The Incredible Lyda Conley

 The Incredible Lyda Conley and Her Sisters (Wyandot) – Protecting Sacred Ground

Visiting the Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas we learned the incredible story of Elizabeth Burton “Lyda” Conley and her two sisters. They were Wyandots, a tribe that had been forced west like many others, from their home in Ohio to Kansas in the 1840s.  In Kansas they established a burial ground in what is today Kansas City. In the last quarter of the century, the Conley’s parents died and were buried there. The US government would not let the tribe alone and sought, beginning in the 1850s, to force them out of Kansas to Oklahoma.  The tribe split, and some (later called Wyandottes) left but others (Wyandots) stayed.  The Conleys had been among those to stay but were not allowed to rest easy. In 1906 Congress authorized the sale of the downtown Kansas City cemetery to developers (at the behest of the Oklahoma Wyandottes). But burial grounds are sacred turf to Indians and has happened many times before and after, they mobilized and took direct action to prevent the sale and destruction of this sacred land. Here is what the Conley sisters did.  They armed themselves with rifles, built a shack over their ancestors’ graves at the cemetery, put up no trespassing signs and for two years literally lived there and stood guard. Meanwhile they also mounted a legal defense, spearheaded by Lyda herself who had graduated from the Kansas Law School in 1902.  The case went to the Supreme Court with Lyda becoming the first American Indian to argue a case before the Court (she also was the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar). The Court ruled against them but their fight was not over. They mobilized community support and then Congressional support, notably Senator Charles Curtis (himself a Kaw Indian – we will learn more about him later in our trip so stay tuned), and in 1916 Congress repealed the earlier bill thus preventing any sale and making it a federal park. The Conley sisters today are buried in the cemetery (now also called the Wyandot National Burial Ground) alongside their mother, father and grandmother.

You may wonder why the name ‘Conley,’ not a typical Indian name. The Wyandots had become increasingly multiracial primarily through intermarriage but also through adoption and this was reflected in the Conley family tree. At the entrance to the cemetery there are also 11 plaques that detail the history of the Wyandot Nation’s 500 year history.

Lyda Conley gravestone in the Huron Indian Cemetery

Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas