From Mr. Avery T. Spencer, of Iola, Allen Co., we have the following account of wholesale outrages on the settlers of our South-Eastern border.
Mr. Spencer left Humboldt, (Allen Co.,) on Tuesday night to procure assistance from the Governor. The days were so hot he traveled only by night, reaching Lawrence yesterday morning. It not being in the power of Gov. Robinson to render the aid desired, Mr. Spencer, in company with Mr. Smith, Private Secretary of the Governor, started for this city, reaching here yesterday afternoon.
Upwards of sixty families from Cherokee – recently McGee – county, (on the Cherokee Neutral Lands) have, within a few days, reached Allen county, having been driven from their homes by a band of Missourians, Arkansans, and Cherokee Indians, under the leadership of one John Matthews, a well known trader of Timber Hill, in the Osage Nation, some 8 miles from our South-eastern border. Threats of an attack on Humboldt, where they had sought safety, have driven many to Le Roy, Coffey County.
The operations of the desperadoes under Matthews extended throughout the neutral lands, 50 by 25 miles, and almost every Union family in that section has been driven away. Their houses have been plundered, the greater portion of their stock seized, and themselves driven from their thriving places without opportunity for a moments preparation. Some were so fortunate as to save their teams and a portion of their stock, but they are the exceptions. Sixteen men are known to have been brutally murdered.
***
The Leavenworth Conservative conveniently failed to mention that these persons were ‘illegal aliens’ on Cherokee Lands who had very recently been removed once or twice by the US Army. The Cherokee Neutral Lands were not subject to Kansas jurisdiction and, therefore, slavery was legal under Cherokee law. The intruders, it appears, were anti-slavery men.
Ken