John Mathews, a trader and blacksmith believed to have been the earliest permanent white settler in present Labette County, arrived about 1840 and established a post to trade with the Osage Indians of one of White Hair's villages on the bluff to the northeast. He dug and walled a spring-fed well and built a large double log house that served as both a tavern and trading post. Beginning in the late 1850's, the Humboldt-Fort Gibson Road passed this point. In 1861, Mathews, a Southern sympathizer, was killed by Union troops and his buildings were burned. Following the war, white settlers began to stream in, and the Osages were removed to present Oklahoma. The community established here, called Little Town, became Oswego in 1866.