author
Gottlieb F. Oehler
A Moravian missionary on the 19th-century frontier, he left behind a rare firsthand account of travel to Pawnee country and of the pressures facing Native communities in Kansas Territory.
1 Audiobook
Description of a journey and visit to the Pawnee Indians : who live on the Platte River, a tributary to the Missouri
by Gottlieb F. Oehler, David Z. Smith
About the author
Gottlieb F. Oehler is known for a firsthand narrative of missionary travel in the American West, co-authoring Description of a Journey and Visit to the Pawnee Indians with David Z. Smith. The work records an 1851 journey to the Pawnee and was later reprinted from the Moravian Church Miscellany.
Historical records from Kansas describe him as a Moravian missionary working with the Chippewa and Munsee Indians in Kansas Territory. Those same records show him writing about the mistreatment of Native people and the failure of officials to protect their lands, which gives his surviving work an added sense of urgency.
Little biographical detail is easy to confirm online beyond his missionary work and authorship. What remains most notable is the window his writing offers into contact between missionaries, U.S. expansion, and Native nations on the mid-19th-century plains.