D. T. Mitchell emigrated from Kentucky to Kansas Territory in the 1850s as an attorney and land agent, engaging also in map publishing and later in newspaper publishing and politics. In this September 11, 1855 letter to Kentuckian Richard H. Collins, Mitchell writes from Weston, Missouri of news of a Pawnee attack on a federally-contracted survey party directed by Colonel Charles Manners while mapping Pawnee lands near the Platte River in Nebraska.