History

Shawnee Indians, along with many other eastern tribes, were moved to present-day Kansas in the 1820s and 1830s. Upon relinquishing their lands in the East, Shawnees received a large tract of land (about 1.6 million acres) west of Missouri in an area sometimes called the Great American Desert.

In July 1830 Chief Fish, leader of the Missouri Shawnees, requested a missionary through their Indian agent George Vashon. A missionary society was formed in September 1830. Reverend Thomas Johnson (pictured at right), a Methodist minister, was appointed missionary to the Shawnees and his brother William, missionary to the Kansa tribe. Reverend Thomas Johnson was born in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and later moved to Missouri. He married Sarah Davis (pictured below right) at Clarksville, Missouri, in 1830, and that same year he arrived with his new bride in present-day Turner, Wyandotte County, Kansas. Here he established the first Shawnee Methodist Mission. The school was in operation at that location until 1839, serving the Shawnee and Delaware tribes.

Johnson became dissatisfied with the school's functioning and proposed to the missionary society that a central school be built to serve many tribes. A site was chosen where a branch of the Santa Fe Trail passed through the Shawnee lands. Building began, and the school opened at the present Johnson County location in October 1839. Indian children of many tribes were sent to this school to learn basic academics, manual arts, and agriculture. Some of the tribes represented were the Kaw (Kansa), Munsee, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Otoe, Osage, Cherokee, Peoria, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wea, Gros Ventres, Omaha, and Wyandot. At the height of its activity, the mission was an establishment of more than two thousand acres with sixteen buildings, including the three large brick structures, which still stand, and an enrollment of nearly two hundred Indian boys and girls from the ages of five to 23.

The first building, referred to today as the west building, was constructed in 1839. This was followed closely by the east building in 1841, and the north building in 1845. In his comments attached to the mission's annual report for 1842, Indian agent Richard Cummins refers to the buildings as follows: "Boarding house (west building) 40 feet long by 20 wide two stories high, a cellar the whole size of the house, walls of rock, the walls of the house brick, this house contains four rooms. . .. Connected with this house is an ell of 90 feet long and 20 feet wide, two stories high. . .. on the first floor of the ell is a dining room of 70 feet long and a cooking room 18 feet long under which is a cellar used as a bake shop. The second story is divided into five rooms of equal size. The stairs for this part of the building are run up in the piazza [porch]. . .. A school (east building) house proper 110 feet long, 34 feet wide, two stories high, with a garret [attic] for lodging boys. The lower part is laid off into three divisions the center room occupied as a chapel and school room for boys. At each end of the house are two rooms occupied by the teachers and their families. The second story is used for lodging and instructing the girls." The north building was not yet built when Cummins made his comments.

By 1843-1844 the number of Indian children at the mission had increased to about 115. To accommodate this increase, the north building was erected in 1845. It was one hundred feet long, twenty feet wide, and two stories high with a piazza across the entire length except for the ends. (The east end was originally identical to the west, but was removed in later years.) The building was divided into connecting rooms used as the girls' school and dormitory. Spinning, weaving, and domestic skills were taught. In addition to these three structures, thirteen other buildings were constructed including a steam grist and saw mill, stable, wagon shop, blacksmith shop, wash house, smoke house, spring house, and barn.

Classes were held six hours each day except Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday teaching was limited to three hours. The boys worked in the shop or on the farm, usually for five hours a day. The girls helped with the sewing, washing, and cooking. The students, as a rule, went to bed at 8:00 p.m. and rose at 4:00 a.m.

Indian children differed little from other children in their pursuit of knowledge. The chief handicaps in working with them were communication between the missionaries and parents and the difficulty in keeping the children in school. According to the missionaries, those children between the ages of six and ten did well because they learned English more readily than the older ones. The younger students also adapted themselves more easily to the manners and habits of the whites.

A visiting author who observed the children in their classrooms in 1855 assured his readers that "they seem, to our eyes, to differ but little from any 'district school' interior, which educates the juveniles of some New England village. We saw one youngster munching an apple, with an occasional side-look at the master and his rod, another doing anything but a sum, unless the sum had a nose and a mouth, with a crest of eagle's feathers upon its head, while a third tried hard to post up her neighbor as to the correct reading of some forgotten arithmetical rule."

In 1854 Kansas Territory was established. Andrew Reeder, newly-appointed territorial governor, had his offices at the mission. Following their adjournment from the first territorial capitol, now part of Fort Riley, the first territorial legislature met at the mission. It was during this legislative session that the so-called "bogus laws" were passed in an attempt to perpetuate slavery in Kansas.

The manual training portion of the school ceased in 1854. In 1858 Reverend Thomas Johnson turned the school over to his oldest son, Alexander, who ran the mission until it closed in 1862.

Thomas Johnson was murdered at his home in Missouri on January 2, 1865. The murderers were believed to have been Southern sympathizers who apparently were angered when Johnson, a proslavery man for many years, had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Union at the start of the Civil War. Johnson is buried in the Shawnee Methodist Mission cemetery (three blocks east of Mission Road on Shawnee Mission Parkway) along with several members of his family.

After several months of legal battles, the mission property was deeded to the Johnson family and was owned by various individuals until the State of Kansas acquired it in 1927. Since that time it has been administered by the Kansas Historical Society.