The Kanza were part of a large network of trade and communication between indigenous peoples, long before European contact. The Blue Earth Village was at the heart of their homeland. It was a large, bustling community, and it would be decades before local white settlements such as Manhattan, Kansas equaled it in population. 

The United States government was interested in the west, and what resources and people it could exploit. Because of this, many expeditions -- the most famous of them being Lewis and Clark's expedition to the sea -- were launched into the West. 

The Long Expedition began in 1818 under the leadership of Major Stephen H. Long. Their goal was to establish a US presence in the area. The visit to Blue Earth Village was undertaken as a side-mission led by self-taught naturalist Thomas Say. Their visit lasted 4 days. Much information about what it was like in the village comes from this expedition. 

Once, it was thought that George Sibley’s expeditionary team visited Blue Earth Village in 1811; however, in recent years, scholars have come to believe they visited a different village along the Kansas River. 

Not long after these expeditions, land treaties in 1825, 1846, 1859, and 1863 expelled the Kanza from their historic homeland. To learn more about how land treaties dispossessed indigenous peoples in this area, you can look at the Chapman Center's subsite: Kansas Land Treaties