Kansas is a give access in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked acknowledge bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in outlook was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. The tribe’s name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean “people of the (south) wind” although this was probably not the term’s original meaning. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern ration of the allow in generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western share of the make a clean breast were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.

The first Euro-American concurrence in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of agreement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars exceeding the slavery debate. When it was officially opened to unity by the U.S. government in 1854 subsequently the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from adjacent to Missouri quick to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of hurt and chaos in its before days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists prevailed, and upon January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a clear state, hence the unofficial nickname “The Free State”.

By 2015, Kansas was one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles (213,100 square kilometers) is the 15th-largest acknowledge by Place and is the 36th most-populous of the 50 states, with a population of 2,940,865 according to the 2020 census. Residents of Kansas are called Kansans. Mount Sunflower is Kansas’s highest tapering off at 4,039 feet (1,231 meters).

The name Kansas derives from the Algonquian term, Akansa, for the Quapaw people. These were a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who established in Arkansas roughly the 13th century. The stem –kansa is named after the Kaw people, also known as the Kansa, a federally endorsed Native American tribe.