Fairview School, Council Grove, Kansas

Title

Fairview School, Council Grove, Kansas

Artist

Catherine Sherman

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

"Fairview School, Council Grove, Kansas" by Catherine Sherman.


Fairview School, opened in 1928, is now the Community Arts Center in Council Grove, Kansas. The school sits in City Park on Main Street behind the Council Oak. Council Grove was an important stop on the Santa Fe Trail.

A shelter east of the Neosho River bridge in Council Grove protects the stump of the Council Oak. Before the Council Oak blew down in a windstorm in 1958, the tree stood 70 feet tall and measured 16 feet around.

According to the santafetrailresearch.com website: In March, 1825, the Congress of the United States of America passed an act to authorize the then president, John Quincy Adams to appoint three commissioners to carry out the process of marking a road to Santa Fe and get the treaty with the Indians. These commissioners were Benjamin Reeves, George C. Sibley and Thomas Mathers. These three commissioners met with the Chiefs of the Great and Little Osage Nations at Council Grove on August 10, 1825. Gathered in the shade of this big oak on this hot August day, agents of the Osage tribe and the U.S. government signed a treaty giving Americans and Mexicans safe passage along the Santa Fe Trail through Osage territory in return for $800.


The first Native American to reach high office in the United States, was U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis, of Osage and Kaw Native American ancestry. He was born in Topeka before Kansas was a state and spent his early life was spent with his maternal grandmother and other relatives on the Kaw Indian Reservation near Council Grove.

After serving as a United States Representative and being repeatedly re-elected as United States Senator from Kansas, Curtis was chosen as Senate Majority Leader by his Republican colleagues. Curtis was the first person with significant Native American ancestry and the first person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach either of the highest offices in the United States government's executive branch. He also was an Executive Branch officer born in a territory rather than a state. His mother was Native American of mixed Kaw, Osage and French ancestry. His father was of British origins, being half-English, a quarter Scottish and half-Welsh.

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July 5th, 2018

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