Council Grove — The American Indian tribe that the state of Kansas gets its name from is slowly working its way back home.
The Kanza last year purchased 170 acres in eastern Kansas with hopes of turning it into a heritage park. The tribe, officially called the Kaw Nation, is trying to get the land listed on the national register. It also has plans for another park in Overland Park and a child-care health clinic for south-central Kansas.
"We are real interested in our Kansas heritage," said Clyde McCauley, vice chairman of the Kaw Nation, who is also the tribe's budget officer and director of grants and contracts. "We aren't trying to move anybody out, but we do plan on making a significant presence in Kansas."
The tribe bought the land four miles southeast of Council Grove 127 years after the Kanza were forcibly removed from the state by the federal government. The tribe eventually was moved into Oklahoma territory. The land the tribe wants to turn into a heritage park is in the center of the last reservation the tribe had in Kansas.
"We are very happy," McCauley said. "Kansas was once our territory everything there down to Wichita was ours."
Tribal members hope the park will provide a place for people to go to learn more about the Kanza.
More than a century ago, the federal government built 138 huts on the land for the Kanza to call home. Some of those, such as the stone cabin built for Chief Wah-Shun-Gah in 1862 and in which the Kanza chose to let their horses live, still stand.
Kanza translates roughly as "The Wind People," or "People of the South Wind." Known as the Konza, Kanza or Kansa, the Kaw originally lived in the Ohio River Valley.
The tribe had moved to what is now the Kansas River Valley by the early 1800s to claim an area that covered roughly two-fifths of modern-day Kansas and parts of Nebraska and Missouri.
The federal government in 1825 began reducing Kaw land holdings, making room for the relocation of other tribes from the east. The tribe's territory eventually was reduced to about 2 million acres in Kansas.
The Kaw had built lodge villages east of modern-day Manhattan and gardened and farmed maize in small plots. They also set out twice yearly to hunt buffalo.
But the government pushed the tribe south in 1846 to a 250,000-acre reservation in the Neosho River valley, near what is now Council Grove.
Eventually the tribe was pushed into the Oklahoma area.
Increasingly, the tribe's culture was lost with each passing generation. The tribe numbered about 1,600 in its early days in Kansas, but by the time of the move to Oklahoma had dropped to about 500.
Today, the Kaw Nation has more than 2,300 members, located across the nation.
Many in Council Grove are looking forward to the Kanza's return.
"We are Kansans," said Ron Parks, curator of the Kaw Mission State Historic Site, who is not Native American. "If there is any meaning to be derived from a sense of place, any understanding of who was here before and what it has meant to people we need to start with the story of the first Kansans. To understand that enriches our identity as Kansans."
As the Kanza begin to return to Kansas, McCauley said they want to reclaim not only some of their most spiritual and sacred sites but provide community services.
A child-care center in Newkirk, Okla., near the Kansas border is open to any child in the area, including those in Kansas. There also is a wellness center, established by the Kanza, that is open to community residents. Both were established with federal matching grant funds for the tribe.
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