SK ETCH EB' U.S' I H ^ OF THE \ / DAKOTA SKETCH 1. THE COMMENCEMENT, The Dakota M isnioii properly dates its commencement in the spring of 1834. Then the two young men, Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond, from Washington, Con- necticut, filled with a desire to work in the hardest field, and to elevate the most degraded of the human race, worked their way up to Fort Snelling, and, in advance of all others, built a log cabin on the mar- gin of Lake Calhoun. That summer also Dr. T. S. Williamson, from Ohio, made a tour of observation under the direction of the A. B. C. F. M., and went as far as Fort Snelling. He returned to Cin- cinnati, expecting to remove and commence his work among the Dakotas that autumn; but the winter came on too soon, and he and his helpers did not reach the Minne- sota country until the summer of 1835. About the same time also. Rev. J. D. Stevens and family, under the appointment of the same noble Board of Foreign Mis- sions, arrived at the same place. They came from New York State, by the way of the great lakes, and crossed down to Prairie du Chien. The good Lord had gone before them and prepared an awakening, not in the Dakota nation, but among the U. S. troops stationed at F ort Snelling. By this meet- ing with the Divine Spirit, when they least expected it, they were encouraged to go forward and work for the evangelization of the heathen in Dakota land. Almost immediately they became two bands, and commenced onerations at Lake Harriet with the village at Lake Calhoun, and far up the Minnesota river, at the village of Lacquiparle. In the course of two or three years the Messrs. Pond fell into line, and became workers under the direction of the Prudential Committee of the American Board, and finally both became preachers of the gospel to the Dakotas, whose language they had been learningin these years. And they have both lived to see what the Lord has done am.ong the heathen, and to joy in the fact that they were permitted to share so largely in the labors and sufiFerings of the beginning. Mr. Stevens, after a few years, trans- ferred his work from the then unpromising Dakota field to the white settlement; and is still living, beyond his three score and ten, and is regarded with veneration, as one of the oldest pioneer ministers of Wis- consin. The first Mrs. Stevens and the first Mrs. S. W. Pond, her sister; the first Mrs. G. II. Pond, and, more recently, her sister, Mrs. Williamson ; and also Mr. A. G. Huggins, of those first companies, have heard the voice of the Master saying unto them, “Come up higher.” Mm. Huggins, of that first band who went to Lacquiparle, abides with her children. And Dr. Thomas S. Williamson, whose energy was untiring and whose faith never seemed to falter, is spared to rejoice in what the good Lord has, in these latter days, done for the Dakotas. On the first day of June, 1837, S. R. Riggs and wife reached Fort Snelling and the station at Lake Harriet, and in 2 SKETCHES OF THE DAKOTA MISSION. the autumn following proceeded to Lac- quiparle. After nearly a third of a century of work, the one has been taken up and the other left to toil here a while longer. During these first years there was much preparatory labor to be performed. The language, which existed only in sounds, and was received only in the ear, must be clothed with symbols, and must meet the eye as well. The educating process com- menced with making the letters in the ashes with a stick, and then transferring them to the wall, and so progress was made to printed books. When the English notation failed to represent the Dakota sounds, marked characters were intro- duced. And, as the great object of all true mis- sionary work is that of bringing the words of life into contact with dead souls, this new and strange tongue must be pressed into the service of the Great King, and the words must be made the bearers of living thoughts which shall awaken the dead spirits. So the missionaries began to write, as well as to speak, in the Dakota language, “ God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” And the answer to this message soon came in a few Indian women, together with Mr. Joseph Renville, the Bois Brule trader at Lacqui- parle, professing their faith in this Only Begotten Son of God. SKETCH II. THE HARROWING. Some poor ploughing had been done, and the seed-basket, filled with precious seeds of the divine word, was slowly un- covered, and the good grain cast abroad by small handsfull. Much of what was sown was like the wayside grain ; the word was poorly presented with stam- mering tongues, and was not under- •stood. Some, however, was harrowed in, and sprang up, giving signs of quick growth. But the enemy too was there, with eyes wide open. Whereunto would this new doctrine grow ? It was not what their fathers had taught them. It was the white man’s religion, and not that of the Dakotas. The gods of their ancestors must not be forsaken. And what did they want of a knowledge of letters ? If the book brought them tobacco or pota- toes, when they begged of the white man, it was good ; but if not, it lied. And what did they want of anything that was not true? No, the schools must be stopped, for the presence of the missiona- ries had dried up the lakes on the prairie, and made the muskrats scarce. Their sacred men — their conjurers, their dream- ers and their war-prophets were troubled by our presence, and their young men were no longer successful on the war- path. So the soldiers were stationed along the way : children stayed away from school, and women, who dared to come to the mission to pray and sing, had their blank- ets cut up ; and the mission cattle w'ere killed and eaten. This was the harromng process. The seed, which had fallen into the stony ground and sprung up quickly, soon with- ered away. In the meantime the sower went forth to sow more abundantly. The Master’s words were clothed in Dakota garb and sent forth. Some had learned to read in their own language the wonder- ful works of God. The laborers, too, were somewhat multi- plied. Robert Hopkins and his young wife had come out in 1843, and he had been trying to preach to the Dakotas at Traverse des Sioux for some time before he was taken away, eight j’ears after. Thomas L. Longley had come from the hills of Massachusetts with his strong arms to help commence a new station, only soon after to be drowned in the Minnesota. Miss Julia Kephart had come from Ripley, Ohio, to be a helper at the new station. Miss Jane S. Williamson, too, whose sym- pathies were easily transferred from the poor colored slave to the ignorant and proud Dakota, had come. Miss Fanny Huggins, afterwards Mrs. Jonas Pettijohn. who, with her husband, labored many years kindly and sympathetically for the Indians, had taken the school at Lacqui- parle. Rev. Moses N. Adams, Rev. John F. Alton and Rev. Joseph W. Hancock and their wives were added to the work- ing force in 1848. And a little while after, Rev. J. Potter and wife, with Mi" THK NEW DEPARTURE. 3 Edwards, were transferred from the Choc- taw to the Dakota field. This considerable addition of laborers f!^reatly encouraged the hearts of those be- fore in the work, and helped to scatter the seeds of divine truth more widely. It was also a testimony, which threw its shadow on into the coming years, of the earnest desire of Christians for the evan- gelization of the red men. Not lost were the prayers and the labors of these toilers. But the greater the number of seed- sowers, so much the more furious, for the time, seemed the opposition. Not only were the wayside seeds quickly picked up, and the stony-ground seeds withered in the first leaf, but that which fell among the thorns was choked out, and bore no fruit to perfection. However, a reaction had even then com- menced, although at the time scarcely per- ceived. Some who had gone back on their profession of faith in the new religion were n'covered. Less Jire water was introduced into the Dakota country. The action of the government came more into accord with the work of the missionaries. The civilizing influences of the gospel were coming to be somewhat realized, and much of the opposition gradually died away. But it was to be ‘‘ not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord,” and the word was finally to take effect on the Dakotas through sufferings. There were too many to go down to the battle. So, one by one, the labor. 'rs in the Dakota field fell off; going to, or staying among, the white people, who, after 1851, filled up the new and beautiful country of the ^^innesota; and then there remained only T. S. \\ illiamson and S. R. Riggs with their families. SKETCH ITT. THE NEW DEI>.\RTURE. The treaties made with the Dakotas in the summer of 1851. imported much both to the Indians and white people. For the latter they were the open gate to the whole of Southern and Western Minnesota. As earl}' as 1838. the Dakotas had ceded a small portio!! of their land lying east of the Missis.si{>pi, on which the towns of St. Paul and St. Anthony and Stillwater were growing up. But now the fertile valley of the Sota-water, and all the broad acres of the South and West, were opened for white men’s homes. To the Indian these treaties meant the giving up of their cran- berry marshes and their natural deer parks, and the leaving of the graves of their fathers. When the time of removal came, they were loth to go. They made all kinds of excuses. They had no means of trans- portation; no horses, no canoes. The white chief, the representative of their Great Father, said to the interpreter, “Tell him he lies.” The interpreter says, “ He says you lie.” The white chief says a second time, “Tell him he lies.” “I have told him so.” “Tell him again.” So the Dakotas of the Mississippi and the lower Minnesota packed up their teepees, and their household goods, and their household gods, some in canoes, some on ponies, some on dogs, and some on the women, and slowly and sadly took up their line of march up to their reservations. ■ For several years previous to this time. Dr. Williamson had occupied a station at Little Crow’s village, only a few miles below St. Paul. He had preached the first sermon to the few white people there, and aided in introducing the first school mistress into this then future capital of Minnesota. But he had consecrated his life to the Dakotas, and no sooner had they made arrangements to move west- ward, than he too was on his way up to the Yellow Medicine, The first winter of the Mission at Pejihootaze (Yellow Medicine), was a fight for life. The house was in an unfin- ished state. The winter came on very early, and was very severe. The snows were deep and the drifting terrible. The teams that were to bring up supplies were snowed in. The animals perished, the provisions were left for the wolves, and the men only reached home in a maimed and frozen condition. But as God would have it, the fish gathered in shoals in the river near the mission, and the Indians and missionaries lived. Two years after this, on a windy day m the month of March, the mission houses at Lacquiparle took fire and burned down. 4 SKETCHES OF THE DAKOTA MISSION. While preparations for rebuilding were being made, Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary of the Board of Missions, visited the Dakota field. It was then deemed advis- able that the small mission force we now had should be drawn closer together. W e had been striking blows far apart ; hardly within sound of each other. Wires of Christian sympathy could not be kept up in such wild distances. “Concentrate” was now the battle cry. And so the Laeciuiparle buildings went up down at Hazelwood, within two miles of Dr. Williamson. Here we gathered the greater pai-t of the families which had really come to sympathize with Christian- ity and civilization. At Pejihootaze a schoolhouse was already up, which answered the double purpose of school and chm-ch assembly. And soon at Hazelwood a small boarding schot)l was established, which was the out- growth of a smaller one started several years before at Lacquiparle, by Rev. M. N. Adams. This last was cared for by Miss Ruth Pettijohn, and afterwards by H. D. Cunningham and wife; and taught suc- cessively by Mrs. Annie B. Ackley, of Granville, Ohio, and Miss Eliza Huggins and Miss Isabella B. Riggs, children of the mission. A neat chapel, too, was soon erected, with but little aid from the treasury of the Board. The Government made its chief agency at the Yellow Med- icine, and very soon commenced operations in the line of external civilization. Those who changed the Indian for the white man’s dress, heretofore, were only such as had changed their religion. These were gathered around the mission stations. Many of their wants were now dift'erent from those of the Indians generally. They now desired pantaloons and coats. For the recognition and supply of their special needs, it hecame important that they should form themselves into a separate band. This they did under the name of the Hazelwood Republic, electing their own chief or president. The U. S. Indian Agent readily recognized them as a sepa- rate people, and encouraged the formation of a like civilized band at the Lower Sioux Agency. From that time onward, the general influence of the Government was made to boar in favor of cutting off the hair and putting on pantaloons. Right hard work this was for both parties. But there was power in oxen and wagons, and in brick houses. So the external civiliza- tion went on. The white man’s axe and the white man’s plow and hoe had been introduced, and the red man was learning to use them. But the great and perma- nent force was in the underlying educa- tion; and especially in the vitalizing and renewing powers of Christian truth. And so far as this inner thought-life was changed and worked out the exterior civil- ized habits, so far these habits became permanent forces; otherwise they were only shadows. This was the New Depar- ture. Evangelization was working out civilization. SKETCH IV. SHADOWS. In the first settlement of this country it was natural and needful to make treaties of peace and of purchase with the Indians. They occupied the continent, and had a traditionary title to the land. The white people were few and claimed no right in the soil, only so far as this command ; “ Multiply and fill the earth,” gave them a right. William Penn’s course of treat- ing with the aborigines of Pennsylvania was humane, and just, and wise ; and on that was built our government policy of making treaties with Indians. But by and by Indian treaties came to be cjuite a source of mischief. The abo- riginal land title was recognized, not so much for the advantage of the red man, as for the pecuniary advantage of that class of white men who were dwelling with him ; and the remuneration given for country ceded was usually in the line of continuing and confirming Indian character and habits, rather than of lifting them up to the higher plane of educated and indenendent living. It should have become apparent long ago that Indians have no power to enforce the terms of a treaty, as against the govern- ment of the United States, nor to compel adherence to it from their own people. So Indian treaties became a humbug, and the making of them a solemn farce. The unwritten part of a treaty was quite likely SHADOWS. 5 to be, to the Indians, the more important part, and from it grew difficulty. As, for instance, this : Before a treaty is signed the Indians stand up and say. Father, we want to retain permission to hunt on these lands.” The commissioners reply; “Yes; it will be a long time before your Great Father will want this land for his white children ; in the mean time you can hunt in the country as you have always done.” So the treaty is signed. But out of this unwritten part grows trouble. This was the case with the Leaf Shoot- ers in 1857. Six years before this, they, with others, had signed the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, and coded all their country to the western boundaries of Iowa and Minnesota. In four years the white settlements had pushed forward one hundred and hfty miles west of the .Mississippi. A few families had found the beautiful groves and lakes of Okaboja and Okabena, or the Spirit Lake country of | northwestern Iowa. In the spring of 1857, i this settlement numbered about forty per- ' sons. Other settlements were far off, down in Iowa and up in Minnesota. The snow was very deep. The Leaf Shooters had been accustomed to hunt around there and i down on the Little Sioux. This spring i they found the game scarce and the hunt- | ing difficult ; and so they undertook to levy black mail upon the white settlers. A collision came on, and the settlement of Spirit Lake was wiped out. Only four women were taken captive. At our mis.sion stations we heard the report thereof But for many long weeks nothing could he done for the rescue of these women. We learned that Inkpadoota and his clan had gone westward, and had 1 crossed the Big Sioux, where one of the white captive women was drowned. Away out in Dakota, in the valley of the James river, two sons of Bebekah negotiated for Mrs. Marble. They took her into their mother’s tent, who eared for her kindly ; and so, when the planting time came, they brought her home with them to Lacquiparle. Kcliable Indian men were immediately sent to obtain the other two women , but before they reached Ink- ^ padoota’s camp, Mrs. Noble had been shot, j The only remaining one, Abby Gardner, l they procured from her captors, partly by purchase and partly by diplomacy, and brought her to the Agency at Yellow Medicine. This appeared to us as a little silver lining on the dark cloud shadow. And only the other day, in a council, when other men had been showing the paper credentials of their greatness, Paul Maza- kootemane stood up and said, “This right hand is my paper.” It had delivered Miss Gardner in 1857, and many others a few years later. All honor to Paul for the heroism of those years ! Thus, as the Prudential Committee in Boston said : “ The indirect value of missions was illustrated in a most unex- pected manner ; the only two persons who escaped the barbarity of the Spirit Lake murders, having been rescued, at great peril, by men who had learned humanity from our missionaries.” But the cloud shadows hung over us all through that summer. The whole Reser- vation was in excitement. At onei time a son of Inkpadoota came to the Yellow Medicine. Immediately Agent Flandreau was informed of the fact, and, by a well laid plan, this Spirit Lake murderer was surrounded and shot ; such men as John Otherday and Enos Good Hail being prom- inent in the affair. Then a large number of wild Indians came in from the west and increased the trouble. The governmentsent up troops un- der Major ( afterwards Maj. Gen.) Sherman, to back the demand for the punishment of Inkpadoota’s clan. But it was not easy to make the other Indians of the Reservation feel that they were under obligations to thrash the rebels. “ Why don’t our Great Father do it himself?” they said. And indeed that was just what was needed. Both loyalty and disloyalty among the Dakotas then needed the influence of a sharp lesson of punishment. But it came not. By and by the Dakotas consented to go and hunt Inkpadoota ; but there was no great meaning in their going. So the time for giving the needed lesson was let slip by, and disloyalty was sufl'ered to grow. Some time after this, there was a great gathering of the Northern Indians at the Yellow Medicine. An evil spirit possessed 6 SKETCHES OF THE DAKOTA MISSION. the young men. They battered in the door of the government warehouse and commenced appropriating the provisions. They were stopped by turning on them a little howitzer, which was managed by a dozen soldiers. A conflict was imminent, but was avoided. “ If there is anything between the lids of the bible, bring it now to bear upon them,” the Agent had said. For that time the shadow passed away. But they continued to come and go, until in August, 1862, when the great dark shadow, like an eclipse, came and covered us all. SKETCH V. THE CAPTIVITY. Suddenly came the outbreak of August, 1862. The cloud shadows did not indi- cate to us the coming storm. But when it came, as God would have it, the mission families, and the greater part of the white pi'uple far up in the country, effected an escape. At the Red Wood, or Lower Sioux Agency, while some escaped to Fort Ridgley, many were killed. Early on Monday, the 18th day of August, not knowing the state of things at the Red Wood Agency, Mrs. Dr. Wake- field, with her two children, started from the Yellow Medicine in a buggy, Mr. George Gleason driving. When within a few miles of the Red Wood, they were met by two Indians, who shot Mr. Gleason, and took Mrs. Wakefield and her children captives. They were probably among the first of the captivity. Then from the .settlements across the Minnesota, on Beaver and Sacred Hat streams, and afterwards from near New Ulm and from Glencoe and Hutchinson, they brought in captive white women and chil- dren. So that a month afterwards Little Crow wrote, “ I have one hundred and fifty-five prisoners.” Some of these were half-breeds, who were with their friends. Some were mid- dle-aged white women, such as Mrs. Earle and Mrs. White and others, who were not subjected to ]>ersonal abuse by their cap- tors. But (juitc a number of them were young women who suffered more than death. Beautiful girls were then in de- mand. One of the white women who passed through those six weeks of captiv- ity, wrote of the young women of the mission : “ The braves boasted that they would have those beautiful girls for their captives.” But in this they were disap- pointed. At that time Mr. Amos W. Huggins, a child of the mission, was living, as gov- ernment teacher, at Lacquiparle, almost directly acro.>urying-ground, near the fort, and cry. Their father had been killed some years before by the Dakotas and was buried there. The next morning they started Ibr their homes ] but these two young men, their people not knowing it, went out and hid themselves that night close by a path which wound around the shores of Lake Harriet. In the early morning following, a Dakota hunter walked along that path, followed by a boy. The man was shot down and the boy escaped to tell the story. During their stay in the neighborhood of Fort Snelling the Ojibwas had smoked and eaten with the Dakotas. That scalped man now lying by Lake Harriet was an evidence of violated faith. The Dakotas were eager to take advantage of the affront. 'J’he cry was for vengeance ; and before the sun had set two parties were on the war-path. The young man who had been killed was the son-in-law of Cloud-man, the chief of the Lake Calhoun village. Scar- let Bird was the brother-in-law of the chief. So Scarlet Bird was the leader of the war party which came to where the city of ^Minneapolis is now built, and about the setting of the sun cro.ssed over to the east side, and there, seating the warriors in a row on the sand, he dis- tributed the beads and ribbons and other trinkets of the man who had been killed, and with them '•'•'prayed ” the whole party into committing the deeds of the next morning. The morning’s sun, as it arose, saw these .same men smiting down the Ojibwas, just after they had left camp, in the region of Rum river Scarlet Bird was among the slain on the Dakota side ; and a son of his, whom he had goaded into the battle by calling him a woman, was left on the field. Many Ojibwa scalps were taken, and all through that autumn and into the following winter the scalp- dance was danced nightly at every Dakota village on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, as far up as Lacquiparle. That was the condition of things THEN. Between Tii en and now there is a contrast. Then only a small government saw-mill stood where now stand mammoth mills, running hundreds of saws. Then only a little soldier’s dwelling stood where now are the palaces of merchant princes. Then only the war-whoop of the savage was heard where now, in this year of grace 18’73, a little more than a third of a cen- tury after, is heard the voice of praise and prayer in numerous Christian sanctuaries and a thousand Christian households. Then it was the gathering place of the nude and painted war party ; note it is the gathering place of the friends of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Then the dusky forms of the Dakotas flitted by in the gloaming, bent on deeds of blood; now the same race is here largely represented by pastors of native churches and teachers of the white man’s civilization and the religion of Christ. And the marvelous^ change that has passed over this country, converting it from the wild abode of savages into the beautiful land of Christian habitations, is only surpassed by the still more marielous change that has been •wrought upon those savages themselves. The greater part of the descendants of the Indians who once THEN AND NOW. 19 lived here are now in Christian families and have been gathered into Christian churches, having their native pastors. Some, too, have gone beyond, to the still wild portions of their own people, and are commencing there such a work as we commenced, nearly forty years ago, among their fathere here. But the work is now commenced among the Teetons of the Missouri under circum- stances vastly different from those which .surrounded us in its beginning here. Then, with an unwritten language, imper- fectly understood and .spoken stammeringly by foreigners, the gospel was proclaimed to unwilling listeners. Now, with the perfect knowledge of the language learned in the wigwam, a comparatively large company of native men and women are engaged in publishing it. Many ears are .still unwilling to listen, and the hearts of the wild Indians are only a very little opened to the good news ; but the contrast between the past and present is very great. I have lately visited, and preached several times at our new station among the Teeton Sioux, at Fort Sully. Since the autumn of last year, James Redwing and Martha Redwing, his wife, have been the efficient helpers of T. L. Riggs. The religious meetings were not attended by a great many men, but Martha Redwing appears to have acquired a considerable I influence over the women and children. Many women having little children come daily to learn to read. And her weekly woman’s prayer meeting is attended by more than thirty. Thus little rootlets of the gospel appear to be striking into these dark hearts, to which we shall look for golden harvests. Our books, our schools, , our churches, our native pastors and help- ! ers, and other aids to progress, are a guarantee, under Ood, of success in the still wide-spread field of Dakota heathen- ism. So we will thank God for the dififer- ence between then and now, and pray that the divine influences may be granted, so as to secure a more abundant harvest in the future. ■r'i .'iW 7'.^ ww nf'v^a trnrt} vHn^ MW'i Jn ,xrni8 co'v-/** ^': ■KjjffJ ). _.ri V iaui* dacI-Jii untii'r *-, ' ‘ ''iw u.tf ' •’ >B^*!, .,( .T i> >rT 3 {{te^ 7 ttti’^ ' - 01 n;;iUwri ci>f i 'fti,! -} i1-t Ti,. Ha :;«)> ,! ? 5 '’|J-i(t ■»f(ijl ^ r.>JW e » ‘liikt {ijiK nomow otfi *4jlH rntaov -^luM IwA ..fe.art iaJ «i7*;4l v;{ , f7?i^ -V;, •'«' ;;iiit,'oui trWMq e’lwmoiw vt'''Ht 0 l'lt»(vT'ofevi^A .\driiJl objIJ ;Vx('i'( ' <»»»! t;»»!h'hjTi «k) ‘tAsqqcJ'Xprtg OiM ' ';i'l W of '*h«»Kf ^r. 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