Waconda Spring

Waconda Spring, or Great Spirit Spring, was a natural artesian spring located in Mitchell County, near the towns of Glen Elder and Cawker City in the U.S. state of Kansas. It was a sacred site for Native American tribes of the Great Plains and, for a time, became the site of a health spa for American settlers. With the completion of the Glen Elder Dam in 1968, the mineral spring disappeared beneath the waters of Waconda Reservoir.

Waconda Spring was situated on the bank of the Solomon River, below the North and South Forks of the river. The water flowing from the spring had deposited a large cone of travertine around it. In 1866, surveyor David E. Ballard described it:

The Spring itself is a natural curiousity, it being located on the summit of a cone shaped limestone rock. The rock is circular, about 200 feet in diameter at the base and about 30 feet high, upon the summit of this, rests the spring, the basin being circular and about 30 feet in diameter, its outlet is a trough apparently formed by the action of the water upon the rock. The water in the spring is about 20 feet deep and exceedingly strong with salt...

The name "Waconda" is from the Kanza language, and translates as "spirit water" or "Great Spirit Spring". However, it is located in territory controlled by the Pawnee, who knew it by the names "Pahowa" and "Kitzawitzuk", the latter translated as "water on a bank".

In the Pawnee traditional religion, the supreme being Tirawa allots supernatural powers to certain animals. These animals, the nahurac, act as Tirawa's servants and messengers, and intercede for the Pawnee with Tirawa.

The nahurac had five lodges, of which Waconda Spring was one. The foremost among them was Pahuk, usually translated "hill island", a bluff on the south side of the Platte River, near the town of Cedar Bluffs in present-day Saunders County, Nebraska. Lalawakohtito, or "dark island", was an island in the Platte near Central City, Nebraska; Ahkawitakol, or "white bank", was on the Loup River opposite the mouth of the Cedar River in what is now Nance County, Nebraska; and Pahur, or "hill that points the way", was a bluff south of the Republican River, near Guide Rock, Nebraska.

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