Reznet

If These Walls Could Talk

By Tetona Dunlap

FAIRWAY, Kan. -- Kansas was home to several Christian missions that were established in the 1830s to help assimilate Native Americans. Of the several Indian missions that were founded in Kansas, four have become historic sites administered the Kansas Historical Society.

The four sites are the Kaw Methodist Mission; the Iowa, Sac and Fox Presbyterian Mission, now known as the Native American Heritage Museum; the Potawatomi Mission, and the Shawnee Indian Mission, formerly called the Shawnee Methodist Indian Manual Labor School.

The Shawnee Indian Mission is located in present-day Fairway, Kan., near Kansas City. The mission was unique because it was situated at the crossroads of westward expansion during the era coined “Manifest Destiny,” the belief that the United States was destined to push toward the Pacific coast.

As European settlers moved west, eastern tribes were forced onto the western plains, which were the homelands of tribes such as the Osage, Wichita and Kansa. At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the areas now known as Kansas and Nebraska were deemed the “Great American Desert” and designated “Indian Territory.”

“They didn’t think that it would be profitable to farm and so it was designated as territory for the Native Americans,” Alisha Cole, site administrator of the Shawnee Indian Mission, said in an interview. Cole was the source of information for this report, along with the Kansas State Historical Society.

The Shawnee and several other eastern tribes were moved to Kansas in the 1820s and ’30s after surrendering their ancestral homelands. However, after the discovery of gold in California, the growing population on the East Coast and the lobbying of railroad companies for more land resulted in a westward push of settlers in the beginning in the 1850s. In 1854, the United States opened Kansas Territory to white settlement.

During this early time of assimilation, Native American children were forced to attend boarding schools far from their homelands, such as Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Chief Fish, leader of the Missouri Shawnees, requested that a missionary school be built for the children on their own land. As a result, the Shawnee children were not so isolated from their traditions or completely cut off from their families.

The present-day location of the Shawnee Indian Mission was also chosen because a branch of the Santa Fe Trail passed through the Shawnee lands. The Santa Fe Trail was primarily used for trade and transport of military supplies.

The Shawnee Mission was one of many missions established at the time as a manual training school for Native American children. The mission was in operation from 1839 to 1862 and taught children from 15 different tribes such as the Shawnee, Kansa, Delaware, Chippewa, Cherokee and Omaha.

At the height of its activity, the mission stood on 2,000 acres with 16 buildings, including the three remaining brick buildings that are part of the present-day historical site. Three years ago, the historical site underwent renovations as well as a reinterpretation.

“In the process they (the Kansas State Historical Society) decided to do a reinterpretation of the site to expand and talk about the role Kansas played as a symbol of Manifest Destiny,” Cole said. “There is much more of an emphasis on the Native Americans. The main theme up until this point has been the school and the founder Rev. (Thomas) Johnson.”

In February, the Kansas State Historical Society announced it had received $20,000 in funding from the city of Roeland Park, Kan., to be used to hire more staff at the Shawnee Indian Mission site.

For information about Shawnee Indian Mission and the history of Kansas, go to Kansas State Historical Society Web site.

Tetona Dunlap is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. She graduated from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., with a B.A. in Journalism in 2004. Dunlap works at the Kansas City Star in Kansas City, Mo., as a photographer/videographer.

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