I am going to be uploading some of my published material. The first three that I will upload over the next few days are encyclopedia entries from Treaties with American Indians: An Encyclopedia of Rights, Conflicts, and Sovereignty, Donald Fixico, ed. It was published in 2007 in three volumes and 958 pages. This encyclopedia was awarded with Outstanding Academic Title 2009 by Choice and the Booklist Editors' Choice--2008.
COUNCIL GROVE, KANSAS
Council Grove, Kansas, is one of the state’s oldest historic communities, having played a part in an important chapter in American Indian treaty history. The community is located in Morris County in east central Kansas, on the Neosho River (Neosho is an Indian word meaning “wet bottoms”). Because of its location on the Santa Fe Trail, Council Grove became an important gathering place for tribes and traders. It was the intention of the U.S. government to foster a safe route along the trail vis-à-vis treaty with Native Americans in the area. The first of these treaties was concluded on August 10, 1825, with the Big and Little Bands of Osage Indians, so that the U.S. government could obtain the right-of-way for a public highway, thus establishing the Santa Fe Trail.
The treaty was signed under an oak tree in a large grove of timber on the eastern side of the Neosho River. George C. Sibley, one of three commissioners sent by President John Quincy Adams, named the area Council Grove for the convocation of treaty signers. The other two commissioners were Benjamin Reeves and Thomas Mathers. For the right-of-way through their territory, the Osage were paid $800. The commission headed west and six days later met with the Kaw or Kanza Indians to negotiate a treaty.
The treaty was signed on August 16, 1825, although not in Council Grove but in McPherson County, Kansas. The treaty was an exact duplicate of the treaty with the Osage. In this treaty, the Kaw Indians gave up their tribal lands of some twenty million acres in northeast Kansas and relocated to a twenty-square-mile reservation near present-day Topeka, Kansas. For the cession of this vast land base, the Kaw were awarded an annuity of $3,500 for twenty years; a quantity of cattle, hogs, and domestic fowl; a blacksmith; and an agricultural instructor. Another treaty with the Kaw in 1846 relocated the tribal members to a twenty-square-mile reservation and encompassed what is now present-day Council Grove. Provisions of this treaty included the sale of their two-million-acre reservation for ten cents an acre; in return, the tribe received an annuity of $8,000 for thirty years; $2,000 for agriculture and education; a gristmill; and 256,000 acres. Manifest Destiny and the desire to open up more lands for expansion led to yet another treaty with the Kaw. A treaty signed in 1859 pushed the reservation slightly south of Council Grove from Kaw lands and gave the tribe only 80,000 of the poorest acres in the area, to be divided into forty-acre plots for each family. The remaining 176,000 of the 256,000 acres were held in trust by the U.S. government, to be sold to the highest bidder. Finally, on May 27, 1872, the starving Kaw (for whom the state of Kansas is named) were relocated to Oklahoma. The Kaw were relocated and their lands diminished so often in such a short time that Kaw Chief Al-le-ga-wa-ho pleaded to Secretary of the Interior Colombus Delano, “Great Father, you Whites treat us Kan-zey like a flock of turkeys, you chase us to one stream, then you chase us to another stream, soon you will chase us over the mountains and into the ocean” (“Collision” 2003, para. 20).
By the Neosho River, a stump portion of the Council Oak still remains, protected by a shelter. Before it was blown over by a storm in 1958, the tree was seventy feet tall, and its trunk was sixteen feet around. In the area are fifteen more state and federal historic properties, including the Council Grove Historic District and the Kaw Methodist Mission.
Kurt T. Mantonya
See also
Treaty with the Great and Little Osage–August 10, 1825; Treaty with the Kansa–August 16, 1825; Treaty with the Kansa Tribe–January 14, 1846; Treaty with the Kansa Tribe–October 5, 1859.
References and Further Reading
Brigham, Lalla Maloy. 1921. The Story of Council Grove on the Santa Fe Trail. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society.
“Collision–Lethal Contact.” 2003. Kaw Mission State Historic Site. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from http://ww.kshs.org/places/kawmision/lethalkanzareservations.htm.
Rollings, Willard H. 1995. The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
U.S. Department of War. 1825. Indian Treaties, and Laws and Regulations Relating to Indian Affairs: To Which is Added an Appendix Containing the Proceedings of the Old Congress, and Other Important State Papers, in Relation to Indian Affairs. Washington City: Way and Gideon.
