The
End of Indian Kansas: A Study in Cultural Revolution, 1854-1871
by H. Craig Miner, William E. Unrau
Book Description: 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 midcentury 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--heped 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.
Paperback from Univ Pr of Kansas
1990 |
