Note 154 — {100} CHAPTER VI

When Say's party reached the Kansas, they had crossed Johnson and Douglas counties, following the high prairie country which lies from six to fifteen miles south of the river. The camp on the thirteenth was probably not far from Lecompton; by the sixteenth, they must have been near Topeka.

Big Blue River (Blue Earth on the map), at the mouth of which the Kansa village stood, rises in Nebraska, flows through Marshall County, Kansas, and forms the boundary between Riley and Pottawatomie counties. Near the confluence, a westward bend of the Big Blue forms a peninsula about two miles long and half a mile wide, which was the site of the village. A few years ago the exact locations of the lodges were still indicated by circular ridges and depressions, from which a map of the village was prepared (see Kansas Historical Society Transactions, 1881, p. 288). The site was partially abandoned in 1830, and three villages constructed near Topeka; these in turn were abandoned when the territory which contained them was ceded to the United States in 1846.—Ed.