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Beyond Manhattan: A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History

Robert S. Grumet (2014) 800 words

[Robert S. Grumet (2014)] may also hearken back to memories of Henry Hudson’s ship and the Half Moon community located at the mouth of the Mohawk River just north of Albany, New York. LENAPE (Leavenworth County). The name Lenape adorns a hamlet and a road and cemetery associated with the now largely defunct community situated on the north shore of the Kansas River on former Kansas Delaware Indian Reservation land several miles upriver from the City of Bonner Springs. MILL CREEK (Wyandotte County). Mill Creek is located just west of Muncie Creek (see below) at the west end of Kansas City. The name refers to the Delaware Mill built in 1833 along the creek’s banks located near the Kansas Delaware Indian Reservation agency office just downriver from Delaware Crossing, where the abovementioned ferry operated by Moses Grinter carried travelers along the Old Military Road across the Kansas River (Arellano 2009:16). MOUNT HOPE (Shawnee County). Graves containing remains of a number of descendants of Annie Grinter are located in a section of the Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka (Hahn 2006). MUNCIE (Franklin, Leavenworth, and Wyandotte counties). Mt. Muncie Airport, Muncie Road, and the Mt. Muncie Cemetery are located within a portion of the Kansas Delaware Reservation in present-day Leavenworth where a group of mostly Munsee Indians that had left Ontario for Wisconsin in 1836 settled in 1839. Unable to stop squatters swarming into the area during the run up to the creation of the Territory of Kansas, the Delawares included the Munsee settlements within the substantial part of the reservation ceded to the federal government under the terms of a treaty signed in Washington, D. C. on May 6, 1854 (Oklahoma State University Library 1999-2000). Muncie Creek runs through the Muncie-Stony Point neighborhood at the west end of present-day Kansas City in the part of the Kansas Delaware Indian Reservation where many of the Munsees displaced from the Leavenworth area relocated in 1854 (Bowes 2007:82-85). The Muncie Cemetery, also known as the Munsee Indian Cemetery, is located southwest of Kansas City in Franklin County (Hahn 2006). The site is located within the portion of the Chippewa Reservation on the Marais des Cygnes River set aside under the terms of a treaty signed on July 16, 1859 for mostly MunBeyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet see “Christian Indians” who moved to the area after 1854. Earlier known as the Osage River, the Marais Des Cygnes River was given the French name meaning “marsh of the swans,” after Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas from Michigan moved to the reservation, established along its banks around the present-day City of Ottawa in 1836. Ottawas, Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, and other Midwestern Indians forced to move west beyond the Mississippi River by the federal government’s Removal Policy moved among the Chippewas along the Marais des Cygnes River. Most of the Christian Munsees who had made the same move became part of the Moravian New Westfield mission community established in the area in 1862. The last Munsee lands on the Chippewa Reservation were sold after tribe members decided to disband their traditional government and accept allotments and American citizenship in 1900 (Abel 1900:2829). Today, many people living in present-day Franklin County continue to trace descent to Munsee forebears. to the area in 1854 near the portion of the Kansas Delaware Indian Reservation sold to the Wyandots from Sandusky (see above in Ohio) in 1843 (Abel 1900:15). WHITE CHURCH (Wyandotte County). The present-day White Church neighborhood in Kansas City is named for a Methodist mission to the Delaware Indians in the area established in 1832. The remains of many Delaware Indians who lived in the area lie buried in the White Church Cemetery (Hahn 2006). MUNSEE. See MUNCIE NECONHECON (Wyandotte County). The NeConHeCon Gravesite in the present-day Delaware Ridge Estates residential development contains the grave of the prominent Wolf phratry Kansas Delaware Indian leader Neconhecon, “he who is pushed in front” (1809-1863). Born in Indiana in 1809, Neconhecon was among the Delaware chiefs who signed treaties with the American government giving up reservation land in 1854 and 1860 (Weslager 1972:390, 404, 407, 414). Vandalized by local residents, his remains were reburied at their present locale in 1955. A branch of nearby Wolf along Tonganoxie Creek, a tributary of the Kansas River, was built around the frame house that Tonganoxie operated as an inn that catered to passing travelers. The community named for him was platted just after the Delawares left for Indian Territory in 1866. The place was formally incorporated as a town two years later. Sandusky Road (see above in Ohio) in the town probably refers to the place where Tonganoxie lived before coming to Kansas. WESTFIELD (Wyandotte County). The Westfield Shopping Center at the west end of Kansas City bears the name of the Moravian mission built to accommodate the