The Kaw Agency

This stone building is a remnant of the old Kansas Agency, the federal office that managed the affairs of the Kaw, or Kanza, people whose name this state carries. The agency was established near Council Grove in eighteen fifty-five, on the Neosho River, on a reservation set aside for the tribe. Federal agents built stone structures here to oversee the Kaw during a hard and shrinking time, as treaties steadily reduced their land.

By eighteen seventy-three the government dissolved the reservation, and that same year the Kaw were forced south to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, the agency closed by presidential order. But the story did not end. The Kaw Nation has since bought back land in this area, now Allegawaho Heritage Memorial Park, reclaiming a piece of their homeland and a measure of the sovereignty taken from them here.