In Lawrence, KS on the north end of Massachusetts St. just south of the bridge over the Kansas River is Robinson Park, named after the State’s first Governor and superintendent of Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University). In 1929, a large pink quartzite rock was erected in the park as a monument to the town’s “Pioneers” and to celebrate Lawrence’s 75th anniversary. 

The land that is now Robinson Park is part of the historic homeland of the Kanza people (Kaw Nation) and part of the hunting territory of their relatives, the Osage. Caddoan peoples, such as the Pawnee, likely frequented this region too. The Kansas river and other waterways also served as important routes for travel and trade among Indigenous North Americans bringing many people to and through this region. U.S. demands to displace Indigenous people in order for U.S. citizens to possess their land resulted in reduced land holdings for the Kanza and other local Indigenous nations, while eastern Indigenous people were forcibly resettled in this area in the 1830s-1840s. As a result, Robinson Park’s land was part of the Shawnee reservation, but the Delaware people, whose reservation was on the north side of the Kansas river lived and farmed in closest proximity to what is now Robinson Park.