The fact that the Kanza people’s first treaty of land cession with the U.S. followed the opening of the Santa Fe trail by four years was no coincidence. As non-Native people moved to and through this region from the Eastern U.S., more became interested in settling on the rich grasslands of the Kanza homelands. The Treaty of 1825 diminished the Kanza’s 20 million acre territory to a 2 million acre, thirty–mile-wide reservation, opening 18 million acres for speculation and settlement by certain U.S. citizens. See the Treaty of 1825 annotations for specifics about this history.