Two main natural watersheds drain the land. In the northern portion of the state, the Kansas River with its more than ten important tributaries flows eastward; through the southern half runs the Arkansas River with its fan of tributaries, flowing in a southeasterly direction. Between them, in the east, a small area is drained by the Marais des Cygnes River (Marsh of the Swans), which used to be the Osage River but was, according to legend, renamed by Longfellow's Evangeline. The story is that Evangeline, abandoned by the British near the Canadian line, wandered with her French companions up the Missouri, came upon the Osage Indians and heard how Osa, a Potawatomi princess, and her sweetheart Coman, war chief of an enemy tribe, had fled in a canoe which sank in a flooded river. As the lovers drowned, two white swans rose from the spot. From a hill Evangeline supposedly spread her arms to the lovely valley of the winding Osage River and exclaimed, "C'est le marais des cygnes!" Local people pronounce this "Merry Deseen," and they have fought successfully to keep the poetic name against reformers who thought it too fanciful.
Kansas produces about one-fifth of the nation's total supply of wheat —and a huge wheat surplus. Here a combine harvester is reaping a bumper crop. Towering grain elevators store more than 700 million bushels of wheat.
A peaceful scene on the Kansas River. The 540-mile-long Smoky Hill River flows from Cheyenne County, Colorado, to join the Re-publican River (which rises in eastern Colorado) in Kansas; together they form the Kansas River.
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