Kansas

An exploration of Kansas social networks traces all the way back to the period of Indian Territory. From there, the history of Kansas social networks are evident all through the timeline of the development of the state, from the 19th-century frontier called Kansas Territory to Bleeding Kansas at the outset of the Civil War to Kansas's role as a national agricultural center in the present.

Author and historian Peter Iverson discusses “inclusion” as a conceptual vantage point far more useful than “assimilation” to explain the ever-expanding intersection of cocultures that produce the cultural significance of a particular locale. Similarly, the “network” metaphor is more descriptive than the “melting pot” trope to understand network pragmatics of early Kansas. Before the Euro-American pioneers settled the frontier, indigenous peoples such as the Wyandottes, the Navajo, and the Hidatsas formed social and economic networks on the Midwestern plains, part of which is now Kansas, for thousands of years. Then in 19th-century Kansas Territory and antebellum Kansas, religious and political functions overtook the social, ultimately linking cocultures in war and conflict.

In about 1825, part of the Indian Territory was created from lands that had previously been deeded to the “five civilized tribes” (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek, and Choctaw nations) who were removed there from ancestral lands in the southern states as white settlers claimed those areas. Tribes interacted economically and socially with other tribes and settlers alike; for example, C. H. Fitch writes in 1900 about “Indian ball” (a lacrosse-type game) that attracted large cocultural crowds. Social and economic interactions and shared interests produced relationships of marriage and commerce, and much of the Indian Territory was cultivated and developed, although still owned by the tribes to which it had been deeded. Christian missionaries established Indian schools to further their religious aims. In some cases, missionaries worked with Indian agents to enable tribes, notably the Shawnee, to acquire slaves.