Shawnee Origins

This Shawnee Indian Cemetery, hidden in an old Shawnee neighborhood, most resembles a vacant lot except for a few headstones. The tall obelisk in the foreground stands at one side and you can see to the car where the other side is. That obelisk marks the grave of Captain Joseph Parks, chief of the Shawnee Indians before the more well-known Chief Charles Bluejacket. He is one of the original signers of the Shawnee Treaty of 1854 that ceded much of the tribe's land back to the federal government. Bluejacket is buried in Oklahoma but two of his wives are buried in this cemetery. There's your history lesson for the day. It took me three wrong turns to find this cemetery, although my mother – as part of the Shawnee Mission Indian Society - did show it to me one time on a cemetery tour.