Congress created Kansas Territory in 1854 by inscribing fictional lines
across the grasslands. Nature, that ever-present agent of change, paid
the politicians no mind. Wind, weather, soil, and water—the whole
suite of nonhuman phenomena—continued shaping Great Plains
human history. Culture, in varieties nearly infinite, still enabled humans to cope
with natural forces and features. People living in what was now officially Kansas
still had to solve the basic ecological problem of enduring on the grasslands. The
endless conversation—culture that expressed humans’ distinctive status inflecting
nature that owed nothing to humans—continued after 1854. This perpetual
dialogue still transforms the land that gave life to its human occupants.
