White Plume

[3] Until the United States acquired Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the Kaw subsisted primarily on buffalo hunting with only limited agriculture.

They were dependent on selling furs and buffalo robes to French traders, such as the powerful Chouteau family, to acquire European goods such as guns.

[4] With his daughters married to French traders, White Plume was identified by American officials as more progressive—in their minds—than his leadership rivals among the Kaws.

The group met with President James Monroe and other American officials, visited New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and performed war dances on the White House Lawn and at the residence of the French Minister.

What was left to the Kaw was a pittance of land thirty miles wide extending westward into the Great Plains from the Kansas River valley.

White Plume probably also foresaw that the Kaw would have to learn to live on much reduced territories and change their emphasis from hunting and fur trading to agriculture.

When George Sibley visited the Kaws in 1811, they were living in a single prosperous village of 128 two and three-family bark lodges on the site of present-day Manhattan, Kansas.

[7] The favoritism, however, shown by the United States to White Plume and the mixed bloods contributed to rivalries for leadership.

A Methodist missionary, William Johnson arrived in 1830 at the Williamstown agency to begin a school for Kaw and mixed-blood children.

Also, in accordance with the treaty, White farmers, teachers, missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, and a blacksmith lived near the agency to "civilize" the Kaw.

[10] The Chouteau family established a trading post across the river from the Agency to provide goods to the Kaw in exchange for buffalo robes and furs.

In his last years, it appears that White Plume, perhaps disillusioned with the results of his accommodation policy, "returned to the old Indian habits."