At Weeks End
Just call me Indiana Johnson.
For years Ive been fascinated by the Vegetarian Colony proposed in the 1850s to spring up south of Humboldt as a utopian community. Truth was, it had a dystopian outcome, lasting about a year, with most of those who ventured from the East either dying or finding their ways out of Kansas as quickly as they could.
Within a year, the colony was a memory.
Now and again Ive traipsed over land that may have been occupied by the colonists, occasionally finding something that fortified my interest, such as square nails, a remnant of an iron pot and other artifacts.
Then, a few months ago, I read We Went to Kansas, a compilation of diary entries of Miriam Davis Colt, which sets out in detail her plight and that of others who came to populate the colony. On arrival they found its promoters had greatly exaggerated the colonys prospects. Most depressingly, they had to bury many of their companions, their deaths brought about by fevers and starvation.
The crops and garden vegetables not pilfered by Osage Indians withered from a hot Kansas summer that year that came with a drought.
The colony as a community never materialized. Rather, those living within the several square miles of its alleged confines made do as best they could in simple log cabins or similar shelters that did little to ward off the elements and infestations of mosquitoes and other pests.
Guided by the diary, I altered my search to what might have been cabin sites.
When terraces were constructed in a field near Vegetarian Creek a stream less than five miles long named for the colony the second terrace I walked yielded in one spot a couple of rusted tools indicative of those used in the 1800s, a few pottery shards that diagnostically dated to the mid-1800s and some fired rock.
The most important find was a Minie ball. Minie balls were a huge technological advance for muzzle-loading rifles, with rings about their bases that caused them to spin on discharge and thus be far more accurate than round balls. They were the bullet of choice in the Civil War. (Incidentally, Ive found about two dozen Minie balls in Humboldt, raided during the war and then protected by a Union detachment.)
While the bullet wasnt altogether definitive, it was an encouraging find, although it could have been fired from elsewhere or lost by Confederate guerillas on their way to ravage Humboldt. Its configuration fits the inventory of bullets available to the South.
More recently Ive come on another feature that may be a remnant of the colony, a hand-dug well with nicely laid-up rock walls.
Research of the well is planned in the coming months, with the aid of my intrepid brother-in-law, Todd Mintz. We also intend to search near the well and in a couple of groves of seemingly very old cedars for evidence of a dwelling.
Stay tuned. We may find evidence in and near the well to better to give information about the colonys presence.
