Isaac Mc Coy - Missionary Work in The 1830s

Missionary Work in The 1830s

McCoy, his son John, his daughter Delilah and her missionary husband Johnston Lykins, worked together as missionaries to the Shawnee and Lenape (Delaware), following them to what is now Kansas City, Missouri, on the border of Indian Territory and near their reservations. The younger McCoy established a trading post at Westport, Missouri. He was among the first organizers of Kansas City. His brother-in-law Lykins was elected as one of the city's first mayors.

McCoy's strong views were often at odds with the Baptist mission board and other missionaries. In 1832, a smallpox epidemic was killing thousands of Indians. McCoy traveled to Washington, seeking funds from Congress to support a vaccination program for Indians. He found little enthusiasm for such a bill. The Missouri Senator, Alexander Buckner, said to him about the Indians, “if they were all dead it would be a blessing for our country.” Partially due to his efforts, Congress eventually passed a modest bill to finance Indian vaccinations. In 1833, an armed McCoy intervened to protect a group of Mormons from a mob in Independence, Missouri. It was said, "...appeared Rev. Isaac McCoy...with gun in hand, ordering the to leave their homes immediately...".

Although he was involved in numerous projects on behalf of what he perceived as the best interest of Indians, McCoy was nearly destitute during much of the 1830s, taking in boarders and working as bookkeeper in a neighboring store. He hoped to be appointed as the government overseer of Indians. He lobbied in Washington and on the frontier seeking, unsuccessfully, for U.S. government recognition of the Indian lands as an official U.S. Territory.

While in Missouri, a slave state, in 1835 McCoy purchased a female slave named Chainy. Opposed to slavery, he said that he had bought her to prevent her being separated from her husband and children by being sold through a slave market. (It appears he already owned her husband and children.) In his will he provided for her to be manumitted, on the condition that she pay his estate (or descendants) her purchase price of $415 plus interest. He also provided for her children (also his property) to be freed when each reached age 24.

In 1840, McCoy wrote one of the earliest, most personally informed reports on the Midwestern Native American tribes, The History of Baptist Indian Missions. In 1842 he returned East to Louisville, Kentucky, where he directed the Baptist American Indian Mission Association. He wrote additional works on Indians and the missions. He died there in 1846 and was buried in Western Cemetery.