1870-1873.—A. L. Riggs Builds at Santee.—The Santee High School.—Visit to Fort Sully.—Change of Agents at Sisseton.—Second Marriage.—Annual Meeting at Good Will.—Grand Gathering.—New Treaty Made at Sisseton.—Nina Foster Riggs.—Our Trip to Fort Sully.—An Incident by the Way.—Stop at Santee.—Pastor Ehnamane.—His Deer Hunt.—Annual Meeting in 1873.—Rev. S. J. Humphrey’s Visit.—Mr. Humphrey’s Sketch.—Where They Come From.—Morning Call.—Visiting the Teepees.—The Religious Gathering.—The Moderator.—Questions Discussed.—The Personnel.—Putting up a Tent.—Sabbath Service.—Mission Reunion.

From Flandreau, the Dakota homestead settlement on the Big Sioux, I accompanied A. L. Riggs and J. P. Williamson to the Missouri. A year before this time, in the month of May, 1870, Alfred had removed his family from Woodstock, Ill., to the Santee agency. The mission buildings heretofore had been of the cheapest kind. Only one small house had a shingle roof; the rest were “shacks.” Before his arrival, some preparation had been made for building—logs of cotton-wood had been cut and hauled to the government saw-mill. These were cut up into framing lumber. The pine boards and all finishing materials were taken up from Yankton and Sioux City and Chicago, and so he proceeded to erect a family dwelling and a school-house, which could be used for church purposes.

These were so far finished as to be occupied in the autumn; and a school was opened with better accommodations and advantages than heretofore. In the December Iapi Oaye, there appeared a notice of the Santee High School, Rev. A. L. Riggs Principal, with Eli Abraham and Albert Frazier assistants. The advertisement said, “If any one should give you a deer, you would probably say, ‘You make me glad.’ But how much more would you be glad if one should teach you how to hunt and kill many deer. So, likewise, if one should teach you a little wisdom he would make you glad, but you would be more glad if one taught you how to acquire knowledge.” This the Santee High School proposed to do.

On reaching the Santee, I met by appointment Thomas L. Riggs, who had come on from Chicago at the end of his second seminary year. Together we proceeded up to Fort Sully, where we spent a good part of the summer that remained. But this, with what came of our visit, will be related in a following chapter. In the autumn I returned to Good Will, and the winter was one of work, on the line which we had been following.

During the early part of this winter, 1871-72, a change was made of agents at Sisseton; Dr. J. W. Daniels resigned, and Rev. M. N. Adams came in his place. Dr. Daniels was Bishop Whipple’s appointee, and, as the Episcopalians were not engaged in the missionary work on this reservation, it was evidently proper, under the existing circumstances, that the selection should be accorded to the American Board. As, many years before, Mr. Adams had been a missionary among a portion of these people, he came as United States Indian agent, with an earnest wish to forward in all proper ways the cause of education and civilization and the general uplifting of the whole people. He met with a good deal of opposition, but continued to be agent more than three years, and left many memorials of his interest and efficiency, in the school-houses he erected, as well as in the hearts of the Christian people.

The object that had been paramount in taking our family to Beloit in 1865 was but partly accomplished when Mary died in the spring of 1869. Since that time three years had passed. Robert had gone back to Beloit to school, and was now ready to enter the freshman class of the college. Cornelia was in her fourteenth year, and her education only fairly begun. It was needful that she should have the advantages of a good school. To accomplish my desire for their education it seemed best to reoccupy our vacant house. That spring of 1872, I was commissioner from the Dakota Presbytery to the General Assembly, which met in Detroit. At the close of the assembly, I went down to Granville, Ohio, and, in accordance with an arrangement previously made, I married Mrs. Annie Baker Ackley, who had once been a teacher with us at Hazelwood, and more recently had spent several years in the employ of the American Missionary Association, in teaching the freedmen. We at once proceeded to the Good Will mission station, where the summer was spent, and then in the autumn opened our house in Beloit.

The meeting of the ministers and elders and representatives of the Dakota churches, which was held with the River Bend church on the Big Sioux, had been found very profitable to all. At that time a like conference had been arranged for, to meet on the 25th of June, 1872, with the church of Good Will, on the Sisseton reservation. The announcement was made in the April Iapi Oaye. In the invitation nine churches are mentioned, viz.: The Santee, Yankton, River Bend, Lac-qui-parle, Ascension, Good Will, Buffalo Lake, Long Hollow, and Kettle Lakes. It was said that subjects interesting and profitable to all would be discussed; and especially was the presence of the Holy Spirit desired and prayed for, since, without God present with us, the assembly would be only a dead body.

In the green month of June, when the roses on the prairie began to bloom, then they began to assemble at our Dakota Conference. Dr. T. S. Williamson came up from his home at St. Peter—200 miles. John P. Williamson, from the Yankton agency, and A. L. Riggs, from Santee, brought with them Rev. Joseph Ward, pastor of the Congregational Church in Yankton. As they came by Sioux Falls and Flandreau, their whole way would not be much under 300 miles. Thomas L. Riggs, who had commenced his new station in the close of the winter, came across the country from Fort Sully on horseback, a distance of about 220 miles, having with him a Dakota guide and soldier guard. They rode it in less than five days. From all parts came the Dakota pastors and elders and messengers of the churches. The gathering was so large that a booth was made for the Sabbath service. It was an inspiration to us all. It was unanimously voted to hold the next year’s meeting with the Yanktons at the Yankton agency.

At the Sisseton agency, in the month of September, a semi-treaty was made by Agents M. N. Adams and W. H. Forbes, and James Smith, Jr., of St. Paul, United States commissioners, with the Dakota Indians of the Lake Traverse and Devil’s Lake reservations, by which they relinquish all their claim on the country of North-eastern Dakota through which the Northern Pacific Railroad runs. By this arrangement, education would have been made compulsory, and the men would have been enabled to obtain patents for their land within some reasonable time; but the Senate struck out everything except the ceding of the land and the compensation therefor. Our legislators do not greatly desire that Indians should become white men.

When Thanksgiving Day came this year, Mr. Adams dedicated a fine brick school-house, which he had that summer erected, in the vicinity of the agency. Of this occasion he wrote, “It was indeed a day of thanksgiving and praise with us, and to me an event of the deepest interest. And I hope that good and lasting impressions were made there upon the minds of some of this people.”

In the work of Bible translation, I had been occupied with the book of Daniel in the summer, and, in the winter that followed, my first copy of the Minor Prophets was made. When the spring came, I hied away to the Dakota country. This time my course was to the Missouri River. Thomas had been married in Bangor, Me., to Nina Foster, daughter of Hon. John B. Foster, and sister of Mrs. Charles H. Howard of the Advance. They came west, and, as the winter was not yet past, Thomas went on from Chicago alone, and Nina remained with her sister until navigation should open. And so it came to pass that she and I were company for each other to Fort Sully.

As we left Yankton in the stage for Santee, where we were to stop a few days and wait for an up-river boat, an incident occurred which must have been novel to the girl from Bangor. The day was just breaking when the stage had made out its complement of passengers, except one. There were six men on the two seats before us, and Nina and I were behind. At a little tavern in the suburbs of the town, the ninth passenger was taken in. As he came out we could see that he was the worse for drinking. I at once shoved over to the middle of the seat, and let him in by my side. He turned out to be a burly French half-breed, or a Frenchman who had a Dakota family. We had gone but a little distance, when he said he was going to smoke. I objected to his smoking inside the stage. He begged the lady’s pardon a thousand times, but said he must smoke. By this time he had hunted in his pockets, but did not find his pipe. “O mon pipe!” The stage-driver must turn around and go back—it cost $75. He worked himself and the rest of us into quite an excitement. By and by he said to me: “Do you know who I am?” I said I did not. He said, “I am Red Cloud, and I have killed a great many white men.” “Ah,” said I, “you are Red Cloud? I do not believe you can talk Dakota”—and immediately I commenced talking Dakota. He turned around and stared at me. “Who are you?” he said. From that moment he was my friend, and ever so good.

It was now the month of May, but there were deep snow banks still in the ravines on the north side of the river. A terrible storm had swept over the country from the north-east about the middle of April. A hundred Indian ponies and forty or fifty head of cattle at the Santee agency had perished. This made spring work go heavily.

I was interested in examining the building erected last summer for the girls’ boarding-school. It should have been completed before the winter came on, according to the agreement. But now it is intended to have it ready for occupancy the first of September. When finished, it will accommodate twenty or twenty-four girls and also the lady teachers.

On the Sabbath we spent there, I preached in the morning, and Pastor Artemas Ehnamane preached in the afternoon. The Word Carrier tells a good story of this Santee pastor. In his younger days, Ehnamane was one of the best Dakota hunters. Tall and straight as an arrow, he was literally as swift as a deer. And he learned to use a gun with wonderful precision. Only a few years before this time, I was traveling with him, when, in the evening, he took his gun and went around a lake, and brought into camp twelve large ducks. He had shot three times.

Well, in the fall of 1872 his church gave him a vacation of six weeks, and “he turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water, where his heart grew young, and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope.

“Being on the track of the hostile Sioux who go to fight the Pawnees, one evening he found himself near a camp of the wild Brules. He was weak, they were strong and perhaps hostile. It was time for him to show his colors. His kettles were filled to the brim. The proud warriors were called, and as they filled their mouths with his savory meat, he filled their ears with the sound of the Gospel trumpet, and gave them their first view of eternal life. Thus the deer hunt became a soul hunt. The wild Brules grunted their friendly ‘yes,’ as they left Ehnamane’s teepee, their mouths filled with venison, and their hearts with the good seed of truth, from which some one will reap the fruit after many days.”

On the 13th of June, 1873, the second regular annual meeting of the Dakota Conference commenced its sessions at Rev. John P. Williamson’s mission at the Yankton agency. The Word Carrier for August says this was a very full meeting: “Every missionary and assistant missionary, except Mrs. S. R. Riggs and W. K. Morris, was present, also every native preacher and a full list of other delegates.” I came down from Fort Sully with T. L. Riggs and his wife, who had only joined him a few weeks before. Martha Riggs Morris and her two children came over from Sisseton—three hundred miles—with the Dakota delegation. They had a hard journey. The roads were bad and the streams were flooded. There was no way of crossing the Big Sioux except by swimming, and those who could not swim were pulled over in a poor boat improvised from a wagon-bed. It was not without a good deal of danger. Those from the Santee agency had only the Missouri River to cross, and a day’s journey to make. The interest of our meeting was greatly increased by the presence of Rev. S. J. Humphrey, D.D., District Secretary of the American Board, Chicago; and Rev. E. H. Avery, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Sioux City.

Mr. Williamson’s new chapel made a very pleasant place for the gatherings. Pastoral Support, Pastoral Visitation, and Vernacular Teaching were among the live topics discussed. Their eager consideration and prompt discussion of these questions were in strong contrast with the stolid indifference and mulish reticence of the former life of these native Dakotas, and showed the working of a superhuman agency. Our friend S. J. Humphrey wrote and published a very life-like description of what he saw and heard on this visit, and it does me great pleasure to let him bear testimony to the marvels wrought by the power of the Gospel of Christ.

“The annual meeting of the Dakota Mission was held at Yankton agency, commencing June 13. We esteem it a rare privilege to have been present on that occasion and to have seen with our own eyes the marvelous transformations wrought by the Gospel among this people. Thirty-six hours by rail took us to Yankton, the border town of civilization. Twelve hours more in stage and open wagon along the north bank of the Missouri—the Big Muddy, as the Indians rightly call it—carried us sixty miles into the edge of the vast open prairie, and into the heart of the Yankton reservation. Here, scattered up and down the river bottom for thirty miles, live the Yanktons, one of the Dakota bands, about 2000 in number. Thirty miles below, on the opposite bank, in Nebraska, are the Santees. Up the river for many hundreds of miles at different points other reservations are set off, while several wilder bands still hunt the buffalo on the wide plains that stretch westward to the Black Hills. The Sissetons, another family of this tribe, are located near Lake Traverse, on the eastern boundary of Dakota Territory. This is the field of the Dakota Mission. The chief bands laid hold of thus far are the Sisseton, the Santee, and the Yankton. A new point has recently been taken at Fort Sully, among the Teetons.

“It was from these places, lying apart in their extremes at least 300 miles, that more than a hundred Indians gathered at this annual meeting. On Thursday afternoon the hospitable doors of Rev. J. P. Williamson’s spacious log house opened just in time to give us shelter from a fierce storm of wind and rain. The next morning the Santees, fifty of them from the Pilgrim Church, some on foot, some on pony-back, and a few in wagons, straggled in, and pitched their camp, in Indian fashion, on the open space near the mission house. About noon the Sissetons appeared, a dilapidated crowd of more than forty, weary and foot-sore with their 300 miles tramp through ten tedious days. Among them was one white person, a woman, with her two children, the youngest an infant, not a captive, but a missionary’s wife, traveling thus among a people whom the Gospel had made captives themselves, chiefly through the labors of an honored father and a mother of blessed memory. It intimates the courage and endurance needed for such a trip to know that there were almost no human habitations on the way, and that swollen rivers were repeatedly crossed in the wagon-box, stripped of its wheels and made sea-worthy by canvas swathed underneath.

“An hour afterward, from 200 miles in the opposite direction, the Fort Sully delegation appeared. For Father Riggs, and the younger son, famous as a hard rider, this journey was no great affair. But the tenderly reared young wife—how she could endure the five days of wagon and tent life is among the mysteries.

“That this was no crowd of Indian revellers come to a sun dance (as it might have been of yore) was soon manifest. The first morning after their arrival, a strange, chanting voice, like that of a herald, mingled with our day-break dreams. Had we been among the Mussulmans we should have thought it the muezzin’s cry. Of course, all was Indian to us, but we learned afterward that it was indeed a call to prayer, with this English rendering:—

“In a few minutes, for it does not take an Indian long to dress, the low cadence of many voices joining in one of our own familiar tunes rose sweetly on the air, telling us that the day of their glad solemnities had begun. This was entirely their own notion, and was repeated each of the four days we were together.

“On this same morning another sharp contrast of the old and the new appeared. By invitation of the elder Williamson, we took a walk among the teepees of the natives who live on the ground. Passing, with due regard for Dakota etiquette, those which contained only women, we came to one which we might properly enter. The inmates were evidently of the heathen party. A man, apparently fifty, sat upon a skin, entirely nude save the inevitable blanket, which he occasionally drew up about his waist. A lad of sixteen, in the same state, lounged in an obscure corner. The mother, who, we learned, occasionally attended meeting, wore a drabbled dress, doubtless her only garment. Two or three others were present in different stages of undress, and all lazy, stolid, dirty. As we looked into these impassive faces we could understand the saying of one of the missionaries, that when you first speak to an audience of wild Indians you might as well preach to the back of their heads, so far as any responsive expression is concerned. And yet, now and then, the dull glow of a latent ferocity would light up the eye, like that of a beast of prey looking for his next meal. Alas! for the noble red man! In spite of what the poets say, we found him a filthy, stupid savage. All this we have time to see while Mr. Williamson talks to them in the unknown tongue. But now the little church bell calls us to the mission chapel. It is already filled—the men on one side, the women on the other. The audience numbers perhaps two hundred.

“All classes and ages are there. All are decently dressed. Were it not for the dark faces, you would not distinguish them from an ordinary country congregation. The hymn has already been given out, and each, with book in hand, has found the place. The melodeon sets the tune, and then, standing, they sing. It is no weak-lunged performance, we can assure you. Not altogether harmonious, perhaps, but vastly sweeter than a war-whoop, we fancy; certainly hearty and sincere, and, we have no doubt, an acceptable offering of praise. A low-voiced prayer, by a native pastor, uttered with reverent unction, follows. Another singing, and then the sermon. One of the Renvilles is the preacher. We do not know what it is all about. But the ready utterance, the mellifluent flow of words, the unaffected earnestness of the speaker, and the fixed attention of the audience, mark it as altogether a success. While he speaks to the people, we study their faces. They are certainly a great improvement upon those we saw in the teepee. But not one or two generations of Christian life will work off the stupid, inexpressive look that ages of heathenism have graven into them. There is a steady gain, however. Just as in a dissolving view there come slowly out on the canvas glimpses of a fair landscape, mingling strangely with the dim outlines of the disappearing old ruin, so there is struggling through these stony faces an expression of the new creation within, the converted soul striving to light up and inform the hard features, and displace the ruin of the old savage life. But the poor women! Their case is even worse. They start from a lower plane. Some of these are young, some are mothers with their infants, many are well treated wives, not a few take part with propriety in the women’s meetings, and yet you look in vain among them all for one happy face. They wear a beaten and abused look, as if blows and cruelty had been their daily lot, as if they lived even only by sufferance. This is the settled look of their faces when in repose. But speak to them; let the missionary tell them you are their friend; and their eyes light up with a gentle gladness, showing that a true womanly soul only slumbers in them. This came out beautifully at a later point in the meeting. A motion was about to be put, when some one insisted that on that question the women should express their minds. This was cordially assented to, and they were requested to stand with the men in a rising vote. The girls, of course, giggled; but the women modestly rose in their places, and it was worth a trip all the way from Chicago to see the look of innocent pride into which their sad faces were for once surprised.

“But sermon is done. There is another loud-voiced hymn, and then the meeting of days is declared duly opened. It is to be a composite, a session of Presbytery, for they happen to have taken that form, and a Conference of churches. A leading candidate for moderator is Ehnamane, a Santee pastor. How far the fact that he is a great hunter and a famous paddleman affects the vote we can not say. This may have had more weight: his father was a great conjurer and war prophet. Before he died he said to his son:—

“‘The white man is coming into the country, and your children may learn to read. But promise me that you will never leave the religion of your ancestors.’

“He promised. And he says now that had the Minnesota outbreak not come, in which his gods were worsted by the white man’s God, he would have kept true to his pledge. As it is, he now preaches the faith which once he destroyed, and they make him moderator.

“We will not follow the meeting throughout the days. There are resolutions and motions to amend and all that, just like white folks, and plenty of speech-making. Now a telling hit sends a ripple of laughter through the room; and now the moistened eyes and trembling lip tell that some deep vein of feeling has been touched. Grave questions are under discussion: Pastoral Support, opening out into general benevolence; Pastoral Visitation, its necessity, methods, difficulties, and also as a work pertaining to elders, deacons, and to the whole membership; Primary Education—shall it be in the vernacular or in English? a most spirited debate, resulting in this: ‘Resolved, That so long as the children speak the Dakota at home, education should be begun in the Dakota.’ Then the Iapi Oaye, the Word Carrier—for they have their newspaper, and it has its financial troubles—comes up. All rally to its support. But the hundred-dollar deficit for last year, that, we suspect, comes out of the missionaries’ meagre salaries. All along certain more strictly ecclesiastical matters are mingled in. James Red-Wing is brought forward to be approbated as a preacher at Fort Sully. An application is considered for forming a new church on the Sisseton reserve. The church at White Banks asks aid for a church building, and a Yankton elder is examined and received as a candidate for the ministry. The Indians, in large numbers, share freely in all these deliberations. Everything is decorous and dignified, sometimes evidently intensely interesting, we the while burning to know what they are saying, and getting the general drift only through a friendly whisper in the ear. While they are discussing, we will make a few notes: about one-third of these before us were imprisoned for the massacre of 1862, although, probably, none of them took active part in it. The larger portion of them were made freemen of the Lord in that great prison revival at Mankato, as a result of which 300 joined the church in one day. They were also of that number who, when being transferred by steamer to Davenport, ‘passed St. Paul in chains, indeed, but singing the fifty-first Psalm, to the tune of Old Hundred. Seven of these men are regularly ordained ministers, pastors of as many churches; two others are licentiate preachers. Quite a number are teachers, deacons, elders, or delegates of the nine churches belonging to the mission, and they report a goodly fellowship of 775 Dakota members, 79 of whom have come into the fold since the last meeting.

“Two or three of these men are of some historic note. John B. Renville, who sits at the scribe’s desk, was the main one in inaugurating the counter revolution in the hostilities of 1862. Yonder is Peter Big-Fire, who, by his address, turned the war party from the trail of the fleeing missionaries. And there is Gray-Cloud, for five years in the United States army, a sergeant of scouts; and Chaskadan, the Elder Brewster of the prison church; and Lewis Mazawakinyanna, formerly chaplain among the fort scouts, now pastor of Mayasan Church, and Hokshidanminiamani, once a conjurer, now no longer raising spirits in the teepee, but humbly seeking to be taught of the Divine Spirit;—and all these—ah! our eyes fill with tears as we think that but for the blessed Gospel they would still be worshipers of devils.

“The meeting is adjourned, and the brethren are coming forward to greet us. We never grasped hands with a heartier good-will. But somehow our sense of humor will not be altogether quiet as, one after another, we are introduced to Elder Big-Fire, Rev. Mr. All-good, Deacon Boy-that-walks-on-the-water, Pastor Little-Iron-Thunder, Elder Gray-Cloud, and Rev. Mr. Stone-that-paints-itself-red. But they are grand men, and their names are quite as euphonious as some English ones we could pick out.

“While supper is preparing, we will look a moment at a phase of tent life. A sudden gust of wind has blown over two of the large teepees. And now they are to be set up again. One is occupied by the men, the other by the women. Under the old rÉgime the women do all this kind of work. But now the men are willing to try their hand at it, at least upon their own tent. It is new work, however, and, while they are making futile attempts at tying together the ends of the first three poles, the mothers and wives have theirs already up and nearly covered. At length a broad-chested woman steps over among them, strips off their ill tied strings, repacks the ends of the poles, and with two or three deft turns binds them fast, and all with a kind of nervous contempt as if she were saying—she probably is: ‘Oh, you stupid fellows!’ The after work does not seem to be much more successful, and they stand around in a helpless sort of way, while the young women are evidently bantering them with good-natured jests, much as a bevy of white girls would do in seeing a man vainly trying to stitch on a missing button, each new bungling mistake drawing the fire of the fair enemy in a fresh explosion of laughter. How the thing comes out we do not stay to see, but we suspect that the practised hands of the good women finally come to the rescue.

“Sunday is the chief day of interest, and yet there is less to report about that. In the morning, at nine o’clock, Rev. A. L. Riggs conducts a model Bible class, with remarks on the art of questioning. At the usual hour of service the church is crowded, and Rev. Solomon Toonkanshaichiye preaches, we doubt not, a most excellent sermon. Immediately following is the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper with the fathers of the mission, Revs. Dr. Riggs and Williamson officiating, a tender and solemn scene, impressive even to us who understand no single word of the service, for grave Indian deacons reverently pass the elements; and many receive them which but for a knowledge of this dear sacrifice might have reckoned it their chief glory that their hands were stained with human blood.

“Just as we close, in strange contrast with the spirit of the hour, two young Indian braves go by the windows. They are tricked out with all manner of savage frippery. Ribbons stream in the wind, strings of discordant sleigh-bells grace their horses’ necks and herald their approach. Each carries a drawn sword which flashes in the sunlight, and a plentiful use of red ochre and eagles’ feathers completes the picture. As they ride by on their scrawny little ponies the effect is indescribably absurd. But they think it very fine, and, like their cousins, the white fops, have simply come to show themselves.

“In the afternoon is an English service, and then one wholly conducted by the natives themselves. No evening meetings are held, as these people that rise with the birds are not far behind them in going to their rest. On Monday the business is finished, and the farewells are said. And on Tuesday morning the various delegations start for their distant homes.

“We have no space to speak of the meeting of the mission proper. It was held at Mr. Williamson’s house during the evenings. Nearly all its members were present,—a delightful reunion it was to them and us,—and many questions of serious interest were amply discussed.

“We dare not trust our pen to write about these noble men and women as we would. The results of their labors abundantly testify for them, and their record is on high. May they receive an hundredfold for their work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”