175th party sounds like fun, but it needs to be thoughtful

Break out the birthday candles in big bunches. Platte County is on the cusp of celebrating 175 years as a constitutional county. But just like for America, the realities within our history are not always pleasant or pretty. Extra fun is planned in 2014, but let’s make it a thoughtful milestone. First, the public is invited to a kickoff for 175th festivities at 11 a.m. Dec. 31, at the Platte County Courthouse in Platte City. We’ll likely read a few comments from those who witnessed the founding and talk about special events in the year ahead. A committee of history buffs with help from the Platte County Parks and Recreation Department is coordinating observances with communities. But where do you start and what do you highlight? Platte County was on the edge of the last major glacier about 12,000 years ago. Early settlers and modern archeologists alike noted artifact finds in the county from the Hopewell culture of Native Americans, which peaked roughly from 100 B.C. to 400 A.D. After 1492, modern horses came with the Europeans and shifted the tribal landscape across North America for Indian tribes. French fur trappers likely tramped up the Line Creek, Bee Creek and Platte River valleys long before Lewis and Clark paddled past in 1804. But change speeded up after Missouri became a state in 1820. Missouri’s state line originally ran straight north and south through where the Kansas River emptied into the Missouri River. Platte County was beyond and considered Indian Territory by treaty. Various tribes passed through as the United States expanded west and continued a genocidal trend of breaking treaties and crushing native cultures. After a few centuries of commercial trapping, hide trading and sustenance hunting, it’s unlikely that the transplanted tribes found much prosperity here. Plus the European tide wanted more land, and the county offered a well-watered land with forests and prairies adjoining a river that served as the main highway for the West. Annexation of land east of the Missouri River, the Platte Purchase, came in 1837. Settlers rushed in and laid claims. The counties for the state’s northwest corner were surveyed and mapped out. Some of those same settlers or their children marched off to wrest more of the West from Mexico in the 1840s. They also brought slaves. This county was ground zero for the nation’s bitter feuding over whether Kansas would become a slave state. When you see the county’s fine old antebellum homes, remember the slaves who enabled that prosperity. The Civil War left the county ripped apart with murder, mayhem and politics. Fast forward through the prairies disappearing, the river being ditched, World War I, World War II, Jim Crow, KCI Airport, Vietnam, the rise of a conservative brand that has split Republicans, modern battles over development scope and a public fried by media overload. Maybe celebrate isn’t the right word for looking back at history. The people who decided how Platte County would mark a century in 1939 probably had an easier time applauding history than the volunteers working on 175th events. Difficult history once buried is rightfully being examined. We can’t ignore the broken promises and warfare between our national government and Native Americans. How can we be sensitive to how brutal slavery was and that it took a century and a Civil Rights Movement to do away with segregation? The history books are filled with the deeds of men but do little justice to the contributions by women. Native wildflowers and prairie grasses are mostly gone and but for the trees in the ridges too rough to plow our natural landscape is gone. But life continues after all. People of varying political, social and religious outlooks will peacefully gather on the Courthouse steps on Dec. 31. Our democracy and community spirit are functioning. We enjoy freedoms and a standard of living envied in many corners of the world. Parks, wildlife areas and thoughtful municipal planning are giving nature a new toehold. The principal that all people deserve an equal right to the pursuit of happiness is greater than at any point in our history. Historical details are fascinating. But love and human spirit surviving the hard times inspire. Here’s a toast to 175 and all the good things we’ll carry forward.