The Society of Friends established a mission among the Shawnees in 1834, about three miles west of the Methodist mission. Henry Harvey, M. Mendenhall, and the Hadleys were teachers in this mission.
In 1822 Father La Croix visited the Osages, just across the line in Missouri, and baptized several Indian children. At different times Father Van Quickenborn visited the Osages and preached. In 1847 Rev. Schoenmaker established the Osage Mission, now St. Paul, in Neosho County.
The Catholic mission was founded in 1836 by Fathers Van Quickenborn and Hœken for the Kickapoos, near the Junction of Salt Creek with the Missouri, in Leavenworth County.
St. Mary’s mission among the Pottawatomies was established in Miami County in 1838, and moved to Linn County in 1839, where it remained until the removal of the tribe to Pottawatomie County in 1849. The mission was then established at St. Mary’s, where it survives to-day in St. Mary’s school for boys.
Many forts were established in early Kansas; a few by the fur companies, some by the War Department, some by state troops, a number by settlers as a place of refuge from the Indians, and a few by free-state and proslavery forces during the Territorial struggle. Some of them consisted merely of a wall of earth thrown up, others of a strongly built log cabin within a line of earthworks or line of palisades. Many of them were more pretentious, and were built of logs, adobe, or stone. Some of the forts established by the National Government cost many thousands of dollars and most of them had large land reserves. As the settlements moved westward the necessity for the forts no longer existed, and with the exception of Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley, which are still maintained by the National Government as army posts, they fell into disuse. The principal early forts were:
Fort Kanzas, established by the French fur traders in the early part of the eighteenth century, was located in what is now Atchison County. It is mentioned in the journal of Lewis and Clark as an abandoned fort.
Fort Lyon, earlier called Bent’s Fort, was built in 1826 for a fur-trading post. It occupied several different sites on the Arkansas River, all of them within the present bounds of Colorado, the last one being within Territorial Kansas. It was opened to settlement in 1890.