Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Shawnee Mission Indian School

 The Kansas City area has a historical site named Shawnee Mission Indian School. The Kansas City Star newspaper  mentioned it the other day. From what I gather, it was a Methodist run manual training school for Indian boys and girls that was run from 1839 to 1862.  The original site was over 2,000 acres... the current  historical site is much smaller. .. and can be visited. It is one of those sites set up to resemble the day to day working of the original site with volunteers etc.

Native American groups have asked ( for years) to have this site explored for graves of missing Indian children.

My daughter's gifted program has a unit with field trips to sites around the Kansas City area. This site has not been part of the unit... I suggested it should be!!

2 comments:

betty said...

I think it would be fascinating if it was part of the curriculum to visit. Phoenix had a school for Native American children called Steele Indian School. Now it is a park but on the local museums has an exhibit with items from the school as well as the history behind it. It was fascinating to read about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_Indian_School_Park

betty

Kay said...

There are so many terrible stories about those schools that kept native American children. Were there any good ones? Perhaps we should balance the bad reports with some that might have some kind of positive light. I hope.