2 Presbyterian Mission Schools Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws 1845-1860 by William L

Vol. 27 No. 1 Women Teachers in Oklahoma 1820-1860 by Ethel McMillan ---------------------- 2 Presbyterian Mission Schools Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws 1845-1860 By William L. Hiemstra ----------------------------------------------------------- 33 Lewis Francis Hadley: The Long-Haired Sign Talker By Carolyn Thomas Foreman ---------------------------------------------------- 41 Experiences in the Opening of Oklahoma by James K. Hastings -------------------- 70 The Opening of Oklahoma by James K. Hastings -------------------------------------- 76 Neighbors in the Cherokee Strip by Clara B. Kennan ---------------------------------- 89 Notes and Documents ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 95 Book Reviews -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 111 Necrologies Alger Melton by Charles Evans --------------------------------------------------- 115 Philip Colfax Rosenbaum by Frederick E. Voelker ---------------------------- 118 John Taylor Griffin by Grant Foreman ------------------------------------------ 120 Mrs. R.L. Fite by Eula E. Fullerton ----------------------------------------------- 122 Albert Rennie by Carolyn Thomas Foreman ------------------------------------ 124 Minutes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 126 CltrMf.olea of 01cklllotn4 WOMEN TEACHERS IN OKLAHOMA 1820-1860 By Ethel JlcJlillaA1 !NTBODUOTION Some pages of our American history offer no satisfaction for immediately the relation with the Indian people who were here before our arrival arrests attention. Yet ~e story of Christian missions among the Indians is one that does· give deep satisfaction, and should be eherished. To Oklahomans, it is of particular interest since we are the beneficiaries. The constructive work of the women teachers sent by the Protest ant churches among the Southeastern Indians had become so in tegrated into their better living that with the removal of these tribes under Government supervision from east of the Mississippi River, many of these devoted instructors accepted the hazards im plied and cast their lot even with the transplanting. Others new in the work joined them. Consecrated to the aims of the task ahead, they came as pioneers to this western land with joy in their hearts, so sure were they in the hope of teaching and carrying on the art of Christian living. Satisfying results from the labors in such missions as Spring place, Brainerd, and Valley Towns among the CherQkees, Elliot and Mayhew among the Choctaws, Monroe among the Chickasaws, and Asbury among the Creeks, led to the determination to carry the work of Christian education among the Indian people west of the Mississippi. LIFE AT UNION MlssION Union Mission among the Osage Indians, the first mission within the bounds of Oklahoma, was established under the auspices of the United Foreign Missionary Society in 1819, only two years after 1 Ethel Brewer McMillan is Chairman of the Committee on Pioneer Women and Research, in Delta Kappa Gamma Society of Oklahoma, a national honorary asso ciation of women teachers, which has as one of its purposes the preservation of the records of the pioneer women teachers in Oklahoma. This article in The Ch.ronide, is contributed by Miss McMillan through her painstaking search through the his torical records to find the names and something of the labors of those women who served as teachers in the Indian Territory from 1820 to 1860. A native of Dover, Muon County, Kentucky, Miss McMillan began teaching in P~ Oklahoma. soon after statehood. She came as a teacher to Culbertson School in Oklahoma CitJ at its opening in 1910, and aerved as its principal from 1919 until her retirein~t iJ1 19'7. As an outstanding honor student, she graduated from Midway School for Girls, Woodford County. Kentucky; is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and has her master's degree from Columbia University, New Yotk.-Ed. s the organization of the Society among the Presbyterian and Congre gational Churches. When it was proposed to establish a . station west of the Mississippi, the Reverend Epaphras Chapman and Joo P. Vinall were appointed to select the site. After months of travel the country of the Arkansas Cherokees was reached in July of that year.1 Here finding that the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions had already planned to establish a station in this region, they pushed on west to the Osage country now a part ~f Okla homa.3 Under the guidance of Captain Nathaniel Pryor and some of the mixed blood French-Osage employees in the fur trade living at the Three Forks of the Arkansas, a location was chosen in this well favored region where the Arkansas, the Neosho and the Verdigris rivers unite.' Today the site of Union Mission may be found on the -west bank of the Neosho or Grand River about seven miles southeast of the town of Chouteau in Mayes County. 5 This initial effort in a movement of such consequence in Okla homa's development, the success or failure of which was to influence the entire enterprise, justifies the presentation of interesting phases of the story of this first mission because it furnished something of the pattegi for other missions and tribal boarding schools which were to follow m this region. It is our purpc)se to catch a glimpse of the contribution of the early women teachers of Oklahoma. Herein we find the first offering. z "On July 13, 1819, Epaphras Chapman and Joh P. Vinall, after visiting Brainerd and making the long journey, reached the Arkansas Cherokees. Then advanced to junction of Poteau and Arkansas River [Ft. Smith], wihere a joint council wu held with Cherokees and Osages ( with) introduction most favorable. A station was selected as seat of Mission about 25 miles from junction of the rivers."-Mis1io11111'1 Herald, 1821, p. 25. 3 The plans of the American Board, under the management of the miuionariee and their assistants, Alfred Finney, Cephas Washburn, James Orr, and Jacob Hitch cock, resulted in the establishment of Dwight Mission in what is now Polk County, Arkansas, north of the Arkansas River. The first church services here were held in May, 1821, among the Arkansas Cherokees, better known in Oklahoma history as the Westem Cherokees. These people had voluntarily migrated some years be fore, from the Cherokee colintry east of the Missi8&ippi to this region in Arkansaa, and numbered about 2,000 to 2,500 in 1820. By terms of their treaty with the U. S. in 1828, they settled in Northeastern Oklahoma in the country later organued as the Cherokee Nation. The operations at Dwight Mission were &U8pended in 1829, and the mission re-established on the site of Nicbville, near present Marble City, ~ Sequoyah County, OklahomL Except for a per.iod of about twenty yeare be gumjng with the War between the States, Dwight Mission continued in operation under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), until 1948.-Ed. , 4 On their return down the Arkansas, both Cephas Washburn and Job Vinall were stricken with fever and had to remain at Fort Smith. Mr. Vinall died after a lingering illness, and Mr. Washburn made the long journey back to New York alone.-Ed. 5 Joseph B. Thoburn and Muriel H. Wright. O""'1unna: A History of ,Ju State ad 116 People (New York, lffi), Vol I., p. 190. 4 Fortunately there is preserved in the Library of the Oklahoma Historical Society the original Journal of Union Mission in manu script from which we get the day by day life of a group of people, some of them strangel'B to eaeh other, accustomed to the environment of one of the advanced cultural sections of our country, starting on a journey to the wilds of an unknown new ·land, and held together only by the common purpose of serving a people whose needs were great. Highly important to this accomplishment was the need to develop and sustain wholesome relations among themselves under privations no one could have foreseen, for buildings had to be erected with but few of the simplest tools, food provided and prepared by no one but themselves and all other common place necessities re spected, meanwhile vigorously laboring for acceptance by this unknown people, the Osages. · The next spring, April, 1820, saw the company of twenty-one carefully selected persons who were to man this first mission to be established in Oklahoma gathered .in New York City for several days of inspirational services and the ingathering of genero11S dona tions and supplies.8 It was indeed appropriate that pa11Se should here be made for this was the inauguration of the movement for the cultural development of a State whose potentialities were perhaps vaguely sensed. There is something of a prophetic nature in this record of one of the members who later wrote, ''We have increasing evidence that the mission is about to excite a general interest in the churches, and needs to be only distinctly known to receive the sup port of all the friends of Zion in the region through which we have passed. ''1 On April 20th, the journey began by way of Philadelphia and overland to Pittsburgh where the embarkation was made in two keel boats propelled by oarsmen. Stops were made along the Ohio where hospitality and generous support were poured out. The Mississippi River was reached with a sense of well-being and there were no serious difficulties until in the vicinity of Memphis, where the White River had to be entered in order to get into the Arkansas as the only means of reaching the destination. In early summer, low water with the oarsmen pulling up-stream ret.arded progress. Muddy river water had to be used for drinking water, and mosquitoes infested the adjacent swamps, so that a virulent form of I lliuioury BaaU, 1821, p. 25. 7 thaicm Miaeioa JoumaJ. p. 9. I malaria soon wrought havoc.• After seventeen days of suffering Dolly E. Hoyt's life was over. Four days later the stricken travelers landed at Little Rook. The next day Susan Lines died.• With all members of the party in such low state of health nothing remained but to stay in Little Rock and await recovery.

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