The great variety of Indian place-names in Kansas resulted from attempts to create a permanent American Indian frontier in the West. Beyond Missouri and Arkansas lay the Great American Desert, and Indians from the East were urged to settle there, supposedly free from the white man's appetite for land. Consequently, Kansas has Indian place-names not only from its early Native inhabitants (Siouan, Caddoan, and Shoshonean peoples) but also from the Algonquians, Iroquois, and other eastern tribes, and even a few groups of Indigenous peoples from the West.
The study of place-names has many facets - linguistics, geography, legends, literature, and folklore. Avoiding the straitjacket of purely linguistic treatment, John Rydjord groups the place-names into chapters based mainly on tribes or linguistic families. He treats the names in their historical context, delving into the circumstances that caused them to be given to each political and topographical feature and including a variety of interpretations, even contradictions.