1870-1871.—Beloit Home Broken Up.—Building on the Sisseton Reserve.—Difficulties and Cost.—Correspondence with Washington.—Order to Suspend Work.—Disregarding the Taboo.—Anna Sick at Beloit.—Assurance.—Martha Goes in Anna’s Place.—The Dakota Churches.—Lac-qui-parle, Ascension.—John B. Renville.—Daniel Renville.—Houses of Worship.—Eight Churches.—The “Word Carrier.”—Annual Meeting on the Big Sioux.—Homestead Colony.—How it Came about.—Joseph Iron Old Man.—Perished in a Snow Storm.—The Dakota Mission Divides.—Reasons Therefor.

The spring of 1870 brought with it a breaking-up of the Beloit home. Some months before Mary’s death, she had invited to our house an invalid niece, the daughter of her older sister, Mrs. Lucretia Cooley. A dear, good girl Mary Cooley was. She had during the war acted as nurse, in the service of the Christian Commission. But her health failed. It was hoped that a year in the West might build her up. After her aunt had gone from us, Mary Cooley remained with us. But the malady increased; and this spring her brother Allan came and took her back to Massachusetts. And now, only a little while ago, we heard of her release in California, whither the family had removed. The good Lord had compassion upon her, and took her to a land where no one says, “I am sick.”

Then the house was rented. The household goods and household gods were scattered, the major part being taken up into the Indian country. Anna would spend the summer with friends in Beloit, and Cornelia, the youngest, I took up to Minnesota, and left with Martha on the frontier.

My plan was to put up two buildings, a dwelling-house and a school-house, for the erection of which the committee at Boston had appropriated $2800. That may seem quite an amount; but the materials had to be transported from Minneapolis and the Red River of the North. What I purchased at Minneapolis was carried by rail and steamboat one hundred and fifty miles. There remained one hundred and thirty, over which the lumber was hauled in wagons in the month of June, when the roads were bad and the streams swimming. And so the cost was very great,—dressed flooring coming up to $75 per 1000 feet, dressed siding $65, shingles about $15 per 1000, and common lumber $60 a thousand feet.

When the materials were on the ground, but little money was left for their erection. But, with one carpenter and two or three young men to assist, I pushed forward the work, and by the middle of September the houses were up, and ready to be occupied, though in an unfinished state.

During this time there were some things transpired which deserve to be noticed.

Before commencing to build, I had received the written approval of the agent. In regard to the locality we differed. He wished me to build in the immediate vicinity of the agency, while I, for very good reasons, selected a place nearly two miles away. But that, I think, could have made no difference in his feeling toward the enterprise. However, soon after I commenced, I was visited by Gabriel Renville, who was recognized as the head man on the reservation. He did not forbid my proceeding, but wanted to know whether I had authority to do so. I replied that I had the approval of Agent Daniels, which I regarded as sufficient. When I reported this to Mr. Daniels, he advised me to write to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and obtain a permit, which, he said, might save me trouble.

Accordingly, I wrote immediately to the Department of the Interior, stating the life-long connection we had had with these Indians, and the work we had done among them, and that now I was authorized by the A. B. C. F. M. to erect mission buildings among them, and asking that our plan be approved.

After three or four weeks, when I was in the very middle of my work of building, there came an order from Washington that I should suspend operations until they would settle the question to what religious denomination that part of the field should be assigned. That subject was then under advisement, they said.

Should I obey? If I did so, much additional expense would be incurred, and my summer’s work, as planned, would be a failure. Really no question could be raised about it. The American Board had been doing missionary work among those Indians for a third of a century, and no other denomination or missionary board pretended to have any claim on the field. It was unreasonable, under the circumstances, that we should be asked to suspend, and thus suffer harm and loss. So I placed my letter safely away and went on with my work. No human being there knew that I had received such a command.

By the return mail I wrote to Secretary Treat, rehearsing the whole case, and asking him, without delay, to write to the authorities at Washington. I told him I had concluded to disregard the taboo, and would not in consequence thereof drive a nail the less. When the summer months were passed, and my houses were both up, I received a letter from the commissioner commending my work, and telling me to go forward.

In the latter end of August there came to me a letter, written in a strange hand, saying that Anna was lying sick at Mr. Carr’s, of typhoid fever. The intention of the letter evidently was not to greatly alarm me, but it conveyed the idea that she was very sick, and the result was doubtful. Ten or twelve days had passed since it was written. My affairs were not then in a condition to be left without much damage, and so I determined to await the coming of another mail. When I heard again, a week later, there was no decided change for the better. So the letter read. But in the meantime this word had come to me—“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” It came to me like a revelation. I seemed to know it. It quieted my alarm. All anxiety was not taken away, but my days passed in comparatively quiet trust. About the middle of September I started down with my own team, and, on reaching St. Peter and Mankato, I received letters from Anna written with her own hand. She had come up gradually, but a couple of months passed before she was strong.

Before I commenced building at Good Will, which was the name we gave to our new station, the understanding was that Anna would be married in the coming autumn, and she and her husband would take charge of the mission work there. Anna seemed to have grown up into the idea that her life-work was to be with the Dakotas. But it was otherwise ordered. In the October following, when we all again met in Beloit, she was married to H. E. Warner, who had lost an arm in the War of the Rebellion, and they have since made their home in Iowa.

Martha Taylor Riggs had been married to Wyllys K. Morris, in December, 1866. For a time they made their home in Mankato, Minn., and then removed to a farm twenty miles from town. Life on the extreme frontier they found filled with privations and hardships, and so were quite willing to accept the new place; and before the winter set in they were removed to Good Will. Robert, who had gone up after his mother’s death, and spent a year with Martha at Sterling, Minn., returned to Beloit, and entered the preparatory department of the college. Cornelia went with us to Good Will, and remained two years.

The home was again in Dakota land. We at once opened a school, which has since been taught almost entirely by W. K. Morris.[6] The native churches needed a good deal of attention. At Lac-qui-parle a number of families had stopped and taken claims. There a church was organized of about forty members, which for two or three years was in the charge of Rev. John B. Renville. But about this time Mr. Renville removed to the reservation, and from that time the Dakota settlement gradually diminished, until all had removed, and the Lac-qui-parle church was absorbed by those on the reserve.

Ascension, or Iyakaptape, so named from its having been from time immemorial the place where the Coteau was ascended by the Dakotas on their way westward, was the district in which a number of the Renville families took claims. Daniel Renville, one of our licentiates, had been preaching to the church gathered there. But it was understood all along that John B. Renville was to be their pastor. And so it came about, as he now transferred his home to that settlement.

In the spring of 1863, Mr. Renville had purchased a little house in St. Anthony, where they made their home for several years, Mrs. Renville teaching a school of white children for a part of the time. Removing from there, they pre-empted a piece of land on Beaver Creek. During these years they had in their family from four to six half-breed or Dakota children, whom they taught English very successfully, and for the most part maintained them out of their own scanty means. While living in St. Anthony, Mr. Renville had translated “Precept Upon Precept,” which was printed in Boston, and became thenceforth one of our Dakota school-books.

As Mr. Daniel Renville was now released from labor at Ascension, I proposed his name to the Good Will church, and advised them to elect him to be their religious teacher. But when the election took place they all voted for me. I thanked them for the honor they did me, and told them that it could not be. Our plan of missionary work was changed. Henceforth the preaching and pastoral work were to be done almost exclusively by men from among themselves. It was better for them that it should be so, for only in that way would they learn to support their own Gospel. We missionaries had never asked them to contribute anything toward our support. It was manifestly incongruous that we should do so. And yet they were so far advanced in the knowledge of Christian duties that they ought to assume the burden of contributing to the support of their own religious teachers. It would be a means of grace to them. Moreover, a man who spoke the language natively had great advantage over us, both in preaching and pastoral work.

When I had made this speech to them, they went again into an election, and chose Daniel Renville to be their pastor. He was soon afterward ordained and installed by the Dakota Presbytery, and continued with the Good Will church about six years. Previous to this time, the original Dakota Presbytery had been divided into the Mankato and Dakota, the latter of which was again confined to the Dakota field, as it had been when first formed in 1845.

At this time Solomon was the pastor of the Long Hollow church, and Louis was stated supply at Fort Wadsworth, or Kettle Lakes, and Thomas Good a licentiate preacher at Buffalo Lake. Some time after this the Mayasan church was organized, and Louis called to take charge of it, David Gray Cloud coming into his place at Fort Wadsworth.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church had set on foot their Million Thank Offering effort, which was available for poor churches in erecting houses of worship. By means of this outside help, the Ascension church and the Long Hollow church, as well as the Homestead Settlement church on the Big Sioux, were enabled to build houses—two of them of logs. The building at Long Hollow continues to be occupied by the church, while the other two houses have given place to larger and better frame buildings.

In the spring of 1871 our Dakota church organizations were eight, viz.: The Pilgrim Church, at Santee, with 267 members, Rev. Artemas Ehnamane and Rev. Titus Ichadooze pastors; The Flandreau or River Bend church, on the Big Sioux, with 107 members, Joseph Iron-oldman pastor elect; the Lac-qui-parle church, with 41 members, now without a pastor; the Ascension church, on the Sisseton reservation, with 69 members, Rev. John B. Renville pastor; the Dry Wood Lake or Good Will church, with 42 members, Rev. Daniel Renville pastor; the Long Hollow church, with 80 members, Rev. Solomon Toonkan-shaecheya pastor; the Kettle Lakes or Fort Wadsworth church, with 38 members, Rev. Louis Mazawakinyanna stated supply; and the recently organized church at Yankton agency, with 19 members, in charge of Rev. John P. Williamson.

In the month of May of this year, the first number of the Iapi Oaye appeared. It was a very modest little sheet of four pages, eight by ten inches, and altogether in the Dakota language, with the motto, “Taku washta okiya, taku shecha kepajin,” which, being interpreted, would read, “To help what is good, to oppose what is bad.” Rev. John P. Williamson, who had the sole charge of it for the first twelve numbers, in his first Dakota editorial, thus accounts for its origin: “For three years I have prepared a little tract at New Year, which Mr. E. R. Pond printed, and I distributed gratuitously to all who could read Dakota. And many persons liked it, and some said, ‘If we had a newspaper, we would pay for it.’ I have trusted to the truth of this saying, and so this winter have been preparing to print one. But I have found many obstacles in the way, and have not gotten out the first number until now.” As it was to be the means of conveying the thoughts and speech of one person to another, it was proper, he said, to call it Iapi Oaye, or “Word Carrier.” The subscription price was placed at fifty cents a year. This was not increased after the paper was doubled in size, as it was the first of January, 1873, at the commencement of the second volume. When the change was made, I was taken in as associate editor, and henceforth about one-third of the letter-press was to be in the English language. By this means we could communicate missionary intelligence to white people, and thus secure their aid in supporting the paper, as well as extend the interest in our work. And, as an attraction to the Dakotas, a full-page picture has been generally added.

In starting the paper, the main object proposed was to stimulate education among the Dakotas, so that we were not disappointed to find that, in addition to all that came in from subscriptions, several hundred dollars were required from the missionary funds to square up the year. But we lived in hope, and do so still, that the time will come when the enterprise will be self-supporting. It has proved itself to be an exceedingly important assistant in our missionary work, which we can not afford to let die.

With the homesteaders on the Big Sioux, on the 23d of June, 1871, we held our first general conference of the Dakota churches.[7] From the Sisseton Agency there went down John B. Renville, Daniel Renville, and Solomon, of the pastors, with several elders and myself. Dr. Williamson came up from St. Peter; and John P. Williamson, A. L. Riggs, and Artemas Ehnamane, and others, came over from the Missouri River. Year by year, from that time on, we have continued to hold these meetings, and they have constantly increased in interest and importance. On this first occasion, four or five days were spent, and religious meetings held each day. The circumstances by which we were surrounded intensified the interest. As yet there was no church or school-house in which we could assemble, and our meetings were held out-of-doors, or under a booth in connection with Mr. All Iron’s cabin.

[7] This was preliminary to the regularly organized conference which met the next year.