St. Marys and its college take their name from St. Mary's Catholic Mission, founded here by Jesuits in 1848 for the Pottawatomie Indians. These missionaries had lived with the tribe in eastern Kansas from 1838 and accompanied their removal to this area. A manual labor school operated at the mission until 1871, and St. Mary's College developed from it after being chartered in 1869; in 1931 the college became a Jesuit seminary. A boulder on the campus marks the site of the first cathedral between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, built of logs in 1849 and later serving as the See of Bishop Miege, known as "Bishop of the Indians." Vice President Charles Curtis, who was part Kaw Indian, was baptized in this parish on April 15, 1860. The mission was also an important stopping point on the Oregon Trail, and the U.S. Pottawatomie agency was located here.