Kansas, a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States, is 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. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys.
Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. It is the 15th most extensive and the 34th most populous of the 50 United States.