relocated to a southeast Kansas reservation called the Osage Diminished Reserve. The city of Independence later developed there. The first Osage reservation was a 50 by strip. The United Foreign Missionary Society sent clergy to them, supported by the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and Associate Reformed churches. They established the Union, Harmony, and Hopefield missions. Cultural differences often led to conflicts, as the Protestants tried to impose their culture. The Catholic Church also sent missionaries. The Osage were attracted to their sense of mystery and ritual but felt the Catholics did not fully embrace the Osage sense of the spiritual incarnate in nature. During this period in Kansas, the tribe suffered from the widespread smallpox pandemic of 1837–1838, which caused devastating losses among Native Americans from Canada to New Mexico. All clergy except the Catholics abandoned the Osage during the crisis. Most survivors of the epidemic had received vaccinations against the disease. The Osage believed that the loyalty of Catholic priests, who stayed with them and also died in the epidemic, created a special covenant between the tribe and the Catholic Church, but they did not convert in great number. Catholic clergy accompanied the Osage when they were forced to move again to Indian Territory in what became Oklahoma. Honoring this special relationship, as well as Catholic sisters who taught their children in schools on reservations, numerous Osage elders went to the city of St. Louis in 2014 to celebrate its 250th anniversary of founding by the French. They participated in a mass partially conducted in Osage at St. Francis Xavier College Church of St. Louis University on April 2, 2014, as part of planned activities. One of the con-celebrants was Todd Nance, who is the first Osage to be ordained as a Catholic priest. In 1843, the Osage asked the federal government to send "Black Robes", Jesuit missionaries, to their reservation to educate their children; the Osage considered the Jesuits better able to work with their culture than the Protestant missionaries. The Jesuits also established a girls' school operated by the Sisters of Loretto from Kentucky. During a 35-year period, most of the missionaries were new recruits from Europe: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They taught, established more than 100 mission stations, built churches, and created the longest-running school system in Kansas. Civil War and Indian wars White squatters continued to be a frequent problem for the Osage, but