The Council Oak at Council Grove, Kansas, and the 1825 Santa Fe Trail treaty

The stump of the Council Oak stands on West Main Street in Council Grove, Kansas, on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. It is all that remains of the tree beneath which an agreement was reached on August 10, 1825, one that gave travelers safe passage along the Santa Fe Trail through Osage territory on the way to present-day New Mexico.

The Council Oak stump in Council Grove, Kansas. Image from the National Park Service's page.

The treaty under the tree

The oak was said to be the tallest in a grove a mile wide. Under it, the chiefs of the Great and Little Osage and three United States commissioners negotiated the agreement. Those present at the signing included Pa-hu-skah (Pawhuska), head chief of the Great Osages, and Watonga, head chief of the Little Osages, along with five other chiefs and nine warriors. On the American side were three commissioners appointed by President John Quincy Adams, a secretary, a surveyor, an interpreter and fifteen other white men.

The Osage signed several agreements with the U.S. government, including treaties that led to large land cessions and greatly reduced Osage territory. In 1825 the government signed eight treaties with eleven tribes about passage along the Santa Fe Trail.

Naming a town

The meeting gave Council Grove its name. One of the commissioners, George Sibley, wrote in his journal that he suggested the name, that it was agreed to, and that a captain was told to choose a suitable tree and record the name on it in strong and durable characters, which was done.

The community began to form around 1847 and became an important stop on the trail, where travelers found water, feed for animals and lumber from the hardwood groves. They could also buy provisions and repair equipment before heading into the tallgrass plains, where wood for axles, wheels and other wagon parts was scarce. Author and historian Francis Parkman, passing through in 1846, wrote that riding beneath the arches of the woods there, ash, oak, elm, maple and hickory hung with grape-vines purple with fruit, was a new sensation.

The Council Oak in 1912. Photograph by Frank Wilson Blackmar, published by Standard Publishing Co.

What is left of the oak

In 1995 the Philomathian Club, a historic women's club, identified 15 trees from the Santa Fe Trail period still alive in Council Grove. The oldest was a bur oak believed to have sprouted in 1694. The Council Oak was not among them: it had blown down in a large storm in 1958. It originally stood about 70 feet tall and measured 16 feet around. Today a shelter protects the six-foot stump, the key feature of the Council Oak National Historic Landmark District.

Sources

• National Park Service, "The Gathering at the Grove" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/gathering-at-the-grove.htm). The 1912 photograph is credited to Frank Wilson Blackmar and Standard Publishing Co. The page's reference list and two promotional pictures are left out.
• National Park Service's page; rewritten in hubnx's own words.