The US state of Kansas is located within the Midwestern part of the country. The state got is name from the Kansas River, that flows through the state. The Kansas River was named after the Native American tribe which colonized the area, referred to as the Kansa. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," even if this was perhaps not the term's original meaning. People of Kansas are known as "Kansans."
Kansas was home to various Native American tribes for thousands of years. The tribes residing in the eastern region of the state lived mostly along the valleys and banks of the river. The tribes living in the Western part of the state were more nomadic living off the herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the middle of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the United States government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to find out if the state of Kansas would become a slave state or a free state. Hence, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days since these forces collided, and was referred to as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on January 29, 1861, the state of Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Following the Civil War, the inhabitants of the state of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of settlers turned the prairie into farmland. Now, the state of Kansas is among the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of sunflowers, wheat and sorghum.
The agricultural outputs of the state are cattle, sheep, wheat, sorghum, cotton, soybeans, hogs, corn, and salt. Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, a region of major grain production within the central USA. The industrial outputs are commercial and private aircrafts, transportation equipment, publishing, food processing, machinery, chemical products, mining, apparel and petroleum.
The state ranks 8th within the nation in oil production. There has been a natural steady decline of oil production because of the difficulty to extract oil over time. Since oil prices bottomed during 1999, oil production in Kansas has remained somewhat constant, with an average monthly rate of around 2.8 million barrels in the year 2004. The recent higher prices have made carbon dioxide sequestration and other oil recovery methods more economical.
The state also ranks 8th in natural gas production, even if production has declined since the 90's. This is mostly because of the gradual depletion of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field, that is the biggest natural gas field in Kansas. During 2004, increased coalbed methane production and slower declines in the Hugoton gas fields contributed to a smaller overall decline.
The Kansas economy is also heavily influenced by the aerospace industry. Numerous huge aircraft corporations have manufacturing facilities within Kansas City and Wichita, such as Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing, Cessna, Learjet, and Hawker Beechcraft (previously Raytheon). A lot of these major company's have their head office in Kansas, such as: Embarq, the Sprint Nextel Corporation, Garmin, YRC Worldwide, Payless Shoes, and Koch Industries.