Platte Purchase
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Platte Purchase in 1836 added 3,149 square miles (8,156 km²) to the state of Missouri making up its northwest corner.
The Platte Purchase includes Andrew 435 square miles (1,127 km²), Atchison (545 square miles), Buchanan 410 square miles (1,060 km²), Holt 462 square miles (1,197 km²), Nodaway 877 square miles (2,271 km²) and Platte (420 square miles) counties.
These areas now include Kansas City International Airport (and the northwest Kansas City suburbs), St. Joseph, Missouri, Mound City, Missouri and Maryville, Missouri. Almost all of Missouri's portion of Interstate 29 is within its bounds. It is an area almost as big as the combined size of Delaware and Rhode Island.
The purchase was presided over by William Clark (of Lewis & Clark fame) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
At the time, the western border of Missouri was the equivalent of the mouth of the Kaw River in Kansas City (94 degrees 36 minutes West longitude)[1] (which is also the border between Missouri and Kansas). The purchase extended the Missouri border in the northwest to 95 degrees 46 minutes West longitude).[2]
Current maps show Platte County's, and all counties north, as having an eastern border further east than the border between Missouri and Kansas south of the river, which no longer conforms to the mouth of the Kaw River.
The tribes involved were the Ioway tribe (with Chiefs Mahaska and No Heart) and the combined entity of the Sac and Fox tribes.
The tribes were paid $7,500 for their land. The government was to "build five comfortable houses for each tribe, break up 200 acres (0.8 km²) of land, fence 200 acres (0.8 km²) of land, furnish a farmer, blacksmith, teacher, interpreter, provide agricultural implements, furnish livestock" and a host of other small items. The tribes agreed to move to reservations west of the Missouri River in what was to become Kansas and Nebraska. At this time there were approximately 1,000 Ioways, 500 Sacs, and 1,200 Foxes.
The tribes had earlier been promised to keep the land permanently. However white settlers (including most spectacularly Joseph Robidoux) quickly broke the agreement.
Martin Van Buren proclaimed the area part of Missouri on 28 March 1837.
It is a historic region of the United States.
