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This item was written in 1917 by Kansas State Historical Society Secretary William Elsey Connelley. Included is both the handwritten draft and typed draft of the work. In the item, the closing piece of his history of the Potawatomie Prairie Band Indians, then located on a reservation in Jackson County, Kansas, Connelley provides his assessment of the probable future of the Prairie Band. Having witnessed their attributes firsthand, Connelley argues that the Prairie Band convinced him that his "faith in the competency and efficiency of the Indian race was well founded." In order to reinforce this belief Connelley then points to events then happening in Europe, stating that "savages, you say. Savages? Look on the reeking battlefields of Europe. All the cruelties perpetrated by the Indians on their despoilers through ten generations could not equal those heaped on France and Belgium in four years by a civilized and enlightened nation." In the end, Connelley maintains that the closure of the frontier in the West will likely spell the end for the "proud possessors of the greatest continent."
Creator: Connelley, William Elsey, 1855-1930
Date: 1917
Item Number: 219358
Call Number: William Elsey Connelley Coll. 16, Box 21Folder: Potawatomie - mss Prairie Band
KSHS Identifier: DaRT ID: 219358
Collections - Manuscript - Connelley, William Elsey
Date - 1910s - 1917
Government and Politics - State Government - State agencies and programs - Agencies - Kansas State Historical Society
Objects and Artifacts - Communication Artifacts - Documentary Artifact - Manuscript
People - American Indians - Tribes - Potawatomi
People - Notable Kansans - Connelley, William E, 1855-1930
Places - Cities and towns - Topeka
Places - Counties - Shawnee
Thematic Time Period - World War I, 1914 - 1919
Type of Material - Unpublished documents - Manuscript
http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/219358