A Kansas Memory Podcast

Shawnee Missions, 1830-1854

The documents used in the Shawnee Missions podcast are available on

• Journal of Johnston Lykins, Shawnee Baptist Mission
  The missionaries were certain that the Indians would be better off if they converted to Christianity and were assimilated into white European culture. In this journal entry from October 27, 1832, Johnston Lykins admits they are having trouble persuading the Shawnee parents to send their children to the Shawnee Baptist Mission to be educated.
• Jotham Meeker to Reverend Lucius Bolles
  Baptist missionary Jotham Meeker was familiar with the Ottawa Indians, some of whom lived on the Shawnee lands. In this letter from Shawnee Mission, dated Nov. 29, 1833, to Reverend Lucius Bolles of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, he discusses his efforts to overcome their resistance to missionaries.
• History of Kansas and Emigrant's Guide, 1855, pg. 32-33
  In 1839, Reverend Johnson moved the Shawnee Methodist Mission to a two-thousand acre site in present-day Johnson County. This evolved into a complex of buildings called the "Manual Labor School," which was attended by as many as two hundred students at a time. These remarks about the Shawnee missions are from J. Butler Chapman's book which he based on, "three month's travel through the territory in 1854."