Background
Cephas Washburn was born on 25 July 1793 in Rutland, Vermont.
Cephas Washburn was born on 25 July 1793 in Rutland, Vermont.
He graduated from the University of Vermont and the Andover Theological Seminary.
Washburn was ordained in 1818 in Waitsfield, Vermont by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to serve as a missionary to American Indians. He was assigned to the Cherokee. He served as a missionary to the Cherokee Indians at Brainerd Mission, Tennessee, for a short while.
He migrated with them westward, arriving in Arkansas in 1819.
This was a group that removed relatively early from the Southeast, rather than waiting for forced removal after the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Acting of 1830. Most Cherokee were removed to Indian Territory in 1838.
The mission was later moved to what is now Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Washburn was the driving force to establish the Far West Academy in Washington County, Arkansas in 1844.
lieutenant was a short-lived attempt to establish a college where both white and Indian students could be educated together.
Washburn served as the primary Indian missionary in the region until he resigned in 1850. Cephas Washburn died at Little Rock, Arkansas on 17 March 1860 of pneumonia. He is buried at the historic Mount Holly Cemetery in downtown Little Rock.
Washburn"s son Edward Payson Washburn was the artist who painted the well-known Arkansas Traveller painting.
lieutenant received wide distribution and recognition when printed as a Currier & Ives lithograph. The painting was inspired by the humorous song "Arkansas Traveller" by Colonel Sanford "Sandy" Faulkner.