How many ages ago did someone look to a far horizon and wonder what might be found beyond his own known world? Footsteps became trails; trails became roads; and roads the bulwark of civilization.

The European “discovery” of this place called Kansas began with Francisco Vazquez de Coronado’s quest to find Quivira in 1541. Except for a few Spanish and French excursions into the great sea of grass, the plains were left to the native prairie tribes. Over the next two centuries prairie bands transitioned from pedestrians to skilled horsemen.

From the east, France pushed into the plains in the latter part of the seventeenth century to advance it’s interest in the region. While Spain mostly kept plains tribes at arm’s length, France encouraged trade, going so far as to take tribal representatives to Versailles to meet the King of France. Warriors were recruited to fight the British in the French and Indian War of the middle 18th century.

Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Lewis and Clark excited imaginations in published reports of the wonders of the West. Although Lewis and Clark only passed the northwest corner of “Kansas,” Lt. Zebulon Pike soon followed in 1806, exploring the interior of the “Great American Desert.”

Steaming west on the “Western Engineer,” the first river boat up the Missouri River from St. Louis, Major Stephan Long’s expedition essentially skirted the Great American Desert in 1819. However, Long “confirmed” the idea that the plains were uninhabitable. All the while traders and trappers were traveling to and from the Rocky Mountains, fully aware of the bounty of the open plains.

Trade in the west exploded following William Becknell’s successful venture to Santa Fe in 1821. Commercial exchange over the Santa Fe Trail proved to be so rewarding that the government commissioned a survey of the “Santa Fe Road” in 1825.

Plans were initiated in 1825 to establish an Indian Territory beyond the western border of the state of Missouri. By 1828 eastern tribes were beginning to cross into “Kansas.” Missionaries joined traders and roads, ferries, trading posts, and government agencies began to touch the landscape. Wagons began moving across the tribal reserves in 1836 along an old trapper’s trail. In the coming years, the Oregon Trail carried thousands of settlers to the northwest coast. In several expeditions during the 1840’s, “The Pathfinder,” John C. Fremont found the prairies more attractive than both Pike and Long. A proponent of Manifest Destiny, Fremont was perhaps the first to anticipate a future wave of settlement across the great “ocean of grass.”

1846 brought war with Mexico. Hundreds of men thronged to Fort Leavenworth to serve in Colonel Stephen W. Kearny’s “Army of the West.” The movement of 1,600 troops across the plains required support wagons traveling back and forth across the plains to the close of the war in 1848.

Forty-niners rushed west for California gold from 1849 to 1855, and during all of these travels over Kansas a very great number of people experienced the prairies as they passed along the Santa Fe and California-Oregon Trails.

Tribal reserves of eastern Kansas were diminished with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Kansas Territory was opened for settlement.

At elections, the polls were overrun by pro-slavery advocates from Missouri resulting in the “Bogus Legislature” controlled by non-resident Missourians. Convening on July 2, 1855, at Pawnee, Kansas Territory, (on the present-day Fort Riley Reservation) the legislature moved to reconvene closer to Missouri at Shawnee Mission where they initiated the “Black Laws.” Just speaking against slavery could result in a jail sentence. The first Territorial Governor, Andrew Reeder, was replaced for taking a stance against proslavery corruption. Wilson Shannon was given the unenviable charge of guiding the territory to statehood under popular sovereignty.

Free State proponents under the leadership of Charles Robinson formed their own government at Topeka, Kan., on Oct. 23, 1855. From that moment forward, violence reigned in Kansas Territory. Free Stater Charles Dow was killed Nov. 21, 1855, near Hickory Point, southeast of Lawrence, Kan.

Pro-slavery Sheriff Samuel Jones gathered 1,500 men to stamp out abolition in Lawrence. Jones was ordered to stand down by the new Governor, Wilson Shannon, on Dec. 7, but not before Thomas Barber, a Free State man, was killed on his way home from Lawrence.

The January, 1856, elections brought about the deaths of pro-slavery John Cook and Free State representative Reese Brown. Charles Robinson and other Free State leaders were arrested for treason and held under guard near the territorial capital of Lecompton. Sheriff Jones attacked and partially burned Lawrence on May 21, 1856. John Brown led an attack at Pottawatomie Creek killing five pro-slavery men. At Black Jack Creek, on June 2, Brown captured a force of 28 pro-slavery men.

Battles were waged across the territory. James H. Lane organized the Army of the North and James Montgomery raised an army of Jayhawkers at Fort Scott. Kansans drew Missouri into the battle, burning their farms and towns.

The territory had seen six governors and five acting governors and more bloodshed than can be imagined. The Free State government tenaciously prevailed. Against the odds Kansas became a Free State on Jan. 29, 1861, and the 34th state in the Union on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st RD, Geneseo, KS. Phone (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.