Beyond the mountain wall which formed the western boundary of Kansas and Nebraska lay four other territories equally without particular reason for their shape and bounds. Oregon, acquired in 1846, had been divided in 1853 by a line starting at the mouth of the Columbia and running east to the Rockies, cutting off Washington territory on its northern side. The Utah territory which figured in the compromise of 1850, and which Mormon migration had made necessary, extended between California and the Rockies, from Oregon at 42° to New Mexico at 37°. New Mexico, also of the compromise year, reached from Texas to California, south of 37°, and possessed at its northeast corner a panhandle which carried it north to 38° in order to leave in it certain old Mexican settlements.
These divisions of the West embraced in 1854 the whole of the country between California and the states. As yet their boundaries were arbitrary and temporary, but they presaged movements of population which during the next quarter century should break them up still further and provide real colonies in place of the desert and the Indian Country. Congress had no formative part in the work. Population broke down barriers and showed the way, while laws followed and legalized what had been done. The map of 1854 reveals an intent to let the mountain summit remain a boundary, and contains no prophecy of the four states which were shortly to appear.
Great amorphous territories now covered all the plains, and the Rocky Mountains were recognized only as a dividing line.]
For several decades the area of Kansas territory, and the southern part of Nebraska, had been well known as the range of the plains Indians,--Pawnee and Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Apache. Through this range the caravans had gone. Here had been constant military expeditions as well. It was a common summer's campaign for a dragoon regiment to go out from Fort Leavenworth to the mountains by either the Arkansas or Platte route, to skirt the eastern slopes along the southern fork of the Platte, and return home by the other trail. Those military demonstrations, which were believed to be needed to impress the tribes, had made this march a regular performance. Colonel Dodge had done it in the thirties, Sumner and Sedgwick did it in 1857, and there had been numerous others in between. A well-known trail had been worn in this wise from Fort Laramie, on the north, through St. Vrain's, crossing the South Platte at Cherry Creek, past the Fontaine qui Bouille, and on to Bent's Fort and the New Mexican towns. Yet Kansas had slight interest in its western end. Along the Missouri the sections were quarrelling over slavery, but they had scarcely scratched the soil for one-fourth of the length of the territory.