William Mehojah is by all accounts, the last pure-blooded member of the
Kaw Nation, the
tribe that gave the state of
Kansas its name.
William Mehojah is one of only about 2,500 people on Kaw Nation tribal rolls. Most have only a fraction of Kaw
blood.
The tribe -- previously known as the
Konza,
Kanza or
Kansa -- at one time stretched over 20 million
acres across northern Kansas into
Nebraska and
Missouri. By
1825,
westward expansion reduced that land to 2 million acres.
The tribe moved to what is now the Kansas, or Kaw, River valley in the early
1800s.
In
1873, the federal
government moved the tribe to a 100,000-acre
reservation in northern
Oklahoma. By this time
disease had reduced the number of Kaw to about 700, said JoAnn Obregon, a member of the Kaw executive council.
About 600 live on the former reservation land today.
Mehojah served in the
Army during
World War II, then worked for 35 years with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in
Montana, the Dakotas,
Idaho and
Arizona, where he retired in
1976.