An everlasting spring used by Indian tribes for ages became the site of the first known white settlement in southern Kansas when John Mathews settled there about 1841 to serve as blacksmith for the Osages and in 1847 became their licensed trader. During that period his slaves dug and walled the old well. Mathews's home and trading house, a two story double log structure painted white, stood about one hundred eighty feet west, lengthwise north and south, with a large stone fireplace at each end, and his race track and stables were about two blocks southwest. The Little Town Band of Osages occupied a village scattered below the bluffs to the east. Little White Hair, Pawhuska, became village chief about 1855 and succeeded to principal chief of the tribe in March 1861. On September 18, 1861, Mathews was killed by Union soldiers from Fort Scott and his settlement was burned, and Little White Hair immediately moved his village to a point on the Verdigris near present Independence, Kansas.