The presentation begins with a summary of the history of the Kanza prior to the tribe’s relocation to the Council Grove Reservation in 1847. The presenter, Ronald D. Parks, presented an overview of the impact of the Santa Fe Trail and U.S. government policy on the Kanzas during the tribe’s occupation of the Council Grove Reservation from 1847 until 1873. Themes covered are environmental degradation, schools that imposed Christianity and farming, the impact of the Santa Fe Trail, whiskey trade, and the illegal occupation of the Indians’ land by white squatters. Ron briefly examines the underlying world views of the dominant Euro-American people who imposed their wills on the Kanzas: the sanctity of private property, a Christian contempt for indigenous religions, white racial supremacy, and the imperial ambitions of an expanding nation-state. The consequences for the Kanzas were dire: indebtedness, military inferiority, vanishing game, dependence on government annuity payments, poverty, profound cultural erosion, and the tribe’s diminishing population.

Ronald D. Parks has a BA in English, from Kansas State University, 1972; employed by the Kansas State Historical Society (Historic Sites Division), 1981-2004; author of The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846-1873. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2014, this book won both the 2014 Prairie Heritage Book Award for the best book about the heritage of the Great Plains and the Santa Fe Trail Association’s Louis Barry Writing Award for the best book or major article about the Santa Fe Trail in 2014. The Darkest Period was also listed by the Kansas Library Association as a Kansas Notable Book for 2015.