The Baptiste Peoria Bust

Near the gazebo on Paola's town square stands a bust of the man who founded this town, Baptiste Peoria, alongside his wife Mary Ann. Baptiste was born in the late seventeen hundreds in a French and Native community in southern Illinois, the son of a French father and a Peoria mother, and he rose to become chief of the Confederated Peoria tribes.

When his people were resettled in eastern Kansas, Baptiste held a large personal allotment, and he decided that his land was where a town should rise. In eighteen fifty four he and several men began laying out the streets of Paola, and he remained a leading member of the town company. He donated the public square that still anchors the town. In eighteen sixty eight he moved with his tribe to Oklahoma, where he later died.