Kaw

Member of an American Indian people who originated from the lower Ohio Valley but had migrated to Kansas by the mid-17th century; Kansas state and river are named after them. They share Siouan-Dhegiha language and tribal origins with the Osage, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw. The Kaw farmed maize on the lower Kansas River and hunted buffalo. Like other Plains Indians, prestige was gained through combat. From the 1820s they traded with settlers migrating along the Santa Fe Trail. Most of their land was ceded to the US government by the mid-19th century, and they were relocated to Oklahoma in 1873. The Kaw Nation of Oklahoma numbers some 2,500 (2000).

The Kaw traditionally lived in semi-permanent villages of dome-shaped earth lodges that housed two or three families. They acquired horses for buffalo-hunting on the plains of western Kansas from the 1700s. Spiritual belief was centred on the power of dreams and wakonda, spirits who represented elements or objects such as the plains or light. Their society was divided into patrilineal clans (membership passing through the male line), and marriage between the clans was strictly regulated. Tourism, a casino, and tobacco sales generate tribal income today.

The French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette was the first European to record the Kaw, observing them near the mouth of the Kansas River in 1673. At the beginning of the 19th century they controlled some 8,000,000 ha/20,000,000 acres of land in north and east Kansas, but as the Santa Fe Trail opened up the region to settlers, their homelands came under increasing pressure. Under a treaty of 1825 they ceded most of their lands to the US government in return for an 800,000-ha/2,000,000-acre reservation in Topeka, Kansas, but were then moved to a smaller reservation in the upper Neosho Valley in 1846. A further treaty of 1859 reduced their reservation to 32,000/80,000 acres, the remainder being held in trust by the US government for sale to the highest bidder. In 1873 they were forced to relocate to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) onto land purchased from the Osage. In 1902 the Kaw were allotted individual plots from their Oklahoma reservation lands under the Dawes General Allotment Act (1887), the rest being opened up for non-Indian settlement.