In April 1855 Brigham Young sent five missionaries to the Cherokee and Creek nations, in what would become the northeastern part of Oklahoma. Theirs was called the Indian Territory Mission. These first missionaries converted some followers of former apostle Lyman Wight’s Mormon colony in Texas. The missionaries also established a branch among the Cherokees.854 In the fall of 1855 another seven missionaries were called and sent from the Mormons gathered in St. Louis.855
Of the dozen missionaries one turned back before getting to Indian Territory, three died of illness, four were able to serve as much as a year, one served two years, two served four and a half years, and the last missionary stayed with his Cherokee wife and soon became absorbed into the life of her tribe. The missionaries organized several small branches among the Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws.856 The missionaries were encouraged to marry Indian women, and three did so. Henry Eyring and his wife separated;857 William Richey’s wife died. And John A. Richards (a widower with one daughter left in Utah) married twice but both wives died. Eyring and Richey in 1860 (after years with essentially no contact with Church headquarters) joined an LDS emigrant company on the plains on its way to Salt Lake City.858 For the next seventeen years there was no organized missionary work in Indian Territory. Most of the few converts of the previous years had either emigrated to “Zion,” apostatized, or lost touch with the Church.859
Then in 1877, Robert Lake, purporting to be a Kiowa Indian, represented to Brigham Young that he was sent by his tribe to request missionaries. Brigham Young sent John Hubbard and Matthew Dalton with Lake to assess the situation, but after going to Indian Territory with these missionaries and learning that they would not take money for their preaching, Lake left. The elders later learned from the Kiowa Indian Agent that Lake was a fraud. However, in Indian Territory, Hubbard and Dalton met Antony Navarr (half Pottawattamie), who had been baptized in Utah and was sent to preach to his mother’s people in Indian Territory. He had married and stayed there, where he was teaching school on Pottawattamie lands and leading a small Mormon branch. Hubbard and Dalton found Navarr faithful and willing to accompany them, so he was rebaptized and ordained and then spent six months with them exploring the various tribal lands in the territory. All three missionaries became ill and Hubbard died; Navarr returned to his work teaching school, and Dalton received a release from the First Presidency. To get home he had to travel 130 miles to reach the nearest railroad.
Not a great deal was accomplished by this short mission, but it did renew contact with John A. Richards, the missionary from 1855 who had remained with his Cherokee wife. There was again a gap of six years in missionary presence in Indian Territory.
In 1883, President John Taylor called George Teasdale, then a young apostle, on a special mission to the Cherokees, along with Matthew Dalton, who had been there briefly six years earlier. After arriving in Indian Territory they set out from Ft. Gibson, near Muskogee, to preach the gospel message without purse or scrip, seeking hospitality as they went. The second family they stayed with was William H. and Ann Hendricks,860 a couple whose home would become headquarters to many sets of missionaries. She joined the Church; he, although a staunch friend, did not. Elder Teasdale wrote a tract and had it translated into Cherokee and printed for use in this mission field. After six months, and having baptized two families, Elder Teasdale was recalled and Joseph Felt came to work with Dalton.861 After six more months of retracing the earlier missionaries’ steps, visiting people who had shown friendship and some interest in their message, Dalton and Felt were replaced by Frank Teasdale (son of Elder George Teasdale) and Israel Bale. These men met substantial opposition and threats of violence, and they both fell subject to malaria; they returned to Utah in September 1884 after only a few months, leaving Indian Territory Mission again unattended.
On January 31, 1885, Andrew and Elder James G. West arrived by train in Vinita, in the northeast corner of Indian Territory and began their service. After West suffered a bout of malaria and returned to Utah, Andrew stayed on alone until other missionaries joined him, and from this low point the mission grew in numbers of elders and converts.
