Jayhawker
Encyclopedia
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 Ruffian
s". 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.
in 1849. 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
.
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:
“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.
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. 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." 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.
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. 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. 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. A newspaper reporter traveling through Kansas in 1863 provided definitions of jayhawker and associated terms:
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." 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." 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. 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. In the words of one observer, "the Kansas-Missouri border was a disgrace even to barbarism."
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). In Louisiana, the term was used to describe anti-Confederate guerrillas, as well as free-booting bands of draft dodgers and deserters.
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.
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.
(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 Ride With the Devil, directed by Ang Lee
, and starring Tobey Maguire
, 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 HH-60
search and rescue helicopter.
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
in Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858...
, where it was adopted by militant bands affiliated with the free-state cause. These bands, known as "Jayhawkers", were guerrilla
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
fighters who often clashed with pro-slavery groups from Missouri known at the time as "Border Ruffian
Border Ruffian
In the decade leading up to the American Civil War, pro-slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring slave state of Missouri. To abolitionists and other Free-Staters, who desired Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a free state, they were collectively known as Border...
s". After the Civil War, the word "Jayhawker" became synonymous with the people of Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
. 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 CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1849. 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
John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States ....
.
The term became part of the lexicon of the Missouri-Kansas border in about 1858, during the Kansas territorial
Kansas Territory
The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Kansas....
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:
“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
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
settlers from their claims of land, revenge, and/or plunder and personal profit.
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. 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." In mid-1858, McReynolds asked Devlin where he had acquired two fine horses that he had recently brought into the town of Osawatomie
Osawatomie, Kansas
Osawatomie is a city in Miami County, Kansas, United States, southwest of Kansas City. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 4,447. It derives its name from two streams nearby, the Osage and Potawatomie.-History:...
. 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.
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. 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. 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. A newspaper reporter traveling through Kansas in 1863 provided definitions of jayhawker and associated terms:
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." 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." 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. 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. In the words of one observer, "the Kansas-Missouri border was a disgrace even to barbarism."
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). In Louisiana, the term was used to describe anti-Confederate guerrillas, as well as free-booting bands of draft dodgers and deserters.
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 KansasUniversity of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
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
Kansas Jayhawks
The sports teams at the University of Kansas are known as the Jayhawks. They are one of three schools in the state of Kansas that participate in NCAA Division I. The Jayhawks are also a member of the Big 12 Conference...
. 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
A cattle drive being held up by Jayhawkers is depicted in The Tall MenThe Tall Men (film)
The Tall Men is a 1955 American western film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Clark Gable, Jane Russell, and Robert Ryan.The 20th Century Fox film was produced by William A. Bacher and William B. Hawks. Sydney Boehm and Frank S...
(1955).
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's Missouran character in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 American revisionist Western film set during and after the end of the American Civil War. It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood , with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Sam Bottoms, and Geraldine Keams.The film was adapted by Sonia Chernus and Philip Kaufman...
(1976) took up the Confederate cause after Redleg Jayhawkers from Kansas killed his son and raped and murdered his wife.
Jayhawker Colonel James Montgomery
James Montgomery (colonel)
James Montgomery was a Jayhawker during the Bleeding Kansas Affair and a controversial Union colonel during the American Civil War...
was portrayed in the 1989 film Glory, where he is referred to as "a real Jayhawker from Kansas."
The 1999 movie Ride With the Devil, directed by Ang Lee
Ang Lee
Ang Lee is a Taiwanese film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman , Sense and Sensibility , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , Hulk , and Brokeback Mountain , for which he won an Academy...
, and starring Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire
Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, and has achieved his greatest fame for his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films.-Early life:...
, Skeet Ulrich
Skeet Ulrich
Bryan Ray Trout , best known as Skeet Ulrich, is an American actor best known for starring in the CBS drama Jericho as Jake Green and for portraying Billy Loomis in Scream...
, and Jewel
Jewel (singer)
Jewel Kilcher , professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet...
depicts Jayhawkers raiding Missouri homesteads.
In a Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
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
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
adopted the name "Jayhawk" for its HH-60
HH-60 Jayhawk
The Sikorsky HH-60J Jayhawk is a multi-mission, twin-engine, medium-range helicopter operated by the United States Coast Guard for search and rescue, law enforcement, military readiness and marine environmental protection missions...
search and rescue helicopter.