The rugged hills of George Sibley

Sibley called them the "naked hills." Maybe that would have attracted more visitors to the region than Pike's description of them as "flint hills."

There’s a lot to like about George Champlin Sibley. This man, who would eventually establish the school that became Lindenwood University in St. Louis, played a key role in the exploration of America’s early 19th-century Western frontier. He served from 1808 to 1822 as the chief factor for the Indian trading post at Fort Osage, located on the Missouri River just east of modern Kansas City. He explored the great salt deposits in northern Oklahoma in 1811. That same year he helped broker an uneasy peace between the Kansa and Pawnee tribes. And in 1825 he charted a map of the road from Missouri to Santa Fe.

What we at Flint Hills, Tall Grass like best about George, however, is his apparent appreciation for the beauty and value of the Kansas Flint Hills.

In an earlier post about Zebulon Pike, we noted how Zeb unknowingly named this part of Kansas by describing his trip near the Cottonwood River as a passage over “flint hills.” We also noted how Zeb was not being complimentary in using the term. He was complaining because the hike over the rocky hills made his feet sore and blistered.

The name Flint Hills stuck and we are glad for that at least. These are the Flint Hills. We would prefer, however, that instead of complaining, travelers through the region notice the great power of the tallgrass prairie and the rugged beauty of the flint-hardened limestone outcrops that form terraced hills. That’s exactly what George Sibley did. Thankfully, that’s also what thousands of visitors to the Flint Hills have done ever since.

So we honor Sibley during “Zeb Pike Month” for being the first of many tourists to the Flint Hills who wrote home about his great journey exploring the region. George’s trip to the Flint Hills came in May of 1811 as part of a larger two-month voyage that took him from Fort Osage in Missouri, to an Osage Indian camp on the Marais de Cygnes River in eastern Kansas, then to the Blue Earth Village of the Kansa Indians along the Kaw River, then to the Pawnee Indian village on the Platte River in southern Nebraska, and finally to the great salt deposits called the Salines located on a branch of the Arkansas River in northern Oklahoma.

George, like Pike, didn’t have much scientific training. Unlike Pike, he did pay attention to what he saw in Kansas and recorded details of his perceptions of the Flint Hills. To be fair, Sibley’s voyage was much shorter than Pike’s and his time in the Flint Hills played a major role in the voyage. Pike was just trying to hurry through the hills on his way to points farther west, while Sibley wanted to study the region.

Sibley saw value in the land that others missed. While many early explorers in the region assumed the lack of trees in the prairie meant the soil was unfit for cultivation, Sibley found positive values. After the trip, Sibley recorded his impressions in a lengthy letter to his father (printed in the article, “George C. Sibley’s Journal of a Trip to the Salines in 1811,” in The Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, vol. 23, no. 3, April 1965, pp. 167-207).

Of his encounters with the landscape of eastern Kansas and western Missouri, Sibley described it as “a country almost entirely open prairie; well watered by numerous rivers, creeks and rivulets, tributairies of the Osage & Kansas (more properly Konsee) Rivers — these small streams all afford more or less of forest growth, consisting of several kinds of oak, hycory, cottonwood, elm, walnut &c. — and some of the larger branches of the Osage afford fine bodies of most excellent land for cultivation; which will at no distant day hold out attractions irresistible to many of our frontier-loving settlers, commonly called Squatters.”

At a time when many thought settlers would avoid the prairie, and years before Stephen Long called it the “Great American Desert,” Sibley liked what he saw and thought folks would be attracted to the region.

He even appreciated the beauty of the landscape, saying, “This large and beautiful tract possesses a sufficient variety of surface and scenery, to render it quite pleasing, and even delightful at many points; to the eye of the mere rambler; and will doubtless at some period not very far distant, offer inducements even for permanent Christian settlements. At present it abounds with wild animals, Elk, Deer, Bear, and some Buffalo, besides a variety of Water fowl, with Beaver & Otters in the rivers and ponds.”

Of course, these descriptions concerned the prairie lands of western Missouri and eastern Kansas, lands outside the Flint Hills. That prairie, however, is lost. Permanent Christian settlements did come quickly and with them, the cultivation and development that took away the tallgrass prairie.

After describing his time in the Osage Indian village and offering a description of the Missouri River, Sibley described his trip northwest through the Flint Hills. Of that leg of the voyage Sibley said:

Our way led through a wild but extremely beautiful high prairie country, pretty well watered, and variegated with strips of woodland, ranges of quite lofty, rugged, naked hills overlooking very extensive tracts of level low ground prairie. Deer and Elk we found in plenty, and I frequently noticed Antelopes skipping over the verdant hills and vallies with almost bird-like speed.

It’s a little ironic that Pike complains and calls them Flint Hills and that name sticks, while Sibley expresses appreciation in calling them “lofty, rugged, naked hills” and people have since ignored his description. The Flint Hills are lofty, towering over the hiker who stays in the valleys. They are rugged, with frequent limestone outcrops, over which hikers are forced to scramble. They are also naked, covered only with a tallgrass skirt. Remember, Sibley hiked these hills in May, when the grass was short and the hills were naked. Pike and many other explorers passed through later in the growing season when tall grass slowed the voyage.

So we will remember Sibley fondly for his appreciation of our Flint Hills. We will return to his descriptions in later posts and learn more about the Blue Earth Village and the Kansa Indians that inhabited the region in 1811. Like the landscape, Sibley expressed appreciation for the people and their way of life. His trip through the Flint Hills and his account of the voyage are therefore worth remembering.