UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE “CAPTURE THESE INDIANS FOR THE LORD”: INDIAN CHURCHES AND THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH IN OKLAHOMA, 1865-1939 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Tash B. Smith Norman, Oklahoma 2010 “CAPTURE THESE INDIANS FOR THE LORD”: INDIAN CHURCHES AND THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH IN OKLAHOMA, 1865-1939 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY Professor Warren Metcalf, Chair Professor Albert Hurtado Professor Fay Yarbrough Professor Robert Griswold Professor Gus Palmer © Copyright by Tash B. Smith 2010 All Rights Reserved. Acknowledgments Distilling years of work, assistance, and thanks into a few pages of acknowledgements is difficult. My immediate gratitude is to the Department of History at the University of Oklahoma and my dissertation advisor, Dr. Warren Metcalf, whose advice and critique struck the right balance of honesty and humor. Dr. Metcalf gave me ample room to pursue my own ideas in this process and enough support to realize I could be a serviceable scholar. I must also thank Albert Hurtado, Robert Griswold, Peter Cahn, Fay Yarbrough, and Gus Palmer, all of whom served on my committee at various points and offered their time and comments in order to make this a better research project and dissertation. I would especially like to thank Elyssa Faison for her subtle influence throughout this dissertation. I may have been far removed from her own field of study, but she provided an excellent example as both a scholar and teacher. That I write this of her even after she made me read Homi Bhabha in seminar is a sign of my respect for her as an individual. Beyond sound academic training, the Department of History provided the financial assistance needed by a struggling graduate student. This included a much appreciated Hudson Fellowship in History, which led me to the department back in the fall of 2004, along with the Edward E. Dale – A.M. Gibson Award for Outstanding Dissertation Research, an A.K. and Ethel T. Christian Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Bea Mantooth Estep Graduate Travel Fellowship. Each of these awards and grants gave me the iv opportunity to present portions of this project at conferences, conduct research at various archives, and continue my studies for the last six years. I should also thank Barbara Million, Rhonda George, and Kelly Guinn for their administrative efforts in the department and making school easier for the easily-overwhelmed teaching assistant. This dissertation has also benefited from other sources of funding and assistance. A Bridwell Library Center for Methodist Studies Fellowship provided a month-long residence on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and complete access to the archives of the Bridwell Library. For this, and for their hospitality, I thank Roberta Schaafsma and Jim McMillin. During my time at SMU, I was fortunate to meet Bishop John Wesley Hardt, who gracefully recalled his time as the presiding bishop for the Oklahoma Conference and Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference and entertained the questions of an inquisitive graduate student. Encouraged by my conversations with Bishop Hardt, I also met with the superintendent of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference, Rev. David Wilson, and members Homer Noley, Doug Scott, Charles Quoetone, and Walter Quoetone. These discussions impressed upon me even further the importance of this work as not just a church history but as a greater study of Christianity across cultural lines. A Research Grant for Native American History from the General Archives of the United Methodist Church allowed me to travel to Madison, New Jersey, for additional work on the campus of Drew University. I thank the General Secretary, Robert Williams, and archivist, v Dale Patterson, for their help. Finally, I spent many hours ensconced in the archives of Oklahoma City University where Christina Wolf and her staff assisted with my relentless questions in the friendliest manner. Since simply surviving the graduate school experience is a struggle unto itself, I would like to single out the members of the “Brain Trust,” Sunu Kodumthara and Patrick Gary Bottiger, for their assistance in pulling me through the program. Sunu and Patrick Gary gave valuable advice and unquestioning support at every stage and under every circumstance, and I considered myself lucky for going through graduate school alongside them. I also thank them for their continual friendship as we move on to the next stage of our careers, which is a subtle way of saying that I still need Sunu’s and Patrick Gary’s help. Most important, I would like to recognize my family since they have suffered alongside me over the years. I decided long ago that if my parents could survive Dad’s graduate school experience in the 1960s and 1970s, I could survive my own more than thirty-five years later. Mom and Dad are terrific examples and have not hesitated to help us as we moved up and down the Great Plains in pursuit of an education. My wife, Patricia, has been a wonderful and understanding partner and I consider myself blessed to have met her my freshman year in college. She makes it look easy to live with me, which others can attest is far from the case, and this dissertation is as much a product of her patience as it is of my work. Patricia and I began this process with one child and collected three more along the way, and yet I would not vi change a thing about that. I hope Maren, Amos, Zeni, and Decker will look fondly on this time and see the importance of hard work and a quality education. When you catch your children playing “research” at mock laptops, you realize the unintended influence you have over their lives. Regardless, I have always tried to be their father first and a student second. And finally, I would be remiss if I did not recognize the contributions of Piper, my nine-year-old Jack Russell Terrier mix. Though her skills as an editor were subpar and her debating talents lacked a certain intellectual component, her companionship during long hours of studying, note taking, writing, and revising was immeasurable. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One – Rebuilding the Mission: Efforts among the Five Tribes, 1866- 1889 ………………………………………………………………………………...33 Chapter Two – Expanding the Mission: The Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Agency after 1887 ……………………………………………………...…………94 Chapter Three – The Mission Changes: From the Land Run to Statehood ………………………………………………………………………………….….159 Chapter Four – Marginalizing the Indian and Mission Work, 1906-1918 .....212 Chapter Five – The Mission Reborn: 1918-1940 …………………………….270 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….…….336 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………….…..348 viii Introduction In the fall of 1907, Oooalah Pyle wrote a letter to the Christian Advocate, the national newspaper for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS) that was based out of Nashville, Tennessee. As many other preachers in the Southern Methodist church did during that era, Pyle sent to the newspaper his own personal report on the just-finished annual meeting held by Oklahoma’s Southern Methodist churches, and he wanted to provide his own perspective on the work of the MECS. The particular event that Pyle referenced was historically significant for the region’s Southern Methodists for a couple of reasons. For one, it was the inaugural gathering of the MECS’s newly-created Oklahoma Conference. Southern Methodism had been active in the territory for decades, but since 1844 the National Church’s work was under the administration of the Indian Mission Conference (IMC). The shift from the IMC to the Oklahoma Conference signified the changing status of Southern Methodism as more and more whites assumed control over the work. Second, the meeting came just weeks before Oklahoma entered the Union as the forty-sixth state. During this time, the region quickly lost its status as an outpost of mainstream culture as both the nation and the Church absorbed the Twin Territories of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory into the national fabric. Pyle was one of the Oklahoma Conference’s many Indian preachers in 1907, with most of his own work concentrated among his fellow Creek Indians in the area around Okmulgee. The participation of native ministers in the 1 Church’s work excited Pyle, and he reported to the Christian Advocate that at the recent Oklahoma Conference annual meeting nearly one-fifth of all of the preachers in attendance were Indians. Even though these ministers did not fit the profile of mainstream Southern Methodist ministers, Pyle did not doubt their commitment to Christianity. “[S]ome of them [are] full-bloods unable to speak English,” Pyle wrote, but “whose lives are devoted to bringing the bread of Eternal life to their people.”1 As he expressed in the rest of his letter, Pyle’s biggest concern for the National Church’s work was Chitto Harjo’s movement among the full-blood Creeks. Harjo had rallied many full-blood Creeks, estimated by Pyle at nearly three thousand, in opposition to the pressures of assimilation into white society. Though Harjo advocated several ways of resisting assimilation such as the rejection of individual allotments, Pyle was particularly worried about Harjo’s promotion of traditional native beliefs and his opposition to the work of missionaries and the Church in converting Indians to Christianity. To make sure his largely white readership understood the problems caused by Harjo and the full-bloods in Oklahoma, Pyle made two Biblical analogies to explain the situation within a Christian context. He noted that Harjo’s movement was like the followers of Baal in I Kings, chapter 18, because these full-bloods promoted another religion against God much as the ancient Israelites had done.