Abandoned Swope Park Lodge Eyed for Native American Center Building is Vestige of Park’s Segregated Past

The playground bullies had cornered a target, a little girl about 5 years old.

Chris Cotten remembered running across the park, demanding an explanation.

“Oh, we’re just picking on this Indian,” was the reply.

That Indian, the one with skin darker than his own, was Cotten’s younger sister.

“We’re adopted, and I’m part Indian too,” he remembered telling those older boys, who quickly turned on Cotten, allowing his sister to run home.

It was  mid-1970s Oklahoma. Cotten was about 7 years old.

Eye-Opening Experience

The episode was an introduction to racism for Cotten, director of Kansas City Parks & Recreation.

“Where I grew up, in middle Tulsa, you’re pretty heavily scrutinized if you’re Indian,” said Cotten, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, meaning he has documented his lineage with the nation.

A forgotten lodge in Swope Park, sealed for more than 20 years, has become Cotten’s passion project. The lodge is tucked off an access road in the more than 1,800-acre park.

Cotten intends to make the 8-acre site a regional gathering place for indigenous people, including members of the four nations that have tribal lands in Kansas: the Prairie Band Potawatomi, the Kickapoo of Kansas, the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Iowa of Kansas and Nebraska.

The lodge once served as Camp Hope, a residential camping program for Black children before integration.

For years, campers formed a municipal government as part of civic education activities. White children had similar programs and attended Swope Park’s larger Lake of the Woods.

The two camps had combined by the mid-1950s.

Parks & Recreation used the lodge’s main building, with its dining hall, two stone fireplaces, and kitchen, until the Lakeside Nature Center opened in 1999. It appears the city walked away from the building upon moving some exhibits and programming to the new nature center. 

“There’s no blueprint for this,” Cotten said of the new effort.

Losing Traditions

The Indian Health Service estimates that about 87% of indigenous people live in urban areas. Many live in suburbs, as Cotten did.

“They don’t have the ability to teach kids any of their ways because they’re in the city,” he said. “There’s no wilderness, there’s no trails, there’s no nature, there’s black top everywhere.”

He knows dominant society often doesn’t recognize native people unless they fit a stereotyped image. Colorism, the deeper lesson he learned the day of the childhood brawl, is also a concern.

Cotten remembered his mother cleaning up his wounds.

“My lips were split open, my nose was bleeding, my eye was black,” Cotten said.

But he didn’t fully comprehend why the older kids had targeted his sister. They’d formed a circle around her and were shoving her around.

His mom just said, “Because your sister’s skin is brown.”

Both children were adopted from an Oklahoma orphanage.

His sister is of the Sac Fox and Cheyenne nations. As an adult, she discovered that she is also part Mexican.

Cotten’s adoption papers describe him as Black Dutch Cherokee.

The term can be considered offensive. Its usage and meanings vary, but sometimes denote light-skinned indigenous people, who were able to pass as white, and did so in order to own land in southern states.

“Obviously, I pass really easily for white society,” Cotten said. “But my sister does not. We learned early on that it was easier to keep our heritage to ourselves.”

John Learned steps along a barely visible pathway near the Swope Park lodge. Freshly hacked tree stumps show where city crews recently cleared the grounds.

Learned is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

He’s excited about the programming area nations can develop.

“This will give us an opportunity to work with the city and work with a larger group of people who are interested in the history of America,” Learned said.

Public schools, he lamented, give only fragmented versions of tribal nations.

“We are true Americans, and this is the history of our country,” Learned said.

Cotten envisions a smaller-scale version of the Shoal Creek Living History Museum in Kansas City’s Hodge Park in the Northland.

The history of tribal nations could be exhibited and shared.

The timeline and costs of the renovations are unclear at this early stage of planning. Learned and other local indigenous people plan fundraising to continue the rehab work, and Native American artisans and workers may donate time and materials.

Board Approval

The Parks & Recreation commissioners approved the new usage of the site in August. It’s a three-year agreement with the American Indian Chamber of Commerce of the Great Plains.

Judith ‘Trǫnyáęhk’ Manthe, principal chief of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, was among the tribal leaders who attended the meeting in support.

“I think it’s a great thing,” she said.

The Wyandot of Kansas began the process of seeking federal recognition last year.

The lodge could potentially host some of the traditional skills Manthe has been practicing with the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma: tanning hides, making baskets, and quillwork.

Timothy Rhodd, chairman of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas Nebraska, also spoke, detailing the many entrepreneurial and economic development activities of the tribe.

“I’m pretty honored to be a part of the opportunity to bring value to this area that will benefit not only my members but many members across other tribes as well,” Rhodd said. “At the end of the day, we’re all indigenous from somewhere.”

Discovering the Lodge

One of Cotten’s sons first spotted the abandoned lodge in drone footage, barely visible due to overgrowth of honeysuckle and trees.

Cotten went to investigate, taking along a jangle of keys to parks and recreation properties, successfully finding one that opened the lodge.

The park’s namesake, Col. Thomas H. Swope, once used the area near the lodge for camping.

By the late 1930s, tents were set up for children’s campsites. By about 1942, the city began building structures.

Archives of The Kansas City Call detail the city and Swope Park’s often contentious racial history, including restrictions on the use of the golf course, tennis courts, and swimming pool, which drew legal challenges.

A September 1924 Call article wrote of a new organization, the Citizens League, formed to keep a watchful eye on any “encroachment upon the rights of Negro citizens.”

At the time, the park board discussed segregating portions of Swope Park for Black and white residents.

Another Protest

The Black community mounted similar protests in July 1940, The Call reported.

“This Shelter House and Pool for Colored People Only,” read a sign that someone had erected near Shelter House 5.

City officials said the sign was unsanctioned, and The Call called for it to be taken down.

Black residents, the paper said, “do not want the exclusive use of any facility at Swope Park, nor do we want to be denied use of any.”

The article further noted the recent 4th of July picnics, where “Negro groups and white groups sat under adjoining shade trees, all enjoying the outing without regard for racial differences.”

But children’s camps were segregated.

Later articles in The Call mention Camp Hope and that it was for Black children. The articles primarily informed families about when the weeklong camp sessions opened, costs, and other details.

Camp Segregation Ends

A May 28, 1956, Kansas City Star article noted the integration of the Black and white camps.

“There will [be] a change at the resident camps this year, Camp Hope, which in the past has been for Negro children, will be for white and Negro boys this year; and camp Lake of the Woods, which has been for white children, will be for white and Negro girls.”

Two years prior, the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the desegregation of public education in Brown v. Board of Topeka Education. The article regarding the Swope Park camps did not mention the court order or dissent with the decision to merge the camps.

Parks department photographs from the 1950s show what appear to be the integrated camps.

Separate camps were also held for children with cardiac issues, cerebral palsy, and those who were diabetic.

Cotten is studying all of that history.

“I’m just really happy to do whatever I can to make this a success,” he said.

Cotten worked with Kansas City Parks & Recreation earlier in his career before returning in 2021 as director.

“In all of my years in this profession, he said, “I’ve never seen anybody really reach out to work with the American Indian community.”