The Mid-America All-Indian Center – Wichita, Kansas
Enter the world of the Native Tribes of the Plains Indians and learn not only about them but to respect their culture and the lives they lived prior to the coming of the white man. This center is a multi purpose facility housing a museum, a Gallery of Nations for special events, and a gift shop.
The immediate predecessors of the tribes whose cultures remain to this day were the short-lived Proto-Historical People: the Dismal River (probably Plains Apache), the Oneota (Kansa or Kaw, Ponca, Omaha, and Osage), the Lower Loup (Pawnee), and the Great Bend (Wichita). Still untouched by the white man’s diseases, alcohol, and more complex technology, these people divided their economic endeavors between gathering, small-scale horticulture (maize and vegetables), and the chase. With the penetration of the central plains by Coronado in 1541 the historic period began, as did the Indians mighty struggle for survival. (informaiton taken from the Mid-American All-Indian Center website.)
The Plains Apacheas a Southern Athabaskan group that traditionally live on the Southern Plains of North America, today being centered in Southwestern Oklahoma and being federally recognized as the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. They were also known as the Kiowa Apache, Ni’isha, or Naishan Dene, meaning “our people”. They worked with other tribes but were actually rather aloft on some matters such as language. They spoke to other native tribes by sign language rather than to learn other languages.
KAW (KANSA)
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.
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 Council House was moved to a smaller tract nearby and the Kaw cemetery to Newkirk, Oklahoma. Thus Newkirk and then Kaw City, the present tribal headquarters some fifteen miles southeast of Newkirk, emerged as the epicenters of the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma.
PONCA
The Ponca tribe separated from the Omaha tribe in the early 18th century. They settled in Nebraska and South Dakota. Smallpox and other introduced Eurasian diseases took a heavy toll of the tribe repeatedly in the 18th and 19th centuries, as they had no immunity. The more powerful Sioux encroached on their land base.
The Ponca never went to war with the United States. They signed their first peace treaty with the US in 1817. In the 1825 they signed a trade agreement. Treaties in 1858 and 1865 ceded lands. The 1860s and 1870s were a difficult time for the Ponca tribe, as the buffalo were disappearing, droughts destroyed crops, and warfare with the Sioux combined to threaten the Ponca with starvation. The US did not uphold their treaty obligations to the Ponca. They gave land reserved for the Ponca to the Sioux in 1868, as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. The government relocated the Ponca to Indian Territory in 1877.
OSAGE
The Osage Nation was originally in the Ohio River valley area (Kentucky) but after years of war with invading Iroquois they migrated west of the Mississippi River to the areas of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. During the 18th century the Osage had become the dominate power in their region, controlling the land between the Missouri and Red Rivers. Today there are tribal members throughout the US.
Wichita has never had a fort that was built to keep out the Indians nor have they ever been at war with the native tribes. It is thought that the early pioneers had a feeling of humanism ingrained within their hearts that they understood that life would be better for everyone if they worked together rather than warring with each other.
The Center was approved with a $2 million bond by the Wichita City Commission in 1974. The 44 ft. sculpture of weathering Cor-Ten steel stands as a tribute to the Indian heritage and marks the strength of continuing Indian Culture. In 1976 the staff of the Center moved into their new building.
Location:
Mid-America All-Indian Center
650 N. Seneca | Wichita, KS 67203
(316) 350-3340
Email: ascott@wichita.gov (April Scott, Executive Director)
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