Kansas Indian Treaty

The head men who met the commissioners here led a people the treaties of 1825, 1846 and 1859 would bring to disease and starvation. They numbered about 1,500 by 1800 and 553 by 1872, and within 16 years of the 1873 move to Indian Territory, 194 remained. Today the Kaw Nation, a federally recognized tribe of more than 3,100 members, governs from Kaw City, Oklahoma. The last full-blood Kaw, William A. Mehojah, died in 2000, and the Kanza Language Project works to revive the language.

What the plaque says

Kansas Indian Treaty In 1825 President James Monroe approved a bill providing for the survey of the Santa Fe trail from Missouri to New Mexico and the making of treaties to insure friendly relations with Indians along the route. A mile west of this sign, on Dry Turkey creek, a monument marks the site of a council on August 16, 1825, between U. S. Commissioners Reeves, Sibley and Mather, and Son-ja-inga and fifteen other head men of the Kansas or Kaw nation. Negotiations were con- ducted through "Old Bill" Williams, a noted guide and trapper. For a consideration of $800 in cash and merchandise the chiefs promised that the tribe would not molest travelers. Earlier, at Council Grove, a similar treaty was made with the Osage Indians. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A roller mill of 1898 on the Smoky Hill that still turns over once a year, and a Swedish manor house shipped to the 1904 World's Fair and given to Lindsborg's college afterward.
• Kauffman Museum — 21 mi
  Bethel College's museum in North Newton of the Mennonites who settled the central plains in the 1870s, home to the copper plates of the 1685 Martyrs Mirror.
• Strataca — 21 mi
  An underground museum 650 feet down in Hutchinson's working salt mine, reached through a shaft sunk in 2004 by freezing the aquifer above the Permian salt.
• Cosmosphere — 22 mi
  Hutchinson's space museum, begun in 1962 with a used star projector in a fairgrounds poultry building, now home to the Apollo 13 command module and Liberty Bell 7.

More markers nearby

• The Mennonites in Kansas — 16 mi
• Turkey Red Wheat — 23 mi