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 Carrie_r 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:--
"'Morning is coming! Morning is coming!
Wake up! Wake up! Come to sing! Come to pray!'
"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."