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For many years, western Arkansas was the edge of the frontier. After the Revolutionary War ended, attention in Washington D.C. turned to the Native Americans. The Cherokee tribe accused the U.S. government and citizens of infringing on its territory on the East Coast. One Cherokee in particular, Tahlonteskee, had been leading the Cherokee opposition to Americans settling in Cherokee land in South Carolina. As tension grew on both sides, Tahlonteskee began to support relocating to preserve tribal identity and land. Tribal removal was a controversial idea the U.S. government was already considering, though many tribal members did not support the proposal.
Tahlonteskee urged the U.S. government to give the Cherokees more concessions in exchange for land. He grew impatient with the process, though, and in 1809, he decided to lead a group of Cherokees west. They left in 1810 and traveled to the Saint Francis River area in both Arkansas and Missouri, where other groups of Cherokee had already relocated. In 1812, Tahlonteskee took his group to the Arkansas River Valley. By this time, he was acknowledged as the leader of the Arkansas Cherokee.
Arkansas was far from unsettled at the time. Some American settlers had already pushed into the territory, and the Osage tribe claimed northern Arkansas as their hunting grounds, which caused tension between the tribes. Tahlonteskee saw the value in working with others to ensure the Arkansas Cherokee could live peacefully alongside the settlers and be protected from the Osage. With this in mind, he took two important steps as a leader: he invited missionaries to create a school and he asked the government to establish a military and trading post.
By 1817, the U.S. Army established a presence in Fort Smith, only a short distance from where the Cherokee had settled. In 1818, Tahlonteskee visited Brainerd Mission, a school run by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFB), a Presbyterian organization, dedicated to providing education and religious instruction to the Cherokees. This was another controversial decision Tahlonteskee made as Principal Chief of the Western Cherokee. He didn’t live to see the establishment of a school, however. Tahlonteskee died in 1819, and the first missionaries from the ABCFB arrived in 1820. Tahlonteskee’s brother, John Jolly, had joined the Arkansas Cherokee before his brother died. He moved his family to Spadra, near present-day Russellville, where the first mission school was also established.
The Dwight Mission began in 1820. The young missionaries who arrived in August included Reverend Cephas Washburn and Reverend Alfred Finney. They built a log cabin and named the school Dwight Mission after Timothy Dwight, head of Yale University and an ABCFM member. The school taught children to read and write in English, with a focus on reading the Bible, life skills like sewing and weaving for girls, and farming and mechanical skills for boys.
The Dwight Mission wasn’t the only school of its type; it was one of over 400 federally-funded boarding schools where Native American children received instruction in English. Some of these schools have come under scrutiny for their practices, which included corporal punishment and allegations of abuse. The history of schools like the Dwight Mission is complex, and even though the school was started at the request of the Western Cherokee in Arkansas, the decision to open the school and send children there remained controversial among the Cherokee.
The Dwight Mission near Russellville ran until 1828. By this time, forced Indian Removal was imminent on the East Coast, although the Indian Removal Act didn’t pass until 1830. The Cherokee in Arkansas did not wait for that act to pass. Instead, they signed a treaty with the U.S. in 1828, relinquishing their land in Arkansas for seven million acres in Indian Territory. The Cherokee abandoned their homes, including the Dwight Mission in Russellville, and moved to present-day Oklahoma.
The missionaries moved with the Cherokee and reestablished Dwight Mission on Sallisaw Creek, 30 miles from Fort Gibson. The staff built another large log cabin to house and educate students and added log cabins as the need for more housing arose. Eventually, the school held over 80 students and more than a dozen staff. Dwight Mission continued to serve Cherokee students until 1948. The school closed and the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery used the land and facilities as a conference center and camp. In 2021, the Presbyterians returned the land to the Cherokee Nation.
The original site in Arkansas was flooded during the creation of Lake Dardanelle. However, a sign on Highway 64 marks the mission’s location, and the Cherokee cemetery is located on a nearby hill, where old headstones can still be found.
Though educating Indigenous children in English and Christian religious practices was controversial and remains so, the Dwight Mission did teach many Cherokee children how to read and write in English. This was Tahlonteskee’s original goal, as he sought a better life for the Western Cherokee in Arkansas.
Header Photo: The Dwight Mission Building in 1917 in Oklahoma. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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