Council Grove. It is one of the fairest regions of the
world. It is a rolling country and well watered. The streams are fringed
with fine trees—oak, hickory, walnut, hackberry, cottonwood, and willow.
There is no more pleasing landscape than a view from any elevation in the
Prairie regions will reveal. For some thousands of years, at least, the
Prairies have been grass-clad, well watered, and fertile. They never
possessed in historic times any of the characteristics of the desert.
The Great Plains extended from the western borders of the Prairies about
Council Grove to the Rocky Mountains. And those elevated passes west of
Laramie might be included. That was a country of frayed out and
disappearing streams. There was little or no timber. Stretches of drifting
sand were to be found, but these were not deserts in the true sense. The
country was almost all covered with buffalo grass—perhaps the most
nutritious of all grasses. It was short—an inch or two in height—and as
thick as the wool on the buffalo. Along the larger streams other grasses
were found, some of them coarse and tall. In the country drained by the
Arkansas there were diminutive oaks—known to the explorers as
Shin-oaks—two or three feet in height, but often prone upon the earth, and
having abundant crops of acorns. There were plum bushes of the same
dimensions, often loaded with fruit. They were called sand-plums, or
buffalo plums, and were relished by the followers of Coronado and all
travelers over the Plains since. The Great Plains were the pastures, par
excellence, of the buffalo. In no other region were they ever found in
such numbers. The antelope was also native to the Great Plains. When the
wild horse appeared these Plains became his favorite haunts. The deer, the
wolf, the coyote, the rabbit, and numerous birds were to be found on the
Great Plains. So, even there the characteristics of the desert were
entirely wanting.
There was a Great American Desert. It exists to this hour, but the
enterprise of the American will reclaim most of it and make it fruitful.
It never did exist in the territory composing Kansas. The mistake of the
early geographers was in placing the Great American Desert on the Great
Plains. But this mistake is turned to advantage by the enterprising Kansas
man. It is the delight of his life to write accounts of the enormous crops
now produced "on land which two generations since was a part of the Great
American Desert." His figures in this respect are truly astonishing—but
they are, strange as it would seem, only facts capable of demonstration to
all.
And, as in all other things, the myth of the Great American Desert is an
asset of no mean proportion to the Kansas man. All of which serves to
establish, in a way, the boast that what is a calamity for other countries
is often a valuable asset for Kansas. It is not true of any other state.
It is possible only of—
"Sunny Kansas, with her woes and glory."
