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The End of Indian Kansas: A Study in Cultural Revolution, 1854-1871
When Kansas became a U.S. territory in 1854 literally all of its land area was guaranteed by treaty to Indians. More than 10,000 Kickapoos, Delawares, Sacs, Foxes, Shawnees, Potawatomis, Kansas, Ottawas, Wyandots, and Osages, not to mention a number of smaller tribes, inhabited Kansas. By 1875 there were only a couple of bands left.
The forced removal of thousands of Indians from eastern Kansas between 1854 and 1871 affected more Indians and occupied more government time than the celebrated exploits of the military against the more warlike western tribes. In this volume Miner and Unrau show Kansas at mid-century to be a moral testing ground where the drama of Indian disinheritance was played out. They relate how railroad men, land speculators, and timber operations came to be firmly entrenched on Indian land in territorial Kansas. They examine remarkable incongruities in Indian policy, land policy, law, and administration, pointing to specific cases in which legal maneuvers by the federal government—within the framework of treaties, statutes, and executive pronouncements—helped to insure the pattern of tribal destruction.
Separate chapters deal with internal factionalism in the Indian tribes, the practice of government chief-making, and the "Indian Ring"—the sub rosa alliances influencing the treaty or sale process. The authors also include revealing portraits of the individuals, from territorial governors to railroad officials, who helped engineer the end of Indian Kansas.
"The reader's perception of those brave, hard-working sod-house settlers may never be the same after reading this book."— American West.
The forced removal of thousands of Indians from eastern Kansas between 1854 and 1871 affected more Indians and occupied more government time than the celebrated exploits of the military against the more warlike western tribes. In this volume Miner and Unrau show Kansas at mid-century to be a moral testing ground where the drama of Indian disinheritance was played out. They relate how railroad men, land speculators, and timber operations came to be firmly entrenched on Indian land in territorial Kansas. They examine remarkable incongruities in Indian policy, land policy, law, and administration, pointing to specific cases in which legal maneuvers by the federal government—within the framework of treaties, statutes, and executive pronouncements—helped to insure the pattern of tribal destruction.
Separate chapters deal with internal factionalism in the Indian tribes, the practice of government chief-making, and the "Indian Ring"—the sub rosa alliances influencing the treaty or sale process. The authors also include revealing portraits of the individuals, from territorial governors to railroad officials, who helped engineer the end of Indian Kansas.
"The reader's perception of those brave, hard-working sod-house settlers may never be the same after reading this book."— American West.
- GenresHistoryNative Americans
196 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2023
Definitely not meant for all audiences. I should have heeded the warning of another reviewer who said that serious students of the subject will use this as a reference. There were interesting sections, but I got lost in the weeds in its niche case studies.
The author sets out to correct the “vital flaw in the sweeping generalizations that have been made concerning the Indian policy of the United States in the nineteenth century” that narratives around removal “are too often based on how twentieth-century America would like to feel and think, and too seldom on careful examination of the voluminous documentary remains of that policy.” Historians and Americans have largely ignored the second massive Native removal, which took place in the 1850s-1870s, superimposing the same narratives from the Jacksonian era Eastern Native removals. Kansas, though, became a territory when its land was not “legally for public ownership,” which makes it a complex and unusual issue. Whereas western Kansas tribes were removed through military action and the decimation of bison supply, eastern tribes were removed through the activities of Indian rings, railroad lobbying, and tribespeople following money and the possibility of power.
Big takeaways:
1. Bleeding Kansas was not the only large-scale struggle in the area.
2. Officials bringing about the removal of Natives weren’t “strictly evil” but thought they should have a right to buy Kansas for the sake of progress. They couldn’t understand why someone would refuse to sell the land where their father was buried if it offered them economic advantages.
3. The concept of the small farmer settler was pitted against Native interests to benefit big business (railroads). Settlers at some point started squatting on Native land, and the media made Natives out to be evil for refusing settlers. The author jokes that, for the media, when Natives denied settlers land, “it was always winter, and the act was always cruel.”
4. Kansas City called itself “The New Babylon” starting in 1865.
5. The only Natives who staved off white expansion were those whose “Indianness and tribal nationality were so important to them that they were not tempted by offers of money, railroads, and power.”
The book ends with an eerie line, written by a federal official around this time:
"It seems as though the Devil changed his residence, & gone to Kansas, for certainly no such atrocities could be committed without his leadership.”
The author sets out to correct the “vital flaw in the sweeping generalizations that have been made concerning the Indian policy of the United States in the nineteenth century” that narratives around removal “are too often based on how twentieth-century America would like to feel and think, and too seldom on careful examination of the voluminous documentary remains of that policy.” Historians and Americans have largely ignored the second massive Native removal, which took place in the 1850s-1870s, superimposing the same narratives from the Jacksonian era Eastern Native removals. Kansas, though, became a territory when its land was not “legally for public ownership,” which makes it a complex and unusual issue. Whereas western Kansas tribes were removed through military action and the decimation of bison supply, eastern tribes were removed through the activities of Indian rings, railroad lobbying, and tribespeople following money and the possibility of power.
Big takeaways:
1. Bleeding Kansas was not the only large-scale struggle in the area.
2. Officials bringing about the removal of Natives weren’t “strictly evil” but thought they should have a right to buy Kansas for the sake of progress. They couldn’t understand why someone would refuse to sell the land where their father was buried if it offered them economic advantages.
3. The concept of the small farmer settler was pitted against Native interests to benefit big business (railroads). Settlers at some point started squatting on Native land, and the media made Natives out to be evil for refusing settlers. The author jokes that, for the media, when Natives denied settlers land, “it was always winter, and the act was always cruel.”
4. Kansas City called itself “The New Babylon” starting in 1865.
5. The only Natives who staved off white expansion were those whose “Indianness and tribal nationality were so important to them that they were not tempted by offers of money, railroads, and power.”
The book ends with an eerie line, written by a federal official around this time:
"It seems as though the Devil changed his residence, & gone to Kansas, for certainly no such atrocities could be committed without his leadership.”
February 14, 2012
Explores in detail the nature of the land and power struggles when Kansas was opened to white settlement and the resulting conflcts with the Indians. I learned much, but the case studies were hard to slog through at times. Serious students of the subject will use this as a reference.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews