It was 1905. From the heights of Sisseton, South Dakota, another
striking scene met the eye. The great triangular Sisseton reserve of
one million acres no longer exists. Three hundred thousand of its
choicest acres are now held in severalty by the fifteen hundred members
of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Band of the Dakotas--the "Leaf Dwellers"
of the plains. Their homes, their schools, their churches cover the
prairies. That spire pointing heavenward rises from Good Will Church, a
commodious, well-furnished edifice, with windows of stained glass.
Within its walls, there worship on the Sabbath, scores of dusky
Presbyterian Christians. The pastor, the Rev. Charles Crawford, in
whose veins there flows the mingled blood of the shrewd Scotch fur
trader and the savage Sioux, lives in that comfortable farm house a few
rods distant. He has a pastorate that many a white minister might
covet. Miles to the west, still stands in its grassy cove on the
coteaux of the prairie, the Church of the Ascension, referring not to
the ascension of our Lord, but to "the going up" of the prairies. On
the hill above it, is the cozy home of the pastor emeritus, the Rev.
John Baptiste Renville, whose pastorate, in point of continuous
service, has been the longest in the two Dakotas. After a long lifetime
of faithful ministrations to the people of his own charge, enfeebled by
age and disease, he sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, Dec. 19, 1904.
Doubtless his is a starry crown, richly gemmed, in token of the
multitude of the souls of his fellow tribesmen, led to the Savior by
his tender, faithful ministry of a life-time in their midst. Round
about these two churches cluster half a dozen other congregations,
worshipping in comfortable church homes. These form only a part of the
PRESBYTERY OF DAKOTA.
The original Presbytery of Dakota was organized September 30, 1844, at
the mission Home of Dr. Williamson, at Lac-qui-Parle, Minnesota. It was
organized, by the missionaries, among the Dakotas, for the furtherance
of their peculiar work. The charter members were three ministers, the
Rev. Samuel W. Pond, Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M.D., and Rev. Stephen
R. Riggs and one elder Alexander G. Huggins. It was an independent
presbytery, and, for fourteen years, was not connected with any Synod.
It was a lone presbytery, in a vast region, now covered by a dozen
Synods and scores of presbyteries. For many years, the white and Indian
churches that were organized in Minnesota, were united in this
presbytery and wrought harmoniously together. In 1858, the General
Assembly of Presbyterian churches (N.S.) invited this independent
presbytery to unite with her two Minnesota Presbyteries and form the
Synod of Minnesota which was accomplished.
Solely on account of the barrier of the language, the missionaries and
churches among the Dakotas, petitioned the Synod of Minnesota to
organize them into a separate presbytery. And the Synod so ordered and
it was so done, September 30, 1867, just twenty-three years after the
first organization at Lac-qui-Parle. By this order, the limits of the
Presbytery of Dakota became the churches and ministers among the Dakota
Indians. It is the only Presbytery in existence, without any
geographical boundaries. At present, there are seventeen ordained
Indian ministers upon the roll of this presbytery--workmen of whom
neither they themselves nor any others have any cause to be ashamed.
There are, also, under its care, twenty-eight well-organized churches,
aggregating more than fifteen hundred communicants, and eight hundred
Sabbath-School members. The contributions of these fifteen hundred
Dakota Presbyterians in 1904, exceeded the sum of six thousand dollars
for all religious purposes.
Among the "Dispersed" of the Sioux nation, in Manitoba, there is one
organized Presbyterian church of twenty-five communicant members. It is
the church of Beulah and is in connection with the Presbyterian church
of Canada.
In all, twenty-one Sioux Indians have been ordained to the Presbyterian
ministry, by the Presbytery of Dakota. Of these, Artemas Ehnamane,
Titus Icaduze, Joseph Iron Door, and John Baptiste Renville have all
passed on, from the beautiful prairies of the Dakotas, to the celestial
plains of glory. And how warm must have been their greeting as they
passed through the pearly gates of the city, whose builder and maker is
God. Gideon Pond, Dr. Williamson, Samuel W. Pond, Stephen R. Riggs and
Robert Hopkins, Margaret Williamson, Mary Riggs and Aunt Jane and other
faithful missionaries and thousands of redeemed Dakotas, welcomed them,
with glad hozannas, and sweet are the songs they sing as they walk
together, under the trees, on the banks of the River of Life.
The Dakota Congregational association has under its care thirteen
organized churches, with more than one thousand communicants and one
thousand Sabbath school members. The prominent leaders of its work are
Alfred L. Riggs D.D., of Santee, Nebraska, and Rev. Thomas L. Riggs of
Oahe, South Dakota. They are the worthy sons of their famous father,
Stephen R. Riggs, D.D., one of the heroic pioneers in the Dakota work.
The native ministers are Francis Frazier, Edwin Phelps, James Garvie,
James Wakutamani and Elias Gilbert. This association is a mighty factor
in God's plan, for the upbuilding of the Dakotas, in the things that
are noble and of good report.
The Presbyterian and Congregationalists have wrought together, side by
side, for seventy years, in this glorious enterprise. Under their
auspices, forty-four churches, many schools and other beneficent
organizations are in efficient operation among these former savage
dwellers on these plains.
Seven other natives have, also, been ordained to the priesthood in the
Episcopal Church, making thirty-three in all, who have served their
fellow-tribesmen in the high and holy office of the Christian ministry.
There is not a single ordained Romish priest among the Sioux Indians.
"Watchman, tell us of the night,
What its signs of promise are."
Seventy years ago, among the twenty-five thousand Sioux Indians in the
United States, there was not a single church, not even one professing
Christian.
They were all polytheistic pagans. There were signs of pagan worship
about every teepee. It might be the medicine sack tied behind the
conical wigwam, or a yard of broadcloth, floating from the top of a
flagpole as a sacrifice to some deity. There was more or less
idol-worship in all their gatherings. One of the simplest forms was the
holding of a well-filled pipe at arm's length, with the mouth-piece
upward, while the performers said, "O Lord, take a smoke and have mercy
on me." In the feasts and dances, the forms were more elaborate. The
Sun-dance continued for days of fasting and sacrificial work by the
participants.
Now these signs of pagan worship have almost entirely disappeared among
the Dakotas. These facts speak volumes--one in eight of the Dakotas is
a Presbyterian. There are two-thirds as many Congregationalists, twice
as many Episcopalians and twice as many Catholics. More than one-half
of the Dakotas have been baptized in the name of the Triune God and
thousands of them are professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now what has wrought this great change among the Dakotas? It was the
power of the Holy Spirit of the Lord, working through the means of
grace as employed and applied by these faithful missionaries. They
renounced heathenism, not because the government so ordered, but
because they found that there was no God like Jehovah and Jehovah said,
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Even those who have not
accepted Christ have generally cast away their idols.
Now do missions pay? Do Indian missions pay? Let the grand work among
the Dakotas and its glorious results be an all sufficient answer. It
does pay a thousand fold.
Hear the Christian tribesmen sing the Hymn of the Sioux.
Lift aloft the starry banner,
Let it wave o'er land and sea;
Shout aloud and sing hosanna!
Praise the Lord, who set us free!
Here we stand amazed and wonder
Such a happy change to see;
The bonds of sin are burst asunder!
Praise the Lord who set us free.
Long we lay in darkness pining,
Not a ray of hope had we!
Now the Gospel Sun is shining:
Praise the Lord who set us free.
In one loud and joyful chorus,
Heart and soul now join will we;
Salvation's Sun is shining o'er us!
Praise the Lord who set us free.
_PART II._
SOME SIOUX STORIETTES
_Part II_
_CONTENTS_
SOME SIOUX STORIETTES.
I. The Dead Papoose.--The Maiden's Feast.
II. Grand Mother Pond.--Oak Grove Mission.
III. Anpetuzapawin.--A Legend of St Anthony Falls.
IV. Aunt Jane--the Red Song Woman.
V. Artemas--the Warrior-Preacher.
VI. Two Famous Missions--Lake Harriet and Prairieville.
VII. The Prince of Indian Preachers.
VIII. An Indian Patriarch.
IX. John--the Beloved of the Sioux Nation.
X. The Martyrs of Old St. Joe.
THE DEAD PAPOOSE
The Indian mother, when her child dies, does not believe that swift
angels bear it into the glorious sunshine of the spirit-land; but she
has a beautiful dream to solace her bereavement. The cruel empty
places, which everywhere meet the eye of the weeping white mother, are
unknown to her, for to her tender fancy a little spirit-child fills
them.
It is not a rare sight to see a pair of elaborate tiny moccasins above
a little Indian grave. A mother's fingers have embroidered them, a
mother's hand has hung them there, to help the baby's feet over the
long rough road that stretches between his father's wigwam and the
Great Chief's happy hunting grounds.
Indians believe that a baby's spirit cannot reach the spirit-land until
the child, if living, would have been old enough and strong enough to
walk. Until that time the little spirit hovers about its mother. And
often it grows tired--oh so very tired! So the tender mother carries a
papoose's cradle on her back that the baby spirit may ride and rest
when it will. The cradle is filled with the softest feathers, for the
spirit rests more comfortably upon soft things--hard things bruise
it--and all the papoose's old toys dangle from the crib, for the dead
papoose may love to play even as the living papoose did.
THE MAIDENS' FEAST
Of the many peculiar customs of the Indians in the long ago, perhaps
the most unique was the annual "feast of Maidens." One was given at
Fort Ellis, Manitoba, some thirty years ago, in a natural amphitheatre,
surrounded by groves, fully one thousand feet above the Assiniboine
River.
It was observed at a reunion of the Sioux, and of the Assiniboines and
the Crees, three friendly tribes.
In his "Indian Boyhood," that brilliant Sioux author, Dr. Charles
Alexander Eastman, great-grandson of Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, that
potential friend of the missionaries in pioneer days at Lake Calhoun,
graphically describes it thus:--
"One bright summer morning, while we were still at our meal of jerked
buffalo meat, we heard the herald of the Wahpeton band upon his calico
pony as he rode round our circle.
"White Eagle's daughter, the maiden Red Star, invites all the maidens
of all the tribes to come and partake of her feast. It will be in the
Wahpeton Camp, before the sun reaches the middle of the sky. All pure
maidens are invited. Red Star, also, invites the young men to be
present, to see that no unworthy maiden should join in the feast."
The herald soon completed the rounds of the different camps, and it was
not long before the girls began to gather. It was regarded as a
semi-sacred feast.
It would be desecration for any to attend, who was not perfectly
virtuous. Hence it was regarded as an opportune time for the young men
to satisfy themselves as to who were the virtuous maids of the tribe.
There were apt to be surprises before the end of the day. Any young man
was permitted to challenge any maiden, whom he knew to be untrue. But
woe to him, who could not prove his case. It meant little short of
death to the man, who endeavored to disgrace a woman without cause.
From the various camps, the girls came singly or in groups, dressed in
bright colored calicoes or in heavily fringed and beaded buckskin.
Their smooth cheeks and the center of their glossy hair was touched
with vermillion. All brought with them wooden basins to eat from. Some
who came from a considerable distance were mounted upon ponies; a few
for company or novelty's sake rode double.
The maidens' circle was formed about a cone-shaped rock, which stood
upon its base. This was painted red. Beside it, two new arrows were
lightly stuck into the ground. This is a sort of altar, to which each
maiden comes before taking her assigned place in the circle, and
lightly touches first the stone and then the arrows. By this oath, she
declares her purity. Whenever a girl approaches the altar there is a
stir among the spectators and sometimes a rude youth would call out;
"Take care! you will overturn the rock or pull out the arrows!"
Immediately behind the maidens' circle is the chaperons' circle. This
second circle is almost as interesting to look at as the inner one.
The old women watched every movement of their respective charges with
the utmost concern. There was never a more gorgeous assembly of its
kind than this one. The day was perfect. The Crees, displaying their
characteristic horsemanship, came in groups; the Assiniboines with
their curious pompadour well covered with red paint. The various bands
of Sioux all carefully observed the traditional peculiarities of dress
and behavior.
The whole population of the region had assembled and the maidens came
shyly into the circle. During the simple preparatory rites, there was a
stir of excitement among a group of Wahpeton Sioux young men. All the
maidens glanced nervously toward the scene of the disturbance. Soon a
tall youth emerged from the throng of spectators and advanced toward
the circle. With a steady step, he passed by the chaperons, and
approached the maidens' circle.
At last, he stopped behind a pretty Assiniboine maiden of good family
and said:
"I am sorry, but according to custom, you should not be here."
The girl arose in confusion, but she soon recovered her control.
"What do you mean?" she demanded indignantly. "Three times you have
come to court me, but each time I have refused to listen to you. I have
turned my back upon you. Twice I was with Washtinna. She can tell the
people that this is true. The third time I had gone for water when you
intercepted me and begged me to stop and listen. I refused because I
did not know you. My chaperon Makatopawee knows I was gone but a few
minutes. I never saw you anywhere else."
The young man was unable to answer this unmistakable statement of facts
and it became apparent that he had sought to revenge himself for her
repulse.
"Woo! Woo! Carry him out!" was the order of the Chief of the Indian
police, and the audacious youth was hurried away into the nearest
ravine to be chastised.
The young woman who had thus established her good name returned to the
circle and the feast was served. The "maidens' song" was sung, and four
times they danced in a ring around the altar.
Each maid, as she departed, took her oath to remain pure until she
should meet her husband.
II
GRANDMOTHER POND.
Grandmother Pond is one of the rarest spirits, one of the loveliest
characters in Minnesota. She is the last living link between the past
and the present--between that heroic band of pioneer missionaries who
came to Minnesota prior to 1844, and those who joined the ranks of this
glorious missionary service in more recent years. Her life reads like a
romance.
Agnes Carson Johnson Pond is a native of Ohio--born at Greenfield in
1825. She was the daughter of William Johnson, a physician and surgeon
of Chillicothe, Ohio. By the death of her father she was left an orphan
at five years of age. Her mother married a worthy minister of the
Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, Rev. John McDill. She had
superior educational and social advantages and made good use of all her
opportunities. She was educated at a seminary at South Hanover,
Indiana. There she met her future husband, Robert Hopkins. He, as well
as she, was in training for service on mission fields. They were
married in 1843. He had already been appointed as a missionary teacher
for the Sioux Indians. The young wife was compelled to make her bridal
tour in the company of strangers, by boat and stage and private
conveyance from Ohio to the then unknown land of the upper Mississippi.
It required thirty days then, instead of thirty hours, as now, to pass
from Ohio to the Falls of St. Anthony. The bride-groom drove his own
team from Galena, Illinois, to Fort Snelling.
[Illustration: GRANDMOTHER POND,
The Last Living Member of the Heroic Band of Pioneer
Missionaries to the Dakotas, in the 81st Year of Her
Age.]
HER HUSBAND DROWNED.
Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins were first stationed at Lac-qui-Parle. After one
year they were transferred to Traverse des Sioux, near the present site
of St. Peter, Minnesota. Here they gave seven years of the most
faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing toil for the lost and degraded
savages around them. They built a humble home and established and
maintained a mission school. Five children were born to them there. Two
of these were early called to the celestial home on high. Their life at
Traverse des Sioux was a strenuous, isolated, but a fruitful and happy
one. It was destined, however, to a speedy and tragic end.
Early in the morning of July 4, 1851, Mr. Hopkins entered the river for
a bath. He was never seen alive again. A treacherous swirl in the water
at that point suddenly carried him to his death. His wife waited long
the carefully prepared morning meal, but her beloved came not again. He
went up through the great flood of waters from arduous service on the
banks of the beautiful Minnesota to his glorious rewards on the banks
of the still more beautiful River of Life.
Broken-hearted, the young wife, only twenty-six years of age, laid him
to rest on the banks of the river whose treacherous waves had robbed
her of her life companion. Sadly she closed her home in Minnesota and,
with her three little fatherless children, returned to her old home in
far-distant Ohio.
Rev. Robert Hopkins enjoyed the full confidence of his colleagues and
was greatly beloved by the Indians. His untimely death was an
irreparable loss to the mission work among the Sioux.
SECOND BRIDAL TOUR TO THE WEST.
Shortly after the tragedy at Traverse des Sioux, Mrs. Sarah Poage Pond,
wife of Rev. Gideon H. Pond, died at Oak Grove Mission of consumption.
In 1854 Mr. Pond visited Ohio, where he and Mrs. Hopkins were united in
marriage. She made a second bridal tour from Ohio to Minnesota, and
toiled by his side till his death in 1878.
In every relation in life in which she has been placed, Mrs. Pond has
excelled. While she long ago ceased from active service in mission
fields, she ever has been, and still is untiring in her efforts to do
good to all as she has opportunity. She is strong and vigorous at the
age of eighty. She still resides at the Oak Grove Mission house, her
home since 1857, universally beloved and regarded as the best woman in
the world by about one hundred descendants.
[Illustration: JOHN P. WILLIAMSON, D.D.,
Superintendent of Presbyterian Sioux Missions.
Forty-five years a missionary to the Sioux.]
[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY FALLS.]
OAK GROVE MISSION HOUSE.
This old land mark is located in Hennepin County, Minnesota, twelve
miles southwest of Minneapolis. Here in 1843, Gilbert H. Pond
established his headquarters as a missionary to the Sioux Indians. He
erected a large log building in which he resided, taught school and
preached the gospel. Here, in 1848, the Presbytery of Dakota convened,
and ordained Mr. Pond and Robert Hopkins to the Presbyterian ministry.
For many years it was the sole source of social, moral, and spiritual
light for a wide region for both races. It was also the favorite
gathering place of the Indians for sport. In 1852, a great game of ball
was played here. Good Road and Grey Iron joined their followers with
Cloudman's band of Lake Calhoun in opposition to Little Six and his
band from Shakopay. Two hundred and fifty men and boys participated in
the game, while two hundred and fifty others were deeply interested
spectators. The game lasted for three days and was won by Cloudman and
his allies. Forty-six hundred dollars in ponies, blankets and other
such property changed hands on the results.
In 1856, the present commodious residence was erected of brick
manufactured on the premises. For twenty-one years it was the residence
of Rev. Gideon Hollister Pond. He was for twenty years, also, pastor of
the white Presbyterian church of Oak Grove. He was a member of the
first territorial legislature; the editor of the "The Dakota Friend"
the first religious journal published in the state, and he was also the
first preacher of the gospel in the city of Minneapolis.
In whatever position he was placed in life, he ever proved himself to
be a wise, conscientious, consecrated Christian gentleman. None knew
him, but to love him; none knew him, but to praise. He was born in
Connecticut, June thirtieth, 1810, and on the twentieth of January,
1878, he passed from his Oak Grove Mission Home through the gates of
the celestial city, to go no more out. They laid him to rest in the
midst of the people, whom he had loved and served so well for four and
forty years and by whom he was universally beloved and admired. None
were more sincere in their demonstrations of sorrow than the little
company of Dakotas to whom he had been a more than father.
III
ANPETUSAPAWIN
_A Legend of St. Anthony Falls_
Long ere the white man's bark had seen
These flower-decked prairies, fair and wide,
Long ere the white man's bark had been
Borne on the Mississippi's tide,
So long ago, Dakotas say,
Anpetusapawin was born,
Her eyes beheld these scenes so gay
First opening on life's rosy morn.
--S. W. Pond.
In the long ago, a young Indian brave espoused as his wife this Indian
maiden of whom the poet sings. With her he lived happily for a few
years, in the enjoyment of every comfort of which a savage life is
capable. To crown their happiness, they were blessed with two lovely
children on whom they doted. During this time, by a dint of activity
and perseverance in the chase, he became signalized in an eminent
degree as a hunter, having met with unrivaled success in the pursuit
and capture of the wild denizens of the forest. This circumstance
contributed to raise him high in the estimation of his fellow savages
and drew a crowd of admiring friends around. This operated as a spur to
his ambitions.
At length some of his newly acquired friends suggested to him the
propriety of taking another wife, as it would be impossible for one
woman to manage the affairs of his household and properly wait upon the
many guests his rising importance would call to visit him. They
intimated to him that in all probability he would soon be elevated to
the chieftainship. His vanity was fired by the suggestion. He yielded
readily and accepted a wife they had already selected for him.
After his second marriage, he sought to take his new wife home and
reconcile his first wife to the match in the most delicate manner
possible. To this end he returned to his first wife, as yet ignorant of
what had occurred, and endeavored, by dissimulation, to secure her
approval.
"You know," said he, "I can love no one as I love you; yet I see your
labors are too great for your powers of endurance. Your duties are
daily becoming more and more numerous and burdensome. This grieves me
sorely. But I know of only one remedy by which you can be relieved.
These considerations constrain me to take another wife. This wife shall
be under your control in every respect and ever second to you in my
affections." She listened to his narrative in painful anxiety and
endeavored to reclaim him from his wicked purpose, refuting all his
sophistry by expressions of her unaffected conjugal affection. He left
her to meditate. She became more industrious and treated him more
tenderly than before. She tried every means in her power to dissuade
him from the execution of his vile purpose. She pleaded all the
endearments of their former happy life, the regard he had for her
happiness and that of the offspring of their mutual love to prevail on
him to relinquish the idea of marrying another wife. He then informed
her of the fact of his marriage and stated that compliance on her part
would be actually necessary. She must receive the new wife into their
home. She was determined, however, not to be the passive dupe of his
duplicity. With her two children she returned to her parental teepee.
In the autumn she joined her friends and kinsmen in an expedition up
the Mississippi and spent the winter in hunting. In the springtime, as
they were returning, laden with peltries, she and her children occupied
a canoe by themselves. On nearing the Falls of St. Anthony she lingered
in the rear till the others had landed a little above the falls.
She then painted herself and children, paddled her canoe into the swift
current of the rapids and began chanting her death song, in which she
recounted her former happy life, with her husband, when she enjoyed his
undivided affection, and the wretchedness in which she was now involved
by his infidelity. Her friends, alarmed at her imminent peril, ran to
the shore and begged her to paddle out of the current before it was too
late, while her parents, rending their clothing and tearing their hair,
besought her to come to their arms of love; but all in vain. Her
wretchedness was complete and must terminate with her existence! She
continued her course till her canoe was borne headlong down the roaring
cataract, and it and the deserted, heartbroken wife and the beautiful
and innocent children, were dashed to pieces on the rocks below. No
traces of the canoe or its occupants were found. Her brothers avenged
her death by slaying the treacherous husband of the deserted wife.
They say that still that song is heard
Above the mighty torrent's roar,
When trees are by the night-wind stirred
And darkness broods on stream and shore.
IV
AUNT JANE
_The Red Song Woman_
Miss Jane Smith Williamson, the subject of this sketch, was one of the
famous missionary women in our land in the nineteenth century. She was
widely known among both whites and Indians as "Aunt Jane." The Dakotas
also called her "Red Song Woman." She was born at Fair Forest, South
Carolina, March 8, 1803. Through her father she was a lineal descendant
of the Rev. John Newton and Sir Isaac Newton. Her father was a
revolutionary soldier.
Her mother was Jane (Smith) Williamson. They believed that negroes had
souls and therefore treated the twenty-seven slaves they had inherited
like human beings. Her mother was fined in South Carolina, for teaching
her slaves to read the Bible. Consequently, in 1804, in her early
infancy, her parents emigrated to Adams county, Ohio, in order to be
able to free their slaves and teach them to read the Word of God and
write legibly.
The story of Aunt Jane's life naturally falls into three divisions.
I--PREPARATION FOR HER GREAT LIFE WORK.
This covered forty years. She grew up in an atmosphere of sincere and
deep piety and of devotion to Christian principles. Her early
educational advantages were necessarily limited, but she made the most
of them. She became very accurate in the use of language, wrote a clear
round hand and was very thorough in everything she studied. She was a
great reader of good and useful books, possessed an excellent memory
and a lively imagination and very early acquired a most interesting
style of composition.
[Illustration: AUNT JANE,
Or, The Red Song Woman.]
From her ancestors she inherited that strong sympathy for the colored
race, which was a marked characteristic of her whole life. In her young
womanhood, she taught private schools in Adams county, Ohio. The
progress made by her pupils was very rapid and her instruction was of a
high order. She sought out the children of the poor and taught them
without charge. She admitted colored pupils as well as whites. For this
cause, many threats of violence were made against her school. But she
was such an excellent teacher that her white pupils remained with her;
and a guard of volunteer riflemen frequently surrounded her school
house. She calmly pursued the even tenor of her way.
In 1820, when she was only 17 years of age, she and her brother rode on
horseback all the way from Manchester, Ohio, to South Carolina and back
again, and brought with them two slaves they had inherited. They could
have sold them in the South for $300 each, and stood in great need of
the money; but instead, they gave to these two poor colored persons the
priceless boon of liberty. Miss Williamson's slave was a young woman of
her own age, called Jemima. She was married to another slave named
Logan. She was the mother of two children. Logan was a daring man, and
rendered desperate by the loss of his young wife, he determined to be
free and follow her. He fled from South Carolina, and after passing
through many adventures of the most thrilling character, he found his
wife in Ohio, and lived and died a free man. He was fully determined to
die rather than return to slavery. Jemima lived to a great age,
surviving her husband, who was killed accidently in the fifties. They
left a family highly respected.
During all these years "Aunt Jane" was a very active worker in Sabbath
schools, prayer meetings and missionary societies. In her own day
schools, she made religious worship and Bible study a prominent feature
of the exercises. In 1835, when her brother, Dr. Williamson, went as a
missionary to the Dakotas, she strongly desired to accompany him. But
her duty required her to remain at home and care for her aged father,
who died in 1839, at the age of 77. She did not join her brother,
however, until 1843, at the age of forty.
II--HER WORK AMONG THE DAKOTAS.
This covers one-third of a century. The missionary spirit was a part of
her life,--born with her,--a heritage of several generations. The blood
of the Newtons flowed in her veins. When she arrived in Minnesota, she
went to work without delay and with great energy and with untiring
industry greatly beyond her strength. She was very familiar with the
Bible. She taught hundreds of Indians, perhaps fully one thousand, to
read the Word of God, and the greater part of them to write a legible
letter. She visited all the sick within her reach, and devoted much of
her time to instructing the Dakota women in domestic duties. She
conducted prayer meetings and conversed with them in reference to the
salvation of their souls. Many of them, saved by the Holy Spirit's
benediction upon her self-denying efforts, are now shining like bright
gems in her crown of glory on high.
Lac-qui-Parle,--the Lake-that-speaks,--two hundred miles west of St.
Paul, was her first missionary home. There she gathered the young
Indians together and taught them as opportunity offered. The
instruction of the youth--especially the children, of whom she was ever
a devoted lover, was her great delight.
It was more than a year before any mail reached her at this remote
outpost. She was absent in the Indian village when she heard of the
arrival of her first mail. She, in her eagerness to hear from her
friends in Ohio, ran like a young woman to her brother's house. She
found the mail in the stove-oven. The carrier had brought it through
the ice, and it had to be thawed out. That mail contained more than
fifty letters for her and the postage on them was over five dollars. In
1846, she removed with her brother to Kaposia, Little Crow's village
(now South St. Paul), and in 1852 to Yellow Medicine, thirty-two miles
south of Lac-qui-Parle. The privations of the missionaries were very
great. White bread was more of a luxury to them then, than rich cake
ordinarily is now. Their houses and furnishings were of the rudest
kind. Their environments were all of a savage character.
Their trials were many and sore, extreme scarcity of food in
mid-winter, savage threats and bitter insults. They were "in
journeyings often, in perils of waters, of robbers, by the heathen and
in the wilderness." All this she endured contentedly for Christ's sake
and the souls of the poor ignorant savages around for the
evangelization and salvation of the degraded Dakotas,--lost in sin.
She possessed great tact and was absolutely fearless. In 1857, during
the Inkpadoota trouble, the father of a young-Indian, who had been
wounded by the soldiers of Sherman's battery, came with his gun to the
mission house to kill her brother. Aunt Jane met him with a plate of
food for himself and an offer to send some nice dishes to the wounded
young man. This was effectual. The savage was tamed. He ate the food
and afterwards came with his son to give them thanks. Scarcely was the
prison-camp, with nearly four hundred Dakota prisoners, three-fourths
of them condemned to be hanged, established at Mankato, when Aunt Jane
and her brother came to distribute paper and pencils and some books
among them.
When their lives were imperilled, by their savage pursuers, during the
terrible massacre, Aunt Jane calmly said; "Well if they kill me, my
home is in Heaven." The churches were scattered, the work apparently
destroyed, but nothing could discourage Aunt Jane. She had, in the
midst of this great tragedy, the satisfactory knowledge that all the
Christian Sioux had continued at the risk of their own lives, steadfast
in their loyalty, and had been instrumental in saving the lives of many
whites. They had, also, influenced for good many of their own race.
III--THE CLOSING YEARS OF HER LIFE.
After that terrible massacre the way never opened for her to resume her
residence among the Dakotas; but she was given health and strength for
nineteen years more toil for the Master and her beloved Indians. Her
home was with her brother, Dr. Williamson, near St. Peter, until his
death in 1879, and she remained, in his old home several years after
his death. During this period, she accomplished much for the education
of the Indians around her and she kept up an extensive and helpful
correspondence with native Christian workers. All the time she kept up
the work of self-sacrifice for the good of others. In 1881 she met a
poor Indian woman, suffering extremely from intense cold. She slipped
off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a
severe illness, which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness
from which she never recovered. In 1888 she handed the writer a $5 gold
coin for the work among the freedmen with this remark: "First the
freedman; then the Indian." Out of a narrow income she constantly gave
generously to the boards of the church and to the poor around her. She
spent most of her patrimony in giving and lending to needy ones.
The closing years of her life were spent with her nephew the great
Indian missionary the Rev. John P. Williamson D.D. at Greenwood, South
Dakota. There at noon of March 24, 1895, the light of eternity dawned
upon her and she entered into that sabbatic rest, which remains for
the people of God. Such is the story of Aunt Jane, modest and
unassuming--a real heroine, who travelled sixteen hundred miles all the
way on horseback and spent several months that she might rescue two
poor colored persons whom she had never seen or even known.
Without husband or children, alone in the world, she did not repine,
but made herself useful, wherever she was, in teaching secular learning
and religious truth, and in ministering to the sick and afflicted, the
down-trodden and oppressed. She never sought to do any wonderful
things,--but whatever her hand found to do, she did it with her might
and with an eye to the honor and glory of God. Hers was a very long and
most complete Christian life. Should it ever be forgotten? Certainly
not, while our Christian religion endures.
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea,
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their
works do follow them."
--Rev. 14: 13.
V
ARTEMAS, THE WARRIOR PREACHER
He was one of the fiercest of the Sioux warriors. He fought the
Ojibways in his youth; danced the scalp-dance on the present site of
Minneapolis, and waged war against the whites in '62. He was converted
at Mankato, Minnesota, in the prison-pen, and for thirty-two years, he
was pastor of the Pilgrim Congregational church at Santee, Nebraska.
Artemas Ehnamane was born in 1825, at Red Wing, Minnesota, by the
mountain that stands sentinel at the head of Lake Pepin. "Walking
Along" is the English translation of his jaw-breaking surname. As a
lad, he played on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. As a youth, he
hunted the red deer in the lovely glades of Minnesota and Wisconsin. He
soon grew tall and strong and became a famous hunter. The war-path,
also, opened to him in the pursuit of his hereditary foes, the
Chippewas. He danced the scalp-dance on the present site of
Minneapolis, when it was only a wind-swept prairie.
While in his youth, his tribe ceded their ancestral lands along the
Mississippi and removed to the Sioux Reservation on the Minnesota
River. But not for long, for the terrible outbreak of 1862, scattered
everything and landed all the leading men of that tribe in prison.
Artemas was one of them. He was convicted, condemned to death, and
pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. While in the prison-pen at Mankato, he
came into a new life "that thinketh no evil of his neighbor." The words
of the faithful missionaries, Pond and Williamson and Riggs, sank deep
into his heart. His whole nature underwent a change. Artemas once
explained his conversion thus:
"We had planned that uprising wisely and secretly. We had able leaders.
We were well organized and thoroughly armed. The whites were weakened
by the Southern war. Everything was in our favor. We had prayed to our
gods. But when the conflict came, we were beaten so rapidly and
completely, I felt that the white man's God must be greater than all
the Indians' gods; and I determined to look Him up, and I found Him,
All-Powerful and precious to my soul."
Faithfully he studied his letters and learned his Dakota Bible, which
became more precious to him than any record of traditions and shadows
handed down from mouth to mouth by his people. He soon became possessed
of a great longing to let his tribe know his great secret of the God
above. So when the prisoners were restored to their families in the
Missouri Vally in Nebraska, Artemas was soon chosen one of the
preachers of the reorganized tribe. His first pastorate was that of the
Pilgrim Congregational Church at Santee, Nebraska, in 1867. It was also
his last, for he was ever so beloved and honored by his people, that
they would not consider any proposal for separation.
No such proposition ever met with favor in the Pilgrim Church for
Artemas firmly held first place in the affections of the people among
whom he labored so earnestly. He served this church for thirty-two
years and passed on to take his place among the Shining Ones, on the
eve of Easter Sabbath, 1902.
Artemas seldom took a vacation. In fact there is only one on record. In
1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian
nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of
the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his
rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in
the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a
camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They were strong and
hostile.
He had tact as well as courage. He invited those savage warriors to a
feast. His kettle was brimming, and as the Indians filled their mouths
with the savory meat, he filled their ears with the story of the
gospel, and gave them their first view of that eternal life, purchased
by the blood of Christ.
The deer-hunt became a soul-hunt. The wild Sicaugu grunted their
amicable "Hao" as they left his teepee, their mouths filled with
venison and their hearts planted with the seeds of eternal truth.
Again he went on a deer-hunt, when he crossed another trail, that of
hunters from another hostile tribe. In the camp he found a sick child,
the son of Samuel Heart, a Yankton Sioux. But let Heart tell the story
himself in his simple way:
"I was many days travel away in the wilderness. My child was very sick.
I felt much troubled. A man of God came to my tent. I remember all he
said. He told me not to be troubled, but to trust in God, and all would
be well. He prayed; he asked God to strengthen the child so I could
bring him home. God heard him. My child lived to get home. Once my
heart would have been very sad, and I would have done something very
wicked. I look forward and trust Jesus."
This is how Rev. Artemas Ehnamane spent his vacations, hunting for wild
souls instead of wild deer.
He was a scriptural, personal and powerful preacher.
Faith in a risen Saviour, was the keynote of his ministry. As he said:
"Who of all the Saviours of the Indian people has risen from the dead?
Not one." "Our fathers told us many things and gave us many customs,
but they were not true." "I grew up believing in what my father taught
me, but when I knew of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I believed in Him
and put aside all my ways." It was to him in truth, the coming out of
darkness into light. "Sins are like wolves," he said. "They abound in
the darkness and destroy men. When we enter the way, Jesus watches over
us. Be awake and follow Him. All over the world men are beginning to
follow Christ. The day is here." "Repent, believe, obey."
He loved to sing:
"Saved, by grace, alone;
That is all my plea;
Jesus died for all mankind;
Jesus died for me."
The twenty grand-children of the old Sioux--all of school age--are
diligently prosecuting their studies in order to be prepared to meet
the changed conditions which civilization has made possible for the
Indians. One of his grand-sons is a physician now, in a fair practice
among his own people.
This man President Lincoln wisely pardoned, knowing full well what a
great influence for good such a man could wield over his turbulent
people. And the President was not disappointed. One of his sons has
been a missionary among the Swift Bear tribe at the Rose Bud Agency for
twenty years; another son has been a missionary at Standing Rock, on
the Grand River, and is now pastor of an Indian congregation on Basile
Creek, Nebraska, and is also an important leader of his tribe. The Rev.
Francis Frazier, one of his sons, was installed September 10, 1902, as
his father's successor in the pastorate of Pilgrim church at Santee.
His married daughter is also very earnest in the woman's work in the
church. Seventy-seven years of age at his death, Rev. Artemas Ehnamane
had filled to overflowing with good deeds to offset the first half,
when he fought against the encroachments of the whites and the advance
of civilization with as much zeal as later he evinced in his religious
and beneficent life. Abraham Lincoln pardoned Ehnamane and the old
warrior never forgot it. But it was another pardon he prized more
highly than that. It was this pardon he preached and died believing.
VI
TWO FAMOUS MISSIONS.
_Lake Harriet and Prairieville_
In the spring of 1835, the Rev. Jedediah Dwight Stevens, of the
Presbyterian Church, arrived at Fort Snelling under the auspices of the
American Board of Missions. He established a station on the
northwestern shore of Lake Harriet. It was a most beautiful spot, west
of the Indian village, presided over by that friendly and influential
chieftain Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky. He erected two buildings--the
mission-home, first residence for white settlers, and the school
house--the first building erected exclusively for school purposes
within the present boundaries of the State of Minnesota.
Within a few rods of the Pavilion, where on the Sabbath, multitudes
gather for recreation, and desecration of God's holy day, is the site,
where, in 1835, the first systematic effort was made to educate and
Christianize Dakota Indians. It is near the present junction of
Forty-second Street, and Queen Avenue (Linden Hills).
In July, Mr. Stevens, and his interesting family, took possession of
the mission house. With the co-operation of the Pond brothers, this
mission was prosecuted with a fair measure of success till the removal
of the Indians farther west, in 1839, when it was abandoned, and the
connection of Mr. Stevens with the work of the Dakota mission ceased.
Here on the evening of November 22, 1838, a romantic wedding was
solemnized by Rev. J. D. Stevens. The groom was Samuel Pond of the
Dakota mission. The groomsman was Henry H. Sibley, destined in after
years to be Minnesota's first delegate to Congress, her first state
executive, and in the trying times of '62, the victorious General
Sibley. The bride was Miss Cordelia Eggleston; the bridesmaid, Miss
Cornelia Stevens; both amiable, lovely and remarkably handsome.
It was a brilliant, starry evening, one of Minnesota's brightest and
most invigorating. The sleighing was fine, and among the guests, were
many officers, from Fort Snelling, with their wives. Dr. Emerson and
wife, the owners of Dred Scott, the subject of Judge Taney's infamous
decision, were present. The doctor was, then, post-surgeon at the fort,
and the slave Dred, was his body-servant. The tall bridegroom and
groomsman, in the vigor and strength of their young manhood; the bride
and bridesmaid, just emerging from girlhood, with all their dazzling
beauty, the officers in the brilliant uniforms, and their wives, in
their gay attire, must have formed an attractive picture in the long
ago. After the wedding festivities, the guests from the fort were
imprisoned at the mission for the night, by a blizzard, which swept
over the icy face of Lake Harriet.
In the previous November, at Lac-qui-Parle, the younger brother was
united in marriage to Miss Sarah Poage, by the Rev. Stephen R. Riggs.
It was a unique gathering. The guests were all the dark-faced dwellers
of the Indian village, making a novel group of whites, half-breeds and
savage Indians. Many of the latter were poor, maimed, halt and blind,
who thoroughly enjoyed the feast of potatoes, turnips, and bacon so
generously provided by the happy bridegroom.
PRAIRIEVILLE.
In 1846, Shakpe or Little Six, extended an urgent invitation to Samuel
Pond to establish a mission at Tintonwan--"the village on the
prairies"--for the benefit of his people. He was chief of one of the
most turbulent bands of Indians in the valley of the Minnesota. He was
a man of marked ability and one of the ablest and most effective
orators in the whole Dakota nation. Yet withal, Shakpe was a petty
thief, had a "forked tongue," a violent temper, was excitable, and
vindictive in his revenge. These characteristics led him to the
scaffold. He was hanged at Fort Snelling, in 1863 for participation in
the bloody massacre of '62. He and his followers were so noted for
their deception and treachery, that Mr. Pond doubted their sincerity
and the wisdom of accepting their invitation. But after weeks of
prayerful deliberation, he accepted and began preparations for a
permanent establishment at that point. He erected a commodious and
substantial residence into which he removed, with his household, in
November 1847.
This station, which Mr. Pond called Prairieville, was fourteen miles
southeast of Oak Grove mission, on the present site of Shakopee. The
mission home was pleasantly located on gently rising ground, half a
mile south of the Minnesota River. It was surrounded by the teepees of
six hundred noisy savages. Here, for several years they toiled
unceasingly for the welfare of the wild men, by whom they were
surrounded.
In 1851, Mr. and Mrs. Pond were compelled, by her rapidly failing
health, to spend a year in the east. She never returned. She died
February 6, 1852, at Washington, Connecticut. Thus after fourteen years
of arduous missionary toil, Cordelia Eggleston Pond, the beautiful
bride of the Lake Harriet mission house, was called from service to
reward at the early age of thirty-six.
Mr. Pond returned to Prairieville and toiled on for the Indians until
their removal by the government, in 1853. He himself, remained and
continued his labors for the benefit of the white community of
Shakopee, which had grown up around him. In 1853, a white Presbyterian
church was organized and, in 1856, a comfortable church edifice was
erected, wholly at the expense of the pastor and his people. The
congregation still exists and the mission house still stands as
monuments of the wisdom, faith and fortitude of the heroic builder.
After thirteen years of faithful service, he laid the heavy burdens
down for younger hands, but for a quarter of a century longer he
remained in his old home.
During these last years, his chief delight was in his books, which lost
none of their power to interest him in advancing age; especially was
this true of the Book of books. He was never idle. The active energy,
which distinguished his youth, no less marked his advancing years. His
mind was as clear, his judgment as sound, and his mental vision as keen
at eighty-three, as they were at thirty-three. His was a long and happy
old age. He lingered in the house his own hands had builded, content to
go or stay, till he was transferred, December twelfth, 1891, to the
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
VII
THE PRINCE OF INDIAN PREACHERS.
Without disparagement to any of his brethren in the ministry, this
title can be properly applied to the Rev. John Baptiste Renville, of
Iyakaptapte, (Ascension) South Dakota, who recently passed on to join
the shining ranks of the saved Sioux in glory.
Timid as a little child, yet bold as a lion, when aroused; shy of
conversation in private, yet eloquent in the pulpit and in the
council-chamber; yielding yet firm as a rock, when duty demanded it; a
loving husband, a kind father, a loyal citizen, a faithful presbyter--a
pungent preacher of the gospel, a soul-winner--a courteous, cultured
Christian gentleman; such a man was this Indian son of a Sioux mother,
herself the first fullblood Sioux convert to the Christian faith.
He was the youngest son of Joseph Renville, a mixed blood Sioux and
French, who was a captain in the British army in the War of 1812 and
the most famous Sioux Indian in his day. After the war, he became a
trader and established his headquarters at Lac-qui-Parle, where he
induced Dr. Thomas S. Williamson to locate his first mission station in
1835.
John Baptiste was one of the first Indian children baptized by Dr.
Williamson and he enjoyed the benefits of the first school among the
Sioux. He was rather delicate, which hindered his being sent east to
school as much as he otherwise would have been. However, he spent
several years in excellent white schools, and he acquired a fair
knowledge of the elementary branches of the English language. The last
year he spent at Knox College, Galesburgh, Illinois, where he wooed and
won Miss Mary Butler, an educated Christian white woman, whom he
married and who became his great helper in his educational and
evangelistic work.
[Illustration:
JOHN B. RENVILLE[1] JOHN P. WILLIAMSON, D.D. DANIEL RENVILLE
JOHN EASTMAN CHARLES R. CRAWFORD
All Indian Ministers Except Dr. Williamson]
[1] Died Dec. 19, 1904
[Illustration: The Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M.D.,
Forty-five years a Missionary to the Sioux.]
He was the first Sioux Indian to enter the ministry. In the spring of
1865, he was licensed to preach, by the presbytery of Dakota, at
Mankato, Minnesota, and ordained in the following autumn. When he
entered the ministry, the Sioux Indians were in a very unsettled state,
and his labors were very much scattered; now with the Indian scouts on
some campaign; again with a few families of Indians gathered about some
military post, and anon with a little class of Indians, who were trying
to settle down to civilized life.
In 1870, he became the pastor of Iyakaptapte, (Ascension) a little
church in what subsequently became the Sisseton reservation. Both
physically and in mental and spiritual qualities, he was best adapted
to a settled pastorate. His quiet and unobtrusive character required
long intercourse to be appreciated. However, in the pulpit, his
earnestness and apt presentation of the truth ever commanded the
attention even of strangers. Under his ministry, the church increased
to one hundred and forty members. More than half a dozen of them became
ministers and Ascension was generally the leading church in every good
work among the Dakota Indians. No one among the Christian Sioux was
more widely known and loved than Mr. Renville. In the councils of the
church, though there were seventeen other ministers in the presbytery
before his death, he was ever given the first place both for counsel
and honor. He twice represented his presbytery in the general Assembly,
and he was ever faithful in his attendance at Synod and Presbytery and
active in the discharge of the duties devolving upon him.
Mary Butler, the white wife of his youth, died several years ago. Their
daughter Ella, a fine Christian young lady passed away at twenty years
of age. She was active in organizing Bands of Hope among the children
of the tribe. She sleeps, with her parents on the brow of Iyakaptapte
overlooking the church to which all their lives were devoted.
Josephine, the Indian wife of his old age, survives him and remains in
the white farm house on the prairie in which John Baptiste Renville
spent so many years of his long, happy useful life. He died December
19, 1904, in the seventy-third year of his age.
VIII
AN INDIAN PATRIARCH.
Chief Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, was one of the strongest characters
among the natives on the headwaters of the Mississippi in the earlier
half of the nineteenth century. He was one of the leading chiefs of the
Santee band of Sioux Indians. He was born about 1780. He was brave in
battle, wise in council, and possessed many other noble qualities,
which caused him to rise far above his fellow chieftains. He possessed
a large fund of common sense. Years prior to the advent of the white
man in this region, he regarded hunting and fishing as a too precarious
means to a livelihood, and attempted to teach his people agriculture
and succeeded to a limited extent.
It was a strange circumstance that prompted the chief to this wise
action. On a hunting tour in the Red River country, with a part of his
band, they were overtaken by a drifting storm and remained, for several
days, under the snow, without any food whatsoever. While buried in
those drifts, he resolved to rely, in part, upon agriculture, for
subsistence, if he escaped alive, and he carried out his resolution,
after the immediate peril was passed. His band cultivated small fields
of quickly maturing corn, which had been introduced by their chief in
the early 30's. He was respected and loved by his people and quite well
obeyed.
[Illustration: REV. JOHN EASTMAN.]
Before the coming of the missionaries he taught and enforced, by his
example, this principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill
non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He
favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had
six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain
half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted this human policy.
His own band lived on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, within
the present limits of Minneapolis. On the present site of lovely
Lakewood--Minneapolis' most fashionable cemetery--was his village of
several hundred savages, and also an Indian burial place. This village
was the front guard against the war parties of the Ojibways--feudal
enemies of the Sioux--but finally as their young men were killed off in
battle, they were compelled to remove and join their people on the
banks of the Minnesota and farther West. He located his greatly reduced
band at Bloomington, directly west of his original village. This
removal occurred prior to 1838.
He was never hostile to the approach of civilization, or blind to the
blessings it might confer on his people.
He was one of the first of his tribe to accept the white man's ways and
to urge his band to follow his example. This fact is confirmed by the
great progress his descendants have made.
He was the first Sioux Indian of any note to welcome those first
pioneer missionaries, the Pond brothers. As early as 1834 he encouraged
them to erect their home and inaugurate their work in his village. In
all the treaties formed between the government and the Sioux, he was
ever the ready and able advocate of the white man's cause. He threw all
the weight of his powerful influence in favor of cession to the United
States government of the military reservation on which Fort Snelling
now stands. He died at Fort Snelling in 1863, and was buried on the
banks of the Minnesota in view of the fort.
He was the father of seven children, all of whom are dead, except his
son David Weston, his successor in the chieftainship, who still lives
at Flandreau, South Dakota, at the age of seventy-eight years. He was
for many years a catechist of the Episcopal Church. His two daughters
were called Hushes-the-Night and Stands-like-a-Spirit. They were once
the belles of Lake Harriet, to whom the officers and fur traders paid
homage. Hushes-the-Night married a white man named Lamont and became
the mother of a child called Jane. She had one sister, who died
childless, in St. Paul, in 1901. Jane Lamont married Star Titus, a
nephew of the Pond brothers. They became the parents of three sons and
two daughters. Two of these sons are bankers and rank among the best
business men of North Dakota. They are recognized as leaders among the
whites. The other son is a farmer near Tracy, Minnesota.
Stands-Like-a-Spirit was the mother of one daughter, Mary Nancy
Eastman, whose father, Captain Seth Eastman, was stationed at Fort
Snelling--1830-36. Mary Nancy married Many Lightnings, a fullblood, one
of the leaders of the Wahpeton-Sioux. They became the parents of four
sons and one daughter. After Many Lightnings became a Christian, he
took his wife's name, Eastman, instead of his own, and gave all his
children English names. John the eldest, and Charles Alexander, the
youngest son, have made this branch of the Cloudman family widely and
favorably known.
John Eastman, at twenty-six years of age, became a Presbyterian
minister, and for more than a quarter of a century has been the
successful pastor of the First Presbyterian church of Flandreau, South
Dakota. He was for many years a trusty Indian agent at that place. He
is a strong factor in Indian policy and politics. He has had a scanty
English education in books, but he has secured an excellent training,
chiefly by mingling with cultured white people.
His proud statement once was; "every adult member of the Flandreau band
is a professing Christian, and every child of school age is in school."
During the "Ghost Dance War," in 1890, his band remained quietly at
home, busy about their affairs. In the spring of 1891, they divided
$40,000 among themselves.
Charles Alexander Eastman was born in 1858, in Minnesota, the ancestral
home of the Sioux, and passed the first fifteen years of his life in
the heart of the wilds of British America, enjoying to the full, the
free, nomadic existence of his race. During all this time, he lived in
a teepee of buffalo skins, subsisted upon wild rice and the fruits of
the chase, never entered a house nor heard the English language spoken,
and was taught to distrust and hate the white man.
The second period (third) of his life was spent in school and college,
where after a short apprenticeship in a mission school, he stood
shoulder to shoulder, with our own youth, at Beloit, Knox, Dartmouth
and the Boston university. He is an alumnus of Dartmouth of '87 and of
Boston University, department of medicine, of '90.
During the last fifteen years, he has been a man of varied interests
and occupations, a physician, missionary, writer and speaker of wide
experience and, for the greater part of the time, has held an
appointment under the government.
At his birth he was called "Hakadah" or "The Pitiful Last," as his
mother died shortly after his birth. He bore this sad name till years
afterwards he was called Ohiyesa, "The Winner," to commemorate a great
victory of La Crosse, the Indian's favorite game, won by his band, "The
Leaf Dwellers," over their foes, the Ojibways. When he received this
new name, the leading medicine man thus exhorted him: "Be brave, be
patient and thou shalt always win. Thy name is "Ohiyesa the Winner.""
The spirit of his benediction seems to follow and rest upon him in his
life-service.
His grandmother was "Stands-Like-a-Spirit," the second daughter of the
old chief Cloudman. His full-blooded Sioux father was a remarkable man
in many ways and his mother, a half-blood woman, was the daughter of a
well-known army officer. She was the most beautiful woman of the "Leaf
Dwellers" band. By reason of her great beauty, she was called
"Demi-Goddess of the Sioux." Save for her luxuriant, black hair, and
her deep black eyes, she had every characteristic of Caucasian descent.
The motherless lad was reared by his grandmother and an uncle in the
wilds of Manitoba, where he learned thoroughly, the best of the ancient
folk lore, religion and woodcraft of his people. Thirty years of
civilization have not dimmed his joy in the life of the wilderness nor
caused him to forget his love and sympathy for the primitive people and
the animal friends, who were the intimates of his boyhood.
[Illustration: DR. CHARLES A. EASTMAN,
Famous Sioux Author, Orator and Physician.]
He is very popular as a writer for the leading magazines. "His
Recollections of Wild Life" in St. Nicholas, and his stories of "Wild
Animals" in Harper, have entertained thousands of juvenile as well as
adult readers. His first book, "Indian boyhood," which appeared in
1902, has passed through several editions, and met with hearty
appreciation. "Red Hunters and the Animal People," published in 1904,
bids fair to be, at least, equally popular.
During the last two years, he has lectured in many towns from Maine to
California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs,
laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual,
trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to
explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs
and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and
training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly
do. He brings out strongly the red man's wit, music, poetry and
eloquence. He also explains graphically from facts gained from his own
people, the great mystery of the battle of the Little Big Horn in which
the gallant Custer and brave men went to their bloody death.
He was married in 1891 at New York City, to Miss Elaine Goodale, a
finely cultured young lady from Massachusetts, herself a poetess and
prose writer of more than ordinary ability.
They have lived very happily together ever since and are the parents of
five lovely children. They have lived in Washington and St. Paul and
are now residents of Amherst, Massachusetts. Whether in his physician's
office, in his study, on the lecture platform, in the press or in his
own home, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman is a most attractive
personality.
IX
JOHN
_The Beloved of the Sioux Nation_
Rev. John P. Williamson, D.D., of Greenwood, South Dakota, was born in
the month of October, 1835, in one of Joseph Renville's log cabins,
with dirt roof and no floor; and was the first white child born in
Minnesota, outside of the soldier's families at Fort Snelling. His
father, the Rev. Thomas S. Williamson. M.D., was the first ordained
missionary appointed to labor among the Sioux Indians. He came out to
the new Northwest on an exploring expedition in 1834, visiting the
Indian camps at Wabawsha, Red Wing, Kaposia, and others.
He returned in the spring of 1835, with his family and others who were
appointed.
After the arrival of this missionary party, Dr. Williamson and his
colleagues, lived and labored continuously among the Indians the
remainder of their lives. Their work for the Master has not suffered
any interruption, but is still carried on successfully and vigorously
by their successors.
John P. Williamson grew up in the midst of the Indians. He mastered the
Sioux language in early boyhood. As a lad, he had the present sites of
Minneapolis and St. Paul for his playgrounds and little Indian lads for
his playmates. Among these, was Little Crow, who afterwards became
infamous in his savage warfare, against the defenseless settlers in
western Minnesota, in 1862.
He was early dedicated to the work of the gospel ministry. In his young
manhood he was sent to Ohio, for his education. In 1857, he graduated
at Marietta College, and in 1860, at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. In 1859
he was licensed by Dakota (Indian) Presbytery, and ordained, by the
same body, in 1861. The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by
Yankton, (S.D.) college in 1890. He recognized no call to preach the
gospel save to the Sioux Indians, and for forty-six years, he has given
his whole life zealously to this great work. He has thrown his whole
life unreservedly into it. And he has accomplished great things for the
Master and the tribe to which he has ministered.
In 1860 he established a mission and organized a Presbyterian church of
twelve members at Red Wood Agency on the Minnesota. These were both
destroyed in the outbreak two years later. He spent the winter of
1862-3, in evangelistic work, among the Sioux, in the prison-camp at
Fort Snelling, where 1,500 were gathered under military guard. An
intense religious interest sprung up amongst them and continued for
months. Young Dr. Williamson so ministered unto them, that the whole
camp was reached and roused, and the major part of the adults were led
to Christ. Many, including scores of the children of the believers,
were baptized. A Presbyterian congregation of more than one hundred
communicants was organized. This church was afterwards united with the
church of the Prison-pen, at Crow Creek, Nebraska.
In 1883, he was appointed superintendent of Presbyterian missions among
the Sioux Indians. He has ever abounded in self-sacrificing and
successful labors among this tribe. He has organized Nineteen (19)
congregations and erected twenty-three (23) church edifices. In
twenty-three years he has traveled two hundred thousand miles in the
prosecution of these arduous labors. The number of converts cannot be
reckoned up.
In 1866, he was married to Miss Sarah A. Vannice. To them there have
been born four sons and three daughters, who are still living. In 1869
he established the Yankton mission, which has ever since been a great
center, moral and spiritual, to a vast region. At the same time he
established his home at Greenwood, South Dakota, and from that, as his
mission headquarters, he has gone to and from in his great missionary
tours throughout the Dakota land.
He has, also, abounded in literary labors. For sixteen years he was the
chief editor of "Iapi Oayi," an Indian weekly. In 1864, he published
"Powa Wow-spi," an Indian Spelling Book, and in 1865, a collection of
Dakota Hymns. His greatest literary work, however, was an edition of
the "Dakota Dictionary," in 1871, and other later editions.
He has won the affections of the whole Sioux nation. They bow willingly
to his decisions, and follow gladly his counsels. To them, he is a much
greater man than President Roosevelt. While he has passed the limit of
his three-score years and ten--forty-six of them in frontier
service--his bow still abides in strength, and he still abounds in
manifold labors. He is still bringing forth rich fruitage in his old
age.
Every white dweller among the Indians is known by some special
cognomen. His is simply "John." And when it is pronounced, by a Sioux
Indian as a member of the tribe always does it so lovingly, all who
hear it know he refers to "John, the Beloved of the Sioux Nation."
X
THE MARTYRS OF OLD ST. JOE.
One of the most touching tragedies recorded in the annals of the new
Northwest, was enacted in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century,
on the borders of Prince Rupert's Land and the Louisiana purchase (now
Manitoba and North Dakota). It is a picturesque spot, where the Pembina
river cuts the international boundary line in its course to the
southeast to join the Red River of the North in its course to Hudson's
bay.
Sixty years ago, in this place, encircled by the wood-crowned mountain
and the forest-lined river and prairies, rich as the gardens of the
gods, there stood a village and trading post of considerable
importance, named after the patron saint of the Roman Catholic church,
in its midst--St. Joseph--commonly called St. Joe. It was a busy,
bustling town, with a mixed population of 1,500. Most of these dwelt in
tents of skin. There were, also, two or three large trading posts and
thirty houses, built of large, hewn timbers mudded smoothly within and
without and roofed with shingles. Some of these were neat and pretty;
one had window-shutters. It was the center of an extensive fur trade
with the Indian tribes of the Missouri river. Many thousands of buffalo
and other skins were shipped annually to St. Paul in carts. Sometimes a
train of four hundred of these wooden carts started together for St.
Paul, a distance of four hundred miles.
But old things have passed away. The village of old St. Joe is now
marked only by some cellar excavations. It possesses, however, a sad
interest as the scene of the martyrdom of Protestant missionaries on
this once wild frontier, then so far removed from the abodes of
civilization.
James Tanner was a converted half-breed, who with his wife labored, in
1849, as a missionary at Lake Winnibogosh, Minnesota. His father had
been stolen, when a lad, from his Kentucky home, by the Indians. Near
the close of 1849 he visited a brother in the Pembina region. He became
so deeply interested in the ignorant condition of the people there,
that he made a tour of the East in their behalf. He visited New York,
Washington and other cities, and awakened considerable interest in
behalf of the natives of this region. While east he became a member of
the Baptist Church. He returned to St. Joe, in 1852, accompanied by a
young man named Benjamin Terry, of St. Paul, to open a mission among
the Pembina Chippewas and half breeds under the auspices of the Baptist
Missionary Society. Terry was very slight and youthful in appearance,
quiet and retiring in disposition and was long spoken of, by the
half-breeds, as "Tanner's Boy." They visited the Red River (Selkirk)
settlement (now Winnipeg). While there, Terry wooed and won one of the
daughters of the Selkirk settlers, a dark-eyed handsome Scotch lass, to
whom he expected to be married in a few months. But, alas, ere the
close of summer, he was waylaid, by a savage Sioux, shot full of
arrows, his arm broken and his entire scalp carried away. Mr. Tanner
secured permission to bury him in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the
corner reserved for suicides, heretics and unbaptized infants. Thus
ended in blood, the first effort to establish a Protestant mission in
the Pembina country.
June 1, 1853, a band of Presbyterian missionaries arrived at St. Joe.
It was composed of the Reverends Alonzo Barnard and David Brainard
Spencer, their wives and children. They came in canoes and in carts
from Red and Cass lakes, Minnesota, where for ten years, they had
labored as missionaries among the Chippewas. They removed to St. Joe,
at the earnest request of Governor Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota, and
others familiar with their labors and the needs of the Pembina natives.
Mrs. Barnard's health soon gave way. Her husband removed her to the
Selkirk settlement, one hundred miles to the north, for medical aid.
Her health continued to fail so rapidly that by her strong desire they
attempted to return to St. Joe. The first night they encamped in a
little tent on the bleak northern plain in the midst of a fierce
windstorm. The chilling winds penetrated the folds of the tent. All
night long the poor sufferer lay in her husband's arms, moaning
constantly: "Hold me close; oh, hold me close." They were compelled to
return to the settlement, where after a few days more of intense
suffering, she died, Oct. 22, 1853, of quick consumption, caused by ten
years exposure and suffering for the welfare of the Indians.
Mrs. Barnard was first interred at the Selkirk settlement, in Prince
Rupert's Land (now Manitoba). In the absence of other clergymen, Mr.
Barnard was compelled to officiate at his wife's funeral himself. In
obedience to her dying request, Mrs. Barnard's remains were removed to
St. Joe and re-interred in the yard of the humble mission cabin, Dec.
3, 1853.
In 1854, Mr. Barnard visited Ohio to provide a home for his children.
On his return, at Belle Prairie, Minnesota, midway between St. Paul and
St. Joe, he met Mr. Spencer and his three motherless children,
journeying four hundred miles by ox-cart to St. Paul. There in the rude
hovel in which they spent the night, Mr. Barnard baptized Mr. Spencer's
infant son, now an honored minister of the Congregational church in
Wisconsin. On his arrival at St. Joe Mr. Barnard found another mound
close by the grave of his beloved wife.
The story of this third grave is, also, written in blood. It was Aug.
30, 1854. The hostile Sioux were infesting the Pembina region. Only the
previous month, had Mrs. Spencer written to a far distant friend in
India: "Last December the Lord gave us a little son, whose smiling face
cheers many a lonely hour." On this fatal night, she arose to care for
this darling boy. A noise at the window attracted her attention. She
withdrew the curtain to ascertain the cause. Three Indians stood there
with loaded rifles and fired. Three bullets struck her, two in her
throat and one in her breast. She neither cried out nor spoke, but
reeling to her bed, with her babe in her arms, knelt down, where she
was soon discovered by her husband, when he returned from barricading
the door. She suffered intensely for several hours and then died. And
till daybreak Mr. Spencer sat in a horrid dream, holding his dead wife
in his arms. The baby lay in the rude cradle near by, bathed in his
mother's blood. The two elder children stood by terrified and weeping.
Such was the distressing scene which the neighbors beheld in the
morning, when they came with their proffers of sympathy and help. The
friendly half-breeds came in, cared for the poor children and prepared
the dead mother for burial. A half-breed dug the grave and nailed a
rude box together for a coffin. Then with a bleeding heart, the sore
bereaved man consigned to the bosom of the friendly earth the remains
of his murdered wife.
Within the past thirty years civilization has rapidly taken possession
of this lovely region. Christian homes and Christian churches cover
these rich prairies. The prosperous and rapidly growing village of
Walhalla (Paradise) nestles in the bosom of this lovely vale and
occupies contentedly the former site of Old St. Joe.
June 21, 1888, one of the most interesting events in the history of
North Dakota occurred at the Presbyterian cemetery, which crowns the
brow of the mountain, overlooking Walhalla. It was the unveiling of the
monument erected by the Woman's Synodical Missionary Society of North
Dakota, which they had previously erected to the memory of Sarah
Philena Barnard and Cornelia Spencer, two of the three "Martyrs of St.
Joe." The monument is a beautiful and appropriate one of white marble.
The broken pieces of old stone formerly placed on Mrs. Barnard's grave,
long scattered and lost, were discovered, cemented together and placed
upon her new grave. The Rev. Alonzo Barnard, seventy-one years of age,
accompanied by his daughter, was present. Standing upon the graves of
the martyrs, with tremulous voice and moistened eyes, he gave to the
assembled multitude a history of their early missionary toil in the
abodes of savagery. It was a thrilling story, the interest intensified
by the surroundings. The half-breed women who prepared Mrs. Spencer's
body for the burial and who washed and dressed the little babe after
his baptism in his mother's blood, were present. The same half-breed
who dug Mrs. Spencer's grave in 1854 dug the new grave in 1888. Several
pioneers familiar with the facts of the tragedy at the time of its
occurrence were also present.
"The Martyr's Plot," the last resting place of these devoted servants
of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a beautiful spot, on the hillside, in the
Presbyterian Cemetery at Walhalla. It is enclosed by a neat fence, and
each of these three martyr's graves is marked by a white stone, with an
appropriate inscription.
The Rev. Alonzo Barnard retired to Michigan, where he gave five years
of missionary toil to the Chippewas at Omene and many other years of
helpful service to the white settlers at other points in that state. In
1883 he retired from the work of the active ministry and spent the
remainder of his days with his children.
He died April 14, 1905, at Pomona, Michigan, at the home of his son,
Dr. James Barnard, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. There is a
large and flourishing Episcopal Indian church at Leech Lake, Minnesota,
the scene of Mr. Barnard's labors from 1843-52.
The rector is the Rev. Charles T. Wright, a full-blood Chippewa. He is
the eldest son of that famous chieftain, Gray Cloud and is now himself,
chief of all the Chippewas. "Thus one soweth and another reapeth."