Keeper of the Plains

The Keeper of the Plains stands on the point where the Little Arkansas River runs into the Arkansas, in the middle of Wichita. Its maker, Blackbear Bosin, was a largely self-taught Kiowa and Comanche artist, born near Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1921, whose Kiowa name, Tsate Kongia, means Black Bear. He came to Wichita in 1940 and worked as a plate maker for a lithography firm and an illustrator for Boeing while his paintings won national prizes. The 44-foot Cor-Ten steel figure, hands raised, went up in 1974 for the Bicentennial, and Bosin donated it to the city.

The city around it carries the name of a people driven onto this ground. The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes write that Confederate troops forced them off their reservation in Indian Territory in 1863 and that they spent the next four years as refugees in Kansas with no land to farm. Some of them built grass houses here at the confluence in 1864, the first settlement on the site of the city. Many starved, smallpox and cholera went through the camps, and only 822 people went back to Indian Territory in 1867.

In 2006 the sculpture was raised onto a 30-foot rock promontory, reached by footbridges from both banks. The plaza is free and open from 5 a.m. to midnight. Five fire drums at the base burn for 15 minutes each night, at 9 p.m. in daylight saving time and 7 p.m. in winter, weather allowing. By day the Mid-America All-Indian Museum next door opens onto the plaza.