It was intended to replace their former mission in Georgia, which they had abandoned after the Cherokees had been forced to emigrate to Indian Territory.

In 1862, a group of Union troops and Pin Indians[a] killed James Ward, a Cherokee missionary.

They abducted Ward's wife and twin infant sons, though they released them about 20 miles (32 km) from the mission.

Christian Adolphus Vammen, with his family, succeeded Nielsen in 1924 and two years later began a children's home, Oaks Indian Mission.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town of Oaks has a total area of 0.81 square miles (2.1 km2), all land.

In 1801, members of the Moravian Church from Salem in North Carolina (now Winston-Salem) decided to begin a mission to the Cherokee people who were then living in Georgia and Tennessee.

This forced the Cherokees and the other four Civilized Tribes (the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles) to give up their homelands in the southeastern United States and move to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

Springplace Mission was forced to close its doors and move with the Cherokees to northeastern Indian Territory.

The area selected was a beautiful one with plentiful oak trees (which is probably where Oaks got its name from) and a spring creek (today called Spring Creek), and the site was on the military road from Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, to St. Louis, Missouri.

The Civil War temporarily closed the mission, but work resumed until 1902, when Danish Lutherans took over.