Kansa
Image: Grandma McCauley Kansas Museum Kaw Nation
The name of the state of Kansas commonly is attributed to the Kansa (Kaáⁿze níkashiⁿga), a Siouan-speaking tribe who lived in the Ohio River Valley according to passed-down stories before migrating along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers possibly around 1300 A.D. Speaking a similar language to the Quapaw, Omaha, Osage, and Ponca tribes, the Kansa wore ornaments, plucked their hair, and often dyed their hair vermillion. Their patrilineal society once lived in a territory that covered two-fifths of modern Kansas and parts of Nebraska and Missouri. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have met them in 1541 as the Guaes, and George Morehouse conjectured that the Kansa were the “Escansaques” that other Spanish conquistadors recorded in 1601. French explorers encountered the “Canssa” in 1673, and Pierre Lemoyne Iberville estimated the tribe at 1,500 families in his 1702 memoir.
French explorer Etienne de Veniard Bourgmont reported them as having guns and horses when he met them at a village by the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. Similar to the Osage who had moved to Missouri, the Kansa later lived in northeast Kansas, then moved to sites along the Kansas River where they lived in circular lodges with a central fire pit until the 1840s when they moved to the Neosho River Vally by Council Grove.
Frederick A. Wislizenus, in his 1839 A Journey to the Rocky Mountains wrote of Hard Chief's Kansa village: "The whole village consists of 50 to 60 huts, built, all in one style, in four somewhat irregular rows. The structure is very simple. On a round, arched frame of poles and bark, earth is placed with grass or reeds; at the top, in the middle, an opening is left for light and smoke; in front, at the ground, a similar opening as an entrance; and the shanty is finished. At the open door there is usually a reed-covered passage, extending a few steps into the street. There are about twelve cut braces inside the house; the fireplace is under the opening in the roof; at the side are some bunks of plaited strips of wood. The whole is rather spacious.". . . "All the rest [including himself] "suffered dreadfully with sickness” and perhaps 100, or more, of the nation died. Agent R. W. Cummins, in his October, 1839, report, stated, of the Kansa: "This tribe has been exceedingly sickly this season; many of them died; their number at present is 1,602.
Victor Tixier's 1844 Voyage aux Prairies Osages, Louisiana et Missouri, 1839-40 wrote about 200 Kansa lodges: "Each frame was covered with skins decorated with red, yellow, blue, and black designs which, through their primitive simplicity, recall the ancient Egyptian paintings" and Kansa girls were "much prettier" than the Osage.
A report from Maj. Stephen H. Long’s 1819-1820 expedition describes meeting the Kansa and their meal: "They commonly placed before us a sort of soup, composed of maize of the present seasons, of that description which, having undergone a certain preparation, is appropriately named sweet-scorn, boiled in water, and enriched with a few slices of bison meat, grease, and some beans, and, to suit it to our palates, it was generally seasoned with rock salt, which is procure near the Arkansas river. The mixture constituted an agreeable food. It was served up to us in large wooden bowls, which were placed on bison robes or mats, on the ground. As many of us as could conveniently eat from one bowl sat around it, each in as easy a position as he could contrive, and in common we partook of its contents by means of large spoons made of bison horn. We were sometimes supplied with uncooked dried meat of the bison, also an agreeable food, and to our taste and reminiscence, far preferable to the flesh of domestic ox. Another very acceptable dish was called lyed corn. . . They also make much use of maize roasted on the cob, of boiled pumpkins, of muskmelons and watermelons, but the latter are generally pulled from the vine before they are completely ripe."(p. 291)
In 1840, Agent R. W. Cummins reported: "The Kanzas Indians while in the buffaloe grounds this winter, sent out a war party of Sixty five men, they came across a party of (Seventeen lodges) Pawnees, the men were absent in search of buffaloe, the Kanzas rushed into the lodges, killed they say, Sixty or upwards women and children and took eleven prisoners, five women and six children. . . ." A report from Fort Leavenworth said: the Kansa "laid in ambush near the ill-fated encampment until they saw the Pawnee warriors, numbering but 17, depart for their hunting ground. The Kanzas warriors, 65 in all, then commenced a murderous fire upon the defenceless women and children [and three men, one blind], which they continued until they supposed all within the encampment had been killed. On entering the scene of carnage they tomahawked and scalped more than 70 of their victims they found 12 (six women and as many children) unhurt, whom they decided to retain as prisoners. . . ." Missionary William Johnson wrote the following month: "Since the Indians came in, the war song and scalp dance constitute their daily employment. All other matters . . . are laid aside. The effect of this massacre upon the tribe at large, in paralyzing all our operations, is now felt to an alarming extent. There are but few men ... of the Kanzas now disposed to think of anything but a defense against the attacks of the Pawnees, now exasperated at the slaughter of their women and children. The upper village of Kanzas have fled from their town, and expect to wander to and fro for the balance of the year. They talk of planting a little corn at their town, but even that is uncertain. The village near the mission are so elated with their past act of bravery, that they have done little else than dance since they came in. The few families who were building houses near the mission are now the subjects of laughter and sport by the new-made braves. The number who are now disposed to build houses and provide for their families is small, not more than 15 families in all. . . . The prospect of reforming these people is truly gloomy at present. . . ."
Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet in his "Sketches" told of "their unsatiable blood lust, and measureless, ingenious cruelty to their prisoners and foes." DeSmet also wrote: "However cruel they may be to their foes the Kanzas are no strangers to the tenderest sentiments of piety, friendship and compassion. They are often inconsolable for the death of relatives, and leave nothing undone to give proof of their sorrow. Then only do they suffer their hair to grow, long hair being the sign of mourning. The principal chief apologized for the length of his hair, informing us of what we could have divined from the sadness of his countenance, that he had lost his son. "
By the 1850s, the Kansa were described as "a comparatively and harmless people," wrote William G. Cutler in History of the State of Kansas. "The Indians never committed depredations as in Ottawa, Cloud, Republic and Jewell counties, but the settlers were a number of times so scared by reports from those counties that they fled, still farther from danger." Kansas Herald of Freedom, May 22, 1858 printed a traveler's encounter with the group: "This afternoon Mr. Enos and myself visited the village of the Kaw Indian, about two miles below the trading-point. Their village contains about eighteen or twenty lodges, built in the following styles: from six to eight feet long; green, limber saplings are stuck in the ground; canvas of various colors, hides, buffalo-robes, etc. are tied around the same; and, drawing them tight toward the top, they bring the saplings together, leaving room, however, for the smoke, or, at least, for some—to escape. Such is their house. Stepping inside, we were greeted with a shouting sound, like “How?” how?” The lords and masters we found smoking and card-playing, old and young. The squaws (ladies) were making or ornamenting leggings or moccasins. Some, old and young, sat around their centre-fires, tailor fashion, talking away lustily—very likely about their white intruders, and their pale, sickly appearance. Some of them had quite a number of buffalo robes, prepared and unprepared, which they were selling at a rather lower rate than usual—probably on account of their banks being closed, as well as ours. They do not appear to like the life of a farmer, mechanic, etc., very much, and I hesitate not in asserting that whenever they die, it is, in nine cases out of ten, not in consequence of overworking themselves."
When the tribe was forced from Kansas to Indian Territory in 1873, it had fewer than 500 members, far less than its 1,500 members in 1800. By 1902, fewer than 200 were on the tribal rolls. Today, the Kaw nation has nearly 3,500 members. See The Kansa - Everyday Life and The Kansas Indians for more information. For information on Kansa in Kansas, see Kanza People (Kaáⁿze níkashiⁿga) of Kansas.
Osage
Image: Tal-Lee, 1834. Wrote artist George Catlin: “Amongst the many brave and distinguished warriors of the tribe, one of the most noted and respected is Tal-lee, painted at full length, with his lance in his hand---his shield on his arm, and his bow and quiver slung upon his back. In this portrait, there is a fair specimen of the Osage figure and dress, as well as of the facial outline, and shape and character of the head, and mode of dressing and ornamenting it with helmet-crest, and the eagle's quill.”
A tribe once in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, the Osage migrated west after the 17th century to live by the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Indian artist, George Catlin, said in 1834 that the tattooed Osages were “the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being few indeed of the men at their full growth, who are less than six feet in stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.”
Louis Cortambert, a French writer, in 1835 wrote the Osage men “carefully pull the hairs from their faces, even their eyebrows, and shave their heads, leaving on the top a tuft of hair, which terminates in back in a pigtail.” Author Washington wrote: “[The Osage are] stately fellows; stern and simple in garb and aspect. They wore no ornaments; their dress consisted merely of blankets, leathern leggings and moccasins. Their heads were bare; their hair was cropped close, except a bristling ridge on the top, like the crest of a helmet, with a long scalp-lock hanging behind. They had fine Roman countenances, and broad, deep chests; and, as they generally wore their blankets wrapped round their loins, so as to leave the bust and arms bare, they looked like so many noble bronze figures. The Osages are the finest looking Indians I have ever seen in the West.”
Between 1808 and 1825, the Osage had made six treaties and given up their land in what was to be Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. From southwest Missouri, one group in 1825 agreed to move to a 50 mile-by-375 mile southeastern Kansas reservation in villages by Chanute and Chetopa. Watson Stewart wrote of one village: "A fire is built in the center of their wigwams, over which meat and vegetables are boiled in a large iron pot; meat is also broiled over the coals. Bread is baked in skillets, or is fried in the buffalo tallow in a kettle—much as we fry doughnuts. They usually boil, with their meat, pumpkins, beans and green corn; they dry the green corn, in the summer, in large quantities; also pumpkins for winter use. Their ways of handling and cooking their provisions are anything but cleanly; they waste no part of an animal that is killed. They will kill a beef take off its hide, and at once, begin to cut up, cook and eat; stripping out intestines with the hands, and, without washing, cut them into strips, roast and eat. They devour the heart, liver and lungs —so that nothing is lost; and a company of twenty or thirty Indians will eat an entire small-sized beef at one meal. A very common feature of every village is the great number of dogs that will come out to meet you with much yelping; they seem to be a mongrel breed, of a cross between a dog and a wolf."
Rev. Pixley in his 1827 Missionary Herald report (Volume 24) stated: "As it respects the kinds of labor they perform I might say, speaking generally, that they perform none. They are lamentably destitute of ingenuity and aptitude in contriving and making things for their use and comfort. They seem in this respect to be inferior to the Indians, who formerly inhabited New England. Such a thing as a basket, I never saw among them. Their dress, excepting such as is used in their dances, exhibits deplorable negligence and laziness. Their game has been so abundant, that they have felt little need of agricultural labors, and have consequently established a habit of considering it dishonorable for a man to do much besides hunting and going to war. . . . .The women plant the corn, fetch the wood, cook the food, dress the deerskins, dry their meat, make their moccasins, do all the business of moving, pack and unpack their horses, and even saddle and unsaddle the beasts on which their husbands and other male kindred ride; while the men only hunt and war, and, when in their towns, go from lodge to lodge to eat, and drink, and smoke, and talk, and play at cards, and sleep; for with them it is no mark of ill manners to doze away some hours of the day in their neighbor's lodge. And were you here now, just to go through their towns on a tour of observation, you would probably find more than four fifths of the men employed in gaming, and scarcely one engaged to any useful purpose."
John C. McCoy and eight others surveyed the north line of the Osage reservation and told of the experience in an 1889 speech. He said they were working about three miles above the Little Osages' village (north of present Chanute) when Osage on horseback watched them and argued about boundaries. McCoy visited the head chief Nicheumanee (Walking Rain) in his centrally-located bark lodge surrounded by several hundred men. The sign language conversation ended in a stalemate. McCoy says: "Findlay and I took our departure. . . . We found our horses at the [lodge] door, with the tail of my horse completely denuded of hair. I was glad to get the horse, even with his corn-cob tail." Back at the surveyors' camp, meantime, an Osage attempt at robbery had been thwarted. The survey westward was continued "without serious molestation."
Expired annuities from the U.S. government resulted in Osage land in Kansas exchanged for money and reservation land in Indian Territory. While the government lagged in its payment, the land was offered for sale in 1870.
Name origin: “People of the Middle Waters” or Ni-O-Kon-Ska. The Otoes also call themselves Jiwere. Language family: Dhegiha Siouan.
Otoe
Image: Otoe couple in Arkansas City, Kansas, 1906. University of Washington Libraries.
Related to the Iowa and Missouri and of the Sioux family, the Otoe farmed and lived in earth or bark lodges along the Missouri River in the central plains and also went on bison hunts. They traced through lineages based on fathers and belonged to clans. Artist George Catlin estimated their population at 1,200 in 1833 before they made a treaty along with the Missouri for a Nebraska reservation that extended two miles south of the Nebraska-Kansas state line into Washington and Marshall counties. In 1881, the U.S. government moved the tribe to Red Rock, Oklahoma, where they are now known as the Otoe-Missouri Tribe of Indians.
Name origin: The tribal name derives from 'wat-ota,' which means 'seekers of pleasure' or 'lechers' (Sioux). Language family: Siouan
Pawnee
Image: La-dóo-ke‑a, Buffalo Bull, a Grand Pawnee Warrior, 1832, George Catlin
One of the largest Plains tribes, the Pawnees traced their ancestral descent through mothers and lived in four bands for more than a thousand years from central Kansas through Nebraska. James R. Mead, Wichita, said “the Pawnee Indians of Nebraska had a regular route of travel from their home on the Platte river, into Kansas, entering the state near the northeast corner of Jewell County thence running south across Mitchell and Lincoln counties thence across the northwest corner of Ellsworth County to the big bend of the Arkansas, and from there wherever Indian camps could be found,” according to Frank W. Blackmar in 1912. One band, the Republican (or Kitkahahki, translated as “on a hill”) lived by today’s Republican River outside of Republic and the other north of Milford Reservoir in Geary County, according to archeological excavations.
In each band’s village with dome-shaped earthen lodges, a hereditary head chief governed with subordinate chiefs and safeguarded the sacred bundle, a religious item representing the tribe’s history. The Pawnee warred with most Plains tribes and looked to the movement of the stars for guidance. The Pawnee men stood out from other tribes with their shaven heads except for a lock of hair greased with buffalo fat to stand straight up. Smallpox, measles, and cholera decimated the population. One smallpox bout in 1838 transmitted from Sioux captives (women and children, most who died of the disease) affected mostly children born after an 1831 epidemic. In response, a Pawnee Loup band killed a Sioux girl, 14, as a human sacrifice, to ward off the disease. Invited leaders of other Pawnee bands refused to attend the sacrifice rite.
Negotiations in the 1800s ended with them ceding their lands in 1875 and moving to present-day Pawnee County, Oklahoma. Once numbering more than 20,000 in the early 1800s, by 1900, the Pawnee numbered about 600.
Name origin: "Men of men" or "hunters" is what the Pawnee called themselves or Pari. Others referred to them as "horns" in reference to the male Pawnee hairstyle and also the "long-haired ones" or "wolf people." Language family: Caddoan
Pueblo
Image: Tewa Pueblo peoples, photographed by Edward S. Curtis, circa 1900. Library of Congress
The Pueblo and Picuris left evidence of their irrigation channels and homes in Scott County. Far from their typical southwestern homes, it’s thought they came northward to escape Spanish rule.
Name origin: "Pueblo" is a Spanish word to describe a type of building built by many Southwest tribes with numerous names but grouped with the Pueblo name.
Wichita
Image: Wee-Ta-Ra-Sha-Ro, Wichita chief by George Catlin (1834)
The Wichita, also known as the Kitikiti'sh, a southern Plains tribe, lived in Kansas as well as Oklahoma and northern Texas. In Kansas, they lived in villages along major streams in area as east to the Missouri state line and west as Larned and in the southeast section of the state; grew corn and pumpkins; hunted game and bison; and built dome-shaped grass lodges. At a lodge apex "was a five-pointed device, symbolical of the five fingers of the hand, and consisting of pointed rods. The central rod was pointed straight up to Man-Never-Known-on-Earth. The other four rods were inclined toward the four winds of Heaven. This device enables the four winds and Man-Never-Known-on-Earth to enter the lodge and bestow their blessings on the people," wrote Bliss Isely in his 1933 The Grass Wigwam at Wichita, Kansas Historical Quarterlies, 2(1), 66-71. "The lodge has two doors, one at the east, where the sun can peep in in the morning to give his blessing, and one in the west where he can look in before night to see that all is well. There also is an opening at the south to serve as a window, where the sun can look in at noon. Just east of the apex is a smoke hole. Under the smoke hole is a circular excavation on the floor of the lodge, which is a fireplace."
It’s estimated that 200,000 Wichita lived from 1425 to 1700 AD in several Kansas villages in an area called Quivira in the 15th century. Spanish explorers told of Etzanoa, a large village by present-day Arkansas City. Searching fabled riches, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, a Spanish explorer, traveled to Quivira and wrote of the Wichita ancestors: "There are not more than twenty-five towns, with straw houses, in it, nor any more in all the rest of the country that I have seen and learned about . . . All they have is the tanned skins of the cattle they kill, for the herds are near where they live, at quite a large river. They eat meat raw like the Querechos [the Apache] and Teyas [the Jumano]. They are enemies of one another. . .These people of Quivira have the advantage over the others in their houses and in growing of maize.”
George A. Dorsey, The Mythology of the Wichita, wrote: "The chief object of war expeditions was the taking of scalps and the capturing of women to be used as slaves. The hereditary enemies of the Wichita were the Apache, Osage, and Tonkawa. These three tribes, in the order named, were considered the bravest of all their foes, and as a consequence, that taking of a scalp of an individual from one of these tribes was looked upon as a high honor. The Wichita had the usual grades of showing prowess in war; such were counting coup, stabbing, scalping, and killing. Their war records were usually depicted in detail on the robe, or the more salient features of the record might be indicated on the tipis. . . .when an individual misrepresented his record, either on this robe or on his tipi, he was at once proclaimed a liar throughout the camp, and this robe or tipi might be destroyed."
The French said the Osage forced the Wichita south. In the mid- to late 18th century, the Wichita did move southward to Oklahoma and Texas. Some came back to Kansas during the Civil War when challenged by pro-Confederate tribes. The U.S. government in 1867 sent them to an Oklahoma reservation now headquartered in Anadarko where they are recognized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita, Keechi, Waco and Tawakoni).
Name origin: Other tribes called them the “tattooed people.” Kitikiti’sh (“raccoon eyes") is what the Wichita called themselves referring to tattoos around their eyes. Dorsey wrote the marks were made on young boys to protect their eyes. Both upper and lower eyelids were tattooed and had a half-inch line extending from their eye outer corner. The French called them Panis Piques because of their cultural and language similarity to the Pawnee, a tribe the French encountered before the Wichita. Language family: Caddoan
