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Indian Missions of the Southern States
The Southern States.—All of this region, and even as far north as
Virginia, was loosely designated as Florida in the earlier period, and was
entirely within the sphere of Spanish influence until about the end of the
seventeenth. century. The beginning of definite mission work in the Gulf
territory was made in 1544 when the Catholic Franciscan Father Andrés
de Olmos, a veteran in the Mexican field, struck northward into the Texas
wilderness, and after getting about him a considerable body of converts led them
back into Tamaulipas, where, under the name of Olives, they were organized into
a regular mission town. In 1549 the Dominican Father Luis Cancer with several
companions attempted a beginning on the west coast of Florida, but was murdered
by the Indians almost as soon as his feet touched the land. In 1565 St Augustine
(San Agustin) was founded and the work of Christianizing the natives was
actively taken up, first by the Jesuits, but later, probably in 1573, by the
Franciscans, who continued with it to the end. Within twenty years they had
established a chain of flourishing missions along the coast from St Augustine to
St Helena, in South Carolina, besides several others on the west Florida coast.
In 1597 a portion of the Guale tribe (possibly the Yamasi) on the lower Georgia
coast, under the leadership of a rival claimant for the chieftainship, attacked
the neighboring missions and killed several of the missionaries before the
friendly Indians could gather to the rescue. In consequence of this blow the
work languished for several years, when it was taken up with greater zeal than
before and the field extended to the interior tribes. By the year 1615 there
were 20 missions, with about 40 Franciscan workers, established in Florida and
the dependent coast region. The most noted of these missionaries is Father
Francisco Pareja, author of a grammar and several devotional works in the
Timucua language, the first books ever printed in any Indian language of the
United States and the basis for the establishment of the Timucuan linguistic
family. In the year 1655 the Christian Indian population of N. Florida and the
Georgia coast was estimated at 26,000. The most successful result was obtained
among the Timucua in the neighborhood
of St Augustine and the Apalachee around the bay of that manic.. In 1687 the
Yamasi attacked and destroyed the mission of Santa Catalina on the Georgia
coast, and to escape pursuit fled to the English colony of Carolina. The
traveler Dickenson has left a pleasant picture of the prosperous condition of
the mission towns and their Indian population as he found them in 1699, which
contrasts strongly with the barbarous condition of the heathen tribes farther
south, among whom he had been a prisoner.
The English colony of Carolina had been founded in 1663, with a charter which
was soon after extended southward to lat. 29°, thus including almost the whole
area of Spanish occupancy and mission labor. The steadily growing hostility
between the two nations culminated in the winter of 1703-4, when Gov. Moore, of
Carolina, with a small force of white men and a thousand or more well-armed
warriors of Creek,
Catawba, and other savage allies invaded the
Apalachee country, destroyed one
mission town after another, with their churches, fields, and orange groves,
killed hundreds of their people, and carried away 1,400 prisoners to be sold as
slaves. Anticipating the danger, the Apalachee had applied to the governor at St
Augustine for guns with which to defend themselves, but had been refused, in
accordance with the Spanish rule which forbade the issuing of firearms to
Indians. The result was the destruction of the tribe and the reversion of the
country to a wilderness condition, as Bartram found it 70 years later. In 1706 a
second expedition visited a similar fate upon the Timucua, and the ruin of the
Florida missions was complete. Seine effort was made a few years later by an
Apalachee chief to gather the remnant of his people into a new mission
settlement near Pensacola, but with only temporary result.
In the meantime the French had effected lodgment at
Biloxi, Miss. (1699), Mobile, New Orleans, and along the Mississippi, and the
work of evangelizing the wild tribes was taken up at once by secular priests
from the Seminary of Foreign Missions in Quebec. Stations were established among
the Tunica,
Natchez, and
Choctaw of Mississippi, the Taensa, Hurna,
and Ceni (Caddo) of Louisiana, but with slight result. Among the Natchez
particularly, whose elaborately organized native ritual included human
sacrifice, not a single convert rewarded several years of labor. In 1725 several
Jesuits arrived at New Orleans and took up their work in what was already an
abandoned field, extending their effort to the
Alibamu, in the present state of Alabama. On Sunday, Nov. 28, 1729, the
Natchez war began with the massacre of the French garrison while at prayer, the
first victim being the Jesuit Du Poisson, the priest at the altar. The
"Louisiana Mission," as it was called. had never flourished, and the events and
after consequences of this war demoralized it until it came to an end with the
expulsion of the Jesuits by royal decree in 1764.
The advance of the French along the Mississippi and the
Gulf coast aroused the Spanish authorities to the importance of Texas, and
shortly after the failure of La Salle's expedition 8 Spanish presidio missions
were established in that territory. Each station was in charge of two or three
Franciscan missionaries. with several families of civilized Indians from Mexico,
a full equipment of stock and implements for farmers, and a small guard of
soldiers. Plans were drawn for the colonization of the Indians around the
missions, their instruction in religion, farming, and simple trades and home
life, and in the Spanish language. Through a variety of misfortunes the first
attempt proved a failure and the work was abandoned until 1717 (or earlier,
according to La Harpe), when it was resumed—still under the Franciscans—among
the various sub-tribes of the Caddo, Tonkawa,
Carrizos, and others. The most important center was at San Antonio, where there
was a group of 4 missions, including San Antonio de Padua, the famous Alamo. The
mission of San Sabá was established among
the Lipan in 1757, but was destroyed soon after
by the hostile Comanche. A more
successful foundation was begun in 1791 among the now extinct Karankawa. At
their highest estate, probably about the year 1760, the Indian population
attached to the various Texas missions numbered about 15,000. In this year
Father Bartolomé Garcia published a
religious manual for the use of the converts at San Antonio mission, which
remains almost the only linguistic monument of the Coahuiltecan stock. The
missions continued to flourish until 1812, when they were suppressed by the
Spanish Government and the Indians scattered, some rejoining the wild tribes,
while others were absorbed into the Mexican population.
In 1735 the Moravians under Spangenberg started
a school among the Yamacraw Creeks a few miles above Savannah, Ga., which
continued until 1739, when, on refusal of the Moravians to take up arms against
the Spaniards, they were forced to leave the colony. This seems to be the only
attempt at mission work in either Georgia or South Carolina from the withdrawal
of the Spaniards until the Moravian establishment at Spring Place, Ga., in 1801.
The great Cherokee
tribe held there mountain region of both Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and
Tennessee, and for our purpose their territory may be treated as a whole.
Dismissing as doubtful Bristock's account, quoted by Shea, of a Cherokee mission
in 1643, the earliest missionary work among them appears to have been that of
the mysterious Christian Priber, supposed, though not proven, to have been a
French Jesuit, who established his headquarters among them at Tellico, East
Tennessee, in 1736, and proceeded to organize them into a regular civilized form
of government. After 5 years of successful progress he was seized by the South
Carolina authorities, who regarded him as a French political emissary, and died
while in prison. In 1801 the Morarians Steiner and Byhan began the
Cherokee mission of Spring Place, north west Ga., and in 1821 the same
denomination established another at Oothcaloga, in the same vicinity. Both of
these existed until the missions were broken up by the State of Georgia in 1843.
In 1804 Rev. Gideon Blackburn, for the Presbyterians, established a
Cherokee mission school in E. Tennessee, which did good work for several years
until compelled to suspend for lack of funds. In 1817 the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, under joint Congregational and
Presbyterian management, established its first station in the tribe at
Brainerd, not far from the present Chattanooga, Tenn., followed within a few
years by several others, all of which were in flourishing condition when broken
up in the Removal controversy in 1834. Among the most noted of these
missionaries was Rev. S. A. Worcester, one of the principals in the founding of
the 'Cherokee Phoenix' in 1828, the author of a large number of religious and
other translations into Cherokee and the steadfast friend of the Indians in the
controversy with the State of Georgia. He ministered to the tribe from his
ordination in 1825 until his death in 1859, first in the old nation and
afterward at Dwight, Ark., and Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Indian Territory. Of
an earlier period was Rev. Daniel S. Buttrick, 1817-47, who, however, never
mastered the language sufficiently to preach without an interpreter. A native
convert of the same period, David Brown, completed a manuscript translation of
the New Testament into the new Cherokee syllabary in 1825.
In 1820 the American Board, through Rev. Mr. Chapman,
established Dwight mission for the Arkansas Cherokee, on Illinois Creek, about 5
mile above its junction with the Arkansas, near the present Dardanelle, Ark.
Under Rev. Cephas Washburn it grew to he perhaps the most important mission
station in the south west until the removal of the tribe to Indian Territory,
about 1839. From this station some attention also was given to the
Osage. Of these missions of the American
Board, Morse says officially in 1822: "They have been models, according to which
other societies
have since made their establishments." As was then customary, they were largely
aided by Government appropriation. On the consolidation of the whole Cherokee
nation in Indian Territory the missionaries followed, and new stations were
established which, with some interruptions, remained in operation until the
outbreak of the Civil War.
In 1820 a Baptist Mission was established at
Valleytown, near the present Murphy, west North Carolina, in charge of
Rev. Thomas Posey, and in 1821 another of the same denomination at Coosawatee,
Ga. A few years later the Valleytown mission was placed in charge of Rev. Evan
Jones, who continued with it until the removal of the tribe to the west. He
edited for some time a journal called the 'Cherokee Messenger,' in the native
language and syllabary, and also made a translation of the New Testament. The
mission work was resumed in the new country and continued with a large measure
of success down to the modern period. Among the prominent native workers may be
named Rev. Jesse Bushyhead.
After many years of neglect the
Muskhogean tribes again came in for
attention. In 1881 the Congregational-Presbyterian American Board,
through Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, established the first station among the Choctaw at
Eliot, on Yalabusha River in north Mississippi. Three years later it was placed
in charge of Rev. Cyrus Byington, the noted Choctaw philologist, who continued
in the work there and in the Indian Territory, for nearly half a century, until
his death in 1868. The Eliot mission in its time was one of the most important
in the southern country. In 1820 a second Choctaw mission, called Mayhew, was
begun, and became the residence of Rev. Alfred Wright, also known for his
linguistic work. On the removal of the tribe to Indian Territory, about 1830, it
became necessary to abandon these stations and establish others in the new
country beyond the Mississippi. Among the most noted was Wheelock, organized by
Rev. Alfred Wright in 1832. Others were Stockbridge, Bennington, Mt Pleasant,
and Spencer Academy. The American Board also extended its effort to the
immigrant Creeks, establishing in their nation, under the supervision of Rev. R.
M. Loughridge, Kowetah (Kawita) mission in 1843, and Tullahassee shortly after,
with Oak Ridge, among the removed Seminole,
a few years later. Most of these continued until the outbreak of the Civil War,
and were reorganized after the war was over. The school at Cornwall, Conn., was
also conducted as an auxiliary to the mission work of the earlier period. Among
the Presbyterian workers
who have rendered distinguished service to Muskhogean philology in the way of
religious, educational, and dictionary translation may be noted the names of
Byington, Williams, Alfred and Allen Wright, for the Choctaw, with Fleming,
Loughridge, Ramsay, Winslett, Mrs Robertson, and the Perrymans (Indian) for the
Creeks.
The Baptists began work in the Indian Territory
about 1832, and three years later had 4 missionaries at as many stations among
the Choctaw, all salaried as teachers by the United States, "so that these
stations were all sustained without cost to the funds which benevolence provided
for many purposes " ( McCoy) . In 1839 they were in charge of Revs. Smedley,
Potts, Hatch, and Dr Allen, respectively. Missions were established about the
same time among the Creeks, the most noted laborers in the latter field being
Rev. H. F. Buckner, from 1849 until his death in 1882, compiler of a Muskogee
grammar and other works in the language, with Rev. John Davis and Rev. James
Perryman, native ministers who had received their education at the Union
(Presbyterian) mission among the Osage. As auxiliary to the work of this
denomination, for the special purpose of training native workers, the American
Baptist Board in 1819 established at Great Crossings, in Kentucky, a higher
school, known as the Choctaw Academy, sometimes as Johnson's Academy. Although
intended for promising youth of every tribe, its pupils came chiefly from the
Choctaw and the Creeks until its discontinuance about 1843, in consequence of
the Indian preference for home schools.
Work was begun. by the Methodists among the
Creeks in Indian Territory about 1835, but was shortly afterward discontinued in
consequence of difficulties with the tribe, and was not resumed until some years
later. Additional Mission Resources
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook
of American Indians, 1906
Indian
Missions of the United StatesFree
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