Goodland Mission

Goodland's Choctaw name was Yakni Achukma, good land. William Fields, a Choctaw, built the first house on the property in 1838. After the Civil War, when no mission board took charge, Rev. John P. Turnbull, an Indian Presbyterian minister, kept the church and school going until 1890. In 1901 Silas L. Bacon, a Choctaw orphaned as a child and taken in near the school, became superintendent for twenty years, and Samuel Bailey Spring, one-fourth Choctaw, who followed him, chose the orphanage over the office of principal chief.

What the plaque says

Goodland Mission Begun 1848 by Rev. John Lathrop of American Bd. of Foreign Miss. Rev. O. P. Stark, Supt. (1850), built 1st church. Mrs. Stark opened 1st school here. Others in the ser- vice through 100 years included W. J. B. Lloyd, J. P. Gibbons, Bella M. Gibbons, Silas Bacon, Mr. and Mrs. B. McCann, Ebenezer Hotchkins, S. Bailey Spring, and E. D. Miller. Goodland Mission Established 1848 by Presbyterian Church as a mission among the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. Organized through the efforts of Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, Ebenezer Hotchkin, Alfred Wright, Cyrus Byington and C.C. Copeland. Today, it is the oldest agency with uninterrupted service in Oklahoma. Oklahoma Historical Society 185-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Towson Historic Site — 17 mi
  The 1824 Red River post where arriving Choctaw and Chickasaw families were dispersed after removal, beside the site of Doaksville, the Choctaw capital where Stand Watie surrendered in 1865.

More markers nearby

• Spencer Academy — 11 mi
• Goodwater Choctaw Mission/Koonsha Female Seminary — 11 mi
• Old Spencer Academy — 16 mi
• Doaksville — 17 mi