Lawrie Tatum: Indian Agent: Quaker Values and Hard Choices

Historians have judged Lawrie Tatum favorably. Mildred P. Mayhall, who wrote about the Kiowas, said of him: "Tatum was appreciated for his sincerity, uprightness, and lack of fear. He was harassed and intimidated, but he was staunch and straightforward. One time a Kiowa felt his heart, to see if there was any 'scare.' Above all, these Indians knew courage when they saw it. Had both Battey and Tatum stayed with the Kiowas longer, the Indians' path might have been an easier one."

Although he never again became an Indian agent, Tatum remained interested in Indians and their welfare the rest of his life. He visited missions and schools and wrote encouragingly about the progress being made to "civilize" the Indians. Yet despite his deep and sincere concern for the Indians, Tatum probably never really understood the depth of the differences between his culture and theirs; he and his fellow Quakers were as much trapped in their own times and values as were the Indians.

Lawrie Tatum was a sincere, deeply religious, practical man made strong and purposeful by the moral imperatives of his faith. In the end he was overwhelmed by forces vastly more powerful than he, only one participant in the tragic Kiowa-Comanche wars, unable to prevent the clash of cultures or avert the pain and bloodshed. But to all difficulty and adversity he always had but one answer: "I thought it was right--and therefore the thing to do."