Oto Mission

The school came out of a treaty. In 1833 the Otoe, now part of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, had just ceded land to the United States for annuities, a gristmill, livestock, farm tools and a government school, and the Merrills were hired to run the school. Merrill traveled to the Baptist settlement at Shawnee Mission in Kansas to print his Otoe books. Narcissa Whitman's letters of 1836 describe a visit with the family as refreshing to our thirsty spirits. After Moses died, Eliza took their son Samuel back to Albany, New York, and founded an orphanage there.

What the plaque says

Oto Mission In November 1833 Moses and Eliza Merrill, missionaries sponsored by the Baptist Missionary Union, arrived at the government Indian agency at Bellevue and opened a mission school for the Oto and Missouri Indians living in eastern Nebraska. The Merrills' were the first Christian missionaries sent to Nebraska. In September 1835 the Merrill family relocated to a log cabin and schoolhouse the government provided on the Platte River about three miles west of here. Part of the Oto and Missouri led by Chief Iatan built a village nearby. As the mission developed, Merrill prepared a spelling book, a reader, and hymnals in the Oto language. More buildings were erected, and a blacksmith and farmer joined the staff. The Oto were plagued by diminishing game supplies and demoralized by liquor. On April 28, 1837, Iatan was killed in an Indian feud and his successor was unable to maintain the village at the mission. Merrill died on February 6, 1840, and was buried at St. Mary, across the Missouri River from Bellevue. In 2011 only a stone fireplace/chimney remained at the mission site. Sarpy County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society, 2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 12 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 13 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 15 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 18 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark Campsite: July 21, 1804 — 2.9 mi
• Fontenelle Bank - County Courthouse — 4.7 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 4.8 mi
• Bellevue — 4.8 mi