Many citizens, and-their descendants, never moved to Oklahoma and were never adopted back into the tribe.  The divisions and bitterness persisted for many years.  There had been no mention of the Huron Indian Cemetery in the treaty of 1867, nor was its ownership or continued use part of the prolonged discussion on tribal reorganization.  Burials in the cemetery of Citizen Class Wyandots, their descendants and relatives continued throughout the 19th Century and well into the 20th, often with the express approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The last such burial was that of Dr. Frank A. Northrup (a grandson of Hiram and Margaret Northrup) on February 25, 1965.

 In the Kansas City building booms of the late 1880s and early 1900s, the cemetery came to be seen by some as a desirable parcel of potential commercial property.  In March, 1896, newspaperman and amateur historian William E. Connelley conducted a detailed survey of the cemetery, assisted by the elderly Ebenezer 0. Zane.  Connelley deplored the cemetery's condition, but by 1898 he was acting as a paid agent for the Wyandot Tribe of Oklahoma in seeking the cemetery's removal and sale, the tribe viewing it as a potential source of badly needed income.  A number of local businessmen were also determined that the "eyesore," as they termed it, should be sold for development...

 Most of the opposition to the sale came from the Citizen Class Wyandot families that had continued to use the cemetery and whose members generally lay in marked and identifiable graves.  One such individual was the elderly Lucy B. Armstrong, missionary's daughter, abolitionist, and widow of John M. Armstrong, whose infant son William was buried in the cemetery.  In a July 4, 1890, letter to the Kansas City Gazette, she stated:

 "To remove the burying ground now would be to scatter the dust of the dead to the winds.  What a sacrilege!  I remember with reverence many of the good Wyandotts buried there, and my heart protests against such a desecration of that sacred ground.  Such a sale is repugnant to every sentiment we cherish for our dead, as well as being offensive to the highest impulses of a Christian civilization."

 The matter finally came to a head in 1906, when on June 21 an authorization for the sale was quietly included in the annual appropriation bill for the Department of the Interior.  The authorization called for the graves to be moved to the Quindaro Cemetery at the northeast corner of 38th Street and Parallel Avenue (which the bill's sponsor apparently mistakenly believed to also be a Wyandot cemetery), and for the proceeds from the sale to be divided among the members of the Wyandot Tribe and their heirs.  It is questionable that any monies thus realized would have gone to the Citizen Class Wyandots whose family graves were being moved.

 Among the Wyandot descendants still residing in Kansas City, Kansas were three nieces of Ebenezer 0. Zane: Ida, Eli.za, and Helena Conley.  All three were very active in Methodist Church affairs, and Eliza (better known by her childhood nickname, Lyda) had the unusual distinction for the time of being an attorney, and a member of the

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Missouri Bar.  Faced with the pending removal of the graves (or at least the tombstones) by the Commissioners appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, Lyda and Helena seized control of the cemetery.  They padlocked the iron gates, erected signs proclaiming "Trespass At Your Peril," and set up residence in a small caretaker's shack, brandishing their father's (unloaded) shotgun and vowing to shoot anyone who tried to enter the cemetery in an attempt to remove the bodies.

 Lyda then filed suit in Federal Court against the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioners appointed by him, to restrain them from selling or interfering with the cemetery.  The case slowly dragged its way through the courts, and in the meantime the two women were subjected to constant harassment.  They were arrested and hauled into local police court on the charge of disturbing the peace, threatened by a U.S. Marshal, and charged with contempt of court by a Federal judge.  The caretaker's shack which had been popularly dubbed "Fort Conley" was burned, but a new shack was soon erected in its place and the two sisters persevered, apparently quite unintimidated by the forces arrayed against them.

 By 1911, the case of Conley vs.  Ballinger had reached the United States Supreme Court, where Eliza B. Conley became one of the first women admitted to plead a case.  Her arguments were rejected, however, as the Court ruled that the United States Government was not legally bound by the treaty which it had signed in 1855, and that Citizen Class Wyandots such as the Conley sisters seemingly had no legal rights in the matter:

 "The United States maintained and protected the Indian use or occupation against others but was bound itself by honor, not by law."

 "That the words 'shall be permanently reserved and appropriated for that purpose,' like the rest of the treaty, were addressed only to the tribe and rested for fulfillment on the good faith of the United States - a good faith that would not be broken by a change believed by Congress to be for the welfare of the Indians."

 "That the plaintiff cannot establish a legal or equitable title of the value of $2,000, or indeed any right to have the cemetery remain undisturbed by the United States."

 As the fight over the cemetery dragged on, public opinion gradually swung over to the side of the sisters.  Their cause was eventually taken up by Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas, who was himself partly of Kansa Indian descent (a fact he tended to remember or forget, depending on the political circumstances).  Curtis was successful in getting the sale authorization repealed on February 13, 1913, and the Conleys' struggle reached its end.
 
 
 

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 In 1916 Congress approved an authorization for $10,000 for improvements to the cemetery.  Plans were prepared which included stone walled entries to the cemetery on both 7th Street and Minnesota Avenue, with ornamental iron gates at the 7th Street entry, ornamental light fixtures similar to those found in several of the city parks, and a paved walk through the center of the cemetery connecting the entrances. (This sidewalk, which most modern viewers take for granted, did not exist at the time of Connelley's 1896 survey, and may actually cover several graves.) A branch of the walk led to a steep flight of steps on the eastern side of the cemetery, tying the improvements to the new Carnegie Library in the center of Huron Place and its surrounding park.

 An agreement with the City of Kansas City, Kansas for the carrying out of these improvements was signed on March 20, 1918.  As part of the agreement the Government was to pay $1,000 to the City, and the City in turn agreed:

 "To forever maintain, care for, preserve the lawns and trim the trees and give the grounds the same and usual attention that it gives to its city parks within the main part of the city, and particularly Huron Park adjoining the Cemetery; and that the City of Kansas City, Kansas, will furnish police protection equivalent to that furnished for the protection of Huron Park; and furnish all electrical energy free of charge for the maintaining of the electric lights, as provided for in the plans and specifications, maintaining and keeping in place all globes and fixtures, and give said Cemetery any and all care that a park of its nature in the heart of a city should demand."

 The agreement was signed by Henry B. Peairs, Superintendent of Haskell Institute, for and in behalf of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and by H. A. Mendenhall, Mayor of Kansas City, Kansas.  It was subsequently approved on April 17, 1918, by E. B. Merritt, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

 Despite the extensive improvements and the perpetual maintenance agreement with the City, the cemetery continued to lead an up-and-down existence.  When maintenance of city parks was virtually abandoned during the years of the McCombs administration (1927-1947), the cemetery suffered accordingly.  There were several local efforts to clean up the cemetery in the 1940s and 1950s, but vandalism was also on the rise during this period, resulting in extensive damage to several of the larger monuments, and it was difficult to get the City to take any responsibility for cemetery conditions.

 The most serious of the later challenges to the cemetery came after World War II, when the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma (as the name was now spelled) renewed its efforts to sell the property.  As before these efforts required the consent of Congress, as the property technically still belonged to the U.S. Government rather than to the Oklahoma Wyandots.  The first attempt, spearheaded by an Oklahoma congressman, came in 1947-49, and was vigorously (and successfully) resisted by Congressman Errett P. Scrivner of Kansas, supported by local attorney and historian Grant W. Harrington.

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 Then on August 1, 1956, Congress terminated the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma's status as a Federally recognized and supervised tribe, and again authorized the sale or transfer of the cemetery, with the stipulation that the matter be concluded by August 1, 1959, after which the authorization was to be automatically rescinded.  This attempt was strongly opposed by many Wyandot descendants and Kansas City, Kansas residents, and eventually came to naught, in part because of the Oklahoma Wyandots' rejection of the appraised value of the property as too low.

 In September, 1965, the Wyandotte Tribal Council in Oklahoma unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the cemetery to be preserved and designated as an historic site, but letters indicate that the Department of the Interior was still looking into possible transfer of the title in the property as recently as 1968.  At that time, the Kansas City, Kansas Urban Renewal Agency initiated the Center City Urban Renewal Project, and decided to make a second major renovation of the cemetery property one of the features of the project.  At the Agency's request, in 1970 the City adopted its first historic landmarks ordinance and proceeded to list just one site, the Huron Indian Cemetery.  This was followed on September 3, 1971, by the entering of the cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places.

 There were numerous delays to the cemetery improvements, and the Urban Renewal Agency had actually ceased to exist by the time that the work was finally carried out under City supervision in 1978 and 1979. (A temporary construction easement and a 20 year grant of right-of-way to the City for maintenance of the new improvements were approved by the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, with the rather unusual proviso that no new burials could take place in that time.  This last was apparently aimed at the Citizen Class Wyandot descendants.) At the ground breaking ceremonies held on May 16, 1978, it was announced that President Carter had restored the Wyandots' status as a Federally recognized supervised tribe the previous day.  Many tribal Wyandots and Citizen Class descendants were present to hear the news, united in their concern for their common history.  Designed by the architectural firm of Buchanan Architects and Associates, the improvements included new entrances from 7th Street Trafficway, Minnesota Avenue, and the Municipal Rose Garden in Huron Place, a refurbished interior sidewalk, and numerous new bronze grave markers.

 Because the research for the project had been left incomplete at the time of Urban Renewal's demise, certain errors inevitably crept into the marking of graves.  In part this stemmed from the use of a faulty typed transcript of the Connelley survey, and in part from reliance on the 1896 survey to the exclusion of other sources.  After extensive research, a full remarking program funded by local tax monies was carried out by the Kansas City, Kansas Parks Department in 1991.  Vandalism of the stone monuments has continued to be a problem, together with the theft (for sale to scrap dealers) of various bronze markers and tablets, but the City has lived up to its maintenance obligations, replacing the missing tablets as necessary.
 

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 In 1994, the old disagreements flared once again when Principal Chief Leaford Bearskin of the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, in partnership with Florida gaming interests, proposed the removal of all the graves in the Huron Indian Cemetery to Oklahoma, and the erection of a giant bingo parlor on the site.  The proposal raised a storm of protest, not only from citizen descendants and the residents of Kansas City, Kansas, but from some of the younger, more history-conscious members of the tribe as well.  Some felt that the proposal was only a negotiating ploy, but it became sadly apparent that any hope for healing the old wounds to the Wyandot Nation must lie with a younger generation.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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