COUNCIL GROVE, Kan. - When on the evening of July 16, 1861, Judge J. H. Watson observed several Indian graves on the brow of a hill overlooking the Cottonwood River and Middle Creek in western Chase County, he proceeded to desecrate them.

"These [the graves] are formed by piling up stones over the dead body," wrote Watson. "On removing a few of these, I perceived the moldering bodies of the once proud savage, an old rusty tin cup, and the decayed remains of what was once a bow and arrow."

Because the Kanzas had encamped in this area the previous winter, it is likely these were the graves of their tribesmen. And the violation of Kanza graves by white people was not uncommon.

COUNCIL GROVE, Kan. - On Sunday, June 17, 1860, Luke Parsons was returning home from the sandstone "buttes" southwest of Salina, when he decided to visit a nearby camp of Kanza Indians. Although Salina was located about 65 miles west-northwest of their reservation villages near Council Grove, Parsons' diary recorded the presence of the Kanzas near Salina on six occasions June through December 1860.

Parsons and his white contemporaries did not consider it unusual to encounter the Kanza far from their reservation on the upper Neosho valley. One hundred fifty years ago the tribe continued doing what it had done for at least two centuries before Salina's appearance on the banks of the Smoky Hill River -- roaming the prairies of present-day eastern and central Kansas.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Manhattan's Monthly Film Series is please to announce that Kevin Willmott, Junction City native and professor of film at the University of Kansas, will be on hand to moderate the screening of his most recent film, The Only Good Indian, when it is screened on Tuesday July 6th, 6:30 pm, at the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium.

The Only Good Indian was written and produced by Thomas L. Carmody and stars J. Kenneth Campbell, Wes Studi, and newcomer Winter Fox Frank.

Set in Kansas during the early 1900s, a teenage Native American boy (played by Winter Fox Frank) is taken from his family and forced to attend a distant Indian "training" school to assimilate into White society. When he escapes to return to his family, Sam Franklin (played by Wes Studi), a bounty hunter of Cherokee descent, is hired to find and return him to the institution. Franklin, a former Indian scout for the U. S. Army, has renounced his Native heritage and has adopted the White Man's way of life, believing it's the only way for Indians to survive. Along the way, a tragic incident spurs Franklin's longtime nemesis, the famous "Indian Fighter" Sheriff Henry McCoy (played by J. Kenneth Campbell), to pursue both Franklin and the boy.

GREAT BEND, Kan. - It was strange that the press conference on Wednesday by the University of Kansas about the sports tickets scandal was held on the west campus at the Robert J. Dole Center for Politics. Usually, when the athletic department has a big announcement, such as the hiring of a new coach, the buildings connected to Allen Fieldhouse provide a perfect venue for a big press event.

It seemed like the athletic department wanted to have this press conference as far from Allen Fieldhouse as possible, as if it could distance this scandal from the storied building. Allen Fieldhouse is to basketball what St. Andrews is to golf, and it would have been "bad optics" to hold the press conference on hallowed ground.

COUNCIL GROVE, Kan. - One hundred fifty years ago Council Grove was a bustling commercial center for the New Mexico trade. From April 24 to June 24 "there passed the Grove" en route to Santa Fe 1,400 wagons, 372 horses, 3,868 mules, 11,705 oxen, and 65 carriages bearing 3,562 tons (7,000,000 lbs.) of freight.

But in May 1860, Colorado rather than New Mexico was the primary destination of most of the traffic on the Santa Fe Road and, rather than commercial operators, most of the travelers were emigrants.

"Pike's Peak emigration through Council Grove is now numbering about fifty wagons a day," observed the May 14 Council Grove Press. Two weeks earlier on a single day over 150 wagons bound for Pike's Peak had passed through Council Grove.

GREAT BEND, Kan. - My Dad's phone rang at 1:30 a.m. yesterday morning. My stepmother picked up the phone and heard that her brother, Walter Hickel, age 90, had died in Anchorage, Alaska. Walter Hickel, two time Governor of Alaska, and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, led an amazing life. My stepmother, Patty Degner Keenan, was one of ten children in the family.

Wally Hickel was born in Claflin, Kansas and didn't leave the Kansas state lines until a Claflin High School trip ventured him and his fellow classmates to Kansas City, MO. He loved Kansas and the wide open spaces, and returned often to see his nine siblings.

As a boy, the thing that bothered him about the family home and farm was that his Dad was a tenant farmer. The family home was owned by a family named Grizzell, and Hickel's father owned no farm ground.

GIRARD, Kan. - "Maria. Maria! The floor. That floor is not clean." It was the most shrill and demeaning voice. Maria stood there, a look of confusion and shame on her face. Peter, fluent in Spanish, calmly directed Conception to sweep the floor. The shrill voice barked at Peter, "She understands what I said, they all understand English-they just pretend like they don't. They're lazy."

It was the same every morning, a recording repeating day after day. No matter how hard Conception worked, she was never granted the respect of being called by her name or thanked for her work.

COUNCIL GROVE, Kan.- One hundred fifty years ago the fledgling town of Emporia, located seven miles south of the southeast corner of the Kaw Reservation, received visits by two groups indigenous to the Flint Hills.

"A party of ten or twelve Kaw 'braves,' gaudily dressed, and mounted on fleet ponies, came in from the west on Thursday morning," noted the April 14 Emporia News. "After spending a few moments in town, a cloud of dust to the east marked their departure towards the land of the Osages."

"A drove of antelope have been making 'calls' in the upper part of town for several mornings past," reported the April 28, 1860 News.

YOCEMENTO, Kan. - A storm was brewing in the north, but there was nothing but peace and good cheer around our kitchen table last Thursday evening. My family and I had the privilege of hosting Nola Ochs and her great-granddaughter Janae Ochs for dinner.

I took an Old Testament class with Nola in the fall of 2006, where we first met. It was her first semester as an on-campus student. On the first day of class, we went around and introduced ourselves with a brief bit about why we were taking the class. Nola said that she was interested in the Bible. She tagged on at the end that she was 94.

There were no gasps or applause from the class; instead there were a few indulgent smiles. How quaint that this elderly woman wants to better understand the history of the Bible. Most likely the professor will go easy on her. After all, she's 94 years old. But we soon found out that Nola Ochs was no shrinking violet. She spoke up with thoughtful, relevant remarks, wrote papers and took exams.

COUNCIL GROVE, Kan. - "A party of Kaw Indians one day last week succeeded in stealing a keg of whisky from the store at Cottonwood Falls," reported the Emporia News on February 18, 1860. "They all got drunk, and from the effects two men and one squaw were killed. The citizens are endeavoring to have them removed."

About a month before this incident the Kanzas had established their camps on the Diamond and Middle creeks a few miles west of Cottonwood Falls. Here the Indians, having just returned from their winter hunt in central Kansas, traded furs and buffalo robes to an Emporia merchant in exchange for clothing and foodstuffs, especially coffee, sugar, flour, and tobacco.

Although unmentioned in reports of this exchange, whiskey was a common and profitable lubricant of the Indian trade in Kansas. It was no secret that the Kanzas, like other area tribes, had a strong appetite for whiskey.