1851-1854.—Grammar and Dictionary.—How It Grew.—Publication.—Minnesota Historical Society.—Smithsonian Institution.—Going East.—Mission Meeting at Traverse des Sioux.—Mrs. Hopkins.—Death’s Doings.—Changes in the Mode of Writing Dakota.—Completed Book.—Growth of the Language.—In Brooklyn and Philadelphia.—The Misses Spooner.—Changes in the Mission.—The Ponds and Others Retire.—Dr. Williamson at Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze.—Winter Storms.—Andrew Hunter.—Two Families Left.—Children Learning Dakota.—Our House Burned.—The Lord Provides.

A grammer and dictionary of the Dakota language had been going through the process of growth in all these years. It was incidental to our missionary work, and in the line of it. The materials came to us naturally in our acquisition of the language, and we simply arranged them. The work of arrangement involved a good deal of labor; but it brought its reward, in the better insight it gave one of their forms of thought and expression.

To begin with, we had the advantage of what had been gathered by the Messrs. Pond and Stevens, and Dr. Williamson, in the three years before we came. Perhaps an effort made still earlier, by some officers of the army at Fort Snelling, in collecting a vocabulary of a few hundred words of the Sioux language, should not be overlooked. Thus, entering into other men’s labors, when we had been a year or more in the country, and were somewhat prepared to reap on our own account, the vocabulary which I had gathered from all sources amounted to about three thousand words.

From that time onward, it continued to increase rapidly, as by means of translations and otherwise we were gathering new words. In a couple of years more, the whole needed revision and rewriting, when it was found to have more than doubled. So it grew. Mr. S. W. Pond also entered into the work of arranging the words and noting the principles of the Dakota language. He gave me the free use of his collections, and he had the free use of mine. This will be sufficient to indicate the way in which the work was carried on from year to year. How many dictionaries I made I cannot now remember. When the collection reached ten thousand words and upward, it began to be quite a chore to make a new copy. By and by we had reason to believe that we had gathered pretty much the whole language, and our definitions were measurably correct.

It was about the beginning of the year 1851 when the question of publication was first discussed. Certain gentlemen in the Legislature of Minnesota, and connected with the Historical Society of Minnesota, became interested in the matter. Under the auspicies of this society, a circular was printed setting forth the condition of the manuscript, and the probable expense of publication, and asking the co-operation of all who were interested in giving the language of the Dakotas to the literary world in a tangible and permanent form. The subscription thus started by the Historical Society, and headed by such names as Alexander Ramsay (then governor of the Territory), Rev. E. D. Neill (the secretary of the society), H. H. Sibley, H. M. Rice, and Martin McLeod (the chiefs of the fur-trade), in the course of the summer, amounted to about eight hundred dollars. With this sum pledged, it was considered quite safe to commence the publication. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions very cheerfully consented to pay my expenses while carrying the work through the press, besides making a donation to it directly from their treasury.

From these sources we had $1000; and with this sum the book might have been published in a cheap form, relying upon after sales to meet any deficiency. But, after considering the matter, and taking the advice of friends who were interested in the highest success of the undertaking, it was decided to offer it to the Smithsonian Institution, to be brought out as one of their series of contributions to knowledge. Prof. Joseph Henry at once had it examined by Prof. C.C. Felton and Prof. W.W. Turner. It received their approval and was ordered to be printed.

In the meantime, Mary and I had undertaken our second trip to the East. Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who had been away awhile on account of Mrs. Adams’ health, were now back at Lac-qui-parle, associated with Mr. and Mrs. Pettijohn. We commenced our journey across the prairie about the first of September. The waters were still high, and we found it necessary to make a boat which should serve as a bed for one of our wagons, and be easily transferred to the water.

Our children now numbered a round half-dozen. The baby, Henry Martyn, about two years old, must be taken along, of course. The boy, “Good Bird,” now about fourteen, we would take down with us and send to school in Illinois. Isabella we concluded to take on to the mother’s mountain home in Massachusetts. The two little girls were kindly cared for in the family of Rev. E. D. Neill of St. Paul; and the little boy, Thomas, was to stay in Dr. Williamson’s family, at Kaposia. Thus the distribution was finally made.

The mission meeting took place this year at Traverse des Sioux. Among other consultations, it was adjudged wise for Mrs. Hopkins and her three children—the father and husband being gone—to accompany us on their return to her friends in Southern Ohio. The brothers Pond and Rev. Joseph Hancock, who had joined the mission and was stationed at Red Wing, all had their horses, and, the travel by land being difficult, they put them on board our good mission boat Winona, and so we had a full cargo down to St. Paul.

From there we had a steamer to Galena, where we took passage in freight wagons that were going to Elgin, the terminus of the railroad that was then being made west from Chicago. This trip across the country we all greatly enjoyed, stopping at Freeport over the Sabbath, and listening to the somewhat celebrated revivalist Elder Knapp. We crossed Lake Michigan, and by the Michigan Central to Detroit, and then took a lake boat to Cleveland. That night we encountered a lake storm; and, while almost every one was sea-sick, Mary and I stood on the fore deck and enjoyed watching the mountain waves.

Reaching the land in safety, Mrs. Hopkins and her little family went to Southern Ohio, and we spent a few days in Medina, with Mary’s brother, Rev. M. M. Longley. We found that the eight years which had passed since we were East before had made a good many vacant chairs in our home circles. My own father had been called from earth very suddenly, in 1845. He was well and had done a hard day’s work, but ere the evening shadows fell he had passed beyond the river. The angel of death and the angel of life had visited Mary’s home again and again. First the grandfather, Col. Edmund Longley, had gone to his fathers, at the good old age of ninety-five. Then, in 1848, the pater familias, Gen. Thomas Longley, had wrapped his cloak about him and laid him down to rest. The next to hear the summons was the little sister, Henrietta Arms. She had grown to be a woman, and Mary fondly hoped to have her companionship and aid in the Dakota field. But the Master called her up higher. And then, only a few months before we reached Ohio, the loving, cultured, and beloved brother Alfred had passed, through months of weariness and pain, up to the new life and vigor of the heavenly world. He had been preaching for several years in North-eastern Ohio. So many had gone that when we reached the mountain home in Hawley, we found it desolate. Only Joseph and his mother remained. Mary soon persuaded her mother to go down to South Deerfield, that they might together spend the winter with the older sister, Mrs. Cooley. And I went to New York City, and was the next seven months engaged in getting through the press the grammar and dictionary of the Dakota language.

Of the various hindrances and delays, and of the burning of the printing-office in which the work was in progress, and the loss of quite a number of pages of the book, which had to be again made up, I need not speak. They are ordinary incidents. Early in the summer of 1852 the work was done,—and done, I believe, to the satisfaction of all parties. It has obtained the commendation of literary men generally, and it was said that for no volume published by the Smithsonian Institution, up to that time, was the demand so great as for that. It is now out of print, and the book can only be bought at fancy prices.

The question of republication is sometimes talked of, but no steps have been taken yet to accomplish the object. While, as the years have gone by, and the book has been tested by Dakota scholars and found to be all that was ever claimed for it, yet, in case of a republication, some valuable additions can be made to the sixteen thousand words which it contains. The language itself is growing. Never, probably, in its whole history, has it grown so much in any quarter of a century as it has in the twenty-five years since the dictionary was published. Besides, we have recently been learning more of the Teeton dialect, which is spoken by more than half of the whole Sioux nation. And, as the translation of the Bible has progressed, thoughts and images have been brought in, which have given the language an unction and power unknown to it before.[4]

While we were in the East, several offers were made in regard to taking one of our children. These offers came from the best families, where a child would have enjoyed all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life, more than could be had in our Indian home. It was a question that had often claimed our thought, and sometimes had been very favorably considered; but when the opportunity came, we decided to keep our children with us for the present. The circumstances of our home-life had changed somewhat; home education could be carried on to better advantage and with less drawbacks than in the first years of our missionary life.

And so in the month of June, when the Philadelphia market was red with its best strawberries, we started westward, bringing the two children with us. It had been a profitable year to Isabella. The mother and children had spent a couple of the last months with relatives and friends in Brooklyn, and now we made a little stop in the Quaker City, and visited Girard College, Fairmount, and other places of interest. It was September when we had gathered all our six children together and were making the trip across the prairie to Lac-qui-parle. This time we had with us the Misses Lucy and Mary Spooner of Kentucky,—since Mrs. Drake and Mrs. Worcester. They came out to spend two years in the mission. Miss Lucy’s teaching in music, vocal and instrumental, as well as other branches, was of singular advantage to our own children, as well as to the Indians. Miss Mary went into the family of Mr. Adams, who had gathered a little boarding-school of Dakota children. This might be called the first effort in this line made among the Dakotas.

Before our return, Mr. and Mrs. Pettijohn had taken the pre-emption fever, and had left the mission and gone to the Traverse and made a claim. Mrs. Pettijohn had been connected with the mission work since 1839, and Mr. P. for a shorter period. Both had been conscientious workers, and had done good service. They now wanted to make a home for their growing family. Mr. Huggins also, about the same time, left the mission work, and made a home in the same neighborhood. Mr. Potter had left the Dakota field after only a year’s trial, regarding it as a very difficult one, as compared with the one he had left in the Indian Territory South. Now, in the years 1852 and 1853, our numbers diminished very rapidly. The Indians were to be removed, according to the stipulations of their treaties, to their reserve on the Upper Minnesota. Both the brothers Pond elected to stay where they were, and minister to the white people who were rapidly settling up the country. Both were successful in organizing churches, one at Shakopee and the other at Bloomington. Both still live, but have retired from the work of the ministry, and are waiting for the translation to the upper world.[5]

Likewise, for the same reasons, Mr. John F. Aiton retired from the service of the Board about the same time, and Mr. Hancock also. Dr. Williamsom elected to continue his work among the Dakotas, and so made arrangements, in advance of the removal of the Indians, to open a new station near the Yellow Medicine, which he called Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze—the Dakota name for that stream.

During the summer of 1852, Dr. Williamson had erected his dwelling-house at this new place, but it was still in quite an unfinished state when he removed his family up, in the beginning of the cold weather. That fall the snows came early, and found the family without any sufficient supplies for the winter. In December, the storms were incessant, and the snow became very deep, at which time the doctor’s men were toiling against odds, endeavoring to bring up provisions to the family on the Yellow Medicine. But they could not succeed. When they were yet more than forty miles away, their teams gave out and were buried in the snow. The men, both frozen badly, Mr. Andrew Hunter much maimed, barely succeeded in reaching the mission. How the family were to winter through was not apparent, but the Lord provided. Unexpectedly, the Indians found fish in the river, and Mr. Adams, with a young man, worked his way down from Lac-qui-parle, and carried them what provisions they could on a hand-sled. Thus they weathered the terrible winter. Thus they commenced mission work at this new place, where they continued for ten years, until the outbreak.

At Lac-qui-parle we were doing effective Christian work. Our own family were all together. The hard winter entailed a good deal of hard work. The snow would sift through our roofs and pack into the upper part of our houses, until, as we sometimes said, there was more inside than outside. Every day, also, our hay-stacks were covered up with snow, so as to make the labor of feeding the cattle very great. But still these were years of enjoyment and profit. A company of Dakota young men were growing up and preparing for work in the future.

The next year Mr. Adams received an invitation to take charge of the church of white people at Traverse des Sioux, which was the continuation of the mission church organized there. This invitation he accepted, and closed his connection with the special work for the Dakotas. It will occur to every reader of these memoirs to note how many men the foreign mission work among the Dakotas gave to the home mission work among the white people of Minnesota. The shepherds were here in advance of their flocks. The work is one—the world for Christ.

The Dakota mission was now reduced to its lowest terms; only Dr. Williamson’s family and my own remained. If the Lord had not given us the victory when we were many, would he do it when we were few? We were sure he could do it. While it is true that the Lord is often on the side of the strong battalions, it is not always so. And spiritual forces are not measured by the same rules that measure material forces. So we toiled on with good hope, and when, a year later, we were called to leave Lac-qui-parle, and commence our station elsewhere, Secretary Treat proposed that we call it New Hope.

In carrying on missionary labor among a heathen people, the question, What shall be the relation of the children of the mission family to the people? is often a difficult and perplexing one. The springs of the home-life must be kept, as far as possible, from being contaminated. And yet the daily intercourse with those of impure thoughts and impure words is contaminating. Shall we make our family a garden inclosed? If so, the children when small must not learn the language of the natives. Mary and I adopted this principle and carried it out very successfully. Up to the time of our return in 1852, our children had hardly learned any Dakota. Now, our boy Alfred was fifteen years old, and had assigned to him duties which made it necessary that he should understand the Indians somewhat and make himself understood by them. So he commenced to learn the language. John P. Williamson had commenced to talk it much earlier. Doubtless the advantage in speaking a language is with those who learn in their very childhood, other things being equal. The reason for the exclusion had partly passed by, and the taking of Dakota children into our family, and being closely connected with a boarding-school of Dakota children, made it impossible, if it had been desirable, longer to keep up the bars.

By and by came along the third of March, 1854. The spring had opened early, the ground was bare of snow, and everything was dry. Our cellars had been in the habit of freezing, and to protect our potatoes and other vegetables we had been in the habit of stuffing hay under the floor, all around, in the fall. This hay had not yet been removed, and was very dry. The cellar was dark, and a lighted candle was needed by those who went down for any purpose. The mother was preparing for the family dinner, and so had sent down the little boys, Thomas and Henry, in their seventh and fifth years respectively, to bring her up potatoes. Through carelessness, and without thought, perhaps, they held the lighted candle too near the dried hay. It took fire immediately, and in a few seconds of time so filled the cellar with smoke that the boys with some difficulty made their escape.

There was no supply of water nearer than the river and spring run, down quite a hill. But every boy and girl were soon carrying water. The difficulty was to reach the fire with the water. The floor was flooded and a hole was cut through, but the fire had taken such a hold of the whole interior, that our little pails full of water were laughed at by the flames. The effort was now made to save something from the burning house. Some articles were carried into the other house, which stood near by. But that also took fire, and both houses were soon consumed, with almost all they had contained. A few books were saved, and the chief part of Miss Spooner’s wardrobe and bedding, her room being on the corner away from where the fire commenced. Before noon the fire-fiend had done his work, and our mission houses were a mass of coals and ashes. Very little had been saved. The potatoes in the cellars were much burned, and cooked; but, underneath, a portion of them were found to be in a good state of preservation.

The adobe church, that stood partly under the hill, was the only building that escaped. Thither we removed what few things we had saved, and our Dakota neighbors were very kind, bringing us what they could; while Mr. Martin McLeod, the trader, sent us blankets and other things to meet the present necessity, partly as a gift, and partly to be paid for. In a few days Dr. Williamson came up from Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze with further supplies. And all along through the spring and summer, as our friends in the East heard of our loss, the boxes and barrels were sent for our relief. It did us good to know that we had so many true-hearted friends.

MARY A. RIGGS.