The Citizen Potawatomi Nation invites local youth interested in taking up North America’s original sport to attend the Lacrosse Exhibition Day on Oct. 14. The event will include a two-hour instructional seminar and feature two lacrosse games between teams from Oklahoma and Texas. CPN hopes to recruit players to restart the youth lacrosse program that Read More »
After the Potawatomi arrived in present-day Kansas, Indian agents R.W. Cummins and A.J. Vaughan established a pay station and trading post at Uniontown located south of the Kansas River and west of present-day Topeka, Kansas. The settlement served as a commercial hub for Tribal members, and its position along the Oregon-California Trail made it a Read More »
The Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center’s treaty gallery features several documents that defined Tribal relationships with the government, including peace, reservation and removal treaties. The Potawatomi signed 44 treaties with the federal government, more than any other tribe. “The treaties help illustrate that Potawatomi groups were autonomous in the Great Lakes region, but that Read More »
In the mid to late 1800s, profitable steam locomotion companies began purchasing large tracts of land in the Midwest. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, chartered in February 1859, wanted to connect Chicago and the West Coast. Upon Kansas’ statehood in January 1861, the company eyed Potawatomi reservation land to complete its railway project. Read More »
The fur trade’s decline and colonial competition increased turmoil across Indian Country. Through the 18th to early 19th century, discord among Native Americans and the federal government continued to grow. Section five of the Cultural Heritage Center focuses on this influential time in North American history. Each Native group had their own survival tactics. Some Read More »
With the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center coming into the home stretch of reconstruction before the busy summer of 2016, we look back at the creation of a few pieces of art that adorned the structure shortly after its original January 2006 opening. Tribal citizen and well known Oklahoma artist Beverly Fentress created many Read More »
This “footlocker” was given to tribal member David P. Johnson upon his arrival at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1899. Johnson is pictured here with friends during his time at Carlisle. Read more about the history of this famous Indian school in an article printed in the March 2013 Hownikan. Carlisle Indian Industrial School was Read More »
Set to go on display in 2017 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. in 2017, the August 5, 1836 U.S.-Potawatomi Yellow River Treaty is an integral part of Potawatomi history. Signed in the eighth month of the year, it was only the sixth of nine treaties drafted between the Potawatomi Read More »
In 1961, Father Joseph Murphy, whose name now adorns one of the Tribal Elder Housing Complexes, penned “Potawatomi Indians of the West: Origins of the Citizen Band Potawatomi.” The study was reprinted in 1988, and the forward written by Dr. R. David Edmunds of Texas Christian University sums up the work’s impact and scope. “Grant Read More »