Residences
Campgrounds
Image: Wichita village. Source: Harvey County Historical Society
Cheyenne and Sioux campsite. This site was the village of more than 300 Cheyenne and Sioux lodges destroyed in 1867 by General Winfield Scott Hancock and General Custer's first encounter with Plains Indians. Pawnee Fork and Duncan's Crossing, Ness County. Learn more in this National Register of Historic Places Registration Form.
Commanche campsite. French explorer Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont met Commanche at their campsite here in 1724 near Ellsworth.
Wichita ancestor or other early tribe camp habitation sites. Around Marion, near the junction of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers, and in Rice and McPherson counties (Great Bend aspect). Hunting camps extended farther north and east (i.e., Miami County) with the Larned area the most intensively used, the location dating back 5,000 years contained stone hearths, stone artifacts, and a clay effigy.
Sac and Fox campsite. The Sac and Fox camped by the Neosho River and traded at Richard Fuqua’s post in the northwestern part of Allen County where “Fuqua always strove to please them, gave dog feasts and other entertainment, and sold flour, groceries, calico, beads, and other articles to them at a very high price,” according to William G. Cutler's, History of the State of Kansas.
Osage Allen County campsite. About 400 Osage camped in the Neosho River valley by the Elm Creek mouth during the early days of frontier settlement, according to William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas.
Osage Sumner County campsite. Osage camped near a cottonwood ford by the Ninnescah River near Oxford. They left the area in 1870.
Sac and Fox campsite. South of Berryton by the city of Wakarusa and along a trail known as the Ottawa State Road, the Sac and Fox camped in the 1840s and had large meetings. By a spring, the level campsite spot later had a church and school built on it, according to the 1917 Tales and Trails of Wakarusa by Alexander Miller Harvey.
Trails. American Indians typically camped while hunting migrating bison herds and close to streams. One of the most well known travel routes, the Pawnee Trail, entered Kansas near the northeast corner of Jewell County, ran south across Mitchell and Lincoln counties, crossed the northwest corner of Ellsworth County, and led to the big bend of the Arkansas River, according to the 1912 Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History. Another major route, the Smoky River Trail that followed the river of the same name, connected Leavenworth to today’s Abilene, Salina, Ellsworth, and Hays on its way to Old Cheyenne Wells where the river began. From there, the path diverged going west with the northernmost trail following present-day I-70 Hiway. Shorter trails existed, too, such as the Osage’s Black Dog Trail that only included a small section of the state from Baxter Springs south to Oklahoma and unnamed trails in the city of Newton often indicated only as “Indian Trail” on maps (Schmucker, K. 2019, December 20. A roving disposition: Black Beaver).
Caves. Caves also were used for short-term and longer residences. Burt Doze wrote in the February 22, 1929 Wichita Beacon that Indian Creek Cave had a 150’ room with a high ceiling. Doze wrote Indian implements, weapons, and skeletons had been found there and taken away. Other caves associated with American Indians.
- Indian Cave: on Mulberry Creek, Ellsworth County.
- Indian Cave, on Beaver Creek, Greeley County, Kansas.
- Indian Cave, five miles southeast of Delphos, Ottawa County.
- Indian Creek Cave, on Indian Creek, southeastern Commanche County.
Villages
Image: Blue Earth Village by Manhattan. The large circles depict houses. Kansas State Historical Society.
Archeologists have found evidence of settlements long ago.
Hopewell village. 1 A.D.-250 A.D. Harry Martin Trowbridge excavating the site from 1928 to 1942 on his property found pottery, stone tools, and stone burial vaults. Vicinity of 61st Street and Leavenworth Road, Kansas City, KS.
Hopewell village. 250-500 A.D. Edwardsville area. See Johnson, Alfred E. (1983). Late Woodland in the Kansas City Locality, Plains Anthropologist, 28:100, 99-108.
Deer and Independence Creek Valley. Archeological studies have found tools dating to the Village Gardener period (A.D. 1000-1500). Atchison County.
Etzanoa. Believed to be the second-largest American Indian city in the United States, the city, whose name means “The Great Settlement,” spanned thousands of acres and contained two thousand houses holding 10 people each, according to the journals of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate in 1601. The people of this Quivira arrived in Kansas in the late 1300s, grew crops, hunted bison, and traded across the continent. Evidence shows some spoke Nahuatl, an Aztec shared language. By Arkansas City along the banks of the Walnut River. Read more in Wichita State Professor Uncovers Forgotten Native Nation That Could ‘Revolutionize’ History of the Great Plains
Quivira. About four miles southeast of Geneseo and along tributaries in Lyons area, ancestors of today’s Wichita tribe, had villages dating from 1425 to 1700 A.D. Waldo Wedel in a 1941 report wrote, “Scattered throughout a wide area in central and southern Kansas, chiefly in the Arkansas basin but extending also into the Smoky Hill and upper Cottonwood drainages, are numerous aboriginal village sites."
Quivira ancestors. Caldwell area circa 1200 A.D. Small villages half mile apart on waterway going to Oklahoma may have been here 10 years.
Padouca (Plains Apache?). William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas stated: "On maps of the time [1700s], the Kansas River was sometimes called the Padouca River, and Padouca villages were located at the sources of both the Kansas River and the Arkansas River."
More recent villages, listed below, often sprung up by U. S. government agencies that distributed annuities and goods to tribes. For example, the Kansa Indian Agency at the mouth of Stonehouse Creek, has a marker noting the 1827 U.S. government agency for the Kansa Indians and where Daniel Morgan Boone built a log house and taught farming until 1831. At the intersection of Brookwood Street and State Line Road in Mission Hills, the Shawnee Indian Agency also known as the Northern Agency of the Western Territory and Fort Leavenworth Agency administered governmental affairs and issued passports to travelers entering the Indian Territory.
James Owen Dorsey collected information from Kansas and listed 20 Kansa villages on the Kansas River before the tribe remnants were located in Council Grove. Some examples are:
Kansa
Village of 24. Early 1700s. Dorsey wrote that Captain Meriwether Lewis in 1804 found two village sites: "They once lived twenty-four leagues higher than the river Kanzas (he spelled the name with a "z") on the south bank of the Missouri and were then more numerous, but they have been reduced and banished by the Sauks and Ayauways, who, being better supplied with arms, have an advantage over the Kanzas, though the latter are not less fierce or warlike themselves." By Doniphan.
Kansas village in Wyandotte County. 1790-1791. Auguste Chouteau spent a year there, according to Charles Hoffhaus in Chex Les Canses: Three Centuries at Kawsmouth (p. 116) "Probably the most ancient site in Kansas is that found in Wyandotte county, a little east of White Church on the old William Malotte farm. The many relics recovered there by the late George U. S. Hovey, and the extensive outlines of this village, prove it to have long been an important center, and it probably was while living there that the stream received from this people the name Kansas."
Village of 12. Morris Werner for Kansas Heritage wrote: "Kansa Village of Twelve, c1724, at mouth of Salt Creek, Leavenworth County, KS. Twelve leagues above mouth of Kansas River, according to French estimates in 18th century." Mouth of Salt Creek. Three miles northwest of Fort Leavenworth boundary. A priest lived there starting in 1727, and Fort Cavagnial (1744-1764) built by France for fur trading stood a mile away and opposite the village. Today a plaque marks the fort site.
White Plume village. Kansa leader White Plume settled northwest of present-day Lawrence from 1827 to 1835 on the north side of the Kansas River downstream from the Kansa agency near Williamstown. The village was in the easternmost ‘half-breed’ tracts, mostly allocated to White Plume’s family members.
Kansa on Kansas River. Three were by Topeka. J. J. Lutz, missionary wrote in 1830: “the Kaw Indians removed from their old village at the mouth of the Blue and located in three villages, each named for its own chief, a little east of the present post village of Valencia, in Shawnee county, one north and the other two south of Kansas river, near Mission creek." (The Methodist mission among the Indian tribes in Kansas, 1905). Frank W. Blackmar wrote in Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History (Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, 1912): “After the treaty of 1825, the tribes moved east again and, in 1830, had two villages near the mouth of Mission Creek a short distance west of Topeka. The village of American Chief, containing some 20 lodges and 100 followers, was on the west side of the creek about two miles from the Kansas River. Hard Chief’s village, nearer the river, had some 500 or 600 inhabitants, and a third village of Fool Chief.” Waldo Wedel wrote the Fool Chief village was the largest and was on the north bank of the Kansas River, six miles above Soldier Creek, and just north of Menoken. Kansa also had villages by Junction City and Manhattan.
Kansa by Council Grove. When moved to a reservation, the Kansa had three villages along Kansas River tributaries about four miles from Council Grove. Waldo Wedel wrote in his 1946 "The Kansas Indians" (Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 49) that on the reservation where the Kansa lived from 1847 to 1873, the Hard Chief [Al-Ie-ga-wa-ho] village was on Cahola Creek south of present Dunlap; the Fool Chief [Kah-he-ga-wa-ti-an-gah] village was in the Neosho Valley near the town of Dunlap , and the third village of Wah-ti-an-gah was southeast of Council Grove near Big John Creek by the Indian agency."
Delaware. Sarcoxie and his Delaware relatives lived north of Lawrence “four miles east of the city across Mud Creek on the first raise of land” in log cabins before moving to Indian Territory. Most buildings were removed by 1890, according to the Lawrence Daily World (July 31, 1892).
Osage. A marker (37° 10.016′ N, 95° 6.502′ W) in Oswego near Commercial Street depicts where Osage dwelled. Their chief village on the Neosho River is near Erie, wrote George Rainey in the 1933 The Cherokee strip (Guthrie, OK: Co-Operative Publishing). Morris Werner for Kansas Heritage wrote the Osage had five villages near St. Paul on the Neosho River in the 1840s. Marlin F. Hawley and Susan C. Vehik in the chapter "Cultural and Historical Background" in the publication Archeological Investigations at Arkansas City, Kansas) wrote the Great and Little Osage moved into southeastern Kansas and lived mostly along the Neosho River and its tributaries, including Chief Black Dog (the First) who established a village in 1826 on the Neosho River, six and one-half miles south of Oswego; LittleTown, three miles from Black Dog’s village near Oswego; Chief Big Hill’s band that had a village on the Verdigris River near Coffeyville—in 1850, its population numbered 600 and the band later moved by Claymore; Black Dog (the Second) returned to Kansas from Oklahoma with the Black Dog Band to live in a village on Onion Creek but moved several times during epidemics; and Whitehair had a village on the Verdigris River near the northern boundary of Montgomery County. Hawley and Vehik wrote: “Little Beaver’s band settled several kilometers below Lightman’s Ford. Nopawalla’s band moved to the north side of the Elk River near the site of Radical City. Chetopa’s band established a village on the south side of the Elk River west of Table Mound.”
Potawatomie. When moved to their reservation in 1837, the tribe's main village was by Lane at a site known as "Dutch Henry's Crossing." They also settled southward along streams and by Greeley until moved in 1848.
Pawnee, Republican River Valley, Republic County. The Pawnee had four documented villages on a 160-mile stretch of the Republican River and also on the Kansas River. Eight miles north of U. S.36 on K-266 in Republic County was the 80-acre village of the Kitkehahki (Republican) Pawnees in the late 1700s and in the 1820s. It was home to a thousand Pawnee housed in 50 or so earth lodges when they were not traveling through western Kansas living in tipis and following the buffalo. The village was abandoned after a Delaware attack and the band moved north to Nebraska, closer to other Pawnees. The village later burned and about half was farmed. Elisabeth Johnson, Courtland, donated 11 acres containing about 35 lodges in 1901 to the state for preservation. Johnson said (Belleville Telescope, Aug. 18, 1988) she had been fishing on the Republican Rier in 1875 and “As we were driving across the country we came to a piece of ground that was like a last year’s circus grounds, up and down, up and sown, as if we were really going over the edges of the rings and found the little embankment which had been around the wigwams, all arranged in streets as orderly as any city thoroughfare."
Sac and Fox. According to Gray's Doniphan County History, "Three chiefs ruled the band, which was divided into many villages. Hooper's Ford district was the site of Peteokema's band [Hooper's Ford on Wolf River three miles northeast of Severance by Leona]; Nesourquoit's warriors pitched their tents in the Bayne Bridge country [Walnut Grove (Bayne's Crossing) on Wolf River, 3 miles northeast of Severance ], while Moless and his band found comfortable quarters and a health resort in the mineral springs in the hills near the present site of Highland Station [1/2 mile east of Highland Station (Sparks)]."
Westfield. Some Mohican, Munsee, and Delaware Christians known as the Stockbridge forced to move settled eight miles west of the Kansas River mouth on Delaware reservation. About two hundred lived there and were joined by a hundred more from Wisconsin Territory in 1837. By Muncie.
Munsee at Leavenworth. Some Munsee moved in 1854 to the last reservation set up in Kansas. Four years later, they sold the reservation. Site of Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery and Mount Muncie Cemetery.
Mixed. 1830s. About 25 families of Flatheads, Kutenai, Iroquois, and others from Rocky Mountains settled briefly at the Kansas River and Missouri River confluence by American Fur Company church.
Mixed. By Towanda Spring and Whitewater Stream. Circa 1863. Vol. P. Mooney in 1916 The History of Butler County Kansas wrote: "The Indians came from the south and west and camped there. Probably as many as 20 different tribes." James Richard Mead, in Kansas Historical Collections, 10 wrote: "In 1863 there came from the south camps of Kickapoos, Shawnees, Delawares and others who settled on the Walnut and Whitewater. . . . There were not over thirty men with families. Their lodges were models of neatness and comfort." By Towanda Spring and Whitewater Stream.
Individual Houses
Image: John Tecumseh "Tauy" Jones house. Kansas State Historical Society.
Charles BlueJacket home. Shawnee leader and Methodist minister, Bluejacket moved to Oklahoma in 1871. 51st and Quivira, Shawnee. Note: BlueJacket Crossing. Country Road 1057 and Wakarusa River (west of Hiway), Eudora, Kansas. Travelers had to cross the Wakarusa River on the Oregon Trail and did so at three sites, according to analysis by Mary Gage, a local historian. Early emigrant diaries did not mention the Bluejacket Ford because the Bluejacket name did not become associated with the crossing until 1854 when the U.S. government gave Henry Bluejacket and George Bluejacket land surrounding the crossing. Charles Bluejacket, a brother of the two other Bluejackets and father of 26 children, appeared to own a roadhouse at this crossing. William Hutter wrote a letter in 1854, saying: “Bluejacket lives at the crossing of the Wakarusa, and has two houses — one double and one single.” The houses, Hutter wrote, were 12-foot by 15-foot with roofs meeting over a breezeway. The rooms held beds and a cooking area.
Grinter Place. At this 1857-built home to Annie and Moses Grinter. Annie, a Lenape (Delaware) and Moses farmed, operated a ferry, and had a Delaware trading post, where he traded with the Lenape Indians. 1420 S 78th Street, Kansas City, KS. Learn more in the National Register Nomination.
John Tecumseh "Tauy" Jones house. Jones, a half-Chippewa, co-founded Ottawa University and built a 14-room stone house close to his trading post and hotel. Northeast of Ottawa. Image on right: Kansas State Historical Society.
Graham Rogers house. 6741 Mackey, Overland Park. Learn more in the Kansas Register of Historic Places.
Tenskwatawa former cabin site. "The house of the prophet was not distinguished at all from the others, wrote Rev. J. J Lutz in the 1906 The Methodists Mission Among the Indian Tribes of Kansa (Kansas State Historical Collections, 9). A low portico covered with bark, under which we were obliged to stoop, was erected before it…Two or three platforms built against the wall served the purpose of bedsteads, covered with blankets & skins. A few ears of corn and a quantity of dried pumpkins (a favorite dish of the Indians) were hanging on poles overheard; a few implements [such] as wooden spoons 7 trays, pipe, &c, lay scattered about the floor. . .One corner of the room, [near] a fireplace, contained a platform of split [], elevated about a foot from the floor and covered with a blanket. This was the bed of the prophet." 3818 Ruby. Kansas City, KS.
White Plume house. The U.S. government built a stone house for White Plume 50 yards north of the Union Pacific depot, according to Frank W. Blackmar's Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History. Saying the house had too many fleas, White Plume left it for a place he built close by. Williamstown.
