White Plume Kaw (abt. 1765 - 1838)

Born about 1765 in Osage City, Kansas

Descendants

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Biography

Chief White Plume was Chief of the Kaw "Half Breeds"^[1]

He was the great-great-grandfather of Charles Curtis, Vice President of the United States

Research Notes

The following was placed in "Memories" back in 2012 by Lois Hirsch; the details need source citations; much of it is clearly a cut and paste from some other source; note the footnote numbers:

• According to geocities.ws, Chief Wite Plume's wife's name was Wyhesee. Evidently their daughter was named after her.
• White Plume was born about 1765. The Kaw tribe at that time occupied lands in what became the states of Kansas and Missouri and numbered about 1500 persons.[2] White Plume married a daughter of the Osage Chief Pawhuska. This marriage may have been important in establishing friendly relations between the closely related Kaws and Osage.
• White Plume had five children. His three sons all died when young men. His two daughters, Hunt Jimmy (b. ca. 1800) and Wyhesee (b. ca. 1802) married the French traders Louis Gonville and Joseph James.[3] Until the United States acquired Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the Kaw subsisted primarily on buffalo hunting with only limited agriculture. They were dependent on selling furs and buffalo robes to French traders, such as the powerful Chouteau family, to acquire European goods such as guns. White Plume lived to see the traditional lifestyle of the Kaws become increasingly unsustainable. He attempted to meet the challenges facing the Kaws by cooperation with the U.S. government
  • See comments below this narrative by Kathie Forbes regarding the # of wives and # of children
• White Plume was first written about as one of the Kaw signatories to an 1815 treaty with the United States.[4] With his daughters married to French traders, White Plume was identified by American officials as more progressive—in their minds—than his leadership rivals among the Kaws. In 1821 he was invited by Indian Superintendent William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) to visit Washington, DC as a member of a delegation of Indian leaders. The group met with President James Monroe and other American officials, visited New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and performed war dances on the White House Lawn and at the residence of the French Minister. The artist Charles Bird King painted a portrait of White Plume. He was given two silver epaulettes as a sign that the U. S. government accepted him as the principal Kaw chief.[5] In reality, however, he never had authority over most members of the tribe.
• White Plume came back from Washington convinced that the future of the Kaw, and his own future, was accommodation with the United States. Already eastern Indians were migrating west and occupying lands claimed by the Kaw. The Missouri River was a highway to fur trappers and traders heading for the Rocky Mountains. In 1822 the first wagons traveled through Kaw hunting grounds from Missouri to New Mexico on the Santa Fe Trail. Many Americans, including the missionary Isaac McCoy, saw Kansas as the place in which all the dispossessed eastern Indians could be gathered together in an Indian state.
• n 1825, White Plume was the principal Kaw chief signing a treaty that ceded 18 million acres (73,000 km2) to the United States in exchange for annuities of 3,500 dollars per year for 20 years plus livestock and assistance to enable the Kaw to become full-time farmers. What was left to the Kaw was a sliver of land thirty miles wide extending westward into the Great Plains from the Kansas River valley. To win support for the treaty from the increasingly important mixed bloods, each of 23 mixed blood children of French/Kaw parents received a section of land on the north bank of the Kansas River.[6] (See Half-Breed Tracts). The immense land giveaway in the 1825 treaty, plus a similar treaty signed by the government with the Osage, opened up Kansas to the relocation, often forced, of eastern Indian tribes. The U.S. would squeeze the Kaw into ever smaller territories. In defense of White Plume, much of the land he ceded was already lost to the Kaw and was being occupied by eastern Indians or White settlers. White Plume probably also foresaw that the Kaw would have to learn to live on much reduced territories and change their emphasis from hunting and fur trading to agriculture. Thus, he chose cooperation as his policy.
• White Plume (Plume Branche or Mon Charisz) called by the French an Kanza (Kaw) (also known as No-Pa-War-Ra, Nampawarah, Wompauara, & Mannschens Caw)meaning "man who scares" or "fury". He was appointed Chief of Kansa (Kaw, Kanza) Indians by General Clark. He assissted Lewis & Clark when their expedition went thru Kansas.

Sources

1. ↑ Compiled by Lawrence Barkwell Coordinator of Metis Heritage and History Research Louis Riel Institute 1825-Treaty for Kansas Kaw Mixed Bloods/Half Breeds- Land Tracts- [[1]]

See also:

• Wikipedia Chief White Plume
• Kansapedia Granddaughters of White Plume
• The Kansa Indians a history of the Wind People
• Unrau, William E., Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989