>> we are here at oklahoma university, home of the bison. it's here that we will explore the gakin archives which hold artifacts from the historic era. >> the christian liberal arts university, we've always been a liberal arts university, that was the vision from the founders from the very beginning, we have a mission, we exist to transform lives by pursuing academic excellence first and foremost to integrate faith with knowledge and engage in diverse world and live worthy of a high calling of god and christ. today we are looking at the murrow, a letter press that was brought to indian territory in late 19th century. the story behind the press is a fascinating one, it's a couching one, it's one that gives reason for why it is in such prominent

location, all students pass by coming in and out of the library. began with a request for merce university, the president asked a student named joseph murrow to consider coming to indian territory. he was sent as missionary of baptist church in georgia in 1857, the very next month he was married and the next month after that he arrived in indian territory, 45-day journey on stagecoach and river boats and arrived ready to undertake his work soon thereafter his whole life was transformed when he saw and experienced the hospitality of the nigh taif -- native americans. he was so touched by how they cared for him, by generosity, the next years of his life was

given to advocating their well-being and benefit, he advocated for them in front of congress, he advocated for them in print, he advocated with his life and with every resource that he had, in 1887 congress passed the daws act in 1898, congress amended the daws act with the curtis act which dissolved all tribal governance and a lot of the lands to individuals and the detriment to the native american with that in part was that the orphaned children were being gathered for guardianship of the orphan and taken inheerns and the children would often times disappear.

he thought it was unchristian and unright and matter of justice and advocating for those that he knew and loved. he started a home and to raise awareness for the issue and the indian orphans home. try today promote the injustice, promote awareness of the injustice being done to native american orphan. it included news about fundraising and news about some mission work that was happening in the area at the time a little bit southeast of as here in shawnee, so the press is here to remind our students that printed

words are powerful and that we exist in a tradition, that we've inherited from those who have gone before us to advocate for fatherless and to be a voice for the faith. it is a typical example of late 19th century letter press and operated in two ways, either with the turning of the wheel or with the foot pedal which is in the front. the way it would typically work is this is the ink plate, a real thick ink, almost like a paint and smeared on and every time the wheel is spun and the gears cycle through the mechanism, this plate is turned one eighth of a turn and they'll be a roller that comes up and rolls across the ink plate to gather

the ink and as the roller comes back down, these two plates separate. the top plate would hold what was called the chase, the chase held the movable type so you had the piece of the type that would be arranged and held in place with wooden blocks and pieces of medal that when you tightened them would expand to hold everything in place and that plate would be held right here with this clamp so the roller would come down, go down along the face of the type, this plate would come down, paper would be placed on that plate and when it would go out the way, it would press the paper to the type, come back down, the rollers would reink, ink back over the face of the type and then the paper would come back forward again. so if you're using the foot plate, you're two hands free, one to pull paper off and the other to put a new paper in, by

backfilling it, putting papers behind it,, that's typically how that worked. it's not that complicated of a machine. this particular one had been, i'm told, adapted with a motor that ran it, so it's not a functional now as we would like for it to be, but that's essentially how the letter press would work. so we will go to gaskin archives and look at documentary history of joseph murrow as well as the university and presence of the shawnee community. so this is an excellent example of the indian orphan, this is from january of 1905, and just to give an example of the types of news that they were publishing in this to raise

awareness of the orphans who were being some manipulated. there's a section here on how the southern district of courts are going to start holding the guardians responsible for their stewardship of the land that was allotted to those under their guardianship. so this is probably the largest repository of the indian orphan publication that we know of and contains some terrific images of the school and the students who were there. moving on down the line here, this is a photo of he and one of his wives, we are not sure which wife, the year after he arrived in oklahoma his first wife passed away and as each of subsequent wives, he ended with four wives and many of the children died in the oklahoma indian territory. he stopped temporarily in otoka,

indian territory and ended up staying for the rest of his life and this is the church that he founded in otoka. and this is him near the end of his life and in the center he lived to be i believe 94 year's old which is remarkable for that generation. the indian missionary which was also published on that printing press that we have downstairs proceeded the indian orphan but ceased in print in late 19th century. this is a good example. this is the second issue of the indian missionary. missionary was intended to relay news on the mission work in indian territory, so it would have been read by churches as well as by the descending churches back in georgia, for example.

some news on, you know, the state of -- of the evangelistic efforts, what their needs are, did they need to raise any money, things like that. he also founded a university for the american indian up in mikogy that these catalogs are some of the early catalogs, i'm not sure when the university was founded. these catalogs are from 1897 and 1898, the university is now known as baycone university. so here is a letter that he wrote in march of 1895, the contents of the letter themselves are not that significant but does indicate that the writing from the baptist academy which became --

which was the predecessor to indians orphan home and moved up but you can see it was with special attention given to the care of indian orphans. so as christian liberal arts university, we see the role of the university archives as well as denominational archives because we hold as one of stewardship, we need to steward these things so they survive for property and stewarding the record of history. some of the current researchers are the most current research on jeff murrow have mentioned that new primary sources have come to light. these. >> information that were available to researchers have now gone missing. and we think that we have some of that that has gone missing and we see that as a matter of stewardship on our parts to make

sure that these come to make the record of this kind of work and ministry of mercy known to the world but that also so that researchers can have access to that record. >> twice a month c-span's city tours take book tv and american history tv on the road to explore the literary life of city, we visit many literary and historic sites as we interview local historians, authors and civic leaders. you can watch any past interviews and tours online by going to booktv.org and selecting c-span cities tour from the series dropdown at the top of the page or by visiting c-span.org/cities tour, you can also follow the c-span's cities tour with video of visit, c-span