It was dusk May 28, 1946. A 76-year-old woman left the Kansas City Public Library, as she often did. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a stranger hit her in the head with a brick and took her purse with only 20 cents inside. After much suffering, she died 24 hours later. ¹

From left to right: Ida, Lyda and Helena Conley.

It was the unjust ending of the life of a woman who had fought so long and so hard for justice. She was Lyda Conley, the nation’s first Native American woman lawyer, the first woman admitted to the Kansas bar and the first Native American and third woman to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court.²

Our story begins 116 years earlier in another May, that of 1830, four decades before Lyda Conley’s birth, with another act of violence and injustice. At the request of President Andrew Jackson, United States Senator Hugh Lawson White of Knoxville and Congressman John Bell of Nashville were the chief sponsors in their respective houses of Congress of the Indian Removal Bill. Despite valiant opposition by Congressman David Crockett of Gibson County, the legislation passed and would lead to the Trail of Tears.³

The Conley sisters living in the Huron Cemetery.

Wyandots Removal and the Huron Cemetery

Although not immediately impacted by the Removal Act like the Cherokees to the south, the Wyandots (related to the Iroquois and often controversially called Huron) knew their life in Ohio and Michigan would soon end. By the close of the 1830s, they were the last tribe in Ohio, but in March 1842, they were forcibly removed to a reservation in Kansas. Upon arrival, they were denied the livable land promised. Hence, the Wyandots negotiated with tribes already there for usable acreage.⁴

Because of deaths of so many from mosquito-borne disease resulting from their initial placement on worthless and unhealthy floodplains, the establishment of a cemetery was a priority. Moreover, burial grounds were especially sacred and central to their culture and heritage. Therefore, with care, the Wyandot chiefs selected a site on a high bluff safe from flooding above the Missouri River. Some 400 to 800 would eventually be buried there. By tradition, only chiefs’ graves were marked. The place was known as Huron Indian Cemetery.⁵

In 1855, after other tribes were removed from Kansas to Oklahoma, most Wyandots agreed to a new treaty with the United States to prevent being driven from their Kansas homes, namely: (1) prior treaties were annulled, (2) Wyandot tribal territory in Kansas was dissolved as a single legal entity and divided equally among individual tribe members, (3) tribal identity in Kansas was also considered dissolved and (4) U.S. citizenship was offered to each Wyandot found “fit.” Those remaining in Kansas and becoming citizens would be known as “absentee” or “citizen class” Wyandots. Those rejecting the new arrangement, about 250, were forcibly removed to an Oklahoma reservation, thereby dividing the Wyandots as a people.⁶

Lyda Conley, Lawyer

Born about 1869, Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley and her three sisters were of a Wyandot family remaining in Kansas. Her mother and a sister died when she was 11 and her father passed away when she was 16. While living in extreme poverty, her older sister, Ida, worked as a cook in the county jail. Ida’s support allowed Lyda and her younger sister, Helena, to attend Park College in Missouri, paddling a boat across the river each day. Lyda graduated as a telegraph operator and secured a job teaching at Spalding Business College in Kansas City, Mo.⁷ Over the 50 years after the founding of Huron Cemetery, the metropolis of Kansas City, Kan., rose around it. Due to its lucrative location downtown overlooking the river, Lyda was horrified to learn that the federal government and most of the Wyandots in Oklahoma wanted to sell the burial ground and exhume the bodies of her ancestors, including her mother and sister. The Kansas or “citizen” Wyandots would have no say in the sale. Accordingly, she determined to become a lawyer to fight the desecration in the courts and for two years attended Kansas City School of Law in Kansas City, Mo., graduating in 1902. She was admitted to the Missouri bar the same year and the Kansas bar in 1910.⁸

The last Wyandots leaving Ohio.

“Trespass At Your Own Peril”

All seemed lost for the cemetery when in 1906 Congress authorized the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a sale and mass exhumations. In response, while Lyda desperately sought a permanent injunction, she and Helena hurriedly armed themselves with their father’s shotgun, erected a tiny shack at the cemetery entrance they named “Fort Conley,” padlocked the gate and displayed a sign that read: “TRESPASS AT YOUR OWN PERIL.” ⁹

Ignoring repeated threats of arrest by the police and U.S. Army, the sisters would live there for over six years whilst keeping the property in “pristine condition.”¹⁰ Lyda later said, “I was not afraid of the troops. I knew that was only a plan to scare me away from the place; I knew the Constitution too well to be afraid of them.”¹¹

Federal District Judge John Calvin Pollock dismissed Lyda’s complaint against the Secretary of the Interior.¹² In a press interview she said, “I will go to Washington and personally defend [the cemetery].” She explained, “no lawyer could plead for the grave of my mother as I could, no lawyer could have the heart interest in the case that I have. If I lose, then I will admit that the Constitution of the United States is Greek to me.”¹³ Lyda appealed to the United States Supreme Court on July 2, 1907, and filed a 69-page brief. Although a licensed attorney, she could not find a member of the Supreme Court’s bar to move for her admission to that bar;¹⁴ thus she simply appeared pro se in the case of Conley v. Ballinger.¹⁵ During oral argument to the High Court on Jan. 14, 1910, she told the justices:

Like Jacob of old I, too, when I shall be gathered unto my people, desire that they bury me with my fathers in Huron Cemetery, the most sacred and hallowed spot on earth to me, and I cannot believe that this is superstitious reverence any more than I can believe that the reverence every true American has for the grave of Washington at Mount Vernon is a superstitious reverence.¹⁶

In a decision of Jan. 31, 1910, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a unanimous Supreme Court held the federal government had the right to administer tribal land, including changing its use, both during existence of tribal authority over the cemetery and after the tribe was dissolved in Kansas by the treaty of 1855. Still, “in view of the circumstances,” costs were not assessed against the unsuccessful appellant.¹⁷

Lyda Conley (circa 1869-1946)

The Aftermath

Undaunted, Lyda and Helena continued to guard the cemetery, and three times their shack was destroyed by police and lastly by U.S. marshals, but the Conleys always rebuilt. Help finally came from powerful Republican U.S. Senator (and future Vice President) Charles Curtis of Kansas. On Feb. 13, 1913, Senator Curtis won adoption of a bill permanently protecting the cemetery and allocating federal funds for its upkeep.¹⁸

Lyda and her sisters, nevertheless, continued to protect and care for the cemetery, and Lyda was arrested several times, spending 10 days in jail in 1930 instead of paying a fine, for interfering with city officials she accused of disrespecting the graves.¹⁹ She promised, “While we live, these bodies shall not be disturbed.”²⁰ Gaining increased protection in 2017, the cemetery was declared a National Historic Landmark and named Wyandot National Cemetery. Lyda Conley’s remains rest there with those of her people.²¹ Like a chief, her grave is marked. |||

RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written for many publications on law and legal history.

NOTES

1. Dean, Samantha Rae, “‘As Long As Grass Grows And Water Flows’”: Lyda Conley and The Huron Indian Cemetery” (2016). Master’s Theses. 31. https://scholars.fhsu.edu/theses/31
2. Id.
3. Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History 152 (1981).
4. Dean at 18-21.
5. Id. at 21-22.
6. Id. at 23-24.
7.Id. at 48-50.
8. Id. at 50-51.
9. Dean at 55-57; Emma Rothberg, “Lyda Conley” 1 (National Women’s History Museum, 2020).
10. Id. at 57.
11. Lyda Conley, interviewed by I.T. Martin, Kansas Magazine (June 1909) pp. 52-53.
12. Dean at 59.
13. Rothberg supra note 8.
14. Dean at 60.
15. 216 U.S. 84 (1910).
16. Lyda Burton Conley, Huron Cemetery, Kansas City, Kansas, Argument Presented to the Supreme Court of the United States by Lyda Burton Conley (Documents: Kansas Collection at the Kansas City, Kan. Public Library, Transcribed from the handwritten manuscript of Lyda Burton Conley, 1909).
17. 216 U.S. at 90.
18 Rothberg supra note 8
19. Id.
20. Conley Interview supra at note 9.
21. Id.