Stephen Return Riggs

1873-1874.—The American Board at Minneapolis.—The Nidus of the Dakota Mission.—Large Indian Delegation.—Ehnamane and Mazakootemane.—“Then and Now.”—The Woman’s Meeting.—Nina Foster Riggs and Lizzie Bishop—Miss Bishop’s Work and Early Death.—Manual Labor Boarding-School at Sisseton.—Building Dedicated.—M. N. Adams, Agent.—School Opened.—Mrs. Armor and Mrs. Morris.—“My Darling in God’s Garden.”—Visit to Fort Berthold.—Mandans, Rees, and Hidatsa.—Dr. W. Matthews’ Hidatsa Grammar.—Beliefs.—Missionary Interest in Berthold.—Down the Missouri.—Annual Meeting at Santee.—Normal School.—Dakotas Build a Church at Ascension.—Journey to the Ojibwas with E. P. Wheeler.—Leech Lake and Red Lake,—On the Gitche Gumme.—“The Stoneys.”—Visit to Odanah.—Hope for Ojibwas.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was to hold its annual meeting in the autumn of 1873 in the city of Minneapolis. That was almost the identical spot where our mission had been commenced, nearly forty years before. And it was comparatively near to the centre of our present work. These were reasons why we should make a special effort to bring the Dakota mission, on this occasion, prominently before this great Christian gathering. Our churches on the Sisseton reservation were only a little more than 200 miles away. Taking advantage of the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, it would only be a three-days journey. Accordingly, I applied to my friend Gen. Geo. L. Becker of St. Paul, who was then president of the road, to send me half-fares for a dozen Dakota men. He generously responded, and sent me up a free pass down for that number.

This made it possible for all the churches on the Sisseton reservation to be represented by pastors and elders. A. L. Riggs brought over a good delegation from the Santee, so that we had there seventeen of our most prominent men. The present missionaries and assistant missionaries of the Board, except Mr. and Mrs. Morris, were all there. Our brother John P. Williamson was engaged in church-building, and could not attend. But there were the Pond brothers and Dr. T. S. Williamson accepting with glad hearts the results of their labors commenced thirty-nine years before. And the presence of so large an Indian delegation added much to the popular interest of the occasion. So that the subject of Indian missions in general, and of the Dakota mission in particular, engaged the attention of this great meeting for about one-third of their time. Artemas Ehnamane, the pastor of Pilgrim Church at Santee, and Paul Mazakootemane, the hero of the outbreak of 1862, both made addresses before the Board, which were interpreted by A. L. Riggs.

In the Dakota Word Carrier, we were at this time publishing a series of “Sketches of the Dakota Mission,” which we gathered into a pamphlet and distributed to the thousands of Christian friends gathered there. Number twelve of these sketches is mainly a contrast between the commencement and the present state of our work among the Dakotas, from which I make the following extract:—

“THEN AND NOW.

“In the first days of July, 1839, a severe battle was fought between the Dakotas and Ojibwas. The Ojibwas had visited Fort Snelling during the last days of June, expecting to receive some payment for land sold. In this they were disappointed. The evening before they started for their homes—a part going up the Mississippi, and a part by the St. Croix—two young men were observed to go to the soldiers’ burying-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 for 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. The 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. Scarlet 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 crossed over to the east side; and there, seating the warriors in a row on the sand, he distributed 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 Lac-qui-parle.

“That was the condition of things then. Between then 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 soldiers’ little 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, 1873, a little more than a third of a century 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; now 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 marvelous change that has been wrought upon those savages themselves. The greater part of the descendants of the Indians who once 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 fathers here.

“But the work is now commenced among the Teetons of the Missouri, under circumstances vastly different from those which surrounded us in its beginning here. Then, with an unwritten language, imperfectly 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.”

While this meeting of the American Board was in progress, the ladies of the Woman’s Boards held a meeting, which was reported as full of interest. So many women publishers of the Word in all parts of the world were present that the enthusiasm and Christ-spirit rose very high. Nina Foster Riggs, who had just arrived from Fort Sully, the center of Dakota heathendom, announced her wish for a female companion in labor there. Several young women present said, “I will go.” From these, Miss Lizzie Bishop of Northfield, Minn., was afterward selected. Her health was not vigorous, but she and her friends thought it might become more so in the Missouri River climate. She at once proceeded with T. L. Riggs and wife to Hope Station. There I met her for the first time in the first of the June following. She impressed me as a singularly pure-minded and devoted young woman. Two Teeton boys in the family belonged to her especial charge. She said she found the Lord’s Prayer in Dakota too difficult of comprehension for their use, and desired me to make something more simple. I sat down and wrote a child’s prayer, of which this is a translation:—

MARY AND I.

Miss Bishop’s missionary work for the Teeton Sioux was soon over. But I will let Nina Foster Riggs tell the story:

“After the meeting of the American Board in Minneapolis, in October, 1873, Miss Elizabeth Bishop of Northfield, Minn., entered the Dakota work.

“Two years later, at the next western meeting of the society, and during the session of the Woman’s Board of Missions, her death was announced. Of the intervening twelve months twice told, it falls to my lot to speak, and I attempt the task with mingled feelings, for I know it is impossible to do justice to the beauty of Lizzie’s character.

“Young, delicate, already suffering with a disease which made her to be over-fastidious in some things, sensitive to the discomforts of frontier life, and inexperienced in its ways of living, she came into the mission work.

“These hindrances were met and more than overbalanced by her singleness of purpose, her even temper, her devotion to her chosen labor, and her unwavering trust in Jesus.

“The first winter of her stay at Hope Station, on the bank of the Missouri River, opposite Fort Sully, was a winter of trial and of danger. Indians had threatened to burn the mission house. Hostile ones crowded about the place, the camps were noisy with singing and dancing in preparation for war-parties, and once a shot was fired into the house.

“None of these things disturbed Lizzie. ‘I do not choose to be killed by the Indians,’ she said, ‘but if the Lord wills it so, it is all right.’ And she went on as usual with her housework and her sewing-school, and the care of the two Indian boys who were taken into the family in the spring. While she taught the sewing-class, several little girls, some six or eight, made dresses of linsey-woolsey for themselves; and then, under Miss Bishop’s supervision, combed their hair, bathed, and put on clean clothes. She also instructed several women in some branches of housework, and was always looking for the opportunity of doing good.

“Very early in the winter she had a slight hemorrhage from the lungs, which was followed by others more severe at intervals through the summer. But she still kept up.

“In the fall, after the removal to another mission station, her health gave way, and she was obliged to go to the fort to rest and recuperate. After her return she was able to resume only a part of her former work; but she carried on, with great enthusiasm, the morning school for children, and aided somewhat in the sewing-school.

“Although, as the spring advanced, her health failed more and more, yet her courage would not give way, and she never but once expressed the opinion that she should not recover. Her plan had been to spend this second summer in her own home, though sometimes she was almost ready to stay on and work for ‘my boys,’ as she called them.

“Finally, she concluded to go to Minnesota for the summer, but made every arrangement to return to the mission in the fall. After some hesitation because of her delicate health, she decided to make the journey with our mission party overland, down the country. So she took the trip, enjoyed every day, and declared she felt better and slept better every night.

“The party camped out over the Sabbath, and on Monday evening, the seventh day after leaving Fort Sully, arrived at the Yankton agency. Here, at the mission home of our friend J. P. Williamson, the welcome was so warm, and the companionship so pleasant, that Miss Bishop desired to spend a few days longer than she had intended. She wanted to visit the schools, and learn both here and at Santee agency something to help her when she should go back to teach the Indian children on the Upper Missouri. So she stayed behind, full of hope and zeal. But her friends parted from her with foreboding in their hearts. In a few days she was again attacked with her old trouble; she rallied so as to get to her home, and to be again with her mother and sister. But she sank rapidly, and, after some weeks of severe suffering, she entered into rest.

“Writing of her, her sister said: ‘Her favorite motto was, “Simply to thy cross I cling.” She trusted in Christ because he has promised to save all who come to him. She enjoyed hearing us sing to the last such hymns as, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” “My Faith Looks up to Thee,” “Father, Whate’er of Earthly Bliss,” “How Firm a Foundation,” and others.’

“Resting on Him who is able to save, she passed away.

“The work she loved, and so conscientiously carried on, has fallen to other hands, but is not finished nor lost; and in the homes she helped to make happy she is missed, yet her memory is an abiding presence, cheering and encouraging.

“‘And a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.’[8]”

[8] Mention should be made here of Rev. Samuel Ingham and his wife, who joined the missionary force at Santee immediately after the meeting of the Board at Minneapolis. Mr. Ingham was suffering at the time from what was considered a temporary malady, but which proved serious and ended his life Dec. 27, 1873. Mrs. Ingham continued in her work in the “Dakota Home,” the new school for girls.

The commencement of the Manual Labor Boarding-School on the Sisseton reserve was an event which indicated progress. Agent M. N. Adams had received authority from the department to erect a suitable building. On the 4th of September, 1873, the foundation walls were so far completed that the corner-stone was laid with appropriate ceremonies. There was quite a gathering of the natives and white people on the reservation. After prayer in Dakota by Pastor Solomon, Mr. Adams made a speech, which was interpreted, setting forth the advantages that would accrue to this people from such a school as this building contemplated. He then announced that he had in his hands copies of the Bible in Dakota and English, and a Dakota hymn book, together with eight numbers of the Iapi Oaye, a copy of the St. Paul Press, and a Yankton paper, and also sundry documents, all of which he deposited in the place prepared for them. I added a few remarks, and then the corner-stone was laid and pronounced level. Speeches followed from Solomon, John B., and Daniel Renville, pastors; and from Robert Hopkins, Two Stars, and Gabriel Renville. They accepted this as the guarantee of progress in the new era on which they had entered.

That autumn the boarding-school was commenced. As only a part of the building could be made habitable for the winter, the girls alone were placed there, under the care and teaching of Mr. and Mrs. Armor. Mr. and Mrs. Morris took the boys and cared for them, in very close quarters, at the mission, only a little way off. In the summer of 1874 there appeared in the Word Carrier articles on “Our Girls,” and “Our Boys,” written by Mrs. Armor and Mrs. Morris, respectively. In each department they had about sixteen. Mrs. Armor classed her scholars as large girls, little girls, and very little girls. That first year was a good beginning of the school.

Mrs. Morris was willing to undertake the hard work these sixteen boys imposed upon her, because she had just met with a great sorrow. She had gone on East with two children, and came back with only one. “As I sit and mend,” she writes, “the alarming holes which the boys make in their clothes, an unbidden tear sometimes falls when I think of our blue-eyed, sunny-haired boy, whose last resting-place is in the valley of the Susquehanna. And I think how much rather I would have worked for him than for these boys. But I say to myself, ‘My darling is safe and out of reach of harm’; and these boys need the doing for that my darling one will never need more. For

And I know that somehow the Lord knows what is best; and he does as he will with his own.”

In the early spring of 1874, I was requested jointly by the American Board and the American Missionary Association to visit and report upon various Indians agencies, where their appointees, or nominees rather, were agents. Accordingly, I started in the month of May, by St. Paul, on the Northern Pacific Railroad, to Bismarck, and thence by steamboat up the Missouri to Fort Berthold. At this time Major L. B. Sperry, who had been a professor in Ripon College, was the nominee of the American Missionary Association. It was not my good fortune to find Agent Sperry at home, but Mrs. Sperry, in a very ladylike way, gave me the best accommodations during the week I remained.

Here were gathered the remnant of the Mandans, only a few hundred persons, and the Rees, or Arricarees, a part of the Pawnee tribe, and the Gros Ventres, or Minnetaree, properly the Hidatsa. Altogether they numbered about two thousand souls. We had before this entertained the desire that we might be able to establish a mission among these people, and this thought or hope gave interest to my visit. The Mandan and the Hidatsa languages were both pretty closely connected with the Dakota; but what seemed to bring these nearer to us was the fact that many of all these people could understand and talk the Dakota, that forming a kind of common language for them.

Howard Mandan, or “The-man-with-a-scared-face,” as his Indian name is interpreted, was the son of Red Cow, the principal chief of the Mandans, and had been taken down by Gen. C. H. Howard, a year before, and placed in A. L. Riggs’ school at Santee. Howard had returned home before my visit, and also Henry Eaton, a Hidatsa young man, who had been East a good many years and talked English well.

George Catlin had, many years ago, interested us in the Mandans, by his effort to prove, from their red hair in some cases—perhaps only redded hair—and in some instances blue eyes, and the resemblances which he claims to have found in their languages, that they were the descendants of a Welsh colony that had dropped out of history a thousand years ago. And Dr. Washington Matthews of the United States Army had created in us a desire to do something for the spiritual enlightenment of the Hidatsa, by his admirable grammar and dictionary of their language. In his introduction to this book he gives us much valuable information about the people.

Hidatsa, he tells us, is the name by which they call themselves. They are better known to us by the names Minnetaree and Gros Ventre. This last is a name given them by the Canadian French, and without any special reason. It is a fact that Indians can eat large quantities of food, but it is very rarely indeed that you will find one whose appearance would justify the epithet gros ventre. The other term, Minnetaree, is the name given them by the Mandans, and means, to cross the water. The story is that when the Hidatsa people came to the Missouri River from the north-east, the Mandan village was on the west side of the river. They called over, and the Mandans answered back in their own language: “Who are you?” The Hidatsa, not understanding it, supposed they had asked, “What do you want?” and so replied; “Minnetaree, to cross over the water.” Whence came the Hidatsa? Their legend says they originally lived under a great body of water which lies far to the north-east of where they now live. From this under-water residence some persons found their way out, and, discovering a country much better than the one in which they lived, returned and gave to their people such glowing accounts of their discoveries that the whole nation determined to come out. But, owing to the breaking of a tree on which they were climbing out of the lake, a great part of the tribe had to remain behind in the water, and they are there yet.

This is very much like the myth of another tribe, who lived under the ground by a lake. A large grape-vine sent its tap-root through the crust of the earth, and by that they commenced to climb out. But a very fat woman taking hold of the vine, it broke, and the remainder were doomed to stay where they were. Do such legends contain any reference to the great Deluge?

After the Hidatsa came up, they commenced a series of wanderings over the prairies. During their migrations they were often ready to die of hunger, but were always rescued by the interference of their deity. It was not manna rained down around their camp, but the stones of the prairie were miraculously changed into buffalo, which they killed and ate. After some time they sent couriers to the south, who came back with the news that they had found a great river and a fertile valley, wherein dwelt a people who lived in houses and tilled the ground. They brought back corn and other products of the country. To this beautiful and good land the tribe now directed their march, and, guided by their messengers they reached the Mandan villages on the Missouri River. With them they camped and learned their peaceful arts.

Dr. Matthews says they have a tradition that during these years of wandering the Genius of the Sun took up one of the Hidatsa maidens, and their offspring came back, and, under the name of Grand-Child, was the great prophet and teacher of his mother’s people. Can that have any reference to the “Son of Man”?

These Indians, the Mandans, the Hidatsa, and the Rees, live in one village at Berthold, in all numbering something over two thousand; and they have lived together, as we know, more than a hundred years, and yet the languages are kept perfectly distinct and separate. Many of them learn each other’s language; and many of them talk Dakota also. “Many years ago they were considered ripe for the experiments of civilization; they stand to-day just as fit subjects as ever for the experiment, which never has been, and possibly never will be, tried.” This is Dr. Matthews’ statement. Let us hope that the latter part may not be prophetic.

“They worship a deity,” says Dr. Matthews, “whom they call ‘The First Made’ or ‘The First Existence.’” Sometimes they speak of him as “The Old Man Immortal.” They believe in shades or ghosts, which belong not only to men, but to animals and trees and everything.

“In the ‘next world’ human shades hunt and live on the shades of the buffalo and other animals who have lived here. Whether the shade of the buffalo then ceases to exist or not, I could find none prepared to tell me; but they seem to have a dim faith in shades of shades, and in shadow-lands of shade-lands; belief in a shadowy immortality being the basis of their creed.”

By all these means our interest in Fort Berthold and its people grew, and we became impatient of delay. But step by step we were led by the hand of the Lord, until at the meeting of the American Board in Chicago in the autumn of 1875, after an animated discussion on Indian Missions, and the debt of the Board was lifted by a special effort, Secretary S. B. Treat arose and said: “We are ready to send a man to Fort Berthold.” The man and the woman, Charles L. Hall and Emma Calhoun, were ready, and the next spring they were commissioned to make their home among the Mandans, Arickarees and Hidatsa.

On leaving Berthold in May, 1874, I proceeded down the Missouri to Bismarck, where I was subjected to considerable delay; and then stopping a few days with Thomas at Hope Station, and making a short call at the Yankton agency, I went to the Santee to attend our annual meeting of the Dakota Conference, which commenced its sessions with the Pilgrim Church on the 18th of June.

A. L. Riggs had put up in large characters the motto of the meeting—1834-1874. Thus we were reminded that forty years had passed since the brothers Pond had made their log cabin on the banks of Lake Calhoun. These gray-headed men were expected to have been present on this occasion, but were not. T. L. Riggs and wife could not come down. Otherwise the attendance of whites and Indians was good. The presence of Rev. Joseph Ward of Yankton, and of Mrs. Wood, the mother of Mrs. Ward, and also of Rev. De Witt Clark of Massachusetts, greatly added to the interest. The question discussed by the native brethren with the most eagerness was, “Shall the eldership receive any money compensation?” This had come up to be a question solely because such native church helpers were receiving compensation among the Episcopalians. But our folks decided against it by an overwhelming vote.

So full an account has been given of the like meeting held a year previous, that this, which was in most respects equally interesting, may be passed over. Of the school here during the winter past, the Word Carrier had contained this notice: “The Normal School of the Dakota Mission at Santee agency has had a prosperous winter session, notwithstanding the dark days last fall, when its doors were closed, and many of its former pupils removed beyond the reach of earthly training by the small-pox.” The whole number of scholars for the winter three months was eighty-five.

After this meeting closed, I spent six weeks with the churches in my own part of the field on the Sisseton reservation. I found the people at Ascension church, J. B. Renville pastor, in the midst of church building. Their log church had become too small, and they had for a year been preparing to build a larger and better house of worship. Mr. Adams took a great interest in this enterprise, and helped them much by obtaining contributions and otherwise. The Dakota men and women also took hold of it as their own work, and the house went up, and was so far finished before the winter that its dedication took place about the middle of December. The cost of the house was then given at $1500. Two or three hundred more were afterward used in its internal completion. This was a great step forward. Dakota Christians build, with but little help, their own house of worship!

About the middle of August I left Sisseton to complete my work of visiting Indian agencies, which I had undertaken to do for the American Missionary Association. At St. Paul I was joined by Rev. Edward Payson Wheeler, who was just from Andover Seminary. He was the son of the missionary Wheeler who had spent his life with the Ojibwas, at Bad River. He had learned the language in his boyhood, and I was only too happy to have as my companion of the journey one who was at home among the Ojibwas.

From St. Paul we went up the Lake Superior Road until we reached the Northern Pacific, on which we traveled westward to Brainerd, and then took stage seventy miles to Leech Lake. There we found white friends and Ojibwas, to whom we preached, Mr. Wheeler trying the language he had not used for years. We then proceeded by private conveyance, over a miserable road through the pine woods, to Red Lake. Rev. Mr. Spees and wife, who were there doing work under the American Missionary Association, and Agent Pratt received us kindly. My friend Wheeler talked with the Indians—the old men remembered his father, and seemed to warm very much toward the son. It appeared to me that there was a grand opening for an educational work and preaching the Gospel. When we left Red Lake, I fully believed that E. P. Wheeler would return there as a missionary before the snow fell. But I was disappointed. The American Missionary Association was heavily in debt, and had no disposition whatever to enlarge work among the Indians.

We then returned by the way we came, and went on to Duluth, where we took a steamer on the Gitche Gumme (Lake Superior) for Bayfield. On the downlake steamer we formed the acquaintance of Rev. John McDougall, a Methodist minister, who, with his family, was going to the Canadian Conference, from the far-off country of the Saskatchawan. For more than a quarter of a century he had been a missionary among the Crees and Bloods and Piegans.

But what interested me most was the account he gave of a small band of about seven hundred Indians called Stoneys. They talk the Dakota language, and, as their name indicates, they are evidently a branch of the Assinaboines.

The name Assinaboine means Stone Sioux, and is a compound of French and Ojibwa. The last part is Bwan, which is the name the Ojibwas give the Dakotas or Sioux.

These Stoneys are said to be all Christians. They have their school-house and church, and Rev. John McDougall, son of the old gentleman, is their missionary. They live on Bow River, which, I suppose, is a branch of the Saskatchawan, about two hundred miles north-west from Fort Benton, and one hundred north of the Canada line. To us who labor among the Dakotas, it is very cheering to know that this small outlier of the fifty thousand Dakota-speaking people have all received the Gospel. We clap our hands for joy.

Landing at Bayfield, we were kindly received by the Indian agent Dr. Isaac Mahan.

Nestled among the hills, and looking out into the bay filled with the Apostle Islands, this town has rather a romantic position. And just out a little way, on Magdalen Island, is La Pointe, the old mission station. We passed around it in a sail-boat on our way to Odanah.

Very soon after reaching Bayfield, we found a boat going over to Odanah, which, I understand, is the Ojibwa for town or village, and which is the name by which the mission station on Bad River has long been known. As I entered the boat, Mr. Wheeler introduced me to the Ojibwa men who were to take us over. When I shook hands with one of them, he said, “My father, Mr. Riggs.” Was he calling me his father, or was it the Indian? I wondered which, but asked no questions. Two or three days after, I learned that adoption was one of the Ojibwa customs, and that when Mr. Wheeler was a little boy this man lost his boy. He came to the mission and said to the missionary, “My boy is gone; you have a great many boys; let me call this one mine.” And so they said he might so call him; and from that time Edward Payson Wheeler became the adopted child of an Ojibwa.

Now, after he had been gone ten years, going away a boy and coming back a man, they all seemed to regard him like a son and a brother. It was very interesting for me to see how they all warmed toward him. They came to see him, and wanted him to go to their houses. They all wanted to talk with him; and when we came to leave, they all flocked to the mission to shake hands, and to have a last word and a prayer; and they gave him more muckoks of manomin (wild rice) than he could bring away with him.

For four days we were the guests of the boarding-school which is in charge of Rev. Isaac Baird. We became much interested in the school and the teachers—Mrs. Baird, Miss Harriet Newell Phillips, Miss Verbeek, Miss Dougherty, and Miss Walker. Naturally, I should be prejudiced in favor of the Dakotas, but I was obliged to confess that I had not seen anywhere twenty-five boys and girls better-looking and more manly and womanly in their appearance than those Ojibwas. The whole community gave evidence of the good work done by the school in past years—many of the grown folks being able to talk English quite well.

But there was one impression that came to me without bidding—it was that civilization had been pressed farther and faster than evangelization. While houses and other improvements attested a great deal of labor expended, the native church is quite small, only now numbering about twenty-eight, and the metawa, their sacred heathen dance, was danced while we were there, within a stone’s-throw of the church. My spirit was stirred within me, and I said to the members of that native church that they ought so to take up the work of evangelizing their own people in good earnest that the dancing of the metawa thus publicly would become an impossibility.

My visit to various points in the Ojibwa country has interested me very greatly. From what I have seen and heard, the conviction grew upon me that the whole Ojibwa field, comprising thirteen or fourteen thousand people in the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, is now open to the Gospel as it never has been before. The old laborers sowed the good seed, but they saw little fruit. No wonder they became discouraged. For years the field was almost entirely given up. But, although the servants retired, the Master watched the work, and here and there the seed has taken root and sprung up. This appears in the new desire prevailing that they may again have schools and missionaries. Shall we not take advantage of this favorable time to tell them of Jesus the Saviour?