Seizing and selling tribal land in Kansas funded scores of American universities

In the 1800s, the U.S. government gave states land in the interest in building land-grant universities, in which schools would reinvest money they got from selling the land. Much of the land came from Native Americans, who got a fraction of what the land was worth.

By

State News

June 17, 2020 - 10:08 AM

Pauline Sharp shows a map of Kanza land in the 1800s during a visit to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park. Photo by Stephan Bisaha / Kansas News Service / kcur.org

COUNCIL GROVE — Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and 30 other schools owe at least part of their existence to land taken from Kansas’ indigenous people.

In the 1800s, the U.S. government gave states that land in the interest of building land-grant universities. Then, the schools would reinvest the money they got from selling the land — which was mostly in the Midwest, including 920,000 acres in Kansas.

A recent analysis by High Country News shows tribes who were forced off of their land were paid less than 2% of what the states raised from selling that same land.

“It’s almost like a 19th century form of money laundering,” said Jim Leiker, a professor of history at Johnson County Community College.

‘The darkest period’

Before 1825, the Kanza tribe called 20 million acres in Kansas home. By the time President Abraham Lincoln signed the first Morrill Act in 1862, they’d been forced to live on 80,000 acres in the Flint Hills near modern-day Council Grove, less than half of a percent the size of where they’d been.

That same year, the federal government built 138 huts for the Kanza people — at the Kanza’s expense. And the huts were built of stone instead of their preferred rounded dwellings of bark. Sharp corners could trap the spirits the Kanza believed in, so the stone huts housed their horses instead.

“They were never ideal from the beginning,” said Pauline Sharp, a member of the Kaw Nation, which is one of many names the Kanza use.

Only three huts remain, a few crumbled walls, at Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park that’s a few miles south of Council Grove. They are a reminder of what Kanza head chief Allegawaho said in 1871 was the “darkest period in our history,” according to historian Ronald Park’s book, “The Darkest Period.”

“It’s horribly sad to know how your ancestors were treated,” said Sharp, who also serves as secretary-treasurer of the Kanza Heritage Society board.

The land that Kanza and other Kansas tribes were forced off of became a windfall for the newly created land-grant universities, including Kansas State. As of 2017, more than 1.7 million students were enrolled in land-grant institutions, which were inititally meant to research and train Americans in agriculture and engineering and are found in all 50 states.

The vast majority of Kansas land benefitted universities back East, like the following:

  • 1,100 acres around Kanopolis Lake in the Smoky Hills helped pay for several land-grant universities, including ones in Delaware and Alabama.
  • Just under 1,000 acres in Johnson County went to universities in Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina.
  • More than 350,000 acres in the Flint Hills, between El Dorado Lake to Fort Riley, paid for schools like Rutgers University and Mississippi State University.
     

Indigenous Kansas land sold by universities 

Kansas tribes were paid $18,000 for the 920,000 acres. But High Country News data shows states raised $1.15 million off of Kansas’ acres (a figure that is not adjusted for inflation).

That’s a more than 6,000% return on investment. And it upends the myth, Leiker with JCCC said, that western settlers were the only ones who benefited from tribes being pushed out of the state.

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