Myra E. Frye of Portland Monthly Meeting was for many years president of the Maine chapter of the Women’s National Indian Association. She was a member of the Yearly Meeting Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) and Committee on the Western Indian (CWI), and was one of the Yearly Meeting’s representatives to the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs (AEC), which oversaw and coordinated the educational and evangelization efforts of Orthodox Friends in Indian Territory. She was a tireless advocate lobbying officials and other influential individuals, including Massachusetts Senator Henry Dawes, author of legislation that would break up reservations into family allotments. Myra and her husband John made numerous donations to support teachers like Elizabeth Test and to help build schools, and they were important supporters of Frank Modoc, a Native warrior who became a Quaker minister. Frank died in their home on his way back to Oklahoma after a course of study at the Quaker Oak Grove Seminary in Vassalboro, Maine.
In 1888 she took one of her many trips to Kansas and what would become Oklahoma, visiting the schools and missions supported by one or another of the organizations of which she was a member. Her traveling companion was Emeline H. Tuttle of Dover Monthly Meeting. Emeline and her husband Asa had spent over a decade teaching in the Quapaw Agency in the northeast corner of Indian Territory. She was also a member of the NEYM CWI and WFMS and a Yearly Meeting representative to the AEC.
Myra and Emeline’s itinerary took them to Indianapolis, to the founding conference of the national organization of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (which became the United Society of Friends Women). Myra spoke about New England Friends' work among the Kickapoo and Iowa peoples, and Emeline described her work with the Modoc and Ottawa Tribes and the tragic and unnecessary war that had forced the Modoc people from their homes in southern Oregon and northern California. They also participated in the selection of Phebe S. Aydelott of New Bedford Monthly Meeting as its first national president.
Traveling throughout Indian Territory, the two women inquired into the state of educational and missionary efforts and tried to encourage the Yearly Meeting-funded efforts of teachers Elizabeth Test of Indiana, Lina B. Lunt of Durham Monthly Meeting, and Mary Sherman from Rhode Island Monthly Meeting. In all, these doughty women logged some 4,000 miles by train and wagon.
Myra and Emeline were unflinching critics of the government’s failure to fulfill its treaty commitments to Indigenous People and the greed and duplicity of land speculators and the railroad and mining interests. They made urgent appeals to officials of all kinds for fair and equal treatment of Native people by the law. Sadly, they shared the prevalent view of the time that the only hope for Indian people lay in complete assimilation to the dominant White culture: surrendering their languages and cultures, relinquishing their rights and status guaranteed by treaty, dissolving their ties to clan and Tribe, and releasing their claims on millions of acres of land in exchange for dubious land patents and second class citizenship.