Kansa Indians

The Kaw call themselves Kaáⁿze. White pressure finally forced them from Council Grove and out of Kansas: on June 4, 1873 they loaded their belongings into wagons and went south, and two weeks later 533 men, women and children reached the junction of the Arkansas River and Beaver Creek, in what became Kay County, Oklahoma. That winter they rode to the Great Salt Plains for their last successful buffalo hunt, jerking the meat and selling the robes for five thousand dollars. In 1922 Lucy Tayiah Eads was elected principal chief, the first and only woman to lead the nation.

What the plaque says

Kansa Indians The Kansa Indians (Kaw) came to this region from the forested southeast. They lived in permanent longhouses covered with bark and cultivated corn, beans, and squash. In their western hunting grounds they captured buffalo and other large animals. By the mid 18th century the Kansa considered most of northern and eastern Kansas their home. Through contact with Europeans and Americans, the Kansa contracted foreign diseases that had a devastating effect on their population. In 1825 the Kansa were forced to agree to a treaty that reduced their land to 10 percent of its original size. Two years later the government established an agency to protect the interests of the United States 2.5 miles southeast of here. It was the goal of the government to change the Kansa into American farmers, stripping them of their traditional way of life. In 1846 the Kansa were again forced to move, this time to an even smaller reservation near Council Grove. After the death of his mother U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis lived on the Kansa reservation with his mother's family. Today the Kaw Nation is headquartered in Oklahoma. The state of Kansas is named for the Kansa Indians. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Watkins Museum of History — 9.3 mi
  Douglas County's free museum in J. B. Watkins's 1888 bank and mortgage building on Massachusetts Street, a red-brick fortune built on Kansas farm loans and given to the city by his widow.
• Haskell Cultural Center and Museum — 11 mi
  Haskell Indian Nations University's own museum in Lawrence, built of cypress logs in 2002 to tell the truth about the federal boarding school the university grew out of.
• Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park — 18 mi
  Monroe Elementary in Topeka, one of four grade schools the city kept for Black children, now the museum of the case that thirteen Topeka families brought and the Supreme Court decided in 1954.

More markers nearby

• Lecompton Capital of Kansas Territory — 5.7 mi
• Lawrence — 8.7 mi
• Lawrence and the Old Trails — 12 mi
• Battle of Hickory Point — 16 mi