The Meaning Behind “Fool Chief”

Sometimes it is interesting – pathetic, even – how language can change the connotation of things, especially when the Americans get involved with translating from Native American languages to English. We who speak English may consider a “Fool Chief” to be something entirely different than the original intent behind the title given to one of the chiefs of the three primary camps or villages of the Kansa Indians, also known as the Kaw. Thankfully, we have an explanation of the true meaning, thanks to a letter written by a long-time resident of Morris County, Kansas.

Here is his short biography:

George P. Morehouse was born July 28, 1859, in Decatur, Illinois. In 1871 the elder Morehouse drove overland in covered lumber wagons to Diamond Springs, Morris County, Kansas, and opened a stock ranch, where his family settled. The stock farm gained a reputation for quality.

George Morehouse became an expert hunter and horseman, driving herds to other ranches. At a young age he was active in politics and early railroad matters, and was a frequent speaker and debater. He attended Albion (New York) Academy, and graduated in 1884. He also graduated from the University of New York, where he was elected president and orator of his class. He studied law, but returned to Council Grove to manage the cattle ranch. He finished his legal education in Kansas and was admitted to the bar in 1889. He was appointed city attorney of Council Grove, serving about six years. Morehouse was also elected county attorney of Morris County, the county which included the Kaw Reservation at Council Grove between 1848 and 1872.

Here is the letter addressed to George W. Martin (emphasis in bold added):

Council Grove, Kansas, April 16th 1904

The Honorable George W. Moreland,

Topeka, Kansas.

My dear sir and friend:-

Your letter will with inquiry relative to the matter of the “Fool Chiefs” of the Kaw Indians received and I should have answered it sooner, but the duties in our spring term of Court have prevented. There will be no discrepancies in the Indian stories of Capt. McClure and the writer.

There were two Fool Chiefs, who at different times were well-known head chiefs of the Kaw Indians,- father and son.

The Fool Chief the First, "Ca-ega-tan-nin-ga," was prominent as a great chief away back as early as 1819, when Major Long's exploring expedition held a council with the Kaws on the Missouri River and when a part of the Expedition visited their large village near the mouth of the Blue [River].

The Kaws had three villages on the Kansas River, the largest one governed by the Fool Chief and the other two presided over by Hard Chief and American Chief. It may here be mentioned that the Kaws governed and usually operated in all things by threes.

Fool Chief's Village - Courtesy Kansapedia

They were always divided into three villages or tribal divisions and when they lived on their reservation near this place, kept up the three village scheme. Fool Chief the first, came here with the Kaws in 1847 and during the year of 1848 while on a visit and to Missouri was killed in a difficulty in Johnson County, in the manner you relate in your address.

"Kah-he-ga-wa-ti-an-gah" or Fool Chief the second, was a son of the former and seemed to inherit the rank from his father. He was “Fool Chief” during the residence of the tribe here and went with the Kaws in 1873 to their present home in the Indian Territory, where he died a very old man a few years ago.

During most of his life he was a great and wise councilor and in his younger days a brave warrior, but once, a few years before the tribe went to the Territory, he became crazed by liquor and in a quarrel killed a Kaw brave with little or no excuse.

It caused a grand council of the tribe to be convened and after full investigation, he was only allowed to save his life by paying a great fine, which took a large number of ponies, robes and many valuable relics. He was also required to surrender his chiefship for a time and was considered in disgrace.

"Kah-he-ga-wa-ti-an-gah" was a peculiar hereditary title and had historical and important significance. Some claim that there was always a “Fool Chief” or a Kah-he-ga-wa-ti-an-gah in the tribe. At different times and by different writers it was spelled Ca-ega-wa-tan-nin-ga, Ka-he-ga-wa-ta-ning-ga, and Kah-he-ga-wa-ti-an-gah the latter being the authorized way by those who lived with the Kaws here and according to our mutual friend Judge Huffaker is the most expressive. Kah-he-ga means chief and wa-ti-an-gah means brave and courageous even to rashness. The term “Fool Chief” was a high and honorable distinction and became hereditary, but could only be maintained by brave and warlike qualities along with good conduct and wisdom in counsel. Originally it was obtained by some remarkable act of personal bravery, daring, Indian prowess which brought advantage and renowned not only to the individual but to the tribe.

The spelling of Indian names varies and is not very important, but that which gives best representation of the pronunciation should be used. Having no written language, this is manifestly so.

The later day fool chiefs in Kansas are in no wise followers of the methods of those dusky worthies of long ago, but now as then all dynasties in Kansas, whether of the fool character or otherwise come to an end and so must this letter.

Have you sent those last pamphlets relative to the State Seal, etc.? I return the leavee of the address you sent.

I think this will harmonize and the discrepancies you mentioned, for there were at least two "Fool Chiefs" among the leading historical characters of the Kaws.

Very truly, Geo. P. Morehouse

Unfortunately, I was not able to locate an image of either "Fool Chief." I find it interesting that “fool” is part of the name or a title for other tribes besides the Kaw. What we today think of as a fool had an entirely different meaning, at least among some Native American tribes.

In my latest book, Charlie's Choice, I placed Charlie's Kansa uncle in the Fool Chief's camp as it existed in 1856. 

PLEASE CLICK HERE to reach the full book description and purchase link for Charlie's Choice. Charlie's Choice is also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Sources:

https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/219522

https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/george-pierson-morehouse/18207

Chief Lucy of the Kaw Nation & Cover Reveal

In the early 1800s, the Kaw, or Kansa, claimed a territory that covered roughly two-fifths of modern-day Kansas along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. Known as “People of the South Wind,” hey were one of the strongest and most influential tribes in the region. The Kansa suffered many reversals since the time of along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. By the mid-19th century, as European settlement claimed more and more land around Council Grove, the Kaw Nation was forced into what is now Oklahoma. At that time, between 1872 and 1873, less than 500 people belonged to the tribe. And by 1902, less than 200 were entered into the tribal rolls.

Chief Washunga

Chief Washunga died in 1908, leaving a void among the Kaw Nation. According to an article in the Tulsa World in 1922, when the Kaw Nation was assembled to choose a tribal head, they searched for a person who was a full-blood and who could speak on behalf of the Kaw Nation but also understand the workings of a white society.

Lucy Tayiah Eads became the logical choice. On Nov. 26, 1922, the paper wrote of her: “Lucy Tayiah Eads, full blood, college graduate, trained nurse, and model housewife, who knows how to chum and sew and bake and does all of them constantly, has been elected chief of the Kaw tribe of Indians ... by a majority vote of the members of the tribe.”

She was the first woman to become a chief of the Kaw tribe. It came just two years after the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote. She is quoted as saying in the Tulsa Daily World., “I cannot tell just yet how I feel about being chosen chief of the Kaws, for the honor is too new,” She asked people to call her “Lucy.”

 

Lucy Tayiah Eads

Lucy Tayiah Eads, 34 at the time, was the mother of seven children and the owner of 800 acres of land near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line.

Lucy was born on Oct. 4, 1888. Her father, Little Pah-Yah, died when she was 6. She grew up at a time when the federal government was pushing American Indians farther and farther away from their culture and heritage. When she and her brother were orphaned, they were adopted by Chief Washunga. She was sent to study at the Haskell Indian College in Lawrence, where she trained as a nurse.

Unidentified Kaw Woman 1800's

In 1908, she married her first husband, Herbert Edward Kimber, but the marriage was short-lived. She married John Eads in 1913.

Eads was a logical choice, according to J.C. Clendenning, the U.S. Indian agent then in charge at Washunga. The 1922 article quoted him as saying, “She is the finest example of what an Indian should be.”

While the Kaw Nation struggled with land claims, oil and gas rights, treaty provisions and dealings with businessmen who weren’t always ethical, Eads tried to right wrongs.

L-R: Isabelle Chouteau Bain, Sister Eads, Lucy Eads in the Kaw Mission at Council Grove, Kansas - Kaw - circa 1945

She became one of the most beloved chiefs of the Kaw Nation. She died on Oct. 11, 1961.

And although she grew up in Oklahoma, Lucy Tayiah Eads and many other Kaw Indians believed their hearts belonged elsewhere--Kansas.

This post is an example of one foot in the past, and the other in the future. I researched and wrote about the Kaw in my novel, Kizzie’s Kisses, set in the Kaw’s former homeland in Kansas. To read my post about the history of the Kaw people, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

My next novella, a shorter romance, has a heroine who also grew up in Kansas, although further west. Other than that, I won’t say much about it until closer to publication day on June 20—wait for it, wait for it—. What I will offer you is a sneak peek at the cover for Aaron’s Annulment Bride.

Sources:

Wikipedia

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-story-of-kansas/article1116197.html

THE KAW-PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH WIND

 One of my favorite characters in my latest book, Kizzie's Kisses, is Charlie Gray Cloud, a man in his late twenties who is half Kaw. The Kaw Indians, also known as Kansa Indians, are the tribe that gave their name to both the river that joins the Missouri River at Kansas City, and to the state of Kansas. He worked as a scout on the same oxen-pulled freight train with my hero, Leander Jones. At the time of my story, the two men are traveling east of Salina, Kansas. The following is a little bit about the history of the Kaw/Kansa tribe.

Early History

The Kansa tribe of farmers and hunters lived along the Kansas River, a tributary of the Missouri and extended from Kansas into Nebraska. They were a strong, proud, war-like people who fought with other tribes, the fur traders and white soldiers and settlers before signing a number of treaties which culminated in their forced removal to reservations.

The Kaw Nation derived its name from the Siouan word for “south wind,” which was the tribe’s role in war ceremonials, using the power of the wind when recognizing warriors. Among the many variations of the name given by French traders and other Europeans were “Kanza” or “Kansa.” By the mid-18th century, the “Wind People” were the predominant tribe in what became the state to which they gave their name (Kansas). Their territory extended over most of present-day northern and eastern Kansas, with hunting grounds extending far to the west.

The Kaw, along with the Osage, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw — technically known as the Dhegiha-Siouan division of the Hopewell cultures of the lower Ohio Valley —lived together as one people in the lower Ohio valley prior to the white invasion of North American in the late 15th century. Sometime prior to about 1750, the search for better sources of game and pressure from the more powerful Algonquians to the east prompted a westward migration to the mouth of the Ohio River. The other tribes moved up and down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and the Kaws assumed control of the region in and around present-day Kansas City as well as the Kansas River Valley to the west.

The French explorer Bourgmont was the first European known to visit the Kaws in 1724. He found them living in a single large village near the future site of the town of Doniphan, Kansas, on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.  In 1780 the Kaw abandoned this village and took up residence on the Kansas River, but the ruins of their earlier village were long a landmark for travelers. When Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, they noted passing the site of the “old village of the Kanzas” on July 2, 1804.

Culture of the Kaw/Kansa People

In the past, each Kansa band was led by a chief who was chosen by a tribal council. Kansa men were hunters and sometimes went to war to protect their families. Kansa women were farmers and did most of the child care and cooking. Only men became Kansa chiefs, but both genders took part in storytelling, artwork and music, and traditional medicine.

The Kansa Indians lived in settled villages of round earthen lodges. These lodges were made from wooden frames covered with packed earth. Kansa houses were very large (more than fifty feet across) and several families shared the same lodge. When Kansa men went on hunting trips, they often used small buffalo-hide tipis (or teepees) as temporary shelter, similar to camping tents. Unlike other Plains Indian tribes, Kansa families did not normally live in teepees.

So-Jum-Wah - 1865

The men wore a blue or red breechcloth with a belt, deerskin leggings, moccasins with no ornamentation, and sometimes a blanket over the upper part of the body. Shells, beads, or metal ornaments were attached to the rim of the ear, sometimes to great profusion, and long slender hair pipes were common. Kaw men shaved their heads, leaving only the scalp lock uncut. Sometimes the edge of the lock was colored with vermilion, or an eagle feather was inserted. On top of the head a roach (headdress) might be worn, made of deer tail, dyed red and parted longitudinally by a silver spreader (James, 1823). 

Quyulange aka Eagle Plume 1877

For my character Charlie Gray Cloud, I used a combination of the photographs of these two men to visualize what he might look like and how he may have been dressed. 

Kaw women wore moccasins, knee-length leggings of blue and red cloth, a skirt and occasionally a cloth thrown over one shoulder. The hair was worn long, parted in the middle, the part colored with vermilion. Like the men, many of the women tattooed the body.

Grandma McCauley

Kansa artists are famous for their native weaving, beadwork, and hide paintings.

One of the best early records of the Kaw people came from the 1832 visit by the artist George Catlin. His paintings of Kaw people preserved images of the dress styles of the time.

The food that the Kansa tribe ate included crops of maize, beans and squash and fish caught in the rivers. In the summer the hunters provided a variety of meat, especially the buffalo.

The religion and beliefs of the Kansa tribe were based on their belief in the Great Spirit and Animism that encompassed the spiritual or religious idea that the universe and all natural objects animals, plants, trees, rivers, rocks, mountains etc. The Kansa religion involved vision quests and many different spirit beings, or wakan, who held different powers.

 

Meach-o-shín-gaw, Little White Bear, a distinguished Kansa brave

Demographers have estimated that, as a consequence of the white man’s diseases (principally smallpox, cholera, and influenza), their population had been reduced perhaps to less than 50 percent, down to about 1,500 men, women and children by 1800. Even so, the Kaws presented a formidable obstacle to American expansion into the trans-Missouri West following its acquisition of this vast region by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. From their villages and small vegetable farms in northeastern Kansas and later along the Kansas River west of present-day Topeka, Kaw warriors maintained control of the lower Kansas valley against both the white man from the east and alien tribes to the west. Kaw hunters also engaged in semi-annual hunting expeditions onto the plains of western Kansas.

In 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804 - 1806) shortly after the Louisiana Purchase pulled this territory under the dominion of the United States. Members of this expedition attempted to make contact with the Kansa tribe, but the people were on a buffalo hunt. In September of 1806, A grand council was held between Zebulon Pike and James Wilkinson and various chiefs of the Kansa, Pawnee and Osage Nations.

However, this turned out to be monumental events for the region, for the expedition returned east with favorable reports of the region. This prompted emigration to the region and the establishment of Kansas City, one of the trade centers and jumping-off points for travelers heading further west.

Francis French Killer, Wah-Sis-Tah-Shin-Kah

However, this was not the first contact with Europeans. Prior to that, due to their location at the junction of two major rivers, they came into contact with both the Spanish and later the French.which established trading posts in the region. Contact with Europeans resulted with a devastating smallpox epidemic killed many people in 1801. Between sickness and intertribal warfare, the number of Kansa people declines dramatically.

the early 1800s, the Kaw’s domain extended well beyond the present-day borders of Kansas. From 1780 to 1830 the Kaw lived at Blue Earth Village on the Kansas River, at the site of present-day Manhattan, Kansas. The Kaw probably moved to the Kansas River Valley to be closer to the buffalo herds on the Great Plains. The tribe increasingly depended upon buffalo hunting for its subsistence and less on agriculture. Also, living on the Kansas River gave them access to a rich territory of fur bearing animals to trade to the French for guns and other commodities. Unfortunately, this movement west also made them more vulnerable to attack from powerful enemies such as the Pawnees. Lewis and Clark noted that they were "reduced by war with their neighbors." They estimated the Kaw to number 300 men—about 1,500 persons in all.

In 1825, the Kaw ceded a huge area of land in Missouri and Kansas to the United States in exchange for a promise of an annuity of $3,500 annually for twenty years. The promised annuity—to be paid in goods and services—was often late in arriving or found its way into the pockets of unscrupulous government officials and merchants. The Kaw were indifferent to the pleas of government agents and missionaries that they take up farming as their sole livelihood.

Meanwhile, the Kaw faced smallpox epidemics in 1827–1828 and 1831–1832, which killed about 500. During the same period the tribe split into four different competing groups living in different villages, a consequence of rivalry between three groups of conservatives, who favored retaining traditional ways, and one group under White Plume which favored accommodation with the United States. Important in the latter group were 23 mixed bloods, the sons and daughters of French traders who had taken Kaw wives.

Due to pressures from encroaching white men and decimation by disease and warfare, and a flood that destroyed their crops in 1844, in 1846, the Kaw sold most of their remaining land and the federal government forced them onto a 20 square-mile reservation surrounding Council Grove, Kansas. Council Grove is a beautiful area of forests, water, and tall grass prairie. About 1,000 people, struggling with disease and starvation, lived in three nearby villages. However, Council Grove was probably the worst location that could have been selected for the already weakened and demoralized tribe. It was a favorite stopping place for the rough-mannered teamsters and traders and greedy merchants on the Santa Fe Trail. The first Kaw arriving there were beaten up by traders. The flourishing whiskey trade in Council Grove was detrimental to the Kaw. Whites invaded Indian lands and sporadic efforts by soldiers to force them off the reservation were ineffective. In 1860, the Kaw reservation, overrun by White settlers, was reduced to 80,000 acres.

The Kaw lived on the reservation for less than 30 years when, despite an impassioned plea to Congress by Chief Allegawaho in 1873, the US government relocated 600 kaws to a new reservation in (present-day Oklahoma).

Kizzie’s Kisses is Book 2, the first full-size book in the Grandma’s Wedding Quilts series. You may read the full book decription as well as purchase Kizzie’s Kisses by CLICKING HERE.

Sources:

http://kawnation.com/

http://www.bigorrin.org/kansa_kids.htm

https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/indian-tribes/kansa-tribe.htm

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ks-santafetrailmrco3.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaw_people