Kaw Mission

Kaw Mission. A School for the Kaws. , "Great father, you white people treat us like a flock of turkeys. You chase us from one steam and then chase us to another stream and then to another stream. Soon you will chase us over the mountains and into the ocean , - Al-le-ga-wa-ho, Chief of the Kaws, 1872, "[The Kaw Mission School] averaged about thirty pupils, all boys. The branches taught were spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic. None of them received instruction in the trades. The boys worked well on the farm." , - Teacher Thomas Huffaker, 1905, The Mission , In 1850, workers from the Shawnee Methodist Mission near Kansas City traveled 110 miles on the Santa Fe Trail to build this mission and boarding school for Kaw (Kansa) Indian boys. The mission opened in 1851, with funding from the U.S. government. However, the government reported that the operational costs were too high, and the school and mission closed in 1854., The Kaws , This land was once part of Kaw and Osage homelands. In the early 1800s, the Kaws' domain extended well beyond today's state borders. By 1848, the federal government forced the Kaw people onto a twenty-mile-square reservation surrounding Council Grove. About 1,000 people, struggling with disease and starvation, lived in three nearby villages. In 1873, the remaining 600 Kaws were relocated to Indian Territory (Oklahoma)., By 1997, only one pure-blooded Kaw was alive. That year, the Kaw Nation, headquartered in Kaw City, Oklahoma, had 2,300 members. It is now stronger economically, politically, and socially than at any other time since the days of the Santa Fe Trail., The State of Kansas was named for the Kaw (Kansa) tribe.