Jayhawker

These gangs were guerrillas who often clashed with pro-slavery groups from Missouri, known at the time in Kansas Territory as "Border Ruffians" or "Bushwhackers".

[6] It was established that the term was adopted as a nickname by a group of emigrants from Illinois traveling to California in 1849, who got stuck in the Death Valley.

[14]Men are now at Fort Scott, working by the day for a living as loyal as Gen. Blunt himself, who have had every hoof confiscated, or jayhawked, which is about the same thing, for all the benefit it is to the Government.

[18] G. Murlin Welch, a historian of the territorial period, described the Jayhawkers as bands of men that were willing to fight, kill, and rob for a variety of motives that included defense against pro-slavery "Border Ruffians", abolition, driving pro-slavery settlers from their claims of land, revenge, and/or plunder and personal profit.

[24] McReynolds reportedly picked up the term from Pat Devlin, a Free State partisan described as "nothing more nor less than a dangerous bully.

McReynolds understood Devlin had acquired his horses in the same manner the Jayhawk got its prey, and used the term in a Southern Kansas Herald newspaper column to describe a case of theft in the ongoing partisan violence.

The term was quickly picked up by other newspapers, and "Jayhawkers" soon came to denote the militants and thieves affiliated with the Free State cause.

When Charles Jennison, one of the territorial-era jayhawkers, was authorized to raise a regiment of cavalry to serve in the Union army, he characterized the unit as the "Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers" on a recruiting poster.

[citation needed] The Jayhawker term was applied not only to Jennison and his command, but to any Kansas troops engaged in punitive operations against the civilian population of western Missouri, in which the plundering and arson that characterized the territorial struggles were repeated, but on a much larger scale.

In the first year of the war, much of the movable wealth in western Missouri had been transferred to Kansas, and large swaths of western Missouri had been laid waste, by an assortment of Kansas Jayhawkers ranging from outlaws and independent military bands to rogue federal troops such as Lane's Brigade and Jennison's Jayhawkers.

Intended to eliminate sanctuary and sustenance for pro-Confederate guerrilla fighters, it was enforced by troops from Kansas, and provided an excuse for a final round of plundering, arson, and summary execution perpetrated against the civilian population of western Missouri.

[46] Over time, proud of their state's contributions to the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union, Kansans embraced the "Jayhawker" term.

[48] Over time, the name was gradually supplanted by its shorter variant, and KU's sports teams are now exclusively known as the Kansas Jayhawks.

"[7] In the Pat Devlin stories, the jayhawk is described more in terms of its behavior (bullying, robbing, and killing) than the type of bird it is.