When the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) created two new federal territories, the doctrine of popular (or squatter) sovereignty became the law of their land. Suddenly slavery was no longer prohibited north of the border set by the Missouri Compromise, and the early settlers, rather than the United States Congress, had the right to determine their political identity. The territories themselves were given the right to choose whether to be slave or free states.
Before the settlers staked out the territory, Kansas was a windswept grassland across which great herds of buffalo roamed. These herds had vanished by the end of the 19th century, destroyed largely by hunters who furnished meat to transcontinental railroad workers. The most famous of the marksmen who supplied fresh buffalo for the Union Pacific was Buffalo Bill Cody. At the same time much of the grass had also disappeared, devoured by plagues of locusts or plowed under by farmers who came to the state from New England and the South.
Modern Kansas has experienced floods and droughts, falling farm prices, and a dwindling of owner-operated farms, but it is still one of the greatest farming states in the United States. Its fertile prairies normally yield more than 400 million bushels of wheat yearly--usually more than is grown in any other state. Kansas is also among the leading states in corn (maize), sorghum, alfalfa, and hay production.
The state is named for the Kansa tribe of Native Americans who lived along the Kansas (or Kaw) River. Kansa is a Siouan word meaning wind people. Because wild sunflowers grow profusely in the state, Kansas is nicknamed the Sunflower State. Other nicknames are the Squatter State and the Cyclone State. The people are often called Jayhawkers, from a Civil War term for Kansas troops and antislavery guerrilla forces that roamed the state. (According to a Kansas legend about the Free State raiders, the jayhawk was a mythical bird of Ireland that tormented other birds.)
Kansas is in the central region of the United States. It is bordered by four states--Oklahoma on the south, Colorado on the west, Nebraska on the north, and Missouri on the east. Its only natural boundary is in the northeast, where the Missouri River flows between Kansas and the state of Missouri before turning eastward at Kansas City. The state is shaped like a rectangle, almost twice as long as it is wide. Its greatest length, from east to west, is 411 miles (661 kilometers). Its greatest width, from north to south, is 207 miles (333 kilometers). The total area of Kansas is 82,264 square miles (213,063 square kilometers), including 477 square miles (1,235 square kilometers) of inland water surface.
