The Treaty of 1846 pushed the Kanza onto a reservation around Council Grove, and the Treaty of 1859 cut it to 80,000 of the poorest acres. In 1862 the government built stone houses for Kanza families, and in 1866, while the people were away on their winter hunt, white settlers stole the doors and windows. On May 27, 1872, over the protests of Chief Allegawaho, Congress passed the act that removed the Kanza to Indian Territory. "You whites treat us Kaws like a flock of turkeys," he told the Interior secretary at Council Grove that June. "You chase us to one stream, then you chase us to another stream."
The Kaw Nation, based in Kaw City, Oklahoma, owns this piece of its last Kansas reservation, the Little John Creek site, and is restoring it as a heritage park; it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The two-mile Kanza Heritage Trail loops past the ruins of three of the stone houses, and a dance arbor finished in 2015 holds intertribal dances each June during Council Grove's Washunga Days, when the Nation hosts a powwow.
In June 2024 the park received Iⁿ'zhúje'waxóbe, a 28-ton red quartzite boulder that stood where Shunganunga Creek meets the Kansas River east of Topeka, a place where the Kaw gathered to pray. Descendants of white settlers took it to Lawrence nearly a century ago and attached a plaque honoring the city's founders. The city and Douglas County apologized in 2023, and Vice Chairman Jim Pepper Henry welcomed the rock home as "our grandfather."
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour