Regarding the large village visited by De Smet as mentioned above, one historian of the tribe has written: "An important village, and the largest of the tribe at that time, was that of old Kah-he-gah-wa-ti-an-gah, known as Fool Chief, which from about 1830 to 1846 was located on the north side of the Kansas river, just north of the present Union Pacific station of Menoken.... Until recent years the lodge-circle marks were visible and its exact location easy to be found." (Morehouse, (1), p. 348.)
A year passed between the visit of Father de Smet to the Kansa towns and the arrival of Fremont in the same locality, but it had been a period of trouble for the tribe and they had suffered greatly. On June 18, 1842, Fremont wrote in his journal: "We left our camp seven, journeying along the foot of the hills which border the Kansas valley.... I rode off some miles to the left, attracted by the appearance of a cluster of huts near the mouth of the Vermillion. It was a large but deserted Kansas village, scattered in an open wood, along the margin of the stream, chosen with the customary Indian fondness for beauty of scenery. The Pawnees had attacked it in the early spring. Some of the houses were burnt, and others blackened with smoke, and weeds were already getting possession of the cleared places." (Fremont, (1), pp. 12-13.)
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 30
a. Kansa village, 1841. George Lehman
b. Dog dance within a Kansa lodge, August 23, 1819. Samuel Seymour
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 31
KANSA HABITATION