John C. Sullivan | |
---|---|
Born | Kentucky, U.S. | December 9, 1788
Died | July 27, 1830 41) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | (aged
Resting place | Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
John C. Sullivan (December 9, 1788 - July 27, 1830) was a surveyor who established the Indian Boundary Line and the Sullivan Line which were to form the boundary between Native Americans and white settlers in Indian Territory from Iowa to Texas.
Following the Indian Removal Act in 1830 all Native Americans west of the Mississippi River and many east of the river were moved west of the Indian Boundary Line. In 1838 disputes over the Sullivan Line were to touch off the bloodless Honey War over the boundary between Missouri and Iowa.
In the Treaty of Fort Clark in 1808, the Osage Nation, the most influential tribe in Missouri, ceded all lands west of Fort Clark near Sibley, Missouri in Jackson County, Missouri. In exchange for this, the tribe was paid merchandise worth $1,500 along with a fort to protect them and a government sanctioned trading post. [1]
The specific boundaries:
The treaty provided the following provision:
In 1816 the boundary was "adjusted" 23 miles (37 km) west to the mouth of the Kansas River on the Missouri River which was a more significant geographic boundary than Fire Prairie Creek. Although no treaties were in place acknowledging the new line, the United States began to survey the new boundary line to which all were to be removed.
Sullivan was instructed to run by his boss William Rector, head of the survey agency for Missouri and Illinois territories to draw a line 100 miles (160 km) north from the mouth of the Kansas River and thence east 150 miles (240 km) and 40 chains to the Des Moines River. [2]
Sullivan was to be criticized later for not extending the line all the way to the similarly named (but different) Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi River at about the latitude of Fort Madison, Iowa.
Sullivan was to begin his survey on the "far bank" of the confluence on the Left Bank of the Missouri at what is now the Clay County, Missouri and Platte County, Missouri line at what is now property owned by Kansas City Downtown Airport.
The 100-mile (160 km) mark that now forms the Iowa-Missouri border was placed just north of Sheridan, Missouri.
Joseph C. Brown in 1823 survey the boundary south to the Arkansas boundary. From Arkansas it has a small eastward angle to the Arkansas River at Fort Smith, Arkansas where it then heads due south before briefly following the Red River of the South to the Texas border.
The line now forms the border between Missouri and Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Sullivan drifted northward by 2 degrees as he headed east to the Des Moines which he described as shallow and calm when he crossed it at just south of Farmington, Iowa.
Sullivan was a delegate to the Missouri Constitutional Convention that defined the state's borders.
The initial proposal for the boundaries of Missouri were close to the boundaries of today and followed the original Osage territory. There was a debate about extending the northern border 80 miles (130 km) further north to the mouth of the Rock River (Illinois) at Rock Island, Illinois and the western boundary 30 miles (48 km) further west to the mouth of the Wolf River (Kansas) at White Cloud, Kansas. The additions would have made Missouri the largest state in the Union and under Congressional pressure it was dropped back to the current configuration since the lines were already marked (plus the addition of the Bootheel to accommodate the wishes of Mississippi River towns to stay with their Missouri compatriots. [3]
The state's official description was:
The wording in the Constitution of "north along the said meridian line, to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the River Des Moines, making said line correspond with the Indian boundary-line" was to stir problems later since Sullivan had not crossed any rapids while a set of rapids on the Mississippi River called the Des Moines Rapids defined the northern navigational end of the Mississippi which was 2.4 feet (0.73 m) deep in the rapids.
In 1824, treaties for the Ioway, Sac and Fox ceding their land in Missouri implied that the Sullivan Line was Missouri's northern border all the way to the Mississippi.
Missouri did not formally move to claim the land south of the Sullivan Line to the mouth of the Des Moines at Keokuk, Iowa became known as Half Breed Tract and was declared part of Iowa when it joined the Union in 1846. Since it is 25 miles (40 km) south of the Sullivan Line it is the southernmost point in Iowa.
After Sullivan died in 1830, the Sullivan Line was extended in the west to the Missouri River in 1836 as the U.S. government in the Platte Purchase bought all the land west from the Indian Boundary Line and then permitted Missouri to annex the land. As part of the purchase, Missouri wanted the Sullivan Line resurveyed. Joseph C. Brown who was involved with establishing the Fifth Principal Meridian from which most of land in the Louisiana Territory was mapped was hired by Missouri to resurvey the land. Brown was to say that instead of using the mouth of the Kansas, the northern should have been determined by its relation to the mouth of Ohio River. Brown said the border should be 9.5 miles (15.3 km) north of the Sullivan Line at what is now Lacey-Keosauqua State Park in Keosauqua, Iowa. Brown's Line was not recognized by Iowa. Missouri sent Clark County, Missouri sheriff to collect taxes in the strip and was arrested. According to legend Missouri tax collectors cut down three trees that had honey bee hives to collect honey in lieu of taxes. State militias from both Missouri and Iowa were called out before the governors eventually agreed to let the Supreme Court decide the case which it did in State of Missouri v. State of Iowa , 48 U.S. 660 (1849), upholding the Sullivan Line noting that is how it was written in state's constitution. The line was resurveyed to correct various jogs as disputes were to continue over the line into the 20th century.
In addition to his surveys in Missouri, Sullivan also surveyed a 20-mile (32 km) strip of land on either side of the Chicago River extending from Lake Michigan to the Fox River (Illinois River tributary). This was to ultimately clear the way for the Illinois and Michigan Canal and eventually the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connecting Lake Michigan, Chicago, Illinois to the Illinois River and ultimately the Mississippi. The survey done in 1818-1819 on land ceded by the Sac and Fox in the Treaty of St. Louis. The survey resulted in several streets in Chicago having a diagonal that is at odds with the city's grid pattern. [6]
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,770 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km2), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the thirteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of the District of Louisiana, which consisted of the portion of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 33rd parallel.
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Spanish Cession, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain. It settled a standing border dispute between the two countries and was considered a triumph of American diplomacy. It came in the midst of increasing tensions related to Spain's territorial boundaries in North America against the United States and the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the American Revolution; it also came during the Latin American wars of independence.
The Platte Purchase was a land acquisition in 1836 by the United States government from American Indian tribes of the region. It comprised lands along the east bank of the Missouri River and added 3,149 square miles (8,156 km2) to the northwest corner of the state of Missouri.
The Honey War was a bloodless territorial dispute in 1839 between Iowa Territory and Missouri over their border.
The Black Hawk Purchase, also known as the Forty-Mile Strip or Scott's Purchase, extended along the West side of the Mississippi River from the north boundary of Missouri North to the Upper Iowa River in the northeast corner of Iowa. It was fifty miles wide at the ends, and forty in the middle, and is sometimes called the "Forty-Mile Strip". The land, originally owned by the Sauk, Meskwaki (Fox), and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Native American people, was acquired by treaty following their defeat by the United States in the Black Hawk War. After being defeated the Sauk and Mesquakie were forced to relinquish another 2.5 million hectares or and give up their rights to plant, hunt, or fish on the land. The purchase was made for $640,000 on September 21, 1832 and was named for the chief Black Hawk, who was held prisoner at the time the purchase was completed. The Black Hawk Purchase contained an area of 6 million acres (24,000 km²), and the price was equivalent to 11 cents/acre. The region is bounded on the East by the Mississippi River and includes Dubuque, Fort Madison, and present-day Davenport.
The parallel 36°30′ north is a circle of latitude that is 36 and one-half degrees north of the equator of the Earth. This parallel of latitude is particularly significant in the history of the United States as the line of the Missouri Compromise, which was used to divide the prospective slave and free states west of the Mississippi River, with the exception of Missouri, which is mostly north of this parallel.
The Des Moines Rapids between Nauvoo, Illinois and Keokuk, Iowa-Hamilton, Illinois is one of two major rapids on the Mississippi River that limited Steamboat traffic on the river through the early 19th century.
Joseph Cromwell Brown Brown (1784-1849) was an American surveyor in the United States who made several major surveys in the Louisiana Territory. In addition to his surveying duties he was a sheriff of St. Louis County, Missouri as well as county engineer.
The Treaty of Fort Clark was signed at Fort Osage on November 10, 1808, in which the Osage Nation ceded all the land east of the fort in Missouri and Arkansas north of the Arkansas River to the United States. The Fort Clark treaty and the Treaty of St. Louis in which the Sac (tribe) and Fox (tribe) ceded northeastern Missouri along with northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin were the first two major treaties in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. The affected tribes, upset with the terms, were to side with the British in the War of 1812. Following the settlement of that war, John C. Sullivan for the United States was to survey the ceded land in 1816 (adjusting it 23 miles westward to the mouth of the Kansas River to create the Indian Boundary Line west of which and south of which virtually all tribes were to be removed in the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
The Osage Treaty was signed in St. Louis, MO, on June 2, 1825 between William Clark on behalf of the United States and members of the Osage Nation. The accord contained fourteen articles. Based on the most important terms of the accord, the Osage ceded multiple territories to the United States government. According to the first article of the treaty, the territories ceded entailed lands lying within and west of both the State of Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas, lands lying north and west of the Red River, all territories south and east of the Kansas River, and all lands located through the Rock Saline. The accord was proclaimed on December 30, 1825.
The Sullivan Line originally marked in 1816 forms three quarters of the border between Missouri and Iowa and an extension of it forms the remainder. The line was initially created to establish the limits of Native American territory ; disputes over the boundary were to erupt into the Honey War.
A Half-Breed Tract was a segment of land designated in the western states by the United States government in the 19th century specifically for Métis of American Indian and European or European-American ancestry, at the time commonly known as half-breeds. The government set aside such tracts in several parts of the Midwestern prairie region, including in Iowa Territory, Nebraska Territory, Kansas Territory, Minnesota Territory, and Wisconsin Territory.
State of Missouri v. State of Iowa, 48 U.S. 660 (1849), is a 9-to-0 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the Sullivan Line of 1816 was the accepted boundary between the states of Iowa and Missouri. The ruling resolved a long-standing border dispute between the two states, which had nearly erupted in military clashes during the so-called "Honey War" of 1839.
Lovely County was a county that existed from October 31, 1827, to 1828 in the Arkansas Territory.
The fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien was negotiated between the United States and the Sac and Fox, the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute and Sisseton Sioux, Omaha, Ioway, Otoe and Missouria tribes. The treaty was signed on July 15, 1830, with William Clark and Willoughby Morgan representing the United States. Through additional negotiations conducted in St. Louis on October 13, 1830, Yankton Sioux and Santee Sioux agreed to abide by the 1830 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. The US government announced the treaty and its numerous adherents on February 24, 1831.
The Treaty of St. Louis is the name of a series of treaties signed between the United States and various Native American tribes from 1804 through 1824. The fourteen treaties were all signed in the St. Louis, Missouri area.
The Treaty of St. Louis is the name of a series of treaties signed between the United States and various Native American tribes from 1804 through 1824. The fourteen treaties were all signed in the St. Louis, Missouri area.
The Treaty of St. Louis is the name of a series of treaties signed between the United States and various Native American tribes from 1804 through 1824. The fourteen treaties were all signed in the St. Louis, Missouri area.
The New Purchase of 1842 is a treaty between the United States and the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes, referred to as the Sac and Fox in the treaty. The Native American tribes ceded land in Iowa west of the Mississippi River and north of the Missouri border.