Huron Cemetery
The Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, also known as Huron Park Cemetery, is now formally known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. It was established circa 1843, when Wyandots had first arrived in their removal from Ohio. The tribe settled in the area for years, with many in 1855 accepting allotment of lands in Kansas in severalty. Others of the Wyandot removed to Oklahoma in 1867, where they maintained tribal institutions, which included control over the communal property of Huron Cemetery. Since the late 19th century, the property was a site of controversy between the federally recognized Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, which wanted to sell it for redevelopment, and the present-day Wyandot Nation of Kansas, which wanted to preserve the burying ground.
The cemetery is located at North 7th Street Trafficway and Minnesota Avenue in Kansas City. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 3, 1971 and has been formally renamed the Wyandot National Burying Ground. It is in the Kansas City, Kansas Historic District. It was placed on the Register of Historic Kansas Places on July 1, 1977.
In the early 20th century Lyda Conley and her two sisters in Kansas City, Kansas led a years-long battle to preserve the cemetery against forces wanting to develop it. In 1916 the cemetery gained some protection as a park under legislation supported by Kansas Senator Charles Curtis. It continued to be subject to development pressure, with new proposals coming up about every decade. Passage of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act provided new protections, as lineal descendants of those interred must be consulted and have a voice in disposition of cemeteries and gravesites. Lineal descendants among the Wyandot Nation of Kansas have strongly supported continued preservation of the cemetery in its original use.
In 1998 the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma and Wyandot Nation of Kansas signed an agreement to use the Huron Cemetery only for religious, cultural or other activities compatible with use of the site as a burial ground.
Read more about Huron Cemetery: History of Wyandot Tribe in Kansas, Current
Famous quotes containing the words huron and/or cemetery:
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)