Arkansas and Kansas

Arkansas (AR-kən-saw) is a state located in the Southern region of the United States. It has a diverse geography which ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.

Arkansas is the 29th most extensive and the 32nd most populous of the 50 United States. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, located in the central portion of the state.

The Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836.

As you might guess, the name “Arkansas” derives from the same root as the name for the state of Kansas.

The Kansa tribe of Native Americans are closely associated with the Sioux tribes of the Great Plains. The word “Arkansas” itself is a French pronunciation (“Arcansas”) of a Quapaw (a related “Kaw” tribe) word, akakaze, meaning “land of downriver people” or the Sioux word akakaze meaning “people of the south wind”. The "s" was added by the French to make a plural.

The pronunciation of Arkansas was made official by an act of the state legislature in 1881, after a dispute between two U.S. Senators from Arkansas. One wanted to pronounce the name ar-KAN-zəs (r -kansas) and the other wanted AR-kən-saw.

In 2007, the state legislature passed a non-binding resolution declaring the possessive form of the state's name to be Arkansas's, which has been followed increasingly by the state government.

Kansas is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States and is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area.

The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "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. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s.

Missouri and Arkansas sent settlers into Kansas all along its eastern border. These settlers attempted to sway votes in favor of slavery, but a secondary settlement were abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters, who attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri.

Kansas was admitted to the United States as a slave-free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to enter the Union.

Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States.

Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans."