History of Kansas
The U.S. state of Kansas, located on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, was the home of nomadic Native American tribes who hunted the vast herds of bison (often called "buffalo").
The sophisticated big-game hunters did not keep a balance, resulting in the "Pleistocene overkill", the rapid and systematic destruction of nearly all the species of large ice-age mammals in North America by 8000 BC.
The hunters who pursued the mammoths may have represented the first of north Great Plains cycles of boom and bust, relentlessly exploiting the resource until it has been depleted or destroyed.
Their tools became more varied, with grinding and chopping implements becoming more common, a sign that seeds, fruits, and greens constituted a greater proportion of their diet.
They also possessed many of the cultural features that accompany semi-sedentary agricultural life: storage facilities, more permanent dwellings, larger settlements, and cemeteries or burial grounds.
At the same time, the Pawnee (sometimes Paneassa) were dominant on the plains to the west and north of the Kansa and Osage nations, in regions home to massive herds of bison.
In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States (US) acquired all of the French claims west of the Mississippi River; the area of Kansas was unorganized territory.
This view of Kansas would help form U.S. policy for the next 40 years, prompting the government to set it aside as land reserved for Native American resettlement.
[7] This area, called the Boonslick, was located due east in west-central Missouri and was settled by Upland Southerners from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee as early as 1812.
[14] On October 29, 1832, the Piankeshaw and Wea agreed to occupy 250 sections of land, bounded on the north by the Shawanoe; east by the western boundary line of Missouri; and west by the Kaskaskia and Peoria peoples.
In the three months immediately preceding the passage of the bill, treaties were quietly made at Washington with the Delaware, Otoe, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, Shawnee, Sac, Fox and other tribes, whereby the greater part of eastern Kansas, lying within one or two hundred miles of the Missouri border, was suddenly opened to white settlement.
On March 15, 1854, Otoe and Missouri Indians ceded to the United States all their lands west of the Mississippi, except a small strip on the Big Blue River.
As early as June 10, 1854, the Missourians held a meeting at Salt Creek Valley, a trading post three miles (5 km) west of Fort Leavenworth, at which a "Squatter's Claim Association" was organized.
They said they were in favor of making Kansas a slave state, if it should require half the citizens of Missouri, musket in hand, to emigrate there, and even to sacrifice their lives in accomplishing this end.
To counter this action, the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company (and other smaller organizations) quickly arranged to send anti-slavery settlers (known as "Free-Staters") into Kansas in 1854 and 1855.
On December 1, 1855, a small army of Missourians, acting under the command of Douglas County, Kansas Sheriff Samuel J. Jones laid siege to the Free-State stronghold of Lawrence in what would later become known as "The Wakarusa War".
On May 21, 1856, pro-slavery forces led by Sheriff Jones attacked Lawrence, burning the Free-State Hotel to the ground, destroying two printing presses, and robbing homes.
The violently feuding pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions tried to defeat the opposition by pushing through their own version of a state constitution, that would either endorse or condemn slavery.
[23] At the start of the war in April 1861, the Kansas government had no well-organized militia, no arms, accoutrements or supplies, nothing with which to meet the demands, except the united will of officials and citizens.
[25][26][27] After Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr. ordered the imprisonment of women who had provided aid to Confederate guerrillas, tragically the jail's roof collapsed, killing five.
In addition to the jail collapse, Quantrill also rationalized the attack on this citadel of abolition would bring revenge for any wrongs, real or imagined that the Southerners had suffered at the hands of Jayhawkers.
[28] After the Civil War, the railroads did not reach the main cattle-ranching areas in Texas, so cowboys brought cattle to Kansas rail heads.
[32] Early settlers discovered that Kansas was not the "Great American Desert", but they also found that the very harsh climate—with tornadoes, blizzards, drought, hail, floods and grasshoppers—made for the high risk of a ruined crop.
[34] During the early years of settlement in the late 19th century, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors.
Much of the leadership was provided by Republican newspaper editors, such as William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette, Joseph L. Bristow of Salina, and Edward Hoch, of the Marion Record.
Hoch denounced the conservative wing of his party:[42] it grows out of unwise leadership; of unfair standards of republicanism; of factional intolerance; of the multiplicity of useless offices; of extravagance in public expenditures; of enormous increase in burdens of taxation.According to Craig Miner, the main issues of progressive era Kansas (in chronological order), were the flood of 1903, conservation, the battle to control Standard Oil in 1905, regulation of railroads and trusts, capital punishment, women's rights, public health, urban reform, the Progressive Party campaign of 1912, and isolationism in foreign policy.
William Allen White in his novels and short stories, developed his idea of the small town as a metaphor for understanding social change and for preaching the necessity of community.
[62] Wichita, which had long shown an interest in aviation, became a major manufacturing center for the aircraft industry during the war, attracting tens of thousands of underemployed workers from the farms and small towns of the state.
Famous athletes from Kansas include Barry Sanders, Gale Sayers, Jim Ryun, Walter Johnson, Clint Bowyer, Maurice Greene, and Lynette Woodard.
[77] On April 10, 1887, the Golden Giants also won an exhibition game from the defending World Series champions, the St. Louis Browns (the present-day Cardinals), by a score of 12–9.
