Once known as the Kansa (or Konza) tribe, the Kaw are a people
of Dhegiha-Siouan linguistic descent who migrated from the lower
Ohio Valley to present northeastern Kansas prior to 1750. In
nineteenth-century Kansas they fell victim to white land
speculators, traders, missionaries, and the federal government's
policy of tribal concentration and dissolution. The result was
their forced removal to a small reservation in present Kay
County, Oklahoma, in 1873 and the allotment of their land by
federal law in 1902. Among the 249 allottees was Charles Curtis,
a future vice president of the United States (1929-33), who
played a significant role in the Kaw allotment proceedings.
Between 1902 and their legal reconstitution as a federally
recognized tribe in 1959, social and legal struggles were a
common feature of nascent Kaw nationalism. Under the allotment
law of 1902 the Kaws retained 260 acres of trust land of their
former reservation. When this tract was inundated by the Kaw
Reservoir in the mid-1960s, the Kaw Cou