Shawnee Indian Mission State Historic Site

The Shawnee reached Kansas in 1828, at the end of a long series of forced removals from the Ohio Valley, and made their headquarters near present-day Shawnee. The Indian agent then contracted the Methodist church to open a manual labor school on about 2,000 acres in the middle of their reservation. It opened in October 1839; the Shawnee Tribe notes that its own people paid for the school's construction and running and helped build it.

Children of many nations were sent here, among them Shawnee, Delaware, Kaw, Wyandot, Potawatomi and Osage, nearly 200 at a time at its height, aged five to 23. The state's own history lists six hours of class a day, five hours of farm or shop work for boys, sewing, washing and cooking for girls, bed at 8 p.m. and rising at 4 a.m. Chief Ben Barnes has said that Shawnee children slept in an attic after working the school's fields, and that the Tribe still does not know all their names, how many never went home, or where those who died were buried. The school closed in 1862.

On September 30, 2021, the Tribe held its first Orange Shirt Day here, handing out shirts printed "yoma hasiski kinicaaninaki m'kawaki," which means "This land. Our children. Find them." It has since begun work with the City of Fairway on the site's history, and a National Trust grant is paying for a historic structure report toward the Tribe's goal of restoring the buildings. The West Building, the oldest, is not yet open.