James R. Mead
James R. Mead (1836–1910) moved west from Davenport, Iowa, in 1859 and quickly established himself as a legendary trader and buffalo hunter with a successful trading post near what is now Salina. In 1863, at only twenty-six years of age, he moved south and established new trading posts in the Arkansas Valley, the first near Towanda, with another near the Wichita Indian settlement. Mead soon entered the freighting and government-contracting business and became a wealthy man while still in his twenties. He is commonly given credit for suggesting “Wichita” as the name for the new city at the forks of the Arkansas.
Jesse Chisholm
Jesse Chisholm (1805–1868), half Scottish and half Cherokee, was an in-law of the legendary Sam Houston. Chisholm first arrived in the Arkansas Valley with some gold seekers in 1836 and returned with the Wichita Indians in the 1860s. He was illiterate but spoke fourteen Indian languages, could communicate in sign language with any Indian tribe on the plains, and was associated with the trading, freighting, and government-contracting enterprises of Mead, Mathewson, and Greiffenstein. He is best known for giving his name to the wagon-freighting route that became the famous cattle trail. Chisholm died of cholera or, as some claimed, from food poisoning contracted from eating rancid bear grease from a brass pan; he was buried in Indian Territory. Oil painting by C. A. Seward.
Mead Buckskin
James R. Mead wore this fringed buckskin jacket with beaded decoration as a young man in Kansas. The child’s outfit of deerskin jacket and beaded pants was made by Jennie Greiffenstein, Indian wife of William Greiffenstein. Known as “Cheyenne Jennie,” she created the clothing as a gift for Mead’s son James L. “Bunnie” Mead around 1866.
Prairie View
Despite the longtime negative reputation of south-central Kansas as an impossible place for “civilized” people to live, many prospective settlers heading west after the Civil War became convinced that “rain follows the plow” in the arid west and that farmers could make this so-called “Great American Desert” bloom.
Colton’s Kansas and Nebraska Map
Colton’s 1857 Kansas and Nebraska map includes locations of forts and missions and indicates Indian lands. An official U.S. survey report of Osage treaty lands in 1836 concluded that the area could never be of use to settlers, and most of the emigrants on their way west ignored the rolling grasslands. Later surveyors, working in 1866 and 1867, agreed but still proceeded to lay out ranges and townships as a basis for possible future settlement.
Munger House
Constructed in 1868 of hand-hewn cottonwood logs with buffalo hair plaster, the D. S. Munger House also served as a post office and hotel. It was moved to the grounds of Old Cowtown Museum in 1952.
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Protestant Episcopal settlers met for worship in the Munger House before constructing the stick-and-sod St. John’s Episcopal Church building in 1870.
Douglas & Main
Photographic artist Henry S. Schuster memorialized one of the earliest views of Wichita, now the area of Main Street and Douglas Avenue, in June 1870.
Wichita grass lodge model
In April 1940 this model of a Wichita grass lodge was presented to the Wichita Public Museum by a delegation of the Wichita Tribe who had returned to the city for a homecoming at the invitation of the Museum’s advisory board.
C. A. Seward’s painting of Wichita
Revered Wichita artist C. A. Seward was commissioned by Sedgwick County citizens to create artwork of “the city’s earliest scene.” The painting, Wichita in 1869, was presented to the Sedgwick County Pioneer Society in 1920 and exhibited at the International Wheat Show and Golden Jubilee. The Munger House is at left.
