ST. PAUL, Kans. – She was prepared to mortgage her house.
For over a decade, Osage elder Margaret Bird has felt the Osage individuals buried in a mass grave at the northeast end of the St. Francis Cemetery deserved more than dilapidated sandstone grave markers with “Indian Graves” carved on the side.
“I thought, we gotta do something about those stones. I know that in our belief that we don’t move our people when they’re down, they’re there,” she said. “But they were here, we didn’t do it, but we need to memorialize them.”
On July 14, her years of advocacy paid off.
Osages and volunteers from the Osage Mission Neosho County Museum gathered at the cemetery to commemorate two new grave markers installed over the burial site of Osage people.
Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear began to speak about the role Jesuit priests played in the Osage culture and that Father Schoenmakers, who was the first priest among the Osage at the Osage Mission in Kansas, was such a big influence that the Osage word for priest is pronounced Shoo.Minka after Schoenmakers.
A real effort to do something about the grave markers came in 2019 when Congressman John Maker sponsored a bill that appropriated $20,000 to commemorate the Osage burial site. Efforts stalled when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. In 2021, Bird visited Standing Bear and said she was concerned with the lack of progress made.
Standing Bear assigned his Chief of Staff Jason Zaun to take over the project and after a bidding process, Zaun hired a company to make the markers in March of 2022. He let Bird pick out the design and stone and it was shipped from India in April of 2023. A company worked on the markers and they were ready by May, but because of the Inlonshka dances in June, the commemoration was delayed to July.
The new markers are inscribed with “Osage Indians” on one side and “Wahzhazhe” in the Osage orthography on the front and back. On top of the markers is the Osage Nation seal. These new markers are square and reddish-brown granite.
The two markers sit on either side of a tall stone marker that is the grave of Osage/Cherokee Charles Mongrain. Mongrain was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, composed of Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War. His great-great-grandson Charles Mongrain was present at the cemetery on July 14 and said Mongrain was not only a soldier but an interpreter for the GAR.
Advocacy
Bird first found out about the mass grave after she moved to Caney, Kans. A friend who lived in the area took her to the cemetery and wanted to show her something.
“We waded water, and the stones were so old and cracked I couldn’t even see. She told me, ‘You see that big stone?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Look on the side.’
“And it said, ‘Indian Graves’ on it.”
Volunteers with the county museum, Dr. Andrea Hunter with the Nation’s Historic Preservation Office and the Office of the Chiefs, have made numerous visits to the site over the years.
Board president for the county museum, Ed Born, befriended Bird as well as other volunteers such as Felix Diskin, who spent countless hours researching who was interred in the vault and where records could be found, to no avail.
Prayers
Standing Bear asked Father Theodore of St. Francis de Hieronymo Catholic Church to say a prayer for those in attendance and for those Osages laid to rest there. Congressman John Maker said a prayer in the Osage language and Vann Bighorse, Noah Shadlow and Joseph Duty sang a prayer song.
Standing Bear asked Diskin to speak.
Diskin said the original Mission cemetery was north and west of the church. Father Schoenmakers in 1870, after the Osage were moved from Kansas, gave the land to make the community of Osage Mission. He said the cemetery would have been in the middle of the land and Schoenmakers asked the remains to be moved to its present location.
“Also, there were (Osage) burials around the area and their remains were taken here. So, my understanding is we can’t find records of names, we don’t know the number or anything like this, but my understanding is there is a vault here and the bodies were brought to here,” Diskin said. “I was thinking this morning, history should make us uncomfortable. 150 years from now, people are going to look back at this era and probably be a little bit uncomfortable with things that happened in this era. History should make us uncomfortable.”
“I do want to say one thing, I have really been pleased with the response of the community here, to this monument. The people here are proud, Margaret, that this went in, Mark (Simms), the people are proud of what you did,” he said.
Bird, along with Dr. Hunter, Standing Bear, Zaun, Simms, Bighorse and ON Museum Director Marla Redcorn-Miller, worked on getting the former stones removed and the new headstones placed on the graves.
“I know I went to Chief, I was gonna mortgage my house because I was going to get this done. I told him what I was prepared to do and he said he would do it and he did it,” Bird said. “I just want to thank everyone who was involved in getting this done. We can all come up here and be proud of this.”
