Our History

The history of the Christian Munsee spans hundreds of years and begins before their conversion to Christianity, their repeated removals, the massacre at Gnattenhutten and their eventual establishment in Kansas. But a summary account of the history is as follows:

The Munsee Tribe in Kansas descends from the Munsee, Mahican, and Delaware or Lenape people.  These tribes were related in their homelands between Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey for thousands of years. Also known as the “Christian Indians”, these natives converted to the Moravian faith at the missions of Shekomeko, Freidenshutten, and Gnadenhutten in the Colonies of Southern New York and Pennsylvania between 1738 and 1754. 

In the 1730's the Moravian missionaries arrived in this country and converted the Mahicans at Shekomeko in New York. Officials and settlers pushed the Moravians and Mahicans to Pennsylvania.  And then, the Delaware and Munsee Tribes were pushed from their lands by the Walking Purchase of 1737 committed by William Penn's sons.

The Moravians requirement that the Christian converts practice pacifism, as well as to live in a structured and European-style mission village, alienated mission populations from other tribes.  The French and Indian War of 1755-63 caused conflict between tribes and the British and French Empires. Settlers poured into Pennsylvania and violence ensued.

The Moravian missionaries David Ziesberger and John Heckewelder requested and were granted lands by the Wyandotte Tribe where they established the mission towns of Gnadenhutten, Schonbrunn, Salem, and Lichtenau in the early 1770's. The American Revolutionary War of 1774-1783 trapped the mission towns between the British Empire, their tribal allies, and the American settlers as these groups battled. 

The Moravian missionaries and tribal converts professed neutrality as the war raged. Lichtenau was burned. Eventually the settler militia grew tired of attacks by British aligned Wyandotte and Delaware warriors and instead attacked pacifist Moravian convents at the Gnadenhutten Massacre of March 8, 1782. Ninety-six unarmed Munsee, mostly women and children, were killed by the militia.

The survivors, which consisted of two boys who survived the massacre and the Moravian converts who were being held captive by the British Empire near Fort Detroit, eventually reestablished New Gnadenhutten north of Detroit.

A group of surviving Christian Munsee left that area led by Moravian missionary David Zeisberger. They eventually reestablished their community in what is today southern Ontario in 1792 at Fairfield/Moraviantown.

The conflict between the Americans and the British Empire led to the War of 1812 and the Battle of Moraviantown on October 5, 1813.  The invading Americans burned Moraviantown and the Munsee people fled for their safety.

The Canadian Government helped rebuild Moraviantown after the battle. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh died fighting the Americans at Moraviantown. The land the Moravian converts had left after the Gnadenhutten Massacre of 1782 was offered to them in a 1788 treaty with the United States. When the Moravian converts failed to return to Ohio the 12,000 acres they were offered in 1788 was sold by Congress in 1823. At the same time the US Government offered 24,000 acres by Executive Order if the Christian Indians returned to the United States west of the Mississippi River.

In 1837, around two hundred Christian Munsee left Moraviantown for The Stockbridge and Brothertown tribes near Green Bay.  In 1838-39 Christian Munsee and Stockbridge Mahican people went down the Mississippi River and up the Missouri River to the Kansas Indian Agency west of the Westport area of Kansas City, Missouri.

The 24,000 acres of land that the Christian Munsee had returned from Canada to claim turned out to be a false promise. Without their own land, the Munsee people stayed on Delaware and Wyandotte lands from 1839 to 1853.  In an 1854 Treaty, the Delaware Tribe sold the Christian Munsee Tribe 2,531 acres near Leavenworth, Kansas.

Between 1858-59 the Munsee Tribe was forced from that land by speculators and politicians. Some of the Munsee people followed Gideon Williams and Reverend Jacob Moonhouse south to New York Indian lands near Fort Scott. Squatters murdered these two men.  The survivors returned to join others at the reservation of the Black River and Swan Creek Chippewa Tribe.  This Chippewa tribe had signed a treaty with the Christian Indians on July 16, 1859 to live together on their reservation near Ottawa, Kansas..

In 1861 Kansas became a state and for the next thirty-nine years, Kansas took various measures to force Native American tribes from its borders. In 1864, facing hardships and insecurity, discrimination and lack of opportunity, the United States and the Moravian Church convinced the Chippewa and Munsee people to dissolve their reservation and become US citizens. 

In 1868, the US Government unsuccessfully put forth a treaty to remove the Munsee Tribe to the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. From 1869 to 1878, the Chippewa and Munsee people didn't have a tribal agency to serve them until they were finally place with The Nemaha Agency at Nadeau, Kansas.

The United States  continued to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream.  Munsee children started attending Haskell Institute when it opened in 1884. The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 pushed tribes to take allotments of reservation land as their reservations were dissolved.  In 1896 US Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas proposed a bill for your ancestors to accept allotments of reservation land from the 1859 treaty and dissolve their tribal government and become US citizens. This bill became law on June 7, 1897 and was finalized on November 8, 1900 with the issuing of forty acre patents of allotted land and $491 of tribal funds per capita.

Even after the tribe was dissolved, Munsee children were still taken to Indian boarding schools like Haskell, Wyandotte, Chilocco, Genoa, Flandreau, and Wahpeton through the 1950's. Tribal members continued to receive health services from Indian Services.  John Kilbuck, whose mother was Mahican and and whose great grandfather was Gelelemend,  the Lenape principal chief of the Turtle Clan and the first American Indian to sign a treaty with the United States. had left the reservation to serve with his wife as missionaries in Alaska and continued that work until his death in 1922.