The great spirit taught us: the Indians' peaceful struggle to remain in Kansas

Abstract

The fewer than one thousand Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Chippewas, Munsees, Iowas, Sacs and Foxes clinging to their eastern Kansas homes in the late nineteenth century were the persistent ones. These Indians still lived in Kansas because they had maintained a degree of cultural independence in the face of every adversity while flexibly yielding to pressure when necessary. While thousands of their fellow tribesmen were forced to leave Kansas, these Indians survived because they adapted to white society as necessary, but at their own pace, and by their own methods of passive resistance and peaceful protest. They rejected efforts by missionaries to convert them to Christianity, and they resisted the individual land allotment provision of the government's civilization program. While they acculturated they did not assimilate; they might have lived like whites, but they did not live as whites. The Indians loved their homes, viewed their lands with reverence, and successfully resisted every effort to expel them from Kansas.