Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley led legal and resistance efforts to protect Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas (1906–1946)
She was the first Native American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Written by shift7, published here with permission.
To appreciate the full significance of Lyda Conley’s stand to protect Huron Indian Cemetery, it is vital to understand some historical context surrounding it.
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed “The Indian Removal Act.” According to the Library of Congress, it authorized him “to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.”¹
Tribes were then pressured by government representatives to “relocate” with various settlement offers.
The Wyandots, living in Wyandot County, Ohio, were pressured repeatedly in the 1830s, and refused all offers. In December 1841, revered Wyandot Chief Summunduwat was murdered, and according to the tribe’s history, “Almost immediately after Summunduwat died, the government showed up to offer land out west again.”
An agreement was reached after nearly a year of negotiations that the Wyandot of Ohio and Michigan would move to 148,000 acres in Kansas, and receive “$17,000 annually, forever, plus $500 per year for the support of the school and $100,000 for moving expenses.”² However, it is clear from a final address before departure by Chief Squire Grey Eyes, that the tribe was under duress:
“No more shall we assemble in our temple to sing the sacred songs and hear the story of the cross. Here our dead are buried. We have placed fresh leaves and flowers upon their graves for the last time. Soon they shall be forgotten, for the onward march of the strong white man will not turn aside for the Indian graves.”³
On July 12, 1843, 664 Wyandot began the arduous 700-mile journey by traveling to Cincinnati with 120 wagons and 300 horses.⁴ From there, they traveled by steamboat up the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers. They arrived in Westport, Missouri, near Kansas City, on July 28 to betrayal.
The tribe’s historical article Ohio’s Trail of Tears recounts:
“The Kansas land promised by treaty was no longer available. Until December, they camped on lowlands. Floods there were so vicious, they left buffalo carcasses rotting in the trees. Fatal diseases swept in with them. Every time they buried one of their own, the Wyandot marched up a hill near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. The scrap of land was a gift from the Delaware tribe. They marched up to the small cemetery more than 100 times in the year after they left Ohio. They carried elders, children and those in between. The tear-stained hill belonged to the dead. Chief Jacquis and his tribe wondered if this hill of sadness and bones was all they would ever own.”⁵
This cemetery would come to be known as Huron Indian Cemetery.
On December 14, 1843, the Delaware Tribe sold the Wyandot Tribe approximately 1600 acres of land at the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, and some additional small parcels in other areas.⁶ The Delaware Tribe had been compelled in the year 1640 to purchase land from the Wyandots, and felt a moral obligation to them.⁷
The Wyandot continued to seek the land promised by the Federal Government. The government claimed that “so large a tract of land could not then be found unclaimed.”⁸ Sometime before 1855, the Federal Government approached the Wyandot offering U.S. citizenship in exchange for the tribe abandoning their land claim.
The Treaty of Washington D.C. with the Wyandot was ratified on March 1, 1855, stipulating in part:
“…it is hereby agreed and stipulated, that their organization, and their relations with the United States as an Indian tribe shall be dissolved and terminated on the ratification of this agreement…and each and every of them, except as hereinafter provided, shall be deemed, and are hereby declared, to be citizens of the United States, to all intents and purposes…”
and:
“The Wyandot Nation hereby cede and relinquish to the United States, all their right, title, and interest in and to the tract of country situate in the fork of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, which was purchased by them of the Delaware Indians…except as follows, viz: The portion now enclosed and used as a public burying-ground, shall be permanently reserved and appropriated for that purpose; two acres, to include the church-building of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the present burying-ground connected therewith, are hereby reserved, granted, and conveyed to that church…”
Approximately 200 Wyandot were deemed “unfit” for U.S. citizenship “by government bureaucrats assigned to assess the readiness of tribal members to assume the ‘duties and responsibilities’ of United States citizenship.”⁹
There was also a clause allowing tribal members to exempt themselves from this agreement, and at least 60 Wyandot did, including Hannah Zane and Eliza Burton Zane Conley, the grandmother and mother, respectively, of Eliza “Lyda” Conley, who would be born 14 years later.
After the Treaty of 1855, in part because Kansas became a battleground during the American Civil War of 1861–65, many Wyandot moved to Oklahoma.
In February, 1867, the federal government signed a treaty that “allowed Wyandots who had been parties to the Treaty of 1855 and their descendants to re-establish themselves as a new Wyandotte Tribe confined to the Indian Territories.”¹⁰
In 1869, Eliza “Lyda” Conley was born to Eliza Conley of the Wyandot and Andrew Conley of England. She was the youngest of four daughters.¹¹ She was encouraged by her family to pursue an education, and attended Park College (now Park University) in Kansas City. She then graduated from the Kansas City School of Law in 1902. A few years later she would spearhead a legal and direct action resistance effort to save the Huron Indian Cemetery.¹²
As Kansas City grew, extensive property development occurred around the Huron Indian Cemetery, and it became a commercially valued property.
In 1899, the tribal council of the Wyandotte Tribe in Indian Territory, based in Oklahoma, decided to try to sell the Huron Indian Cemetery land and have the graves moved. “A storm of protest arose from local Wyandot descendants; and in face of the opposition, the sale was never completed,” states Wyandotte Nation history about the cemetery.
In 1906, “a provision was buried in a section of a 65-page Congressional appropriations bill, authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to sell a tract of land located in Kansas City Kansas (Huron Indian Cemetery). Remains of persons buried there were to be moved to Quindaro Cemetery.”¹³
Lyda Conley and her two sisters, Helena and Ida, stepped up in defense of the Huron Indian Cemetery — their parents, their sister Sarah, their grandmother Hannah Zane, and many other relatives and ancestors were buried there. “They established ‘Fort Conley’ on cemetery grounds and led a successful resistance to this proposed action. They padlocked the front gate and hung a sign on it warning all persons to ‘Trespass at Your Peril.’ Over the graves of their parents, they erected a small building where they slept during their vigil.”¹⁴
In June 1907, Lyda filed in U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Kansas “for a permanent injunction against the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Indian Commissioners to prevent the sale.” ¹⁵
Her petition was dismissed by the Judge on July 2. In essence, the arguments against her case tied back to the matter of her citizenship. A government representative surveyed the Wyandots in 1869, and noted that her mother Eliza Burton Zane Conley and her family wanted to be noted as tribal members, not as U.S. citizens. But later a government agent named Joel T. Olive submitted their names to the government marked as U.S. citizens. When Lyda brought her petition to the District Court of Kansas, the opposing side argued that “Conley was not a citizen of the Wyandotte Tribe, nor of any Indian tribe, but rather was a citizen of the United States and therefore had no right or interest stemming from the 1855 Treaty.”¹⁶
That same day, Lyda filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and while waiting for a response, she and her sisters kept up their round the clock watch at “Fort Conley” in Huron Indian Cemetery.
On July 26, 1907, the Kansas City Kansas Globe reported, “Mr. Durant of the Huron Commission said today: “It is our move and if we cannot persuade Miss Conley that she is in the wrong by any other means we will write the war department to authorise the commandant at Leavenworth to send soldiers here to eject the Conley sisters and superintend the removal of the bodies.”¹⁷
The troops never came, and the three sisters kept up their watch for years.
In a June 1909 interview with Kansas Magazine, she said,
“Was I afraid in that cemetery? Afraid of the dead? you ask,” and her eyes and lips combined in an incredulous smile. “Afraid of what? Afraid of my mother — or of my grandmother — that their spirits would harm me, when I was enduring those hardships for the security of their last resting place? Why should I be afraid — of the dead? I builded the hut close to the grave of my mother and I felt secure every moment of my stay in the grounds that may appear to you, gloomy, but sacred to me for their memories.”
The Kansas City Kansan newspaper wrote on August 1, 1909, “Praying aloud to the Great Spirit by night and guarding the graves of their ancestors by day, the Conley sisters have kept a constant vigil at the old Indian Burial ground.”¹⁸
On January 14, 1910, Lyda finally “stood before the United States Supreme Court to appeal the dismissal of the suit that she had filed against Secretary of the Interior James Garfield in 1907.”¹⁹ She was the first Native American woman, and the third woman, to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Through her strong testimony, Lyda moved the judges of the court. In their ruling on January 31, 1910, they stated, “For every reason we have examined the facts with anxiety to give full weight to any argument by which the plaintiff’s pious wishes might be carried out.” However, they issued a complex ruling that she did not have standing to bring the case as an individual.²⁰
Lyda and her sisters “continued guarding the cemetery despite repeated attempts by authorities to run them out” and were arrested multiple times for doing so.²¹ It was not in vain; all of the attention they brought on the cemetery “dissuaded potential buyers of the site, and the Commission that had been established to find a buyer for the property eventually gave up.”²²
On February 13, 1913, the U.S. Congress passed legislation sponsored by Kansas Senator Charles Curtis, that “both repealed the part of the Indian
Appropriation Act of 1906 authorizing the sale of Huron Place Cemetery and recommended that the cemetery become a national monument,” and in 1916, Congress “appropriated $10,000 for the renovation and preservation of the cemetery.²³
Lyda still kept guard.
In 1918, Conley tried to stop “cemetery renovations and improvements that she believed were undertaken carelessly, without regard for the presence of unmarked graves at Huron Place.”²⁴
Lyda guarded the cemetery until her death in 1946, and she was buried in it.²⁵
Just months after her death, the federal government and the Wyandot Tribe of Oklahoma once again attempted to move the graves and sell the cemetery land. Various legislative and legal efforts to do so failed over subsequent decades.
In September 1958, the last of the Conley sisters died, and joined her other siblings and parents in burial at the Huron Indian Cemetery. Her tombstone read in part, “Cursed be the villain that molest their graves.”
Finally, in September 1971, the cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Sites.²⁶
Ultimately the Huron Indian Cemetery was designated a national historic landmark in 2017, over 100 years after Lyda argued her case in Washington.
Rest in Power, Lyda and family.
Visit Lyda’s story in person:
- Huron Indian Cemetery — Kansas City, Kansas
- University of Missouri-Kansas School of Law
- United States Supreme Court — Washington, DC
Discover
- Wyandotte Nation
- “Trespassers, Beware!”: Lyda Burton Conley and the Battle for Huron Place Cemetery — Kim Dayton — Yale Journal of Law & Feminism
- Wyandotte-Nation’s Huron Indian Cemetery Chronology 1842–1995 by Janish English, Chief of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas
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