Cavanaugh | Hodgeman County, KS
“1,000,000 Acres of Land in the New Kansas” advertisement by Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company (1875)
“Third president, 1801–1809,” oil painting by Mather Brown (1786)
Settler Colonialism
The Treaty Period
Coerce.
“Commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them, and not war.”
Thomas Loraine McKenney, Charles Loring Elliott (1856)
Undisturbed.
“[I]t is the policy of the Government to guarantee them lasting and undisturbed possession.”
Thomas L. McKenney, Report of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of War (Nov. 30, 1825)
Photograph of unidentified Osage men, artist unknown (c. 1860)
Surplus.
“The tribe of the Great and Little Osage Indians, having now more lands than are necessary for their occupation, and all payments from the Government to them under former treaties having ceased, leaving them greatly impoverished, and being desirous of improving their condition by disposing of their surplus lands, do hereby grant and sell to the United States the lands contained within the following boundaries….”
1865 Treaty with the Osage, 14 Stat. 687 (Sept. 29, 1865)
Map of Treaty Cessions by Charles C. Royce, Bureau of American Ethnology (1899)
Primary Sources
& Markups
U.S. Law
Land Becomes Property
Primary Sources
& Markups
“Map Showing the Progress of the Public Surveys in Kansas and Nebraska,” by Surveyor General’s Office” (Aug. 25, 1866)
“Spirit of Kansas,” oil painting by Mary Pillsbury Weston (1891)