John C. Sullivan
John C. Sullivan was a surveyor who established the Indian Boundary Line and the Sullivan Line which were to form the boundary between Native Americans and white settlers in Indian Territory from Iowa to Texas.
Following the Indian Removal Act in 1830 all Native Americans west of the Mississippi River and many east of the river were moved west of the Indian Boundary Line. In 1838 disputes over the Sullivan Line were to touch off the bloodless Honey War over the boundary between Missouri and Iowa.
Background
In the Treaty of Fort Clark in 1808, the Osage Nation, the most influential tribe in Missouri, ceded all lands west of Fort Clark near Sibley, Missouri in Jackson County, Missouri. 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.The specific boundaries:
The treaty provided the following provision:
Indian Boundary Line
In 1816 the boundary was "adjusted" west to the mouth of the Kansas River on the Missouri River which was a more significant geographic boundary than Fire Prairie Creek. Although no treaties were in place acknowledging the new line, the United States began to survey the new boundary line to which all were to be removed.Sullivan was instructed to run by his boss William Rector, head of the survey agency for Missouri and Illinois territories to draw a line north from the mouth of the Kansas River and thence east and 40 chains to the Des Moines River.
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 was to begin his survey on the "far bank" of the confluence on the Left Bank of the Missouri at what is now the Clay County, Missouri and Platte County, Missouri line at what is now property owned by Kansas City Downtown Airport.
The mark that now forms the Iowa-Missouri border was placed just north of Sheridan, Missouri.
Joseph C. Brown in 1823 survey the boundary south to the Arkansas boundary. From Arkansas it has a small eastward angle to the Arkansas River at Fort Smith, Arkansas where it then heads due south before briefly following the Red River of the South to the Texas border.
The line now forms the border between Missouri and Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Sullivan Line
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.Sullivan was a delegate to the Missouri Constitutional Convention that defined the state's borders.
The initial proposal for the boundaries of Missouri were close to the boundaries of today and followed the original Osage territory. There was a debate about extending the northern border further north to the mouth of the Rock River (Illinois) at Rock Island, Illinois and the western boundary further west to the mouth of the Wolf River (Kansas) at White Cloud, Kansas. The additions would have made Missouri the largest state in the Union and under Congressional pressure it was dropped back to the current configuration since the lines were already marked (plus the addition of the Bootheel to accommodate the wishes of Mississippi River towns to stay with their Missouri compatriots.
The state's official description was:
The wording in the Constitution of "north along the said meridian line, to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the River Des Moines, making said line correspond with the Indian boundary-line" was to stir problems later since Sullivan had not crossed any rapids while a set of rapids on the Mississippi River called the Des Moines Rapids defined the northern navigational end of the Mississippi which was deep in the rapids.
In 1824, treaties for the Ioway, Sauk and Meskwaki ceding their land in Missouri implied that the Sullivan Line was Missouri's northern border all the way to the Mississippi.
Missouri did not formally move to claim the land south of the Sullivan Line to the mouth of the Des Moines at Keokuk, Iowa became known as Half Breed Tract and was declared part of Iowa when it joined the Union in 1846. Since it is south of the Sullivan Line it is the southernmost point in Iowa.