History of The City of St. Marys.

St. Marys is one of the most historically important communities in Kansas.

St. Marys was founded in 1847 as a Jesuit Mission and tribal headquarters, serving the Pottawatomie tribe when that tribe was moved from Sugar Creek reserve in eastern Kansas. St. Marys straddled the route of the Oregon-California Trail, the Fort Leavenworth - Fort Riley Military Road and the Smoky Hill Trail.

From 1847 to about 1857, St. Marys was the "Cape Canaveral" of western migration along this leg of the Oregon-California Trail. Once a person left St. Marys in those years - there was not another settlement until one reached Salt Lake, the California Gold Fields or the Willamette Valley in Oregon Territory, journeys of thousands of miles. The only intervening vestiges of "civilization" were two small sparsely manned army posts at Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie.

Not far from St. Marys, on the south bank of the Kansas River a few miles east, was the westerly-most ferry across the river. Nearby was the site of Uniontown, a Pottawatomie village and trading post that was savaged by cholera twice - thence burned and abandoned in 1859.

A war party of Pawnee raided the Pottawatomie settlements near St. Marys in 1850, leading to a battle lasting several days which ended near where Ft Riley sits today. It was a major defeat for the Pawnee, and there was never another Pawnee raid into the Kansas River Valley.

Several hundred members of the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie tribes, disillusioned with the US and new State government, left St. Marys mission in the early spring of 1865 to move to Mexico, where they had an agreement with the Mexican government to occupy several towns on the south side of the Rio Grande river to protect Mexican settlements from marauding tribes, and, mainly, Texans.

On their way to Mexico, the St. Marys people were attacked by several hundred Texas militia without provocation (see About.com link or this link). The Indians from Kansas prevailed in this battle and went on to Mexico. In the spring of 1866 several dozen of the men returned to Texas to exact revenge for the unprovoked attack, but were all killed. These events triggered a border war with Texans that lasted over 20 years and was noted for its unremitting ferocity. Direct descendants of many of the people involved in these events still live in and around St. Marys.

St. Marys was one of the last locations of Jesuit service to North American tribes, which began in the 1600's in Quebec and Montreal. St. Marys Mission was the Pottawatomie Tribal headquarters and service center until the tribal lands were greatly reduced in about 1867. The Old Pay Station, an original building that served to distribute annual annuity payments and conduct other business on behalf of the tribe in the early days of St. Marys, still stands and is part of the St. Marys museum complex.

The substantial grounds and buildings of the original mission were transformed into a Jesuit Men's College, then into a Jesuit seminary until 1967. After being abandoned for many years, the buildings and grounds were acquired by the Society of St. Pius X and have since been restored to service for both a K-12 school and a four year college. St. Marys Academy is now a robust conservative Catholic educational institution serving students from all over North America.

The rich and varied history of St. Marys, its relationships to the history of the Catholic Church in North America, to tribal transitions and to westward expansion, and its beautiful location on bluffs overlooking the Kansas River Valley, make it a location of considerable interest to tourists and historians. Some examples of the historic literature that exists regarding St. Marys is noted in the following links and references.