The Kaw Nation (Kansa: Kaáⁿze), also known as the Kanza or Kansa, is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. The Kaw people historically lived in the central Midwestern United States. They have also been called the "People of the South Wind","Constitution of the Kaw Nation." Kaw Nation. 2011. Retrieved 30 April 2012. "People of Water", Kansa, Kaza, Konza, Conza, Quans, Kosa, and Kasa. Their language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan-Catawban language.
The state of Kansas was named for this tribe. The name of Topeka, capital city of Kansas, is said to be the Kaw word meaning 'a good place to grow potatoes'.Connelley, William E. "Origin of the Name of Topeka" Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, Vol 27, 589-593. The Kaw are closely related to the Osage Nation, with whom members often intermarried.
Government The Kaw Nation's headquarters is in Kaw City, Oklahoma, and the tribal jurisdictional area is within Kay County, Oklahoma. The elected chairwoman is Lynn Williams currently serving a four-year term. Of the 3,126 enrolled members, 1,428 live within the state of Oklahoma.
Economy The estimated annual economic impact of the tribe is $200 million. Kaw Nation owns the Kanza Travel Plaza; Woodridge Market; Smoke Shop I, and II; SouthWind Casino; including a bingo hall, and an off-track wagering facility; and SouthWind Casino Braman, which opened September 2014. The tribe also operates the Kanza Health Clinic, Kanza Wellness Center, Kaw Nation School Age Enrichment Center, Kanza Museum, Kaw Nation Environmental Department, Kaw Nation Police Department, Kaw Nation Social Service and Educational Department, Kaw Nation Emergency Management Department, Kaw Language Department, and the Kaw Nation Judicial Branch. The Kaw Nation Judicial Branch includes a domestic violence program. The Kaw Nation operates its own Housing Authority, library, Title VI Food Services, and issues its own tribal vehicle tags.Kanza Cultural History. The Kaw Nation. (retrieved 29 April 2012) The Kanza News, the newsletter of Kaw Nation, is published quarterly.
History
Early history
The Kaw are one of many Dhegiha peoples. Oral history indicates that the ancestors of the five Dhegiha tribes migrated west from the east, possibly somewhere around the Ohio Valley. The Quapaw separated from the other Dhegiha at the mouth of the Ohio, going down the Mississippi River to live in what is today the state of Arkansas. The other Dhegiha proceeded up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The Osage left the main group in central Missouri; the Kaw halted upstream on the Missouri River in northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas; the Omaha and Ponca continued north to settle in Nebraska and South Dakota.Unrau, William E. Kansa Indians: A History of the Wind People, 1673–1873, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971: 12-14.
This tradition is reinforced by the fact that the Illinois and Miami tribes called the lower Ohio and Wabash Rivers the Akansea River, because, as they told French explorers, the Akansea (Quapaw) formerly dwelt there. Accessed, Feb 21, 2010
The Dhegiha may have migrated westward in the early to mid-17th century. The reason for leaving the traditional home may have been due to the mass displacement westward of Indian tribes caused by European settlement on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The first certain record of the Dhegiha is 1673 when the French explorer of the Mississippi River, Pere Marquette, drew a crude map which showed the Dhegiha tribes near their historic locations.Dorsey, James Owen, "Migration of the Siouan Tribes," The American Naturalist, Vol XX, Mar 1886, 214.
The French explorer Bourgmont was the first European to document his visit to the Kaws in 1724. He found them living in a single large village near the future site of the town of Doniphan, Kansas.Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, Explorer of the Missouri, 1698–1725. Lincoln: University of Neb Press, 1988, 51 The Kaw later lived farther downstream near the French Fort de Cavagnial (1744-1764). By the late 1700s, the Kanza took up residence on the Kansas River, but the ruins of their earlier villages and Fort Cavagnial were a landmark for travelers in the early 1800s. When Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, they noted passing the site of the French post and Kansa village on July 2, 1804,, Accessed, Ce 12, 2020 and the "old village of the Kanzas" of 1724 on July 2, 1804., Accessed, Feb 23, 2010
Traditional culture and subsistence The primary village of the Kanza between about 1790 and 1828 was along the Kansas River near the confluence with the Big Blue River of Kansas. The Kaw had camped and hunted along the Kansas River for at least a century. Moving its primary village to the Kansas River valley put the Kaw closer to the bison herds they hunted annually, and it removed them from other tribes that visited the trading posts along the Missouri River. This new settlement was distanced from the sometimes antagonistic relations with tribes from east of the Missouri River, but was closer to the Pawnee, with whom they were often in conflict. Lewis and Clark noted that their numbers were "reduced by war with their neighbors". They estimated the Kaw to number 300 men—about 1,500 persons in all. Accessed, Feb 23, 2010
Interaction with the United States
The purchase by the United States of Louisiana Territory in 1803 led to disastrous impacts on the Kaw. They were increasingly hemmed in, first, by Eastern Indians forced to migrate west and, secondly, by White settlers who coveted the "beautiful aspects" and "rich and exuberant soils" of Kaw lands.Unrau, Kansa Indians, 105 West of the Kaw lived the warlike Cheyenne and Comanche, and to the north were the Pawnee, their traditional enemies. In 1825, the Kaw ceded a huge area of land in Missouri and Kansas to the United States in exchange for a promise of an annuity of $3,500 annually for twenty years. The promised annuity—to be paid in goods and services—was often late in arriving or found its way into the pockets of unscrupulous government officials and merchants. The Kaw were indifferent to the pleas of government agents and missionaries that they take up farming as their sole livelihood.
Meanwhile, the Kaw faced smallpox epidemics in 1827–1828 and 1831–1832, which killed about 500.Unrau, Kansa Indians, 149-150 During the same period the tribe split into four different competing groups living in different villages, a consequence of rivalry between three groups of conservatives, who favored retaining traditional ways, and one group under White Plume which favored accommodation with the United States. Important in the latter group were 23 mixed bloods, the sons and daughters of French traders who had taken Kaw wives. The French influence among the Kaw is still seen in common surnames such as Pappan, Bellmard, and Chouteau.
A disastrous flood in 1844 destroyed most of the land the Kaw had planted and left the tribe destitute. In 1846, the Kaw sold most of their remaining of land for $202,000 plus a reservation centered on Council Grove, Kansas.Unrau, ibid, 159-161 Council Grove is a beautiful area of forests, water, and tall grass prairie, but it was probably the worst location that could have been selected for the already weakened and demoralized tribe. It was a favorite stopping place for the rough-hewn teamsters and traders and voracious merchants on the Santa Fe Trail. The first Kaw arriving there were beaten up by traders.Unrau, Kansa Indians 163 The flourishing whiskey trade in Council Grove also proved to be deleterious. Whites invaded Indian lands and sporadic efforts by soldiers to force them off the reservation were ineffective. In 1860, the Kaw reservation, overrun by white settlers, was reduced to .
With the coming of the American Civil War in 1861, the Kaw and other Indians in Kansas suddenly became an asset as the state recruited them as soldiers and scouts to stave off invasions by slave-holding tribes and Confederate supporters in Indian Territory. Seventy young Kaw men were persuaded—or forced—to join Company L, 9th Kansas Cavalry Regiment. They served in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and Arkansas during the war and 21 of them never came home—a large loss to the already diminished numbers of the tribe.National Archives, Record Group M-234, Tape 467, page 476
After the war, European-Americans in Kansas agitated for removal of Indians, including the Kaw. However, amidst the gloom of a tribe that seemed likely to disintegrate came one colorful moment. The Kaw and the Cheyenne had long been enemies. On June 1, 1868, about one hundred Cheyenne warriors descended on the Kaw reservation. Terrified white settlers took refuge in Council Grove. The Kaw men painted their faces, donned their finery, and sallied forth on horseback to meet the Cheyenne. The two Indian armies put on a military pageant featuring horsemanship, fearsome howls and curses, and volleys of bullets and arrows. After four hours, the Cheyenne retired with a few stolen horses and a peace offering of coffee and sugar by the Council Grove merchants. Nobody was hurt on either side.
During the battle, the mixed-blood Kaw interpreter, Joseph James, Jr. (more commonly known as Jojim or Joe Jim) galloped 60 miles to Topeka to request assistance from the Governor. Riding along with Jojim was an eight-year-old, part-Indian boy named Charles Curtis or "Indian Charley". Curtis would later become a jockey, a lawyer, a politician, and Vice President of the United States under Herbert Hoover.Unrau, William E. Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity, Norman: University of Okla Press, 1971: 72-75.
White pressure finally forced the Kaw out of Kansas. On June 4, 1873, they packed up their meager possessions in wagons and headed south to Indian Territory to a new reservation. Two weeks later, 533 men, women, and children arrived at the junction of the Arkansas River and Beaver Creek in what would become Kay County, Oklahoma.Unrau, Mixed Bloods, 92 The Kaw made their last successful buffalo hunt that winter, journeying on horseback to the Great Salt Plains. They preserved the buffalo meat by jerking it and sold the buffalo robes for five thousand dollars. Accessed, Aug 12, 1999.
The Kaw continued their decline in Oklahoma. In 1879, their agent reported that nearly half of their number had died of contagious diseases in the previous seven years. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Kaw derived much of their income from leasing their land to white ranchers for grazing. In 1884, to manage grazing leases, they elected a government with a Chief Councilor and a representative from each of the four Kaw bands: the Picayune, Koholo, Rock Creek, and Half-breed. Washungah was elected as the Chief Councilor in 1885 and the tribal headquarters was later named Washunga to honor him.Finney, Frank F. "The Kaw Indians and their Indian Territory Agency." Chronicles of Oklahoma. Vol. 35, 1957–58, p. 418
20th century
The Kaws found security from white harassment on their Indian Territory lands, but the tribe continued to decline, especially the full bloods. By 1888 they numbered only 188 persons and the Kaws seemed on the road to extinction.Accessed, Feb 22, 2010. However, they slowly acculturated and their numbers increased, mostly through intermarriage as the number of full-bloods continued to decline. By 1910, only one old woman in the tribe could not speak English and more than 80 percent were literate.