Black Bob (Shawnee chief)
[2] He was known for being one of the last Shawnee to resist leaving for the Indian Territory, and for keeping his band together until his death, holding their lands in common, as they moved between Missouri, Arkansas, and the Black Bob Reservation in Kansas.
"[2] The Cape Girardeau band believed that government commissioners had misled them about the 1825 treaty and argued that they had never agreed to allow any Ohio Shawnees to settle on the western lands.
As a result, a portion of the Shawnees under the leadership of Black Bob did not move to eastern Kansas and instead settled along the White River in Arkansas.
Meanwhile, the Rogerstown and Fish bands traveled directly to eastern Kansas, where successive parties of Ohio Shawnees joined them over the next several years.
"[6] The Black Bob band had written directly to President Andrew Jackson, noting that "For the last forty years we have resided in Upper Louisiana," (which was now called Missouri), "peaceably following our usual occupations for the support of our families", explaining that the Shawnee lands in Kansas had "climate colder than we have been accustomed to, or wish to live in," and they would be "surrounded by people strangers to us."
[3] During the years of the Civil War, Shawnees from the Absentee-Shawnee and other bands fled to the 33,000 acre Black Bob Reservation as refugees.
[5] A "record of land selections made by members of Black Bob's Band of Shawnee" can be found in the James Burnett Abbott Collection of the Kansas Historical Society.
Then, on account of the losses and sufferings to which they were subjected from bushwhackers on one hand, and Kansas thieves on the other, they left their homes and went to the Indian Territory in a body.
"[9] Tribal members petitioned the US Government in the 1870s to "keep their land intact," noting that since the war, the band had been "composed largely of women and children."
"[14] Another account states: The border troubles before and during the Civil War made it impossible for these Shawnees to remain on their land, and they went to the Indian Territory.
As it was most excellent land--fertile soil, well watered and timbered--settlers rushed in at the close of the war and soon every quarter-section of it was occupied by a claimant.
"[19] The squatters on the Black Bob Reservation remained a topic of discussion as late as 1890 in The Indian Chieftain newspaper, published in Vinita, Oklahoma.
The United States District Attorney of Kansas, under Instructions from Attorney-General Miller, has just filed a bill in equity in the Circuit Court of the United States at Topeka, on behalf of the Black Bob band of Shawnee Indians sad ajrsinsfc the settlers who have squatted on the Black Bob reservation in Johnson County and the speculators who hold unapproved deeds from the Indians.
The bill prays that the settlers be ejected and that they be held to account to the Indians for the rents and profits of the land for the last twenty years.
This suit involves about 39,000 acres of the best land in Johnson County, which have been occupied by squatters ever since the Indians were driven off by Quantrell and his men in 1861.
Great excitement prevails among the people on the reservation over the prospects cf being ejected, losing the improvements which they have placed there, and belay, mulcted for rents and profits besides.
Might has been right on the reservation for a long time, and for years it has furnished tho courts of Johnson County the largest proportion of their criminal business.
