The surprises keep coming

A (pretty-much) weekly newsletter to share my book writing process and adventures while also sharing what I discovered as I researched nurses and medicine in the Civil War.

My last post was about how the climax of the book takes place about three miles south of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, during the battle of Stones River, because of logistics and word count, and how I had an affinity for the name Murfreesboro as a kid.

This post is about Wyandotte, Kansas, home to Wyandotte Indians, also to the Potawatomi, where my ‘ballsy’ protagonist was born. I didn’t think I had the same affinity for the place like I did with Murfreesboro – I never heard of it before I chose it on an old map.

Some people don’t believe in coincidences, but as I was reading about the history of Wyandotte, I’m beginning to believe this writing thing I’m doing is ‘soul retrieval,’ where parts of a person’s soul gets splintered off in previous lives and are integrated into a person’s present-day body.

How it started. I needed to have a backstory that included a place of origin for the protagonist. I’ve heard of Bleeding Kansas on occasion. When I looked at a circa 1850s map of Kansas Territory, the name Wyandotte stood out. It sounded appropriate for the period, but I wasn’t that curious about it.

The other thing I needed for my protagonist was motivation: What does my protagonist want more than anything in the world? I chose law. Most people would think: Why would a woman want to be a lawyer when there were NO women lawyers ANYWHERE in the United States in the Civil War? This was back when women grew up to have babies and bake pies. Little did I know the woman’s rights movement was active in Kansas at the time.

Why not medicine? After all, the story takes place during the Civil War, and nursing has been traditionally a ‘woman’s’ profession, right? Maybe because I went to law school.

And why is she of mixed race, Potawatomi and French (Métis)? Maybe because I worked among Native Americans, one of them was Métis. ‘They’ say authors put a lot of themselves into the books they write.

Here’s what I found out today, late in the game, as I’m almost done with the first draft.

The Wyandotte – ‘these savage allies of Britain,’ according to an author writing in the 1700s – were known by the British for their intelligence, and the Eastern tribes respected them so much they had the Wyandotte preside over their inter-tribal councils. Who were these intelligent, widely respected people?

The Wyandotte, also known as the Huron, originated in Quebec, Canada where the Iroquois pushed them out during the 18^th century. The aggressive Iroquois were fierce warriors, and they forced lots of people off tribal lands so they could cash in on the fur trade. In Ohio, for instance, they forced out the Ojibwe, who then went all the way to present-day Minnesota.

From the ashes of villages burned by the Iroquois, the Wyandotte left Quebec City for Fort Dearborn, where they helped found the city of Detroit, Michigan. A large number of tribal members went from there to Sandusky, Ohio. BTW, the Wyandotte did NOT grow olive trees in Ohio. Their name has nothing to do with the olive brand.

Tricky, dishonest Indian treaties took their land in Ohio, and some tribal members sold their land. Eventually the Wyandotte went to Kansas and from there most went to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

At first, the Wyandotte settled on the banks of the Missouri River in Kansas Territory and established an early settlement that became known as Quindaro, a place known for its activity as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It still exists as an archaeological site. The nearby Wyandotte City that developed shortly after was eventually incorporated into Kansas City, Kansas.

In 1869 a girl was born in Wyandotte, Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley. Her mother was Eliza Burton Zane Conley - a Wyandotte member and descendant of a chief, and her father was Andrew Conley - an English farmer. The mother was adamant that all four children receive a solid education, and they did. Eliza went to law school.

When more and more settlers moved into the city and the city expanded, a large portion of the Wyandotte sold their land and moved to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). But a portion of the tribe remained in Wyandotte. In a short time, the Oklahoma tribe disowned their Kansas cousins and they refused to enroll them into the Oklahoma tribe, which was federally recognized. The Kansas members were called Absentee members by the Oklahoma Wyandotte.

In addition to non-enrollment in the Oklahoma Wyandotte, the feds did not recognize the Kansas Wyandotte tribe and took their land. So now the Kansas tribe, who were not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe and were not citizens of the U.S. because they had no land, had no legal identity and thus no tribal, federal or state rights.

By 1900 the only physical trace left of the Kansas Wyandotte was a cemetery. As Kansas City grew, speculators eyed the cemetery as a means of making money. By that time Wyandotte City was at the center of Kansas City, Kansas, and a prime location for development. In the early 20^th Century, the Oklahoma Wyandotte wanted make money and sell the cemetery in the center of Kansas City. Legal battles ensued.

Eliza, by now a member of the Missouri Bar and the Kansas Bar, took up the legal campaign to defend the Kansas Wyandotte’s rights to preserve the cemetery. To make sure the land would not be encroached upon or sold for development, Eliza and her sisters built a tiny 6’ x 8’ shack on cemetery property and moved in. They patrolled the cemetery boundary with musket rifles. Eliza even shot a policeman.

The development issue went beyond inter-tribal, state and federal disputes all the way to the Supreme Court. At the time, Eliza was not enrolled to argue before the Supreme Court, but afterwards she became the first Native American woman enrolled to argue before the Supreme Court. Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled against her, but in 1913 a Kansas senator Charles Curtis succeeded in Congress to declare the cemetery a national park and the development dispute was mute.

In the 1990s, the Oklahoma Wyandotte went at it again. They wanted to put a gaming casino on the cemetery land. The Kansas Wyandotte have won all their disputes to date, and the cemetery is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, since 1971. Some ballsy broad, this Eliza!

Eliza died on May 28, 1946, the day I was born. Coincidence?

Eliza Burton Conley