Niobrara Missionary Jurisdiction

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The earliest Episcopal Church missions to the Indigenous peoples of North America occurred under the direction of Bishop John Henry Hobart, who began missionary outreach in the early 19th century to the Oneida tribe in New York. The Oneida mission under Eleazar Williams gave birth to similar endeavors amond the Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the 1850s. Minnesota became the scene of a dedicated attempt to evangelize to the Indigenous tribes under the leadership of the first bishop, Henry Whipple. Whipple was deeply sympathetic to the cause and condition of American Indians. He served as chair of the government commission on the armed conflict occurring near the Little Big Horn River during the Great Sioux War of 1876. Whipple advocated successfully for the establishment of the Episcopal Church’s first Indian Commission under the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s Board of Missions. Bishop Whipple is also known for having interceded to obtain Lincoln’s clemency in the capital punishment of 269 Native Americans taken as war prisoners after the Dakota Sioux Uprising of 1862. Thirty-eight others were publicly hanged in retribution.

Read more at: episcopalarchives.org/subject-guides/indigenous-holdings/