43 Facts About Isaac McCoy

Isaac McCoy was an American pioneer and Baptist missionary among the Native Americans in what became the states of Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Kansas.

Isaac McCoy was an advocate of saving the dwindling tribes from decades of ongoing American abuse, by leading their charitable removal from the eastern United States into their own homesteading.

Isaac McCoy serially established successful tribal missions at the remote western American frontiers, hundreds of miles beyond any white settlements, repeatedly relocating westward due to encroachment and exploitation.

Isaac McCoy wrote books and made many trips to Washington, DC to solicit funds, create programs, and propose a permanent sovereign tribal colony within Indian Territory, which instead became the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Isaac McCoy pioneered the areas that became Grand Rapids, Michigan and Kansas City, Missouri.

Five years later, the Isaac McCoy family rafted down the Ohio River to Kentucky, settling first near Louisville and in 1792 in Shelby County.

Isaac McCoy's father was a Baptist minister, sharing profound arguments with him about religion.

Isaac McCoy was inspired in childhood to become a missionary to Native Americans and determined on that work.

On October 6,1803, Isaac McCoy married Christiana Polke, age 16, in Kentucky.

Isaac McCoy was a cousin of the future President James K Polk.

Isaac McCoy's mother and four siblings were carried into captivity by the Shawnee, and Christiana was born after that time.

John Calvin Isaac McCoy assisted his father and became prominent in the early history of the Kansas and Missouri frontiers.

In 1809, Isaac McCoy became pastor of Maria Creek Church near Vincennes.

Isaac McCoy founded his first "religious station" and school in October 1818 in what became Parke County, Indiana, on Big Raccoon Creek upstream from the later Wea Indian reservation at Armiesburg.

In May 1820, the Isaac McCoy family moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana to set up a mission to the Miami tribe.

In 1821, Isaac McCoy made the first of many visits to Washington, DC, seeking approval by the federal government, unsuccessfully on this occasion, for him to appoint teachers, blacksmiths, and other "agents of civilization" to be provided the Indians under newly ratified treaties.

Isaac McCoy gained approval of a government-funded Quaker agricultural mission to the Miami.

In December 1822, Isaac McCoy left Fort Wayne and moved his family and 18 Indian students to a site on the St Joseph River near Lake Michigan and the present-day city of Niles in southwestern Michigan.

Isaac McCoy opened a mission to the Pottawatomi, which came to be known as the Carey Mission, named after the English missionary to India, William Carey.

In 1826, Isaac McCoy moved his family deeper into the western frontier, where he established the Thomas Mission to the Odawa people, at what later became Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Isaac McCoy began in 1823 to advocate that the Indian nations of the East be moved west "beyond the frontiers of the White settlement".

Isaac McCoy believed that getting the tribes to their own, isolated places, away from the reach of whiskey traders and others who were exploiting them, would give them a better chance of surviving and becoming Christianized.

Isaac McCoy expanded his concept later to propose the creation of an Indian state making up most of the land area of what is Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.

Isaac McCoy thought of himself as the future leader of what he called "Indian Canaan", but he had little confidence in his fellow missionaries.

Isaac McCoy's proposed Indian colony, to become subsequently a Territory and then a State within the United States, was intended to be guided by a benign US government and missionaries, with whiskey dealers and dishonest merchants banned.

Isaac McCoy invited representatives of the Potawatomi and Odawa to join the expedition.

In June 1829, Isaac McCoy moved his family to Fayette, Missouri.

Isaac McCoy compares this to a hypothetical conquest of the modern Washington, DC by Chinese invaders who could similarly see America as alien, uncivilized, and inferior.

Isaac McCoy had hoped to be one of the three commissioners appointed to oversee Indian Territory, but he was passed over and his dreams of becoming the government's chief representative to the Indian tribes were dashed.

Aware of the fraud, abuse, and neglect involved in the removal of Indians westward, Isaac McCoy rationalized that it was for the greater good of having Indian lands secured for them in perpetuity.

Isaac McCoy traveled to Washington, seeking funds from Congress to support a vaccination program for Indians.

In 1833, Isaac McCoy was reportedly armed and involved with a company of "ruffians", a mob in Independence, Missouri who attacked Mormon families at gunpoint and expelled them from their homes onto the prairie, where they nearly starved.

The Rev Isaac McCoy headed one of about 60 or 70, the other's was about 30 or 40.

Isaac McCoy hoped to be appointed as the government overseer of Indians.

Isaac McCoy lobbied in Washington and on the frontier seeking, unsuccessfully, for US government recognition of the Indian lands as an official US Territory.

Isaac McCoy was opposed to slavery, saying that he had bought her to prevent her separation from her husband and children by being sold through a slave market.

Isaac McCoy provided for her children to be freed when each reached age 24.

In 1840, Isaac McCoy wrote one of the earliest, most personally informed reports on the Midwestern Native American tribes, The History of Baptist Indian Missions.

Isaac McCoy was the sole representative from Kentucky at the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Georgia, in 1845.

Isaac McCoy was much more of a social reformer than a missionary, hardly being concerned in his later years with converting Indians to Christianity.

Isaac McCoy "attacked the system of law and custom by which Indians had been kept in bondage" and "his object was to free the Indians from those restraints".

Isaac McCoy's solution was to move the Indians beyond where they could be corrupted and exploited by Whites.

Isaac McCoy's biographer said that the vision of this rude, untutored preacher and pioneer was "somewhat breathtaking".