The Platte Purchase gave us our northwest corner.
In the early to mid-1830s, a big region now comprising six counties—Andrew County, Atchison County, Buchanan County, Holt County, Nodaway County, and Platte County—was known as the Platte Country. Initially excluded from the state of Missouri, the government set out to purchase the land from the Sauk, Fox, and Ioway Indians. The land quickly became a source of contention involving the federal government, the state of Missouri, and several Native American tribes.
The highly desirable Platte Country
Bordered by Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, the land runs alongside the east bank of the Missouri River, following Missouri’s upper western border. The Platte region was idyllic, consisting of some two million acres—over 3,000 square miles—of fertile prairie and timberland. At that time, several tribes, including the Sauk and Fox, Medawah-Kanton, Wahpacoota, Wahpeton, Omaha, Iowa, Otoe, Missouria, Sisseton Sioux, and Potawatomi, had claims to the land and lived and hunted on it. Meanwhile, growing hordes of westbound Anglo families—settlers who were emigrating from Europe to America—saw the Platte Country as a beckoning opportunity to settle on rich land and find a fresh beginning.
Despite a law expressly forbidding it, early in the decade, many would-be settlers who saw the Platte land as ideal for farming began building homes and settlements there.
Fortunately for the land-hungry Anglos, the federal government was taking full advantage of the Indian Removal Act, a draconian law that President Andrew Jackson had ramrodded through Congress in 1830. A reading of the act might indicate that its authors’ motives were benign. As written, the object of the act was to provide “a liberal and equitable exchange of lands,” as well as to assume full payment for the Native Americans’ relocation. The reality was considerably more chilling. In an ongoing effort to secure ever more land for the increasing numbers of westbound immigrants, the law provided legal grounds for removing entire tribes from their homelands and relocating them, sometimes by force, on random and often barren reserves west of the Mississippi.
• This map of Platte Country shows the segment of land known as the Platte Purchase. • Seth Garcia
The extension of the western border
In 1832, Governor John Miller addressed the state assembly regarding Missouri potentially acquiring Platte Country as part of the state. He pointed out that the acquisition of the Platte Country would extend Missouri’s western border along the Missouri River north of the Kansas River and would boost the state’s economy by welcoming a raft of White settlers.
The Platte region was comparatively small, given the vast tribal concessions being made at the time. As was the government’s custom, a given tribe’s displacement would be negotiated through a series of treaties. This did not bode well for the Native Americans.
Eventually, treaties pushed the tribes ever farther onto poor land that no Anglos wanted at the time. As historian H. Jason Combs notes in his dissertation, Early settlement of a frontier community: The Platte Purchase, “Plagued by disease and starvation brought on by White settlers, the Native Americans were not in a strong position to bargain with government officials.”
The treaties resulted in progressively larger cessions of Indian land to the federal government.
At the 1830 Treaty of Prairie du Chien negotiations, government representatives conducted the proceed-ings without providing interpreters, leaving the various tribal representatives ignorant of the terms they were signing. Without realizing it, the Sauk and Fox, Sioux, Iowa, Omaha, and Otoe tribes were at risk of losing their hunting grounds in western Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota. In 1833, at the so-called Treaty of Chicago, the Chippewa, Ottawa, Ojibway, and Potawatomi tribes ceded approximately five million acres of land in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan to the United States.
In a curious oversight, however, the government representatives neglected to acquire the fertile Platte region. When Missouri’s government officials heard that the federal land acquisitions resulting from the 1833 treaty left the Platte region in Native American control, they were apoplectic. Missouri government officials were not about to let that stand. They pressured the federal government to revise the as-yet unsigned treaty with the three tribes, rewriting it to include Platte Country.
Missouri senators Lewis F. Linn and Thomas Hart Benton applied tremendous—and ultimately, successful pressure on Congress to block the ratification of the Chicago treaty and to amend it to include Platte Country.
In 1834, the Senate ratified a revised version of the treaty, conditional upon the tribes agreeing to the new terms. Secretary of War Lewis Cass sent Thomas J.V. Owen, the Indian agent for Chicago, to inform the tribal leaders of the revised treaty and to secure their agreement.
The tribes consent to the treaty
Despite the tribes’ adverse reaction to the new treaty due to its unfavorable land offerings, an agreement was reached in the Treaty of 1836 and signed by several tribes, including the Iowa, Sauk, Meskwaki, and some bands of the Potawatomi. In exchange, the tribes were given $7,500, livestock, and cabins. The agreement over the Platte region was made all the easier by the fact that a large number of White settlers had already begun moving onto the land. In exchange, the tribes were assigned considerably less favorable land in present-day Kansas and Nebraska.
When the federal government assumed control of what was now referred to as the Platte Purchase, it opened the door to its annexation by Missouri the following year. By this time, the Potawatomi had splintered into several bands, and the majority of them—unaware of the terms of the recent treaty—were moving from parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan into Missouri and onto the Platte Purchase. Still believing the land was theirs, they remained, despite the rapidly burgeoning White presence. The following year, President Martin Van Buren ordered them removed.
A crucial facet of each treaty was the issue of compensation—what to give the Native Americans for their land. In exchange for these vast concessions and in an attempt to “civilize” (in the language of that time) the Native Americans by converting them to farmers, the government assigned each tribe a specific parcel of land on which to settle and raise crops. Each tribe was allotted a sum of money, along with farming implements, as well as Anglo blacksmiths and agricultural advisers. When various tribes requested more money with which to purchase necessities, they were refused.
Former explorer William Clark, then superintendent of Indian Affairs, stated in a letter during one round of negotiations, “My children, the different sums of money we offered you … is the extent to which we can go. … The part we offered in blacksmiths and farming tools … must remain as is … Your father [the president] is anxious to enable you to improve in agriculture so that you can depend on your own exertions hereafter.”
An unforeseen problem arose almost immediately after Missouri annexed the Platte Purchase. When the state officially opened the door to White settlement, many of the newcomers brought enslaved people with them. This did not trouble the government of Missouri, which had earlier declared itself a slave state. The federal government, however, had made it illegal for settlers to bring their slaves into the Platte region; the Missouri Compromise of 1820—in an effort to control the spread of slavery in new territories—had clearly stated that all land north of the 36°30’ N parallel was to be slave-free. The Platte Purchase was north of the line. It was a detail that both native Missourians and slave-owning newcomers chose to ignore. They would continue to bring slaves along with them, which would ultimately result in the establishment of a large African-American population.
By 1850, according to federal records, the Platte Purchase—in addition to boasting six new counties—contained 4,589 slaves, helping set the stage for the coming Border Wars and the Civil War.
• From top, a 1859 sketch by Daniel Jenks depicts westward
expansion with two covered wagons being ferried down a river. • Library of Congress
The rise of the Trail of Death
The resettlement of the various tribes proved anything but seamless. Today, highway signs in Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois mark their trek, which has been named the Trail of Death.
Communication on the vast frontier was so poor that Native American agents and other federal officials sometimes worked at cross-purposes due to lack of coordination, often resulting in shortages of promised food and supplies. Also, in many cases, land that had been promised to the tribes in perpetuity was soon overrun by White settlers, causing the government to move the tribes time and time again. According to historian Dave Edmunds in his book The Prairie Potawatomi Removal of 1833, the entire process was “characterized by misadministration and poor planning.”
• This mural by George Gray, Platte Purchase Centennial, depicts the Platte Purchase agreement in 1836. The original painting was recently restored and is now displayed at the Pony Express National Museum
in St. Joseph. • The State Historical Society of Missouri
The Platte Purchase today
The 19th-century belief in Manifest Destiny shaped our state demographically, culturally, and economically. Native American tribes were forced to relocate to land considered less desirable at the time in Kansas and Nebraska, while slaveholders brought African Americans into the area.
The land was valuable for farming and remains the predominant industry in our state still into today. St. Joseph and Maryville are the largest towns in this largely rural region, where Maryville hosts Northwest Missouri State University.
This northwestern part of Missouri that was acquired by the Platte Purchase also hosts the Kansas City International Airport and over 20,000 acres of Conservation Areas. Many state parks have developed along this land as well, including Big Lake, Lewis and Clark, and Weston Bend state parks.
From resettlement to resources to rural land acquisition, the Platte Purchase shaped our state in more ways than simply its physical shape on a map.
Feature photo: This painting, “The First Discussion of the Platte Purchase,” is at the Missouri State Capitol. The painting shows general Andrew S. Hughes and general Alexander W. Doniphan discussing the Platte Purchase.
This article was orginally printed in the October 2025 issue of Missouri Life.
