No state's creation was more dramatic, more at the center of national attention, more involved in fundamental moral conflict, than that of Kansas. In a sense, the state's history began with the Indians of the area and the Spanish explorers. A moral conflict of pro-slavery forces in the Civil War that led to "Bleeding Kansas", and the moral contradiction between a declaration that claimed, "all people are created equally". A constitution pragmatically permitting slavery had led to the repeated compromise in American history until the issue found resolution in war. "Kansas as a body politic was born of that process and much of its permanent character or personality was determined by it," {K.Davis}. The state character has changed drastically over time.
             The first recorded history of this area was made by the Spanish chroniclers of the Francisco Vinquez de Coronado expedition. They set out from the Rio Grande to visit region in the present central part of the state they identified as Quivira. On this trip in the summer of 1541 they found the soil to their liking and capable of growing all products of Spain. The Indians were described as being physically attractive, but they lived in grass houses and possessed no gold, the primary object of the Coronado party. Friar Juan de Padilla returned to Quivira the following year as a missionary to the Indians, he was martyred by those he sought to convert.
             The Kansa Indians, native to the northeastern part of the Kansas region, lived earthen lodges and depended on their gardens and hunting for food. They and the neighboring Osage Indians to the south lived a semi-nomadic life, whereas Indians making use of the western Plains region were nomadic, depending on the buffalo for food, shelter, and clothing. The Indians first seen by the Spanish in the Kansas area were too few in number to easily exploited under the colonial system of relying on masses of servile natives. Furthermore, the lack of...