This treaty reduced the 2 million acre reserve to 256,000 acres including present-day Council Grove, Kansas, which became an important hub on the Santa Fe Trail. Notably, while the U.S. government recognized this land as belonging to the Kanza, U.S. settlers illegally established farms and squatted on these lands, reporting in correspondence and local newspapers that they were confident that the federal government would back their claims, which, in the end, was true.