COUNCIL GROVE, Kan. - One afternoon in late November 1845, a small group of Kanza Indian men rode into a camp of freighters at the Big John Creek crossing of the Santa Fe Road two miles east of Council Grove. The Indians invited James Josiah Webb and companions to visit their village two or three miles downstream. Here a "swap" would take place, Webb trading a blanket coveted by one of the Kanza for a pail full of honey.
Sure enough, the next morning Webb and his companions enjoyed a sweet breakfast in a Kanza lodge: "They insisted we should take some honey; and a wooden bowl, or deep trencher, filled with honey, and a part of a buffalo horn so shaped that it could be used as a spoon, was set before us. And we enjoyed a feast, passing the spoon back and forth, Indian fashion." Afterwards, one of the Kanza warmed a honey-filled rawhide bag in front of the fire, occasionally kneading it, then filled a pail full to be carried on horseback to the Big John Creek campsite, where that evening Webb once again indulged in copious amounts of honey, in consequence suffering a stupendous bellyache.
