John Dunbar (1804–1857) was a missionary who tried to Christianize the Pawnee Indians of Nebraska during the 1830s–1840s.
John Dunbar (1804–1857) was a missionary who tried to Christianize the Pawnee Indians of Nebraska during the 1830s–1840s.
Born in Palmer, Massachusetts, John Dunbar grew up in the fertile cultural soil of western New England. The Connecticut River Valley was a region awash with revivalistic evangelical religion and the zeal for social reform, much as the more well-known Burned-over district of Western New York. Indeed, Dunbar grew up in the shadow of missionary endeavor. He attended Williams College, where the 1806 Haystack Prayer Meeting took place, the birthplace of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the symbolic origin of the entire antebellum missionary movement. [1]
Dunbar continued his education at Andover Theological Seminary, even as he began considering the cause of missions. He graduated and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1834 and left for the western frontier that same year under the authority of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He was joined on the journey by Samuel Parker and an assistant missionary, Samuel Allis. Their original aim had been to go farther West and minister to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, known at the time as the Flatheads. In St. Louis, the missionaries changed their minds, and Parker headed back to New England, though he would go on to fame as a missionary to Oregon. [1]
Instead, Dunbar and Allis decided to apply their evangelistic efforts more locally and instead made a base camp in Bellevue, Nebraska, where Moses Merrill, a Baptist missionary, was already at work amongst the Otoe–Missouria Indians. Over the next two years, Dunbar and Allis joined the Pawnee Indians bands on their biannual buffalo hunts across the Nebraskan Great Plains. Dunbar returned to Massachusetts to marry Esther Smith whose sister had died in the mission field at the Bombay Mission in modern-day Mumbai. [2] Allis and the Dunbars continued to work sporadically with the Pawnees from Bellevue until 1841, when the missionaries built their own lodgings not far from the Pawnees' main village nearby modern-day Fullerton, Nebraska, in rural Nance County. A small settlement of white settlers developed around the mission, as treaty-appointed blacksmiths, teachers and farmers arrived to assist the Pawnee on the federal dime. [3] Factionalism soon divided the American settlement, based in part upon disagreements about how to resolve Pawnee-white disputes. Dunbar and Allis largely supported the Pawnees' perspectives during these disagreements, worsening the factionalism but allowing the missionaries to maintain warm relations with the Pawnees. Nonetheless, none of the Pawnees were particularly drawn to the Christian message. Dunbar's efforts had come up empty and the growing threat of Lakota raids in the region forced the missionaries to flee the mission in 1846. [1]
Their mission work at an end, the Dunbars moved first to Andrew County and then Holt County, Missouri. They moved again in 1856 to Brown County, Kansas, where John Dunbar died the next year. [1]
Interestingly, the acclaimed 1990 Western film Dances with Wolves starred Kevin Costner as a fictional character named Lt. John Dunbar. This fictional Dunbar supported the Indian cause against white rapacity and witnessed Pawnee and Lakota wars, much as the real Dunbar did. And, as it happens, John Dunbar's son, John Brown Dunbar, did fight in the Civil War. However, the name was not chosen for historical reasons. Michael Blake, the screenwriter, explained that he invented his main character by splicing together various period names from a list of men who served in the American Civil War. Blake was cheered by this happenstance: "In a mystical sort of way, I feel sort of vindicated that there was a John Dunbar out there." [4]
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Pawnee are a Central Plains Indian tribe that historically lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas but today are based in Oklahoma. They are the federally recognized Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, who are headquartered in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Their Pawnee language belongs to the Caddoan language family, and their name for themselves is Chatiks si chatiks or "Men of Men".
Dances with Wolves is a 1990 American epic Western film starring, directed, and produced by Kevin Costner in his feature directorial debut. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 novel Dances with Wolves, by Michael Blake, that tells the story of Union Army Lieutenant John J. Dunbar (Costner), who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and who meets a group of Lakota.
Red Cloud was a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1865 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents whom the United States Army faced in the western territories. He defeated the United States during Red Cloud's War, which was a fight over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. The largest action of the war was the 1866 Fetterman Fight, with 81 US soldiers killed; it was the worst military defeat suffered by the US Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn 10 years later.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
Arikara, also known as Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree, or Hundi, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribe known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
The Otoe are a Native American people of the Midwestern United States. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and closely related to that of the related Iowa, Missouria, and Ho-Chunk tribes.
Peter Parker was an American physician and a missionary who introduced Western medical techniques into Qing dynasty China, at the city of Canton. It was said that Parker "opened China to the gospel at the point of a lancet."
Fontenelle's Post, first known as Pilcher's Post, and the site of the later city of Bellevue, was built in 1822 in the Nebraska Territory by Joshua Pilcher, then president of the Missouri Fur Company. Located on the west side of the Missouri River, it developed as one of the first European-American settlements in Nebraska. The Post served as a center for trading with local Omaha, Otoe, Missouri, and Pawnee tribes.
The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the United States.
Logan Fontenelle, also known as Shon-ga-ska, was a trader of Omaha and French ancestry, who served for years as an interpreter to the US Indian agent at the Bellevue Agency in Nebraska. He was especially important during the United States negotiations with Omaha leaders in 1853–1854 about ceding land to the United States prior to settlement on a reservation. His mother was a daughter of Big Elk, the principal chief, and his father was a respected French-American fur trader.
The Moses Merrill Mission, also known as the Oto Mission, was located about eight miles west of Bellevue, Nebraska. It was built and occupied by Moses and Eliza Wilcox Merrill, the first missionaries resident in Nebraska. The first building was part of facilities built in 1835 when the United States Government removed the Otoe about eight miles southwest of Bellevue. Merrill's goal was to convert the local Otoe tribe to Christianity; he had learned the language and translated the Bible and some hymns into Otoe.
Native American tribes in the U.S. state of Nebraska have been Plains Indians, descendants of succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples who have occupied the area for thousands of years. More than 15 historic tribes have been identified as having lived in, hunted in, or otherwise occupied territory within the current state boundaries.
Peter Abadie Sarpy (1805–1865) was the French-American owner and operator of several fur trading posts, essential to the development of the Nebraska Territory, and a thriving ferry business. A prominent businessman, he helped lay out the towns of Bellevue and Decatur, Nebraska. Nebraska's legislature named Sarpy County after him in honor of his service to the state.
The Massacre Canyon battle took place in Nebraska on August 5, 1873, near the Republican River. It was one of the last hostilities between the Pawnee and the Sioux and the last battle/massacre between Great Plains Indians in North America. The massacre occurred when a large Sioux war party of over 1,500 Oglala, Brulé, and Sihasapa warriors, led by Two Strike, Little Wound, and Spotted Tail attacked a band of Pawnee during their summer buffalo hunt. In the ensuing rout, many Pawnees were killed with estimates of casualties ranging widely from around 50 to over 150. The victims, who were mostly women and children, suffered mutilation and sexual assault.
Two Strike was a Brulé Lakota chief born in the White River Valley in present-day Nebraska. He earned his Lakota name "Nomkahpa", meaning "Knocks Two Off" in a battle with Utes, when he knocked two off their horses with a single blow of his war club. Two Strike fought in various battles against the U.S. Army during the early conflict of the Plains Indian wars and of the Great Sioux wars with Chief Crow Dog and Chief Crazy Horse as well as various war exploits and atrocities against the Pawnee.
John Grass, Matȟó Watȟákpe or Charging Bear was a chief of the Sihasapa (Blackfeet) band of Lakota people during the 1870s through 1890s. He fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana. In the summer of 1873, he led his men of the Sihasapa and Oglala/Brule against the Pawnee in Nebraska near the Republican River, killing between 75 and 100 Pawnee men with mostly women and children, although the estimates of dead ranged at 156. The incident was named The Battle of Massacre Canyon.
John Dunbar may refer to:
Pawnee leader Blue Coat's village near the Loup River in Nebraska at a site called Plum Creek was attacked by a group of Lakota fighters on June 27, 1843. This was the worst blow to the Pawnee people until the attack in Massacre Canyon by the Lakota in 1873. Between 65 and 70 Pawnees were killed, scalped and mutilated, few of the earth lodges were burnt.