Communion Set & Globe from Indian Mission

Missionaries came representing the Catholic church as well as several Protestant denominations: Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians each had their own missions in the area and were sponsored by congregations and supporters in the East.

Missionaries, often with their families, settled on or near tribal lands and set about constructing and furnishing eastern-style buildings that would serve to house, educate, and spiritualize the Indians in white, Christian beliefs. This process took the form of schooling and manual training for Indian children, teaching both children and adults English, and introducing the Indians to Christianity. Some Indian tribes welcomed the missionaries while others did not.

In order to become Christians and convert to the white way of life, missionaries insisted that the Indians eat, dress, work, speak and worship as white persons. This process meant taking part in rituals specific to the missionaries' beliefs. This three-piece communion set (tankard, chalice, plate) was used at the Delaware Baptist Indian mission from the 1830s through the late 1860s. The globe was used in the classrooms to instruct Indian children.

Around 1836, a newly-ordained Baptist pastor from Massachusetts, Reverend John Gill Pratt, was employed by the Baptist Missionary Society to work in the Indian Territory. After assisting at another nearby mission, he was given charge of the Delaware Baptist Mission in 1847. The mission was located in present Wyandotte County, near the town of Edwardsville. The original mission building was destroyed by flood waters around 1844. Logs from the original building were used to build a replacement structure farther inland around 1848. Pratt used the communion set until about 1864, at which time he became a United States Indian agent to the Delawares. He served in this capacity until around 1868, when most of the Delaware Indians moved to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). After the Delaware Baptist Mission was abandoned, the mission buildings began to fall into ruin and are no longer standing.

Four surviving Indian missions are now State Historic Sites administered by the Kansas Historical Society: Kaw Methodist Mission in Council Grove; the Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission in Highland; Potawatomi Baptist Mission in Topeka; and the Shawnee Methodist Mission in Fairway.

The globe and communion set were donated in 1907 by the daughter and daughter-in-law of the Reverend John Gill Pratt. They may be seen in the main gallery of the Kansas Museum of History, along with a bookcase made for Pratt by pupils at the Delaware mission.

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