KC’s most famous graveyard stand-off becomes a monument

What would you do if your family’s graves were being sold to make a few bucks? The bravery and determination of Lyda Conley and her sisters Helana and Ida are the stuff of legend, and Chief Judith Manthe of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas is doing her best to keep the story alive.

Manthe first told the story of the Conley sisters’ efforts to save the Huron Cemetery on the debut episode of KCUR’s A People’s History of Kansas City. Inspired by the podcast, playwright Madeline Easley decided to dramatize the Conley sisters’ fight and consulted Manthe for her play Representatives for Those at Peace. Easley’s work debuted at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, where it drew large crowds. Now, a collaboration between the Wyandot Nation of Kansas and public arts group Monumenta is producing a traveling memorial to the Conley sisters’ work called “Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors.”

In 1867, the officially recognized Wyandot tribe was uprooted by the U.S. government and moved from KCK to Oklahoma. Those that chose to remain in their homes had to become United States citizens, forfeiting their rights as tribe members. This classification did little to weaken their identities or their dedication to those that came before them. So, when Lyda heard in 1906 that the Oklahoma Wyandot Nation was selling the Kansas land that included many of her ancestors’ gravesites, she was ready to fight. And fight she did. 

By all accounts, Lyda and her sisters were a trio not to be reckoned with. It is said they would paddle across the Missouri River to attend school. Lyda went to law school and passed the bar before she was even constitutionally eligible to vote.

When it was time to protect her ancestors’ graves, Lyda took her fight all the way to the United States Supreme Court. She was the first indigenous and third woman ever to do so. When the Court overturned her appeal, Lyda and her sisters then decided to build a 6-by-8-foot wooden structure on the cemetery’s grounds they called “Fort Conley,” where they began an armed occupation to protect the site. They hung a sign that read: “Trespassers Beware!”

This small shack, where the sisters lived through hot summers and chilly winters, is the main focus of the travelling art installation by Monumenta and the Wyandot Nation of Kansas. “The fort itself is a very accurate recreation,” says Neysa Page-Lieberman, artistic director and founder of Monumenta. “But once you step inside, you’ll be transported into another world. Instead of beds and domestic things inside, you see filmed vignettes that reimagine and recreate the Conley sisters’ daily life.”

Mixed with archival documents, images and videos, actors and artists will recreate scenes from the sisters’ time in the fort. Viewers will be able to see them writing, reading, preparing legal briefs and just being bored. “They can’t leave,” Page-Lieberman says. “They have to lock this place down. They can’t have a normal life. It goes through different seasons because they were there for years. We’re trying to show the commitment and endurance they had to have going through this.”

“It’s always been a very important thing for me to tell this story, to really bring out the courageous warriors that the three are,” Manthe says. “My hope is that the story is told, that people all over will know the hardships and the endurance of these sisters to protect their sacred rights.”  

The monument will be unveiled on August 30 at Wyandotte County
Historical Museum (631 N. 126th St., Bonner Springs). 

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