Kansas is a
U.S. state located in the
Midwestern United States. It is named after the
Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively
kka:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind", although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans". For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse
Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-
nomadic and hunted large herds of
bison. Kansas was first settled by
European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the
slavery issue.