The Shawnee Quaker Mission (1835-1869)

Quaker missionaries first established a mission and school among the Shawnee Tribe in Ohio around 1808. After the Shawnee were compelled by the federal government to move to their reservation in present-day Johnson County, Kansas, tribal leaders invited the Quakers in 1834 to establish a new mission. The Quakers arrived in 1835 and leased 320 acres from the tribe for the planned school and farm. The mission operated at first out of log homes, and later, a three-story log schoolhouse was built at this location. In 1923, the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a stone here to recognize the historical significance of the mission school, which was located approximately at the modern-day intersection of 61st and Goodman Streets in Overland Park. The Shawnee Quaker or "Friends" Mission operated through 1869.

The Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, had a long-standing relationship with a number of Native American Tribes, including the Shawnee. Starting in 1804, they had operated a Shawnee mission on the tribe's reservation in Ohio. In 1834, church missionaries accepted an invitation from the Shawnee to build a new mission and manual labor school on the tribe's new reservation in what is today Johnson County.

When the missionaries arrived in 1835, they leased 320 acres for the operation of the school and supporting farm. At first, the school operated out of two log cabins. As with the neighboring Shawnee Baptist and Shawnee Methodist Missions, instruction at the school included academic subjects such as reading and writing but also the practical skills needed to survive as a subsistence farmer on the edge of the wilderness, such as farming, blacksmithing, and carpentry. Girls were instructed in the domestic arts. The school averaged 40-50 students, mostly drawn from the Shawnee, and some were sent from other nearby reservations.

Similar to other mission schools, cultural assimilation was promoted at the school with instruction in English, along with the expectation that students and Indian staff abide by Quaker religious and cultural mores. Students lived with the missionary's families. Religious instruction was supplied by these families and attendance in Quaker meetings. Students were primarily from the Shawnee Tribe but other area reservations also sent their children to school here. The tribe also sometimes entrusted the school with the care of orphans. Some of the most prominent Shawnee at the time were educated here, including Chief Charles Bluejacket, who would later have a 200-acre farm in Shawnee, KS. The mission was supported by a large farm that was worked by the missionaries and the students.

In 1844, a flood on the Kansas River and Turkey Creek wiped out a large number of the Shawnee Tribe's farms and brought starvation to areas of the reservation. The Quakers appealed to their brethren back east for support. The money raised allowed the mission to distribute food and supplies to those devastated by the flood and also paid for the construction of 30'X60" three-story log school house. The building was constructed of native oak and walnut, which the tribe helped drag to the site from the government sawmill several miles to the north.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened up the Kansas Territory to settlement and led to a new treaty between the federal government and the Shawnee Nation. That treaty allotted 200 acres to each member of the tribe that they could either keep or sell. Many sold their land and moved on to a new reservation within the Cherokee Reservation in present-day Oklahoma. Many chose to keep their land and remain, but they struggled to keep their culture and autonomy as settlers flooded into the new Kansas Territory.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act also decreed that the legality of slavery in the Kansas Territory would be settled by popular vote. Political violence spread throughout eastern Kansas as the pro and anti-slavery forces clashed in a period known to historians as Bleeding Kansas. The Quaker missionaries were firmly on the side of the anti-slavery movement. When pro-slavery men, many from Missouri, elected a pro-slavery legislature and drew up a pro-slavery constitution, anti-slavery Free Staters elected their own legislature and wrote a constitution banning slavery. The Quaker missionaries joined this effort, and one was even elected to the rebel Free State legislature. Pro-slavery forces attacked the mission in 1856 in an attempt to drive the Quakers out of the territory. They threatened the missionaries and students before ransacking the mission buildings and stealing everything they could. The attack crippled the school's operations, and it was forced to close for nearly a year.

The political violence was also devastating to the remaining Shawnee in the Kansas Territory. The Shawnee were often caught in the middle and indiscriminately targeted by forces on both sides. This intensified during the Civil War, and most of them either sold their land or abandoned it before moving to the reservation in Oklahoma. By 1870, the vast majority of the Shawnee had left Kansas. With diminished government support and few students, the Shawnee Quaker Mission closed for good in 1869. The main mission building survived until 1915 when it was sold to developers, who used its lumber in the construction of area homes. The surviving headstones from the mission's cemetery were moved to the Shawnee Tribal Cemetery in Shawnee, Ks. In 1923, the Daughters of the American Revolution marked the approximate site of the mission school at today's 61st and Goodman in Overland Park, Ks. with a commemorative stone. The only other trace of the mission that remains is nearby Hadley St., named for Quaker missionary Jeremiah Hadley.

Dixon, Pearl H.. Sixty Years Among the Indians: A Short Life Sketch of Thomas H. and Mary W. Stanley, Quaker Missionaries to the Indians. Published by the Dixon family, 1920.

Currey, Cecil. Quakers in "Bleeding Kansas". Bulletin of Friends Historical Association, vol. 50, no. 296 - 101. Published September 1st, 1961. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41945603.