Jayhawker

Jayhawkers is a term that came to prominence just before the American Civil War in Bleeding Kansas, where it was adopted by militant bands affiliated with the free-state cause. These bands, known as "Jayhawkers", were guerrilla fighters who often clashed with pro-slavery groups from Missouri known at the time as "Border Ruffians". After the Civil War, the word "Jayhawker" became synonymous with the people of Kansas. Today the term is a nickname for a native-born Kansan.

Origin

The origin of the term "Jayhawker" is uncertain. The term was adopted as a nickname by a group of emigrants traveling to California in 1849.[2] The origin of the term may go back as far as the Revolutionary War, when it was reportedly used to describe a group associated with American patriot John Jay.[3]

The term became part of the lexicon of the Missouri-Kansas border in about 1858, during the Kansas territorial period. The term was used to describe militant bands nominally associated with the free-state cause. One early Kansas history contained this succinct characterization of the jayhawkers:[4]:

“Confederated at first for defense against pro-slavery outrages, but ultimately falling more or less completely into the vocation of robbers and assassins, they have received the name --- whatever its origin may be -- of jayhawkers.”

Another historian of the territorial period described the jayhawkers as bands of men that were willing to fight, kill, and rob for a variety of motives that included defense against pro-slavery "Border Ruffians", abolition, driving pro-slavery settlers from their claims of land, revenge, and/or plunder and personal profit.[5]

While the “Bleeding Kansas” era is generally regarded as beginning in 1856, the earliest documented uses of the term "jayhawker" during the Kansas troubles were in late 1858, after the issue of slavery in Kansas had essentially been decided in favor of the Free State cause.[6][7] The most credible explanation of why the term (as applied to the Kansas troubles) emerged at that time is provided in the retrospective account of Kansas newspaperman John McReynolds. McReynolds reportedly picked up the term from Pat Devlin, a Free State partisan described as "nothing more nor less than a dangerous bully."[8] In mid-1858, McReynolds asked Devlin where he had acquired two fine horses that he had recently brought into the town of Osawatomie. Devlin replied that he "got them as the Jayhawk gets its birds in Ireland,” which he explained as follows: “In Ireland a bird, which is called the Jayhawk, flies about after dark, seeking the roosts and nests of smaller birds, and not only robs nests of eggs, but frequently kills the birds.” McReynolds understood Devlin had acquired his horses in the same manner the Jayhawk got its prey, and used the term in a Southern Kansas Herald newspaper column to describe a case of theft in the ongoing partisan violence. The term was quickly picked up by other newspapers, and "Jayhawkers" soon came to denote the militants and thieves affiliated with the Free State cause.[9]

The meaning of the jayhawker term evolved in the opening year of the Civil War. When Charles Jennison, one of the territorial-era jayhawkers, was authorized to raise a regiment of cavalry to serve in the Union army, he characterized the unit as the "Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers" on a recruiting poster. The regiment was officially termed the 7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, but was popularly known as Jennison's Jayhawkers.[10] Thus, the term became associated with Union troops from Kansas. After the regiment was banished from the Missouri-Kansas border in the spring of 1862, it went on to participate in several battles including Union victories of the Battle of Iuka and the Second Battle of Corinth. Late in the war, the regiment returned to Kansas and contributed to Union victory in one of the last major battles in the Missouri-Kansas theatre, the Battle of Mine Creek.

The jayhawker term was applied not only to Jennison and his command, but to any Kansas troops engaged in predatory operations against the civilian population of western Missouri, in which the plundering and arson that characterized the territorial struggles were repeated, but on a much larger scale. For example, the term "jayhawkers" also encompassed Senator Jim Lane and his Kansas Brigade, which sacked and burned Osceola, Missouri in the opening months of the war after their defeat by Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard in the Battle of Dry Wood Creek.[11][12] A number of other smaller Missouri towns, and large swaths of the Missouri countryside, were similarly plundered and laid waste by Union forces as back and forth raids were undertaken by forces from both sides.

However, lending to confusion over the precise meaning of the jayhawker term along the Missouri-Kansas border, it also continued to be used to describe outright criminals like Marshall Cleveland that operated on a smaller scale and outside the Union military command, but still under the cover of supposed Unionism.[13] A newspaper reporter traveling through Kansas in 1863 provided definitions of jayhawker and associated terms[14]:

Jayhawkers, Red Legs, and Bushwhackers are everyday terms in Kansas and Western Missouri. A Jayhawker is a Unionist who professes to rob, burn out and murder only rebels in arms against the government. A Red Leg is a Jayhawker originally distinguished by the uniform of red leggings. A Red Leg, however, is regarded as more purely an indiscriminate thief and murderer than the Jayhawker or Bushwhacker. A Bushwhacker is a rebel Jayhawker, or a rebel who bands with others for the purpose of preying upon the lives and property of Union citizens. They are all lawless and indiscriminate in their iniquities.

The depredations of the jayhawkers contributed to the descent of the Missouri-Kansas border region into some of the most vicious guerrilla fighting of the Civil War. In the first year of the war, much of the movable wealth in western Missouri had been transferred to Kansas, and large swaths of western Missouri had been laid waste, by an assortment of Kansas jayhawkers ranging from outlaws and independent military bands to rogue federal troops such as Lane's Brigade and Jennison's Jayhawkers. In February 1862, the Union command instituted martial law due to "the crime of armed depradations or jay-hawking having reached a height dangerous to the peace and posterity to the whole State (Kansas) and seriously compromising the Union cause in the border counties of Missouri." [15] One expert on the jayhawkers stated that the Border War would have been bad enough given the fighting between secessionist and unionist Missourians, "but it was basically Kansas craving for revenge and Kansas craving for loot that set the tone of the war. Nowhere else, with the grim exception of the East Kentucky and East Tennessee mountains, did the Civil War degenerate so completely into a squalid, murderous, slugging match as it did in Kansas and Missouri."[16] The most infamous event in this war of raids and reprisals was Confederate leader William Quantrill's retaliatory attack on Lawrence, Kansas known as the Lawrence Massacre.[17] In response to Quantrills' raid, the Union command issued Order No. 11, the forced depopulation of specified Missouri border lands. Intended to eliminate sanctuary and sustenance for pro-Confederate guerilla fighters, it was enforced by troops from Kansas, and provided an excuse for a final round of pludering, arson, and summary execution perpretated against the civilian population of western Missouri.[18] In the words of one observer, "the Kansas-Missouri border was a disgrace even to barbarism." [19]

As the war continued, the "jayhawker" term came to be used by Confederates as a derogatory term for any troops from Kansas, but the term also had different meanings in different parts of the county. In Arkansas, the term was used by Confederate Arkansans as an epithet for any marauder, robber, or thief (regardless of Union or Confederate affiliation).[20] In Louisiana, the term was used to describe anti-Confederate guerrillas, as well as free-booting bands of draft dodgers and deserters.[21]

Over time, proud of their State's contributions to the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union, Kansans embraced the "Jayhawker" term. The term came to be applied to people or items related to Kansas, similar to the terms "Hoosier" for Indiana, "Sooner" for Oklahoma, "Tar Heel" for North Carolina, and "Buckeye" for Ohio.

Relationship to the University of Kansas Jayhawk

When the University of Kansas fielded their first football team in 1890, the team was called the Jayhawkers. Over time, the name was gradually supplanted by its shorter variant, and KU’s sports teams are now almost exclusively known as the Jayhawks. In the traditions promoted by KU, the jayhawk is said to be a combination of two birds, “the blue jay, a noisy, quarrelsome thing known to rob other nests, and the sparrow hawk, a stealthy hunter.”

Historic descriptions of the ornithological origin of the “jayhawker’ term have varied. Writing on the troubles in Kansas Territory in 1959, one journalist stated the jayhawk was a hawk that preys on the jay. One of the “Jayhawkers of ‘49” recalled that the name sprung from their observation of hawks gracefully sailing in the air until “the audience of jays and other small but jealous and vicious birds sail in and jab him until he gets tired of show life and slides out of trouble in the lower earth.” In the Pat Devlin stories, the jayhawk is described more in terms of its behavior (bullying, robbing, and killing) than the type of bird it is.

The link between the term “Jayhawkers” and any specific kind of mythical bird, if it ever existed, had been lost or at least obscured by the time KU’s bird mascot was invented in 1912. The originator of the bird mascot, Henry Maloy, struggled for over two years to create a pictorial symbol for the team, until hitting upon the bird idea. As explained by Mr. Maloy, “the term ‘jayhawk’ in the school yell was a verb and the term ‘jayhawkers’ was the noun.” KU’s current Jayhawk tradition largely springs from Frank W. Blackmar, a KU professor. In his 1926 address on the origin of the Jayhawk, Blackmar specifically referenced the blue jay and sparrow hawk. Blackmar’s address served to soften the link between KU’s athletic team moniker and the Jayhawkers of the Kansas territorial period, and helped explain the relatively recently invented Jayhawk pictorial symbol with a myth that appears to have been of even more recent fabrication.

Cultural influence

The football team at the University of Kansas in Lawrence was originally called the Jayhawkers, and the university's sports teams are now known as the Jayhawks.

A cattle drive being held up by Jayhawkers is depicted in The Tall Men (1955).

Clint Eastwood's Missouran character in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) took up the Confederate cause after Redleg Jayhawkers from Kansas killed his son and raped and murdered his wife.

Jayhawker Colonel James Montgomery was portrayed in the 1989 film Glory, where he is referred to as "a real Jayhawker from Kansas."

The 1999 movie directed by Ang Lee, Ride With the Devil starring Tobey McGuire, Skeet Ulrich, and Jewel depicts Jayhawkers raiding Missouri homesteads.

In a Gunsmoke episode called "The Jayhawkers", men of that name extort money from cattle-drivers by threatening to scatter their herds unless paid off.

Plunderers and militant abolitionists were referred to as "Jayhawkers" or "Red Legs" and both were used as terms of derision towards those from Kansas after the Civil War. The term "Jayhawk" has evolved over the years to a term of pride used by some Kansans. The term "Red Leg" as applied to Kansans has disappeared from common lexicon.

Items stolen in raids into Missouri were frequently referred to as having been "Jayhawked".

The United States Coast Guard adopted the name "Jayhawk" for its search and rescue helicopter model HH-60J.

See also

• Bushwhacker
• Border Ruffian
• Quantrill's Raiders

External links

• Seventh Regiment (Jennison's Jayhawkers) Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Kansas Historical Society
• "The Mythical Jayhawk," Kansas Historical Quarterly, Kansas Historical Society
• Cool Things - Pogo Comic Strip featuring Jayhawk, Kansas Historical Society

References

• Castel, Albert (1997). Civil War in Kansas: Reaping the Whirlwind. (ISBN 0-7006-0872-9)
• Kerrihard, Bo. "America's Civil War: Missouri and Kansas." TheHistoryNet.
• Starr, Steven J (1974). Jennison's Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and its Commander. (ISBN 0-8071-0218-0)
• Wellman, Paul. (1962) A Dynasty of Western Outlaws (details the origins of the James-Younger and other outlaw gangs in the Kansas-Missouri border war).