History of the Kansas Indians

Native American History in Kansas - Page 2

George J. Remsburg, who was regarded as an authority on matters relating to the Kanza Indians, said the grand village of the tribe, the one visited by Bourgmont in 1724, was located where the town of Doniphan now stands, and was known as the "Village of the Twenty-four." After the white settlers induced them to remove farther west, the principal village of the tribe was near the southwest corner of Pottawatomie County. In the spring of 1880 Franklin G. Adams, Secretary of the Kansas Historical Society, had the site of this village surveyed. In his report he stated that the old village was "about two miles east of Manhattan, on a neck of land between the Kansas and Big Blue Rivers. The rivers here, by their course embrace a peninsular tract of about two miles in length, extending east and west. At the point where the village was situated, the neck between the two rivers is about one-half mile wide, and the village stretched from the banks of the Kansas River northward for the greater part of the distance across toward the Blue River."

Kanza Indian men.

The 15th annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology said there was a Kanza village at the mouth of the Saline River, and that the first treaty between them and the United States was concluded there. 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, that of Fool Chief, was located on the north side of the Kansas River, not far from the Menoken Union Pacific Railroad station.

In 1847, several remnants of the tribe were ordered to what was known as the "diminished reserve" at Council Grove. Concerning this movement on the part of the government of the United States, George P. Morehouse, in his Kanza Indians and Their History said: "It was not only a blunder, but it was criminal after cheating them out of their Kansas Valley homes, to remove them to Council Grove. Here, they were placed near a trading center on the Santa Fe Trail, where their contact with piejene (fire-water), the whisky of the whites, and other vices, proved far more injurious than any knowledge of civilization received could overcome. Here, they were totally neglected in a religious way, and only experiments of a brief nature undertaken for their education."

Among the Kanza the gentile system prevailed. There were seven tribal subdivisions, and these were still further divided into sixteen clans, including: Manyinka (earth lodge), Ta (deer), Panka (Ponca), Kanza, Wasabe (black bear), Wanaghe (ghost), Kekin (carries a turtle on his back), Minkin (carries the sun on his back), Upan (elk), Khuga (white eagle), Han (night), Ibache (holds the firebrand to the sacred pipe), Hangatanga (large Hanga), Chedunga (buffalo bull), Chizhuwashtage (peacemaker), Lunikashinga (thundering people).

Ethnologically, the Osage were closely allied to the Kanza. Geographically they were divided into three bands -- Pahatsi (great), Utsehta (little), and the Santsukhdi band which lived in Arkansas. Marquette's map of 1675 showed the tribe located on a stream believed to be the Osage River, and other explorers and writers located them in the same place. In 1686 Donay made mention of 17 villages of the Osage, but Father Jaques Gravier, eight years later, wrote from the Illinois Mission that the tribe had but one village, the other 16 being mere hunting camps occupied only at intervals. Iberville, in 1701, gave an account of a tribe of some 1,500 families living in the region of the Arkansas River, near the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, and like them, speaking a language that he took to be Quapaw.

Osage Warrior

La Harpe said the Osage were a warlike tribe which kept the Caddoan tribes in a state of terror, also the Illinois Indians, though once when the latter were driven across the Mississippi River by the Iroquois they found shelter with the Osage Nation. Friendly relations must have been established between the Osage and Illinois in the 18th century, as Charlevoix met some Osage at Kaskaskia in 1721, and Bossu reports some at Cahokia in 1756.

Early in the 18th century French traders visited the Osage and succeeded in making peace treaties with the tribe that lasted for years. In 1714 some of the Osage warriors assisted the French against the Fox Indians at Detroit, and in 1806 a Little Osage chief named Chtoka (Wet Stone) told Lieutenant Pike that he was at the defeat of General Braddock in 1755, with all the warriors of his tribe that could be spared from the village.

It is said that some of the Kanza Indians also marched to the assistance of the French on that occasion, but did not arrive in time to take part in the action. When Dutisne visited the tribe in 1719 he found on the Osage River, a village consisting of about 100 cabins and 200 warriors, while southwest, on the Little Osage was another village. Dutisne's account was the first mention of the Osage tribe in the white man's history of America.

Mention has been made of Dorsey's belief that the Osage Nation was originally one people, and that the division into three bands happened in at a comparatively recent period. According to Lewis and Clark, about one-half of the Great Osage, under a chief named Big Track, migrated to the Arkansas River about 1802 and laid the foundation of the Santsukhdi band. Two years after this separation, Lewis and Clark found the Great Osage, numbering 500 warriors, in a village on the south side of the Osage River, and the Little Osage, numbering 250 or 300 warriors, about six miles distant on the Arkansas River and one of its tributaries called the Vermilion River. The present Osage reservation was established in 1870.

The Indian name of the tribe was Wazhaze, which was corrupted by the French into Osage. A tribal tradition relates that originally the nation consisted of two tribes -- the Tsishu or peace people, and the Wazhaze or true Osage. The Tsishu lived on a vegetarian diet, while the Wazhazelatter, being a war people, ate meat. After a time the two tribes began to trade with each other. The Tsishu later met a warlike people called the "Hangda-utadhantse," with whom they made peace, and all three were then united under the general name of Wazhaze. After the consolidation the tribe was divided into 14 bands -- seven of the former Tsishu, five of the Hangda, and two of the Wazhaze, so that the number of bands of the peace people and the war people were equal. In forming their camps it was the custom to locate the entrance on the east side, to the left of which were the the peace people, while the war people were on the right, in harmony with the old tradition.

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