Waconda Spring, or Great Spirit Spring, was a natural artesian aquifer in Mitchell County near Glen Elder and Cawker City, Kansas, and a sacred, neutral gathering place for Native American tribes of the Great Plains. Although it lay in territory traditionally controlled by the Pawnee, its name came from the Kanza, or Kaw, word Wakonda, meaning Great Spirit. Native Americans believed the spring marked an underwater lodge where animals of different species met in sacred council, and they regarded those animals as mediums through which people could acquire knowledge and power. The spring served as a stopping point for tribes following the buffalo herds, including the Arapaho, Comanche, Crow, Kaw, Kiowa, Miami, Pawnee, Sioux, and Wichita. Its waters were believed to have healing powers, and travelers left offerings such as beads, blankets, weapons, and other items in the pool to seek safe passage across the plains and favorable buffalo hunts. Native Americans also carved intaglios in the land near the springs, several of which survive, and the last recorded visit to worship there was in the early 1870's. A popular and probable legend tells of Wakonda, the daughter of a chief, and Takota, the son of an opposing chief, whose love was forbidden because they came from enemy tribes; after Takota was mortally wounded in a battle near the spring and fell into it, Wakonda dove in after him and never resurfaced, leading people to believe her spirit dwelled in the spring. In 1944 the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers announced plans for a large earthen dam on the Solomon River near Glen Elder that would flood the spring beneath a lake. Local residents opposed the project, but severe flooding in Kansas in 1951 renewed support for dams and flood control. Construction of Glen Elder Dam began in 1961 and was completed by the end of 1963, and engineers bulldozed the hotel and health spa and dumped the debris into the pool of Waconda Spring before the river filled the valley and the site was covered by impounded water in the mid-1960's.