Read Ebook: Among the Sioux: A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas by Creswell R J Robert J

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The Pond Brothers.--Great Revival.--Conversions.--Galena.--Rum-seller Decision.--Westward.--Fort Snelling.--Man of-the-Sky.--Log Cabin.--Dr. Williamson.--Ripley.--Lane Seminary.--St. Peters Church.--Dr. Riggs.--New England Mary.--Lac-qui-Parle.

The Lake-that-Speaks.--Indian Church.--Adobe Edifice.--First School.--Mission Home.--Encouragements.--Discouragements.--Kaposia.--New Treaty.--Yellow Medicine.--Bitter Winter.--Hazlewood.--Traverse des Sioux.--Robert Hopkins.--Marriage.--Death.--M. N. Adams, Oak Grove.-- J. P. Williamson, D.D.

Prisoners in Chains.--Executions.--Pentecost in Prison.--Three Hundred Baptisms.--Church Organized.--Sacramental Supper.--Prison Camp.--John P. Williamson.--One Hundred Converts.--Davenport.--Release.--Niobrara. --Pilgrim Church.

PART ONE.

SOWING AND REAPING.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing Precious Seed, Shall doubtless come again With rejoicing, Bringing his sheaves.

It was 1834. A lovely day--the opening of the merry month of May!

The Warrior, a Mississippi steamer, glided out of Fever River, at Galena, Illinois, and turned its prow up the Mississippi. Its destination was the mouth of the St. Peters--now Minnesota River--five hundred miles to the north--the port of entry to the then unknown land of the Upper Mississippi.

The passengers formed a motley group; officers, soldiers, fur-traders, adventurers, and two young men from New England. These latter were two brothers, Samuel William and Gideon Hollister Pond, from Washington, Connecticut. At this time, Samuel the elder of the two, was twenty-six years of age and in form, tall and very slender as he continued through life. Gideon, the younger and more robust brother was not quite twenty-four, more than six feet in height, strong and active, a specimen of well developed manhood. With their clear blue eyes, and their tall, fully developed forms, they must have attracted marked attention even among that band of brawny frontiersmen.

In 1831 a gracious revival had occurred in their native village of Washington. It was so marked in its character, and permanent in its results, that it formed an epoch in the history of that region and is still spoken of as "the great revival". For months, during the busiest season of the year, crowded sunrise prayer-meetings were held daily and were well attended by an agricultural population, busily engaged every day in the pressing toil of the harvest and the hayfields. Scores were converted and enrolled themselves as soldiers of the cross.

Among these were the two Pond brothers. This was, in reality with them, the beginning of a new life. From this point in their lives, the inspiring motive, with both these brothers, was a spirit of intense loyalty to their new Master and a burning love for the souls of their fellowmen. Picked by the Holy Spirit out of more than one hundred converts for special service for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Pond brothers resolutely determined to choose a field of very hard service, one to which no others desired to go. In the search for such a field, Samuel the elder brother, journeyed from New Haven to Galena, Illinois, and spent the autumn and winter of 1833-34 in his explorations. He visited Chicago, then a struggling village of a few hundred inhabitants and other embryo towns and cities. He also saw the Winnebago Indians and the Pottawatomies, but he was not led to choose a field of labor amongst any of these.

A strange Providence finally pointed the way to Mr. Pond. In his efforts to reform a rumseller at Galena, he gained much information concerning the Sioux Indians, whose territory the rumseller had traversed on his way from the Red River country from which he had come quite recently. He represented the Sioux Indians as vile, degraded, ignorant, superstitious and wholly given up to evil.

This man's description of the terrible condition of the Sioux Indians in those times was fairly accurate. Those wild, roving and utterly neglected Indians were proper subjects for Christian effort and promised to furnish the opportunities for self-denying and self-sacrificing labors for which the brothers were seeking.

Mr. Pond at once recognized this peculiar call as from God. After prayerful deliberation, Samuel determined to write to his brother Gideon, inviting the latter to join him early the following spring, and undertake with him an independent mission to the Sioux.

He wrote to Gideon:--"I have finally found the field of service for which we have long been seeking. It lies in the regions round about Fort Snelling. It is among the savage Sioux of those far northern plains. They are an ignorant, savage and degraded people. It is said to be a very cold, dreary, storm-swept region. But we are not seeking a soft spot to rest in or easy service. So come on."

Despite strong, almost bitter opposition from friends and kinsmen, Gideon accepted and began his preparations for life among the Indians, and in March, 1834, he bade farewell to his friends and kindred and began his journey westward.

They expected to go among roving tribes, to have no permanent abiding place and to subsist as those wild and savage tribes subsisted. Their plan was a simple and feasible one, as they proved by experience, but one which required large stores of faith and fortitude every step of the way. They knew, also, that outside of a narrow circle of personal friends, none knew anything of this mission to the Sioux, or felt the slightest interest in its success or failure. But undismayed they pressed on.

The scenery of the Upper Mississippi is still pleasing to those eyes, which behold it, clothed in its springtime robes of beauty. In 1834, this scenery shone forth in all the primeval glory of "nature unmarred by the hand of man."

As the steamer Warrior moved steadily on its way up the Mississippi, the rich May verdure, through which they passed, appeared strikingly beautiful to the two brothers, who then beheld it for the first time. It was a most delightful journey and ended on the sixth day of May, at the dock at old Fort Snelling.

This was then our extreme outpost of frontier civilization. It had been established in 1819, as our front-guard against the British and Indians of the Northwest. It was located on the high plateau, lying between the Mississippi and the Minnesota rivers, and it was then the only important place within the limits of the present state of Minnesota.

While still on board the Warrior, the brothers received a visit and a warm welcome from the Rev. William T. Boutell, a missionary of the American Board to the Ojibways at Leach Lake, Minnesota. He was greatly rejoiced to meet "these dear brethren, who, from love to Christ and for the poor red man, had come alone to this long-neglected field."

A little later they stepped ashore, found themselves in savage environments and face to face with the grave problems they had come so far to solve. They were men extremely well fitted, mentally and physically, naturally and by training for the toils and privations of the life upon which they had now entered. Sent, not by man but by the Lord; appointed, not by any human authority but by the great Jehovah; without salary or any prospects of worldly emoluments, unknown, unheralded, those humble but heroic men began, in dead earnest, their grand life-work. Their mission and commission was to conquer that savage tribe of fierce, prairie warriors, by the two-edged sword of the spirit of the living God and to mold them aright, by the power of the Gospel of His Son. And God was with them as they took up their weapons in this glorious warfare.

They speedily found favor with the military authorities, and with one of the most prominent chieftains of that time and region--Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky.

The former gave them full authority to prosecute their mission among the Indians; the latter cordially invited them to establish their residence at his village on the shore of Lake Calhoun.

The present site of Minneapolis was then simply a vast, wind-swept prairie, uninhabited by white men. A single soldier on guard at the old government sawmill at St. Anthony Falls was the only representative of the Anglo-Saxons, where now dwell hundreds of thousands of white men of various nationalities.

Busy, bustling, beautiful Minneapolis, with its elegant homes; its commodious churches; its great University--with its four thousand students--; its well-equipped schools--with their forty-two thousand pupils--; its great business blocks; its massive mills; its humming factories; its broad avenues; its pleasant parks; its population of a quarter of a million of souls; all this had not then even been as much as dreamed of.

Four miles west of St. Anthony Falls, lies Lake Calhoun, and a short distance to the south is Lake Harriet, . The intervening space was covered by a grove of majestic oaks.

Here, in 1834, was an Indian village of five hundred Sioux. Their habitations were teepees, made of tamarack bark or of skins of wild beasts. Their burial ground covered a part of lovely Lakewood, the favorite cemetery of the city of Minneapolis. This band recognized Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky as their chief, whom they both respected and loved. He was then about forty years of age. He was an intelligent man, of an amiable disposition and friendly to the approach of Civilization. Here, under the auspices of this famous chieftain, they erected for themselves a snug, little home, near the junction of Thirty-fifth street and Irving Avenue South, Minneapolis.

It was built of large oak logs. The dimensions were twelve feet by sixteen and eight feet high. Straight tamarack poles formed the timbers of the roof. The roof itself was the bark of trees, fastened with strings of the inner bark of the basswood.

A partition of small logs divided the house into two rooms. The ceiling was of slabs from the old government sawmill at St. Anthony Falls. The door was made of boards, split from a tree with an axe, and had wooden hinges and fastenings and was locked by pulling in the latch-string. The single window was the gift of the kind-hearted Major Taliaferro, the United States Indian agent at Fort Snelling. The cash cost of the whole was one shilling, New York currency, for nails, used about the door. The formal opening was the reading of a portion of Scripture and prayer. The banquet consisted of mussels from the Lake, flour and water. This cabin was the first house erected within the present limits of Minneapolis; it was the home of the first citizen settlers of Minnesota and was the first house used as a school-room and for divine worship in the state. It was a noble testimony to the faith, zeal and courage of its builders. Here these consecrated brothers inaugurated their great work. In 1839 it was torn down for materials with which to construct breastworks for the defense of the Sioux, after the bloody battle of Rum River, against their feudal foes, the Ojibways. Here amid such lovely natural surroundings were the very beginnings of this mighty enterprise.

The first lesson was given early in May, by Samuel Pond to Big Thunder chieftain of the Kaposia band, whose teepees were scattered over the bluffs, where now stands the city of St. Paul. His chief soldier was Big Iron. His son was Little Crow, who became famous or rather infamous, as the leader against the whites in the terrible tragedy of '62. Later in May the second lesson was taught by Gideon Pond to members of the Lake Calhoun band. Both lessons were in the useful and civilizing art of plowing and were the first in that grand series of lessons, covering more than seventy years, and by which the Sioux nation have been lifted from savagery to civilization.

While God was preparing the Pond brothers in the hill country of Connecticut for their peculiar life-work, and opening up the way for them to engage in it, He also had in training in the school of His Providences, in Massachusetts and Ohio, fitting helpers for them in this great enterprise. In the early 30's, at Ripley, Ohio, Dr. Thomas S. Williamson and Mrs. Margaret Poage Williamson, a young husband and wife, were most happily located, in the practice of his profession and in the upbuilding of a happy Christian home. To this young couple the future seemed full of promise and permanent prosperity. Children were born to them; they were prosperous and an honorable name was being secured through the faithful discharge of the duties of his most noble profession and of Christian citizenship. They regarded themselves as happily located for life.

The mission call to Dr. and Mrs. Williamson was emphasized by the messenger of death. When the missionary call first came to them, they excused themselves on account of their children. God removed the seeming obstacles, one by one. The little ones were called to the arms of Jesus. "A great trial!" A great blessing also. The way was thus cleared from a life of luxury and ease in Ohio to one of great denial and self sacrifice on mission fields. The bereaved parents recognized this call as from God, and by faith, both father and mother were enabled to say, "Here are we; send us."

"This decision," says an intimate friend, "neither of them after for one moment regretted; neither did they doubt that they were called of God to this great work, nor did they fear that their life-work would prove a failure." With characteristic devotion and energy, Dr. Williamson put aside a lucrative practice, and at once, entered on a course of preparation for his new work for which his previous life and training had already given him great fitness.

In 1833, he put himself under the care of the Presbytery of Chillicothe, removed with his family to Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, and entered Lane Seminary. While the Pond brothers in their log cabin at Lake Calhoun were studying the Sioux language, Dr. Williamson was completing his theological course on the banks of the beautiful river. He was ordained to the office of the gospel ministry in 1834. And in May, 1835, he landed at Fort Snelling with another band of missionaries. He was accompanied by his quiet, lovely, faithful wife, Margaret, and one child, his wife's sister, Sarah Poage, afterwards Mrs. Gideon H. Pond, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander G. Huggins and two children. Mr. Huggins came as a teacher and farmer. During a stay of a few weeks here, Dr. Williamson presided at the organization of the first Protestant congregation in Minnesota, which was called the Presbyterian church of St. Peters. It consisted of officers, soldiers, fur-traders, and members of the mission families--twenty-one in all; seven of whom were received on confession of faith. It was organized at Fort Snelling, June 11, 1835, and still exists as the First Presbyterian church of Minneapolis, with more than five hundred members.

Early in July, Dr. Williamson pushed on in the face of grave difficulties, two hundred miles to the west, to the shores of Lac-qui-Parle, the Lake-that-speaks. Here they were cordially welcomed by Joseph Renville, that famous Brois Brule trader, the half-breed chief who ruled that region for many years, by force of his superior education and native abilities, and who ever was a strong and faithful friend of the missionaries. He gave them a temporary home and was helpful in many ways. Well did the Lord repay him for his kindness to His servants. His wife became the first full-blood Sioux convert to the Christian faith, and his youngest son, John Baptiste Renville, then a little lad, became the first native Presbyterian minister, one of the acknowledged leaders of his people.

June, 1837, another pair of noble ones joined the ranks of the workers by the Lakeside. These were the Rev. Stephen Return Riggs and his sweet New England Mary, he was a native of the beautiful valley of the Ohio; she was born amid the green hills of Massachusetts. His father was a Presbyterian elder of Steubenville, Ohio; her mother was a daughter of New England. She herself was a pupil of the cultured and sainted Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke.

They were indeed choice spirits, well-fitted by nature and by training for a place in that heroic band, which God was then gathering together on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet and Lac-qui-Parle, for the conquest of the fiercest tribe of prairie warriors that ever roamed over the beautiful plains of the New Northwest. He was a scholar and a linguist; courageous, energetic, firm, diplomatic; she was cultured, gentle, tactful, and withal, both were intensely spiritual and deeply devoted to the glorious work of soul-winning. Both had been trained as missionaries, with China as a prospective field of service. Step by step in the Providence of God, they were drawn together as life companions and then turned from the Orient to the Western plains.

During these years of beginnings, Dr. Williamson formed the acquaintance of Stephen R. Riggs, then a young man, which culminated in a life-long alliance of love and service. During his seminary course, Mr. Riggs received a letter from his missionary friend, to which he afterwards referred thus: "It seems to me now, strange that he should have indicated in that letter the possible line of work open to me, which has been so closely followed. I remember especially the prominence he gave to the thought that the Bible should be translated into the language of the Dakotas. Men do sometimes yet write as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. That letter decided my going westward rather than to China." It was a lovely day, the first of June, when this young bride and groom arrived at Fort Snelling. Though it was their honeymoon, they did not linger long in the romantic haunts of Minnehaha and the Lakes; but pressed on to Lac-qui-Parle and joined hands with the toilers there in their mighty work of laying foundations broad and deep in the wilderness, like the coral workers in the ocean depths, out of sight of man.

What a glorious trio of mission family bands were then gathered on Minnesota's lovely plains, on the shores of those beautiful lakes! Pond, Williamson, Riggs. Names that will never be forgotten while a Sioux Christian exists in earth or glory.

In 1836, within one year from the arrival of Dr. Williamson and his missionary party at Lac-qui-Parle, a church was organized, with six native members, which in 1837, consisted of seven Dakotas, besides half-breeds and whites, and, within five years, had enrolled forty-nine native communicants. Of this congregation Alexander G. Huggins and Joseph Renville were the ruling elders.

An adobe church edifice was erected in 1841, which for eighteen years met the wants of this people. In its belfry was hung the first church bell that ever rang out over the prairies of Minnesota, the sweet call to the worship of the Savior of the human race. The services of the church were usually held in the native language. The hymns were sung to French tunes, which were then the most popular. At the beginning, translations from the French of a portion of Scripture were read and some explanatory remarks were made by Joseph Renville.

The first school for teaching Indians to read and write in the Dakota language, was opened in December, 1835, at Lac-qui-Parle, in a conical Dakota tent, twenty feet in height and the same in diameter. At first the men objected to being taught for various frivolous reasons, but they were persuaded to make the effort. The school apparatus was primitive and mainly extemporized on the spot. Progress was slow; the attendance small and irregular, but in the course of three months, they were able to write to each other on birch bark. Those who learned to read and write the language properly, soon became interested in the gospel. The first five men, who were gathered into the church, were pupils of this first school. Of the next twenty, three were pupils and fourteen were the kindred of its pupils. Among their descendants were three Dakota pastors and many of the most faithful and fruitful communicants.

One large log-house of five rooms, within the Renville stockade, furnished a home for the three mission families of Dr. Williamson, Rev. Stephen R. Riggs and Gideon H. Pond. One room was both church and school room for years. Under this roof the missionaries met frequently for conference, study and translation of the word of God. Here, September 30, 1844, the original Dakota Presbytery was organized.

For several years most of the members of this congregation were women. Once in the new and then unfinished church edifice, more than one hundred Indian men were gathered. When urged to accept Christ and become members of this church, they replied that the church was made up of squaws. Did the missionaries suppose the braves would follow the lead of squaws? Ugh! Ugh!!

For the first seven years, at Lac-qui-Parle, mission work was prosecuted, with marked success in spite of many grave hindrances. But for the four years following--1842-46--the work was seriously retarded. The crops failed and the savages charged their misfortunes to the missionaries. They became very ugly, and began a series of petty yet bitter persecutions against the Christian Indians and the missionaries. The children were forbidden to attend school; the women who favored the church had their blankets cut to pieces and were shut away from contact with the mission. The cattle and horses of the mission were killed, and for a season the Lord's work was stayed at Lac-qui-Parle. Discouraged, but not dismayed His servants were watchful for other opportunities of helpful service.

In 1846, the site of the present, prosperous city of St. Paul, was occupied by a few shanties, owned by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort," sellers of rum to the soldiers and the Indians. Nearby, scattered over the bluffs, were the teepees of Little Crow's band, forming the Sioux village of Kaposia. In 1846, Little Crow, their belligerent chieftain, was shot by his own brother, in a drunken revel. He survived the wound, but apparently alarmed at the influence of these modern harpies over himself and his people, he visited Fort Snelling and begged a missionary for his village. The United States agent stationed there forwarded this petition to Lac-qui-Parle with the suggestion that Dr. Williamson be transferred to Kaposia. The invitation was accepted by the doctor, so in November, 1846, he became a resident of Kaposia . To this new station, he carried the same energy, hopefulness and devotion, he had shown at the beginning. Here he remained six years, serving not only the Indians of Little Crow's band, but also doing great good to the white settlers, who were then gathering around the future Capital City of Minnesota. Here in 1848, he organized an Indian church of eight members. It increased to fifteen members, in 1851, when the Indians were removed.

No sooner did the Indians move than Dr. Williamson followed them and established a new station at Yellow Medicine, on the West bank of the Minnesota river and three miles above the mouth of the Yellow Medicine river. The first winter there, was a fight for life. The house was unfinished; a very severe winter set in unusually early, the snows were deep and the drifts terrible; the supply-teams were snowed in; the horses perished, the provisions were abandoned to the wolves and the drivers reached home in a half-frozen condition. But God cared for His servants. In this emergency, the Rev. M. N. Adams, of Lac-qui-Parle, performed a most heroic act. In mid-winter, with the thermometer many degrees below zero, he hauled flour and other provisions for the missionaries, on a hand sled, from Lac-qui-Parle to Yellow Medicine, a distance of thirty-two miles. The fish gathered in shoals, an unusual occurrence, near the mission and both the Indians and the missionaries lived through that terrible winter. Here, an Indian church of seventeen members was organized by Dr. Williamson. It increased to a membership of thirty in the next decade.

In March, 1854, the mission houses at Lac-qui-Parle were destroyed by fire. A consolidation of the mission forces was soon after effected. Dr. Riggs and other helpers were transferred from Lac-qui-Parle to a point two miles distant from Yellow Medicine and called Omehoo . A comfortable mission home was erected. The native Christians removed from Lac-qui-Parle and re-established their homes at Hazelwood. A boarding school was soon opened at this point by Rev. M. N. Adams. A neat chapel was also erected. A church of thirty members was organized by Mr. Riggs. It grew to a membership of forty-five before the massacre. These were mainly from the the Lac-qui-Parle church which might be called the mother of all the Dakota churches.

There were now gathered around the mission stations, quite a community of young men, who had to a great extent, become civilized. With civilization came new wants--pantaloons and coats and hats. There was power also in oxen and wagons and brick-houses. The white man's axe and plow and hoe had been introduced and the red man was learning to use them. So the external civilization went on.

But the great and prominent force was in the underlying education and especially in the vitalizing and renewing power of Christian truth. So far as the inner life was changed, civilized habits became permanent; otherwise they were shadows. Evangelization was working out civilization. It is doing its permanently blessed work even yet.

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