Kansas and Nebraska Compared

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Mr. Beat compares and contrasts two states in the middle of the country, and two that he knows very well.

Music featured in this video:

"When Kansas Met Nebraska" by Electric Needle Room (Mr. Beat's band). Download for free at

Additional music by the 126ers.

Produced by Matt Beat. All images/video by Matt Beat, found in the public domain, or used under fair use guidelines.

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Special thanks to the AP Archive for additional footage for this video. It made a huge difference! AP Archive website

Creative commons credit:

Babymestizo

Tony Webster

Teton Council Site

Don Middleton

Fredlyfish4

Bkell

City of Greensburg, Kansas

Capitolist

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James St. John

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#compared

#kansas and #nebraska

Two bordering states that I am VERY familiar with in these United States. Both can trace their beginnings to the Kansas–Nebraska Act. I guess you can call this whole video the Kansas Nebraska Act amirite? Ha ha!

Both have been settled by humans for thousands of years. Some were nomadic, others were sedentary. By the time Europeans got to the area in the 1500s and 1600s, prominent American Indian nations in modern-day Kansas included the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita. Wait, the Kansa? Yeah, Kansas is named after the Kansa Indians, for real. Prominent American Indian tribes in modern-day Nebraska included also the Cheyenne and Pawnee, but additionally the Lakota, Omaha, Otoe, and Ponca. Nebraska is named after the Otoe Indian word Nebrathka, which means “flat water,” in reference to the Platte River, which runs through the state. As you probably already guessed by now, the biggest cities in both states today, Wichita and Omaha, are both named after the Indian tribes.

Anyway, in 1541, a Spanish conquistador named Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his expedition were the first Europeans to reach modern-day Kansas. Modern-day Nebraska wasn’t really checked out by Europeans much until the 1700s. The French claimed it. In 1714, Etienne de Bourgmont and his crew checked it out for the first time.

Both the French and Spanish did not settle modern-day Kansas, but the French did do some trading along the Missouri River, which led to a trading post in modern-day Nebraska.

The future states both completely were part of the Louisiana Purchase. Yep, the United States bought them in 1803. The next year, Lewis and Clark checked both out on their famous expedition. In 1806, Zebulon Pike’s expedition passed through Kansas and assumed the area was too dry for farming. Thanks to him and particularly a dude named Stephen Long, who checked out both modern-day Kansas and modern-day Nebraska in 1820, the western part of the Great Plains mistakenly got called the Great American Desert. Later on, when the American government was forcing American Indians off their lands back east and needed a place to relocate them, they were like, let’s send them off to the crappy land we can’t farm out in the Great American Desert?