A Vision of Accomplishment

Summary of the Potawatomi Nation’s Journey to Gaming

The Prairie Band of Potawatomi currently resides on 77,400 acres on a 121 square mile area in Jackson County, Kansas. In 2008 tribal membership totaled 4,830 members with 480-500 living on the reservation, another 1,000 within state boundaries, and the remainder living across the United States. As of 2005, the Nation owned 14,518 acres, and membership owned 19,745 for a total of 34,263 acres or 42% of the reservation. But,first a short historical background.

Pow Wow dancer.

History

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation originated in the Great Lakes area. At this time, the Potawatomi people were an autonomous and prosperous group living off the bountiful natural resources of the Great Lakes. What they couldn't catch in the lakes or hunt in the forests, they acquired through trade with other tribes and later with the non-Indians.

After first contacts with non-Indians in 1641, land became a central issue that intensified with the expansion of the 13 colonies or "13 Fires." Non-Indians wanted the land for mines, timber and the growing number of towns, cities and ports.

During this time of advancing settlement, the Potawatomi people held no real concept of land ownership. Their beliefs taught them that land belonged to all living things alike. However, the U.S. Government, in its first treaties with the Indians, established boundaries for tribal land. In the numerous treaties that followed, known as "cession treaties," the Potawatomi agreed to sell land to the U.S. Government. Those early concessions soon led to more drastic policies.

The 1830 Removal Act was a governing policy of the United States government. The policy revolved around a dream that the Indian "problem" could be eliminated forever by persuading the eastern Indians to exchange their lands for territory west of the Mississippi.

During this forced migration west, the Potawatomi made temporary stops in Missouri's Platte Country in the mid-1830s and the Council Bluffs area of Iowa in the 1840s. The tribe controlled up to five million acres at both locations. After 1846 the tribe moved to present-day Kansas. Although the area lacked the beauty of the Great Lakes, the circumstances of removal left the tribal people little choi