The Kaw: The Heart of a Nation (The Rivers of America Series) [Kansas]

ix, [1], 371, [3] pp. 8vo. Illustrations by Isabel Bate and Harold Black, map precedes text. Part of the popular Rivers of America series. "The river known in Kansas as the Kaw is described on the map and spoken of in the world at large as the Kansas River. Its local Indian name, however, is not the only thing that makes this river the special property of Kansas. Its history is the history of Kansas and the prairie country. The story of the Kaw opens simultaneously with the trails which led from its mouth westward across the prairie. The Forty-niners, the Santa Fe traders and the early western traders used these trails; but the first settlers came over them and built churches and schools on the banks of the Kaw. The story of the river is also the story of the building of two great railroads across the plains, the Kansas Pacific and the Santa Fe; it is the account of Hays and Sheridan and the other rail towns which were sinks of wickedness and crime at the 'end of the railroad.' It is the story of the wheat industry from the days of the Indians to the present time. The early settlers grew the soft wheats until the Mennonites from Russia brought the hard red Turkey wheat and finally persuaded American housewives it was fit to eat. The story of the Kaw is the story of cattle and of the thousands of Texas longhorns marching up the beef trails, of gun battles and saloons, of Tom Smith who tamed Abilene with his fists and of Wild Bill Hickok who curried it with six shooters. The Kaw is the story of farmers and crop failures, low prices and high freight rates, and of the battle cry, 'Raise less corn and more Hell.'"