To the editor:

A century ago, Kansas University Chancellor Strong wanted to close Manhattan’s campus and turn Haskell into an agricultural “satellite” campus under his control. This power-grab involved Superintendent Hervey Peairs, who tried to convince Washington officials his Haskell Institute was no longer needed for Indian education! K-State students did their “durndest” to stop it (Journal-World, Old Home Town, Feb. 2). They succeeded.

In 1909, Haskell’s farm operations were only beginning to expand from the uplands, adjacent to the buildings, down into the Wakarusa Bottoms. This wettest and most flood-prone of the original 18,000 acres of periodic prairie wetlands survived white settlement precisely because those who tried to farm it failed repeatedly.

The 1909, “Indian Leader” reported the abysmal failure of farming these wetlands. Peairs and his successors lobbied for the next decade before Congress finally authorized substantial funds needed to “tame the swamp.” Even with deep drainage ditches and substantial dike enclosures, an expensive tiling network had to be placed underground before crops could be planted.

The Haskell Farm is historically significant, but its importance to Haskell alumni and other Native Americans pales compared to the much larger story of how this wetland played a crucial part in how native children survived our nation’s most sustained campaign of cultural extermination. Like the K-State students of a century ago, Haskell students and alumni will do their “durndest” to thwart the asphalt assault on this historic place.

Mike Caron,
Lawrence