"What shall be done with the Kansas?"

"What shall be done with the Kansas?". . , The Chouteau family of St. Louis had enjoyed a major share of the Kansa trade since the early nineteenth century. Although Kansa trad had in recent years been on the decline, the Chouteaus found a renewed interest in the Kansas after the tribe was guaranteed an annual income by the government. , The Chouteaus were well aware that the 1825 treaty had provided no specific guidelines regarding how (whether as money or goods) or to whom (whether individuals, heads of families, or tribal leaders) the Kansa annuities would be paid. Taking advantage of this, the Chouteaus encouraged tribal factionalism. They then effectively decreed which individuals would receive the annuities, threatening bodily harm to members of the tribe who objected to their machinations. Although the Chouteaus agreed to pay prices that were twenty to forty percent higher than those offered by the government, the overall trade terms were so stacked in the Chouteau's favor that by 1846, the Kansas owed the Chouteaus at least fifteen hundred dollars. This amount had to be taken out of the last annuity payment available under the Treaty of 1825. , Food shortage, disease, and death by starvation became the lot of the Kansas in the two decades following the 1825 treaty. In the spring of 1835, Richard Cummins of Fort Leavenworth Agency reported that the Kansas were starving. They had less than twenty bushels of corn and were begging at the settlements or trying to trade a few lengths of elk string for food. The following year, superintendent William Clark referred to the Kansas' "destitute" condition. Poorly housed, sick, and starving, increasing numbers of Kansas resorted to raiding the Santa Fe caravans or stealing from settlements near the mouth of the Kansas River. Where unscrupulous white men operated "whiskey shops, using every strategem in their power to get the Indians to drink.", In 1844, with the Kansa annuity fund virtually exhausted, the government could no longer continue is policy of procrastination. But what was to be done? The government decided that the solution lay in the Kansas' land. Much of the land could be sold; the proceeds could then be used to alleviate some of the tribe's more pressing problems. While the process of forced acculturation could be renewed with greater dedication and vigor on a smaller, more concentrated reservation., Their bargaining power severely compromised by the tribe's suffering, the Kansa chiefs ceded two million acres of their most valuable land for the small sum of $202,000--amounting to just over ten cents per acre. The remaining unceded land had insufficient timber, so the government decided to relocate the Kansas to the upper Neosho valley in the area around Council Grove. In a move calculated to discourage the Kansas hunting habits. The new reservation was limited to twenty square miles.