Charles Journeycake (Ne-sha-pa-na-cumin)
Part I: Chief, Evangelist, Delaware, Baptist
We try to forget these things, but we would not forget that the white man brought us the blessed Gospel of Christ, the Christian’s hope. This more than pays for all we have suffered.
The speaker was addressing the Indian Rights Association in Washington, D.C. in 1886. He was no stranger to the capital. He made twenty-four trips there, negotiating treaties between the Delaware and the US, and seeking the government’s compliance with them.
Each treaty successively diminished his tribe’s land holdings in northeast Kansas, north of the Kansas River and west of Leavenworth. It was their home for less than four decades. By the time he made his speech, he too had relocated.
Charles Journeycake (Ne-sha-pa-na-cumin) himself described “these things” to which he was referring in his 1886 address:
We thought when we moved across the Missouri River and had paid for our homes in Kansas we were safe. But in few years the white man wanted our country. We had made good farms, built comfortable houses and big barns. We had schools for our children and churches where we listened to the same Gospel the white man listened to. We had a great many cattle and horses. The white man came into our country from Missouri and drove our cattle and horses away across the river. If our people followed them they got killed.
He personally suffered those losses. In 1869 he was among several Delaware who filed claims seeking restitution for theft of property-in his case, $1087, for three horses, three mules, six hogs, and twenty-two head of cattle.
What he “would not forget” he found in the Baptist Church-home of his life-long evangelicalism. In turn, it lionized him, believing that had his missionary example been widely emulated, “the Indian problem” would have been settled and the wrongs of the “Century of Dishonor” atoned, as one biographer wrote:
[A]s a representative of what a Christian civilization can do for a noble, but much-abused race, it seems right to gather about Chief Journeycake such an array of historic testimony as will exhibit the strong points of his character in an unmistakable light.
Another Baptist chronicler of Journeycake’s life added:
As a Christian and a minister of the gospel he exerted fully as great an influence for good upon his people as he did as chief and statesman. His name is one of hallowed memory, by reason of what he did in promoting moral development.
There were Baptist scholars who devoted their academic careers to studying him. One work of historical fiction celebrated his tumultuous years in Kansas as an idyllic life, lived in harmony with nature.
Some Delaware viewed Journeycake suspiciously, considering him-derogatively-a progressive for deviating from traditional ways and his close relationships with white society-a complicated melding started before his birth, December 16, 1817.
He was one-fourth white. His white grandmother, Mary Castleman, grew up with the Wyandot. They captured her when she was thirteen and she became the tribe’s translator before marrying Charles’ father, Solomon.
During the French and Indian War, the Delaware sided with the colonials and were key to the pivotal defeat of British General Braddock, and his ally Colonel George Washington, at the Battle of the Monongahela. Two decades later, Washington had switched allegiances and with his fellow revolutionaries, sought the assistance of the Delaware.
In 1778, the Delaware struck the first treaty between the US government and an Indian tribe. It committed the Delaware to provide scouts and fighters to the colonials for their revolt against British rule as well as a right of way through their territory to facilitate the Revolutionary Army’s assault on British fortifications. Eleven of the Delaware, who fought under the command of Captain John Montour-himself half Delaware and who originally sided with the British before changing allegiances-are memorialized at the Delaware Indian Cemetery at White Church in Kansas City, Kansas, a church founded in 1832 as the Methodist mission to the Delaware, and the oldest church in Kansas.
The colonials pledged support for the tribe while its men were engaged in the revolution, and invited the tribe “to form a state whereof the Delaware nation shall be the head and to have a representative in Congress.” Only one year later, the tribe met with their former opponent, then General Washington, seeking his assistance in fulfilling the colonials’ commitments. After the Revolution, Washington and recommended that Congress grant the Delaware hundreds of thousands of acres for their aid.
Despite the promises and rapprochement the colonies sought with the Delaware, antipathy towards them ran deep within the tribe. The support promised in the treaty never materialized, and Congress never approved Washington’s recommendation. Moreover, many Delaware held colonial forces responsible for several massacres during the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars -including the notorious Gnadenhutten (Ohio) massacre. The chief banned, in 1806, Christian missionaries from the new states.
After the Revolution, the tribe fractured, some moving to Canada, some into what is now Wisconsin, and others to northeast Ohio, where Charles was born. The Delaware living there-the Christian Delawares-disregarded the 1806 ban. Both of his parents converted.
One year after Charles was born, the Delaware was one of eight tribes who concluded a series of treaties with the US-collective known as the Treaty of St. Mary’s. The Delaware agreed to relinquish their holdings in the eastern US, in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River, in Kansas territory.
The Delaware with whom the Journeycakes were living began their move west in 1827. When they arrived in Kansas two years later, they settled near the Shawnee Baptist Mission in what is now Roeland Park. Charles was baptized into the Baptist church in 1837, the first Indian baptized in Kansas.
The same year, he and Jane Socta-also a Delaware and Christian-married. They would have fourteen children, three boys and eleven girls, including Nannie, born in 1843.
— Researched and written by Greg Frazier, Volunteer
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Sources:
Barndollar, Lue. Charles Journeycake. A Program Prepared and Presented January 2000. Files of the Shawnee Indian Mission.
Biography of Colonel Jacobs H. Bartles. https://accessgenealogy.com
Bowes, John. The Lands of My Nation: Delaware Indians in Kansas, 1829-1869. Great Plains Quarterly 36. Winter 2016. https://www.academia.edu/29588216/_The_Lands_of_My_Nation_Delaware_Indians_in_Kansas_1829_1869_Great_Plains_Quarterly_36_Winter_2016_1_30_Co_authored_with_Brice_Obermeyer?email_work_card=title
Briggs, Argye M. Both Banks of the River: A Novel. William B. Eardmans Publishing Company. 1954.
Church Book or Book of Records for the Baptist Church Constituted at the Delaware Baptist Mission, 5 April 1841. https://bartlesvillehistory.pastperfectonline.com/archive/CC19658C-0212-4BDD-BC6A-986929017219
Files of the Shawnee Indian Mission.
Little, Kay. The Woman Behind the Man-A Look at the Life of Nannie Journeycake Pratt Bartles. B Monthly. March 2020. https://issuu.com/bartlesvillemonthly/docs/bmonthlyonline_mar20/s/10282388
Messimore, Emily. Charles Journeycake: The Faithful Chief. Official Website of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. October 4, 2015 https://delawaretribe.org/blog/2015/10/04/charles-journeycake-the-faithful-chief/
Miner, Craig and William E. Unrau. The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution, 1854-1871. University Press of Kansas. 1978.
Mitchell, Reverend S.H. The Indian Chief, Journeycake. American Baptist Publican Society. 1895.
Morgan, Paul. History of Wyandotte County Kansas and its people. The Lewis Publishing Company. https://www.ksgenweb.org/archives/wyandott/history/1911/volume1/47.html#005005
Obermayer, Brice. Removal History of the Delaware Tribe. Official Web Site of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. https://delawaretribe.org/services-and-programs/historic-preservation/removal-history-of-the-delaware-tribe/
Owing, Clara. Life Among the Delaware Indians. Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society1872
Remsburg, George. Linwood, In This County Has Borne Three Names. Leavenworth County Historical Society and Museum. https://ksgenweb.org/KSLeavenworth/digitalLibrary/newspaperClippings/LINWOOD.html
Roark, Harry M. Charles Journeycake: Indian Statesman and Christian Leader. Dissertation for the Doctorate of Theology. The Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Kansas City, Kansas. April 1948.
Self, Burl. Journeycake, Charles. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=JO025
Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society.
Tribal Treaties Database. Oklahoma State University Libraries. https://treaties.okstate.edu
Wolff, Chris. The Shawnee Baptist Mission. Clio: Your Guide to History. September 6, 2024. https://theclio.com/entry/185176