Historical Marker · No. 21
Council Grove
Morris County · Kansas
Erected by State of Kansas
The stone mission school the board mentions taught Kaw boys for barely three years. The Methodist Episcopal Church South built it under the 1846 treaty's promise of $1,000 a year for Kaw education, finishing it in February 1851: native stone, two stories, eight rooms. Classes began that May under Thomas Sears Huffaker, a 24-year-old teacher, with about 30 Kaw boys aged 6 to 17 living in four upstairs dormitories. No girls attended, and the Kaw sent only orphans and dependents. The school closed in 1854 over its $50-a-year cost per student. Huffaker bought the building in 1865.
What the plaque says
Council Grove Council Grove takes its name from a council of Osage Indians and representatives of the U.S. government that met here in 1825 and ended with a historic purchase. The U.S. paid $800 for a right-of-way across Osage land that became the famous Santa Fe Trail. Thousands of traders passed along this route. After Seth Hays opened his trading post here in 1847, Council Grove became one of the most important points on the trail-- the last place for freighters going west to get supplies until they reached Bent's Fort, 600 miles away. Hays' post stood on what was then the Kaw reservation, a 400-square-mile preserve established in 1846. Squatters began to occupy the Kaws' land, farming illegally on the reservation, and by 1872 U.S. officials had forced the Kaws to Oklahoma. The 1851 mission school is now operated as Kaw Mission State Historic Site and Hays' trading post still stands today. Erected by the State of Kansas
Where it stands
38.66208, -96.48826 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park — 3.7 miThe Kaw Nation's own land south of Council Grove, site of the last Kanza villages in Kansas, with stone house ruins, a dance arbor, and since 2024 the sacred red boulder Iⁿ'zhúje'waxóbe.
- Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve — 16 miA Chase County cattle ranch of the 1880s with its limestone house, three-level barn and one-room school intact, set among 40 miles of trails through unplowed tallgrass where bison and cattle both graze.
- Chase County Courthouse — 20 miA Second Empire courthouse of local limestone, built in 1872 and 1873 to John G. Haskell's design and, by the county's account, the oldest courthouse in Kansas still in daily use.