Rev. Isaac McCoy
Isaac McCoy was born
near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, June 13, 1784. His early life was
spent in Kentucky.
In 1817 he became a
missionary among the Miami Indians in the valley of the Wabash.
Subsequently he labored among the Pottawatomie and Ottawa. He
believed he could accomplish more in the way of elevating the Indians
if he could get them away from the contaminating influence of the
white settlements
He visited Washington and
laid his plans for the migration of the tribes of the (then) western
states to the wilderness west of the Mississippi, before John C.
Calhoun, who was then Secretary of War, and who approved the
same
After continuing his
agitation for several years he was named as a member of a commission
to arrange for the emigration of the Pottawatomie and Ottawa in
1828. From that time until his death he was almost constantly
engaged in aiding other tribes to select new reservations in the West,
and to move to the same. He placed the western limit of possible
successful agriculture at an undefined line drawn from north to south
across the state beginning at a point near the western part of Kay
County.
In 1837, the Cherokee
Outlet, which had been provided for by the terms of the treaties under
which the Cherokee moved to the West, was surveyed and its bounds
established. The work was done under the direction of Rev. Isaac
McCoy.
He died at Louisville,
Kentucky, in 1845.
Source: A
History of Oklahoma by Joseph B. Throburn and Isaac M.
Holcomb, Doub and Company San Francisco 1908.
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