Note (return) — III. THE INDIAN REFUGEES IN SOUTHERN KANSAS

Kile's178 visit was no longer on Fall River. Gradually, since first discovered, the main body of the refugees had moved forward within the New York Indian Lands to the Verdigris River and had halted in the neighborhood of Fort Roe, where the government agents had received them; but smaller or larger groups, chiefly of the sick and their friends, were scattered all along the way from Walnut Creek.179 Some of the very belated exiles were as far westward as the Arkansas, over a hundred miles distant. Obviously, the thing to do first was to get them all together in one place. There were reasons why the Verdigris Valley was a most desirable location for the refugees. Only a very few white people were settled there and, as they were intruders and had not a shadow of legal claim to the land upon which they had squatted, any objections that they might make to the presence of the Indians could be ignored.180