During the early decades of the nineteenth century when those pioneer ornithological enthusiasts, whose names and discoveries are familiar to all students of the science, were pushing beyond the frontiers in quest of new objects of study, the Kansas City region was the gateway to the wilderness and the very outpost of civilization. In this immediate neighborhood where the down-rushing Missouri is joined by the less turbulent Kaw, and where the great river bends finally to the east, were situated the frontier settlements of Independence, Fort Osage (Fort Clark, of Lewis and Clark), Westport, and the great Konzas Indian village, while a short distance up-stream were three other landmarks frequently mentioned by travelers. Fort Leavenworth, the mouth of Little Platte River, and the Black Snake Hills.

These names bring to mind several notable ornithologists and botanists whose published journals and narratives are at once fruitful sources of information to the working student and delightful reading to any person. Of all the young scientists who passed this way in their eagerness to explore the unknown beyond and gather its treasures to science, perhaps none are of more interest, though others may be more widely known, than John K. Townsend and Thomas Nuttall. Nuttall’s discovery here of the bird now known as Harris’s Sparrow (Zonotrichia querula), together with the fact that two other eminent ornithological explorers, at later periods, each believed he had discovered the bird in this same region, renders the tradition of peculiar and obvious local interest.

A long entertained hope of being able to determine the actual locality in Jackson County, Missouri, where Nuttall took the original specimen of this Sparrow, has led the writer to bring together the widely scattered data bearing on the early history of the bird. The facts in question, which do not appear to have been previously assembled, present several interesting features.

Nuttall and Townsend had outfitted in St. Louis in late March, 1834, preparatory to a leisurely pedestrian journey of some three hundred miles across the state to Independence, where they were to join the large caravan under Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, bound for the Columbia River country. On April 28th the party left Independence over the frontier trail to Westport, distant approximately fourteen miles. Some time during the day Nuttall, who was primarily a botanist and is said to have carried no gun, took, or had taken for him by some member of the party, the type specimen of Harris’s Sparrow which he named the Mourning Finch (Fringilla querula). Nuttall writes: “We observed this species, which we at first took for the preceding [White-crowned Sparrow], a few miles to the west of Independence, in Missouri, towards the close of April. It frequents thickets, uttering in the morning, and occasionally at other times, a long, drawling, monotonous and solemn note te de de de. We heard it again on the 5th of May, not far from the banks of the Little Vermilion, of the Kansa.”[3]