The Land
Sunflower State, Cyclone State (lots of tornadoes), Jayhawk State, Kansas (French) was named after the Dakota Sioux Indian word KaNze, which means 'south wind' or 'people of the south wind'.
Kansas is located in the east-central Great Plains and is bordered by Nebraska on the north, Missouri (east), Oklahoma (south), and Colorado (west).
At 82,282 square miles, Kansas is the the 14th largest state. The highest elevaton is Mt. Sunflower in Wallace County at 4,039 feet. The lowest elevation is Verdigris River in Montgomery County at 679 feet.
The highest temperature recorded was 121° while the lowest was -40°
The History
Eastern Kansas was occupied by the Osage, Pawnee, Kansa, and Wichita Indians, western Kansas by the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Commanche, and Kiowa. France ceded lands including present Kansas to Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the French and Indian Wars. Considered unsuitable for U.S. settlement, the region was designated a permanent home for Native Americans in the 1830s, and northern and eastern tribes were relocated there. Indians began attacking frontier settlements in 1864, peaking in 1867. The Sioux and Cheyenne raided northern Kansas in 1869.
The Kaw Indians were removed from their reservation in Morris County to Oklahoma Territory in 1874, thus opening this land for white settlement. The last Indian battle in Kansas occurred on September 27, 1878, when Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf of the Northern Cheyenne fought the U.S. Cavalry on present Beaver Creek, just south of Scott County State Park. Some 248 Indians, including women and children, were fleeing rom confinement and starvation on the reservation in Oklahoma (Indian Territory) to their home lands in Yellowstone. The last Indian raid occurred that same year in Decatur County.
The first European known to have visited the region was the Spanish explorer Francisco de Coronado, during his search for Quivira, a fabled kingdom of riches, in 1541. Father Juan de Padilla, a priest who had accompanied Coronado, returned to Kansas in 1542. Though he didn't actually explore Kansas, the French explorer Robert Cavalier, sieur de La Salle, claimed all the territory drained by the Mississippi River, inlcuding Kansas, for France about 1682. Another Frenchman, Captain M. Etienne Venyard de Bourgmont, led an expedition into what are now Atchison and Doniphan counties in 1742.
Lewis and Clark passed through the region during their 1803-1806 expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike of the U.S. Army followed the Arkansas River across the Kansas area en route to Colorado in 1806. Stephen H. Long conducted a scientific expedition across the area in 1819. The first permanent settlements in Kansas were outposts, Fort Leavenworth (1827), Fort Scott (1842), and Fort Riley (1853), established to protect travelers along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.
France and Spain both owned the area, though neither established a strong presence. France ceded the territory of West Louisiana (including Kansas) to Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the French and Indian Wars. In 1800, Spain gave it back to France.
The U.S. purchased an immense tract of land from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The new lands included present Kansas.
Kansas was Organized as a territory on May 30, 1854 and became the 34th state to unite under America on January 29, 1861.
The People
In 2000 whites made up 86.1 percent of the population, blacks 5.7 percent, Asians 1.7 percent, Native Americans 0.9 percent, and those of mixed heritage or not reporting ethnicity 5.5 percent. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders numbered 1,313. Hispanics, who may be of any race, were 7 percent of the people. Although a few black people in Kansas live in rural areas, the majority live in the Wichita, Topeka, and Kansas City metropolitan areas.
Germans, Swedes, and other groups from western Europe were important components of the early settlement of Kansas. Mexicans, Croatians, and Italians came shortly after 1900. In more recent decades, however, foreign-born residents have not been numerous. They numbered 2.5 percent of the state's total population in 1990.
The 1998 census put Kansas' population at 2,629,000. The State Capital is Topeka, other major cities or towns include Wichita, Kansas City, Overland Park, Olathe, Lawrence, Salina, Shawnee, Manhattan, Leavenworth.
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