Platte Purchase

The Platte Purchase was a land acquisition in 1836 by the United States government from American Indian tribes of the region.

[1] The area acquired was almost as large as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, and extended Missouri westward along the river.

St. Joseph, one of the main river ports of departure for the westward migration of American pioneers, was located in the new acquisition.

On January 27, 1835, Senator Lewis F. Linn wrote John Dougherty, an Indian agent, to inquire about acquiring the land.

Andrew S. Hughes, the US Indian agent for the Sac and Fox tribes, presided over a meeting of Missouri residents who formally asked Congress to acquire the land.

Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton introduced a bill to acquire the land and it was approved with little opposition in June 1836.

In October 1837, the Missouri General Assembly accepted the land and placed it all initially in the newly created Platte County.

It required a second relocation of tribes who had just been moved "permanently" west of the Missouri border, as part of the forced Indian removal policy of ethnic cleansing from lands wanted by whites.

The U.S. Government set up a United States General Land Office in Plattsburg, Missouri to handle the settlement.

They brought enslaved African Americans with them or purchased them at slave markets, to work such Southern commodity crops as the labor-intensive hemp and tobacco.