In 1838 disputes over the Sullivan Line were to touch off the bloodless Honey War over the boundary between Missouri and Iowa.
In exchange for this, the tribe was paid merchandise worth $1,500 along with a fort to protect them and a government sanctioned trading post.
Sullivan was instructed to run by his boss William Rector, head of the survey agency for Missouri and Illinois territories to draw a line 100 miles (160 km) north from the mouth of the Kansas River and thence east 150 miles (240 km) and 40 chains to the Des Moines River.
[2] Sullivan was to be criticized later for not extending the line all the way to the similarly named (but different) Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi River at about the latitude of Fort Madison, Iowa.
Sullivan drifted northward by 2 degrees as he headed east to the Des Moines which he described as shallow and calm when he crossed it at just south of Farmington, Iowa.
There was a debate about extending the northern border 80 miles (130 km) further north to the mouth of the Rock River (Illinois) at Rock Island, Illinois and the western boundary 30 miles (48 km) further west to the mouth of the Wolf River (Kansas) at White Cloud, Kansas.
Brown said the border should be 9.5 miles (15.3 km) north of the Sullivan Line at what is now Lacey-Keosauqua State Park in Keosauqua, Iowa.