CHAPTER V
KANSAS AS AN INDIAN COUNTRY
Kansas Belonged to the Indians. During the years when the white men were traveling back and forth across Kansas they were not making settlements here. The country remained in the undisputed possession of the Indians. The white men did not want it as yet. They looked upon these vast prairies, not as a resource, but as so much land to be crossed in reaching places farther west. But changing conditions in the states east of the Mississippi River made people begin to look upon Kansas in a different light. The country there was becoming thickly settled and the people wanted the lands of the eastern Indians.
Removal of Eastern Indians to Kansas. Soon after the Louisiana purchase was made people began to talk of an Indian reserve, of a state set aside for the Indians, and it was believed that these western prairies would be useful for such a purpose. Nothing definite was done, however, until 1825, when the National Government began the “removal policy.” The eastern part of Kansas was occupied by two tribes of Indians, the Kanzas, or Kaws as they are often called, north of the Kansas River, and the Osages south of it. In 1825 the National Government made treaties with these two tribes. Under the provisions of these treaties each tribe retained only a small part of its territory, the rest being ceded to the Government. In return, the Indians were to receive certain annual payments and were to be supplied with cattle, hogs, and farming implements. The Government was also to provide them with blacksmiths and with teachers of agriculture. With these two tribes restricted to their reservations, a large part of eastern Kansas was left to be apportioned into reservations for Indians from the East. In 1830 Congress passed an act setting aside an Indian country, which included eastern Kansas. Then the removal policy was carried out. Under this arrangement the Government made treaties with the various eastern tribes by which they gave up their lands in exchange for certain tracts in the Indian country. The Shawnees had come in 1825, and during the ten or twelve years following 1830 about seventeen tribes were located on reservations in Kansas. Among these were the Iowas, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos, Delawares, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Wyandottes, and Miamis. By 1850 there was not a tribe left east of the Mississippi River. The Indians had all been moved to these western plains, and no white man could settle on any of the reservations without the consent of the Indians.
An Indian in War Dress.
Indians Removed from Kansas. According to the treaties the Indians were promised their land “so long as grass should grow or water run.” But it soon developed that the white men wanted Kansas also. In 1854 we find the tribes being again transferred, this time to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, where the remnants of the various tribes still remain.[7]
Although Kansas was not used during those early years to make homes for white settlers, a few hundred people came here. They were of three different classes; fur traders, missionaries, and soldiers.
Indian Reservations in Kansas.