Thanks to names like Black Bob Road, Shawnee Mission School District, and the city of Shawnee,\u00a0we\u00a0often\u00a0think of\u00a0the Shawnee Tribe when\u00a0imagining the lives\u00a0of\u00a0Johnson County\u2019s indigenous residents.\u00a0However, the Kaw Tribe\u00a0inspired the name for our state and\u00a0lived on this land long before the Shawnee were displaced\u00a0westward.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jocohistory.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/default.jpg?w=390\")
Johnson County Museum Collection on JoCoHistory<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Before\u00a0Anglo\u00a0settlers moved across the North American continent, a people\u00a0established\u00a0themselves\u00a0across\u00a0the plains. Before the land was crisscrossed with imaginary, agreed-upon borders, a family of tribes moved along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. These nomads belonged to the\u00a0Dhegiha\u00a0(pronounced they-GEE-hah) section of the Mississippi Valley Siouan peoples.\u00a0The\u00a0Dhegiha\u00a0tribes share a culture with similar family relationships, war customs, and dances\u00a0in each branch.\u00a0They moved into the area sometime between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, using the river as their tribal identification.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is thought the\u00a0Dhegiha\u00a0tribes started migrating from the Ohio River Valley as early as the year 1300.\u00a0The first to break off were the Quapaw, whose name is translated as \u201cdownstream people,\u201d\u00a0who\u00a0followed the river down into Arkansas. The Omaha, or \u201cupstream people\u201d settled in present-day Nebraska. The Osage and Kansa split along the Missouri River with the Osage, \u201cmiddle waters people\u201d traveling down to the Ozarks, and the Kansa, or \u201cpeople of the\u00a0southwind\u201d heading off into the plains of Kansas\u00a0along the\u00a0Kansas\u00a0River.\u00a0This\u00a0tribe used the wind to recognize their warriors, thus the\u00a0wind-inspired\u00a0name\u00a0rather than a water-inspired name.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other\u00a0appropriate names\u00a0for the Kansa are the Kaw, Kanza, Konze, or, appropriately,\u00a0Kansas.\u00a0The modern tribe refers to themselves as the Kaw Nation so we will refer to this group of people as the Kaw for the\u00a0remainder\u00a0of this blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a semi-sedentary tribe, the Kaw mostly kept their settlements to the\u00a0northern and\u00a0eastern areas of modern-day Kansas,\u00a0including modern day Johnson County,\u00a0with their hunting grounds extending into\u00a0western Kansas, especially along the Solomon, Smoky Hill, and Arkansas Rivers.\u00a0In fact, Lewis and Clark\u2019s Corps of Discovery camped on the site of a Kaw village near where the Kansas and Missouri Rivers meet\u00a0in Wyandotte County. However, they did not interact with the tribe as they were hunting buffalo\u00a0to the\u00a0west. The site is now Kaw Point Park in Kansas City, Kansas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Author photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
There is not much information on the traditional way of Kaw life. By the time their histories were recorded using written language, much of their lifestyle had changed to adapt to their new reality of living among various tribes who had been displaced further west and incoming\u00a0Anglo settlers. How the Kaw lived prior to first contact can only be glimpsed in the historical record.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a nomadic people, the Kaw Tribe was divided into\u00a0smaller\u00a0semi-autonomous,\u00a0mobile\u00a0bands, described as \u201ctowns\u00a0on the move.\u201d\u00a0Rather than domesticating animals and building permanent towns and cities\u00a0like ancient Europeans did, bands of the Kaw followed the herd animals around the plains, relying on them for their\u00a0food (meat), material (hide and leather), and tools (bone).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Kanza Clan Book<\/a>, there were once seven bands, one for each star in the Big Dipper constellation (called\u00a0W\u00e1baha\u00a0Khe in the Kaw language).\u00a0\u00a0Each camp had a specific layout followed by the band members:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCamp was arranged in a circular formation, with a wide avenue open at one end, usually the east. Half of the tribe always camped to the left of this avenue, and\u00a0half\u00a0of the tribe always camped to the right. The people that camped to the left were called\u00a0Y\u00e1ta\u00a0(meaning \u2018left side\u2019) People, and the people that camped to the right were called\u00a0Isht\u00f3nga\u00a0(\u2018right side\u2019) People. Each of these two halves \u2013 or moieties, as anthropologists label halves of groups \u2013 were then further\u00a0divided\u00a0into\u00a0roughly eight\u00a0clans, or collections of several extended families. Thus, there were approximately sixteen clans in the camping circle of a Kanza band.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The clans that made up each band consisted of several extended families. In these families, cousins were often treated as siblings and there was little differentiation between\u00a0parents\u00a0vs aunts and uncles. However, hierarchy in the family was extremely important and\u00a0everything down to names\u00a0relied heavily on birth order. Families were patrilineal and grouped together based on the father\u2019s clan\u00a0with spouses ideally coming\u00a0from different halves of the camp.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As the United States claimed\u00a0more\u00a0land\u00a0west\u00a0of the Mississippi River, the Kaw signed treaty after treaty diminishing their territory and\u00a0forcing\u00a0them to trade their nomadic lifestyle for one of settled family farms, disrupting the entire way of life for the Kaw as their hierarchy, roles, and affiliations centered around their camping circle.\u00a0The Kanza Clan Book<\/a> describes the average male member of the Kaw\u2019s identity in the following way.\u00a0Compare\u00a0this description with a\u00a0stationary life on a singular plot of land, and one can see the\u00a0juxtaposition\u00a0felt by tribal members.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll these levels of social structure played a large part in a tribal member \u2013 especially a male \u2013 having a particularly wide scope of personal identification. He was first a member of a family, which was a member of a subclan, which belonged to a clan, which was part of both a particular [singing group] and one of the two moieties, which were the established divisions of a band, which was a semi-autonomous unit belonging to the tribe as a whole. Furthermore, the tribe was\u00a0closely associated\u00a0with the land through which it traveled and hunted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Disease arrived prior to the white settlers and diminished the tribe\u2019s population from several thousand to a mere 1,500 by\u00a0the year\u00a01800. The treaty of 1825 removed the tribe\u2019s claim to the\u00a0eastern Kansas area that includes present day Johnson County. Where they once claimed 20 million acres to roam,\u00a0now their land was\u00a0consolidated\u00a0to 2 million acres\u00a0west\u00a0of\u00a0present day\u00a0Topeka. Once the railroad came to Kansas, the tribe\u2019s land was further reduced to 256,000 acres at Council Grove via the Treaty of 1846. The Treaty of 1859 reduced their land even further leaving them 80,000 acres outside of Council Grove divided into\u00a040-acre\u00a0plots for each family. In 1872, the tribe was\u00a0removed\u00a0from their namesake land and moved to a reservation of just over 100,000 acres in Oklahoma\u00a0that they had to\u00a0purchase\u00a0from the Osage Tribe. By this time,\u00a0their members\u00a0had shrunk to only 553\u00a0people\u00a0and within 16 years of their move,\u00a0they\u00a0had only 194 members left.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Kaw lost all legal power in the Kaw Allotment act of 1902 until they received federal recognition again in 1959.\u00a0Today, the Kaw Tribal Headquarters\u00a0are located in\u00a0Kaw City, Oklahoma, and\u00a0they are\u00a0a federally recognized tribe with almost 4,000 members. The Kaw Nation sponsors a Powwow that is free and open to the public during the annual\u00a0Washunga\u00a0Days Festival in Council Grove every October.\u00a0<\/p>\n To learn more about the Kaw Nation, you can visit their website here<\/a>. To see other indigenous tribes who lived in the area, you can visit Native Land Digital<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to names like Black Bob Road, Shawnee Mission School District, and the city of Shawnee,\u00a0we\u00a0often\u00a0think of\u00a0the Shawnee Tribe when\u00a0imagining the lives\u00a0of\u00a0Johnson County\u2019s indigenous residents.\u00a0However, the Kaw Tribe\u00a0inspired the name for our state and\u00a0lived on this land long before the Shawnee were displaced\u00a0westward.\u00a0\u00a0 Highway sign for Shawnee, KansasJohnson County Museum Collection on JoCoHistory Before\u00a0Anglo\u00a0settlers moved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[3767,63916,3794,181221],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-359901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-blog","tag-jocohistory","tag-people","tag-southwind"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jocohistory.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-2.png?w=351\")
Photo courtesy of the Kaw Nation<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n