The Shawnee in Johnson County: Pioneer Settlers, Traders, Developers
“In regard to this extensive section of the country, we do not hesitate, [to give] the opinion that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture.” With this, explorer Stephen Long dismissed the value of lands west of the Missouri River. Long’s account of his 1818-1819 journey supported earlier reports that the region was best suited as a strategic border to protect the United States from its southern enemies, the Spanish and later the Mexicans.
Long coined the phrase “Great American Desert” to describe the areas west of the Missouri River, a motto that temporarily stalled the region's development by white settlers. Deemed unfit for cultivation, this land was initially set aside for Indian reservations. Between 1826 and 1833, the Shawnee Indians were moved into this region from their settlements in more desirable regions of Ohio and Missouri. The 1.6 million-acre tract selected for the Shawnee, which served as their permanent residence for nearly forty years, included much of Johnson County’s present boundaries.
The first Shawnee to settle in the Johnson County area were moved here from Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The Shawnee established themselves along the banks of the Kansas River and the surrounding creeks, including Bull and Mill Creeks. They utilized the local waterways to cultivate the county's earliest farms and to initiate the trade and industry that supported the early growth and prosperity of Johnson County. Throughout their residency in Kansas, the Shawnee remained in the eastern portion of their allotment, establishing their initial settlement by 1828 near present-day downtown Shawnee.
The Shawnee relocated to this region under the terms of a series of treaties negotiated with the United States government and its agents. In 1825, the Merrimac or Fish band of the Shawnee and General William Clark negotiated a treaty to exchange the Shawnee's lands near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, for a tract of land lying west of the Missouri River and south of the Kansas River. Other Shawnee still residing in areas surrounding Cape Girardeau and in Ohio were relocated to the Shawnee reservation under separate treaties negotiated in the 1830s. These treaties brought approximately one thousand Shawnee to the reservation where they lived until 1854, when another treaty dissolved the reservation and the Shawnee were again relocated to the newly established Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
The establishment of the Shawnee reservation was preceded by centuries of both voluntary and forced movement and relocation. As early as 1683, French missionary Robert de LaSalle encountered Shawnee in Illinois. Other accounts placed them in the South — in Florida, the Carolinas and Georgia. By the 1720s, the majority of the Shawnee lived in Pennsylvania, but they moved west into Ohio after years of conflict with their northern neighbors, the Iroquiois.
The Shawnee — like many other Native American tribes — were involved in numerous regional conflicts over land and settlement rights during the late 1700s and early 1800s. A series of military alliances and tribal disputes resulted in the loss of their extensive settlements in Ohio and other northwestern regions as white settlers continued to move beyond the Allegheny Mountains. In 1790, weary of combating the white man's settlement of the western regions, part of the Ohio Shawnee secured a land grant from the Spanish government in the Cape Girardeau region of southwest Missouri. Other factions, later referred to as the “Absentee Shawnee,” moved further west into Texas or Oklahoma. Throughout the early 1800s, the Ohio Shawnee continued to struggle for land holdings, but instead, found themselves repeatedly pushed further west onto smaller reservations and less desirable land. Determined to defeat the United States, the Shawnee allied with the British during the war of 1812. Two Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (also known as the Shawnee Prophet), organized an alliance among various tribes and allied with the British. Although this alliance presented a powerful force against the largely inexperienced United States military, they were defeated and Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813.
Thus, by 1825 the Shawnee residing in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, were war-weary dissenters with insufficient power or resources to engage in yet another land struggle. On November 7 of that year, the Shawnee ceded to the United States government the lands awarded to them by the Spanish government in exchange for lands west of the Missouri River. According to the 1825 treaty, the Shawnee received 1.6 million acres (about 1,700 acres each) and $25,000 for the improvements on their Missouri lands and in settlement of various claims. These funds were also to be used to purchase animals, farm equipment, and provisions upon arrival in their new lands. In addition, the United States agreed to support and maintain a blacksmith shop on the new reservation for at least five years and to furnish the shop with tools and three hundred pounds of iron annually.
Members of the Shawnee nation still residing in Ohio were also offered land on the new reservation, and some moved there between 1826 and 1828. The four hundred remaining Shawnee were removed from Ohio to the Kansas reservation under a separate treaty negotiated in 1831, which provided additional monetary compensation and provisions in exchange for their land in Ohio. The last group of Ohio Shawnee moved to the reservation in 1833.
Settling along the eastern edge of their allotment, the Shawnee were regarded as skillful farmers, particularly known for the variety of fruits they raised. They also prospered in trade with overland travelers and as skilled craftsmen.
One of the earliest descriptions of the Shawnee settlements survives in the records of Isaac McCoy, a Baptist minister instrumental in developing Indian relocation policies for the United States government. McCoy traveled throughout the region negotiating treaties on behalf of the government and organizing religious missions among the Indian settlements. He visited the Shawnee reservation in 1835 and described the Shawnee farms:
Generally their dwellings are neat, hewed log cabins, erected with their own hands, and within them a small amount of furniture. Their fields are enclosed with rail fences; and sufficiently large to yield them corn and culinary vegetables plentifully. They keep cattle and swine, work oxen, and use horses for draught; and own some plows, wagons and carts.
Neat log cabins and fenced fields were noted in other contemporary accounts of the Shawnee settlements in eastern Kansas. The Shawnee had largely adopted an agricultural lifestyle prior to their relocation in 1825. During their initial settlement in eastern Kansas, however, some continued to support themselves by hunting and tried to preserve some of their traditional customs. But, faced with the dramatic decline in the supply of game and increased competition from neighboring tribes for other sources of food, the Shawnee increasingly took up farming and learned to raise cattle, hogs, chickens, and other animals.
Traditional religious celebrations were still practiced, despite the presence of Christian missions on the Shawnee reservation and their participation in weekly religious meetings. One traditional celebration, the Bread Dance, was observed on the Shawnee reservation. The Bread Dance was a festival of thanksgiving celebrated in the spring and fall to give honor to the Creator. The celebration included ritual food preparation, a ball game resembling football (with the men teamed against the women), several ceremonial dances, prayers and other ceremonies.
Matthew Fields, a correspondent for the New Orleans Picayune, witnessed some of the festivities associated with the Bread Dance. His account, published in 1843, described a dance held in the early evening on a “pleasure ground” situated on a broad, level field located near present-day downtown Shawnee. Field estimated two hundred costumed dancers in attendance in a large ballroom setting fashioned out of barked logs laid in an “oblong manner” across the field. The dancers wore feathers, beads, long frocks, leggings and moccasins. They grouped themselves in sets, moving forward “inch by inch, their advance being indeed hardly more than an inch with each motion. With their feet close together, ... they progress in a mincing shuffle around the men, describing circles and scrolls and various fanciful curves, ...”
Religious missionaries of nearly all denominations were present throughout the Indian settlements as early as the 1860s. These religious workers sought to save the Indians “heathen” souls and succeeded in converting many to Christianity. Some — such as Charles Bluejacket--then served as missionaries among their own people. The Friends, or Quakers, had lived and worked among the Ohio Shawnee and relocated with them to the Kansas reservation in the 1830s. The Methodists were perhaps the most zealous missionaries, being the first organized religion to sanction outdoor services and weekly camp meetings, or spiritual revivals. This type of religious gathering was accepted among many Indian tribes, including the Shawnee, who attended weekly religious services in a meeting or council house located in today’s downtown Shawnee.
Three missions were established within the Shawnee reservation during the early nineteenth century. Although the Baptists were in the area by 1830, the first and largest mission was established in 1831 by the Methodists, who founded a school and mission in Wyandotte County’s Turner area. This mission, led by Reverend Thomas Johnson — Johnson County’s namesake — was relocated in 1839 to its present location in what is now Fairway, at 53rd Street and Mission Road.
The Methodist Mission was distinguished by its size (2,240 acres) and extensive improvements which included numerous wooden buildings and the three brick buildings that remain standing. The Mission operated a 1,500 acre farm and cultivated an additional ten thousand acres. In addition to teaching Christianity, the Methodist Mission operated a Manual Labor School from 1839-1854. Boarding students or “scholars” from the Shawnee and surrounding reservations were instructed in the “three R’s.” They were also taught modern farming and homemaking practices, carpentry, blacksmithing and mill operations. Students and slaves owned by Thomas Johnson provided the labor that earned the Mission substantial profits in trade with the settlers traveling west along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.
By 1832, the Baptists — led by Reverend Isaac McCoy — had established a mission on the Shawnee reservation near present-day 53rd and Walmer streets. McCoy also transcribed the Shawnee language and began the production of the Shawnee Sun (Siwinowe Kesibwi), the first native language newspaper and the first printed in Kansas.
Between 1834 and 1835, The Society of Friends, or Quakers, left their missions in Ohio to continue serving the Shawnee at their new reservation. Construction began on the Friends mission in 1836, which operated until its closing in 1871 near 61st and Hemlock. One of the Friends missionaries, Henry Harvey, prepared a highly detailed account of the Shawnee in Kansas. Harvey wrote this description in 1854, the year the Shawnee reservation was closed. He described the Shawnee’s “large and commodious” meeting house in which they held weekly religious or camp meetings and regular tribal councils. Harvey's description placed the Shawnee “about thirty miles of the east end of their tract,” where there were “many good springs of water on their lands, and stone plenty for every purpose.” He also commented the “handsome view” the prairie settlements afforded the traveler and praised the Shawnee’s industrious efforts to establish “good dwellings, handsome farms, bordering on the forest, and fine herds of cattle and horses grazing in the rich prairies.” Harvey also noted “beautiful fields of grain sown, planted and cultivated by the Indians themselves.”
Many Shawnee prospered as farmers, traders, and early land speculators. Chief Charles Bluejacket was perhaps one of the most successful and well-known Shawnee farmers. A minister and distinguished leader, Bluejacket was also widely known for his “bountiful orchards” bearing choice varieties of fruit. In the 1850s, he built a two-story residence and operated a two hundred-acre farm in the Shawnee area along McAnany Road. (See the accompanying article for additional information about Charles Bluejacket and his role in Johnson County history.)
The Shawnee were doomed by their own success in cultivating the land Stephen Long dismissed as “uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture.” The United States government negotiated additional treaties that opened the reservations west of the Mississippi for white settlers in search of new lands. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act established the region as a new territorial area open for settlement. In a treaty negotiated that same year, the Shawnee's holdings in Kansas were reduced to less than two hundred thousand acres, and their settlement was restricted to within thirty miles of the Missouri River.
Some Shawnee exchanged their lands in Kansas for new land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), while others took the two hundred acres offered each “man, woman, and child” and tried to adjust to life among the newly emigrating white settlers. The Black Bob band (one hundred members) took lands in common ownership — an option provided in the treaty — and tried to continue a traditional way of life in the Tomahawk Creek area, located in present-day Olathe. A few Shawnee prospered from the terms of the 1854 treat, acquiring several contiguous 200-acre grants, which they developed extensively, producing large quantities of wheat, Indian corn, oats, tobacco, potatoes, barley, hay and other commodities.
The Shawnee who remained in Johnson County and the surrounding region endured further hardship during the border raids of the 1850s and the Civil War years. Extensive property damage and the continued denial of their rights caused many to either sell or abandon their property and move to Indian Territory. When the lands reserved for the “Absentee Shawnee” were offered for sale in 1869, most of the Shawnee in Indian Territory accepted citizenship in the Cherokee Nation. Many of the Shawnee in the Kansas Territory and the Johnson County area began selling their lands, with most relocating to Indian Territory by 1871. Nearly ten years later, in 1879, federal legislation opened the unallotted western portion of the Shawnee reservation for settlement. Again, many Shawnee sold or abandoned their property and moved south to Indian Territory. Those who remained struggled to retain their property and to preserve their culture. The 890 Shawnee residing in Kansas in 1890 suggests the strength of their resolve to maintain their property and the ownership rights promised in previous treaties.
Although the 1854 treaty with the Shawnee reserved lands for the missions and their churches, their operations quickly ceased. Shortly after this treaty was negotiated, the Methodist Manual Labor School closed, although the Methodists operated a classical Academy until 1862. In 1855, the Baptists closed their mission and in 1871, when most Shawnee had left the reservation, the Friends Mission closed.
The nearly forty-year residence of the Shawnee in Johnson County remains visible today throughout the county in place and street names, such as Shawnee, Lenexa, Olathe, and Bluejacket Street and Elementary School. The county’s early churches and their cemeteries, including the Shawnee Methodist Church and Cemetery, the Baptist Church in Mission, and the Shawnee Indian or Bluejacket Cemetery, are further reminders of these early Johnson County residents.
ALBUM vol. 7, no. 2 (winter 1994)