Serendipity and Schoenmakers Window - A Visit to the Osage Nation's Immaculate Conception Church in Pawhuska
Serendipity and Schoenmakers Window - A Visit to the Osage Nation's Immaculate Conception Church in Pawhuska
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
During our recent outing to Osage Hills State Park, I noticed we were close to Pawhuska, the heart of the Osage Nation, and to the Immaculate Conception Church, often called the Cathedral of the Osage. I had long wanted to see the shrine to St. Kateri Tekakwitha there, and I vaguely remembered reading that it was outdoors and always accessible. Since we were nearby, we decided to stop.
I should clarify immediately: while the shrine is outdoors, it is not always open. As I stood outside trying to peer into the locked space, a parishioner, Mr. Lynn, happened to be nearby and asked if we would like to see “their windows.” What followed was one of those unplanned encounters that makes the road worth taking.
Inside, he introduced me to the church’s stained glass, Munich glass from the Royal Bavarian Stained Glass Manufactory, the same workshop responsible for the windows at Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa. While every window is beautiful, Mr. Lynn led me directly to the one he wanted me to see most: the Osage Window, or Schoenmakers’ Window.
The window tells a layered story, of the Osage Nation, of displacement and endurance, and of Father John Schoenmakers, the Jesuit missionary whose life became bound up with the people he served.
Before 1800, the Osage Nation controlled vast territories across present-day southeastern Kansas, northeastern Oklahoma, much of Arkansas, and southern Missouri, with the Mississippi River marking their eastern boundary. They were a hunting and trade people, long accustomed to interaction with French and Spanish trappers. Early treaties following the Louisiana Purchase focused largely on trade and mutual recognition, and initially, the Osage were left relatively undisturbed.
That would not last.
As American settlements pressed westward, conflict followed. In 1818, the Osage were forced to cede lands in Arkansas and parts of Oklahoma. Around the same time, Congress passed the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, authorizing Christian missions among Native nations. Several Protestant missions attempted to establish themselves among the Osage between 1820 and 1839, but their Calvinist theology aligned poorly with Osage spiritual traditions, and mounting conflicts with settlers made those early efforts unstable.
By 1825, the Osage had relinquished their Missouri lands and consolidated in Kansas. Tribal leaders, recognizing that mission schools were becoming unavoidable, requested Catholic missionaries, the “black gowns” with whom they had prior experience through French trading networks and whose sacramental worldview resonated more closely with their own beliefs.
Father John Schoenmakers accepted the call.
Born in Holland in 1807, Schoenmakers immigrated to the United States in 1833, joined the Jesuit order the following year, and was eventually stationed in Missouri. On April 28, 1847, Schoenmakers, Father John J. Bax, and several lay brothers established St. Francis Mission and a boys’ school in what is now St. Paul, Kansas. Soon after, Sisters of Loretto opened a girls’ school nearby.
The mission initially thrived as an educational institution, though most Osage families were interested in schooling rather than conversion. That fragile balance was shattered in 1852.
That year, a devastating epidemic, likely measles or smallpox, swept through the region. As illness spread, Osage parents began withdrawing their children from the mission. Their fear did not arise solely from rumor or distrust, but from lived experience.
Years earlier, at a Protestant mission school, another epidemic had resulted in children being quarantined and separated from their families. According to Osage accounts, when parents were eventually permitted to return, they found their children dead. Written records from this period are fragmentary and incomplete, but there is no reason to doubt the condition in which the children were found. The question is not whether the tragedy occurred, but how it unfolded.
I do not know the precise circumstances. The only explanation that does not amount to willful neglect, or worse, would be that the missionaries themselves also fell ill and died or were incapacitated beyond the ability to care for the children. Absent such evidence, the event must be understood within the broader reality of nineteenth-century American expansion, where Indigenous lives were too often treated as expendable under the moral banner of Manifest Destiny.
For the Osage, this was not abstract history. It was trauma carried forward in memory. When illness returned in 1852, panic was not irrational; it was protective.
The Jesuits at St. Francis did not flee.
Though Father Schoenmakers himself fell ill and was briefly evacuated, Father Bax remained. He continued caring for the children who had not been withdrawn and traveled to Osage homes to administer sacraments and provide comfort to families who had left the mission. In doing so, he himself fell ill. Father Bax died on August 5, 1852. He was thirty-five years old.
His death matters. It does not erase history, but it clarifies intention.
The mission survived the epidemic and additional outbreaks in 1855 and 1856, though the Osage population was significantly reduced. During the Civil War, neutrality proved impossible, and after 1865, the Osage were once again pressured to cede land. This time, with Father Schoenmakers’ help, they negotiated a sale, not a relinquishment, and protected themselves from predatory railroad treaties through the Drum Creek Treaty. When the Osage relocated to Oklahoma in 1870, they did so owning their land outright.
Though federal policies would later attempt to sever those protections, oil discovered beneath Osage lands in 1894 transformed the Nation’s fortunes. After a prolonged legal battle, the Osage retained mineral rights and royalties. One of their first major undertakings was the construction of a church.
Immaculate Conception Church was begun in 1910 and completed structurally by 1915. The windows, commissioned from Munich, were delayed by World War I and installed just in time for the church’s final dedication in 1925. Every window was donated by parish families, funded by royalty income.
Mr. Lynn showed me the baptismal window, donated by his grandmother, the same window beneath which he himself was baptized. His pride was quiet, rooted, and deeply earned.
I left with gratitude for the interruption, for the story, and for the reminder that history, like stained glass, is never a single panel. It is light filtered through endurance.
I still need to return to see the shrine to St. Kateri Tekakwitha, this time during posted hours, and for Mass. But I suspect I had already seen what I needed to see.
____________________________________________________________________
About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
✨ #TakeTheBackRoads
Enjoyed this post? Support the adventure by visiting my sponsors, shopping the gallery, or buying me a cup of coffee!
