Master's Theses

Department

History

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Abstract

The beginnings of the missionary activity of the Presbyterian Church date back to the colonial days of the eighteenth century. In point of American historical chronology, the missionary work of the Presbyterians among the Indians in what is now Kansas, southwestern Missouri and east central Oklahoma was inaugurated in the same decade that witnessed the War of 1812. It was my original intention to confine, this research to a consideration of the Indian missions established by the Presbyterian Church in that part of the Indian Territory which has now become the State of Kansas. There were five such mission stations set up within the present confines of this state. The first two were established in 1824 and 1829, respectively , among the Osage Indians in present Neosho county, Kansas. In 1834 a third was established in what is now Miami county to administer to the Wea and Piankeshaw Indians. Three years later the newly organized Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church chose the Iowa and Sac and Fox Indians as fit subjects for a mission station, which they organized in present Doniphan county. The last station which was established did not come until late in the territorial period of the history of this state, 1856, when an organization was developed near the Iowa station, in what has become Brown county, among the Kickapoo Indians. The history of the first two missions (the Neosho Mission, 1824, and the Boudinot Mission, 1829) is so closely interwoven with that of the Harmony Mission in Bates county, Missouri, and with the Union station set up in Oklahoma on the Grand (Neosho) river, about twenty-five miles above its junction with the Arkansas that a consideration of those in Kansas must necessarily include something of the story concerning the latter. Thus the scope of my research includes the Union and Harmony Missions, the Neosho and Boudinot Missions, the Wea Mission, the Kickapoo Mission, and last, though not so in chronological order, the Iowa, Sac and Fox Mission.

Keywords

Native Americans, Indians of North America, Presbyterian missions, Church missions, Indian reservations, Kansas territorial history, Indigenous people

Advisor

Dr. Robert L. Parker

Date of Award

Spring 1935

Document Type

Thesis

Rights

© The Author(s)

Comments

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