DR. T. S. WILLIAMSON.
The father of the Dakota Mission has gone. Thomas Smith Williamson died at his residence in St. Peter, Minn., on Tuesday, the 24th of June, 1879, in the eightieth year of his life. My own acquaintance with this life-long friend and companion in work commenced when I was yet a boy, just fifty years ago in July. We were new-comers in the town of Ripley, Ohio, where Dr. Williamson was then a practising physician of some five years’ standing. My mother was taken sick and died. In her sick-chamber our acquaintance commenced, which has continued unbroken for half a century.
The silver wedding of the Dakota Mission was celebrated at Hazelwood, in the summer of 1860. Dr. Williamson himself furnished a sketch of his life and ancestry for that occasion which has never been published. From this document, as well as from articles written by his son, Prof. Andrew Woods Williamson, and published in the St. Peter Tribune and the Herald and Presbyter, much of this life-sketch will be taken.
Thomas Smith Williamson, M.D., was the son of Rev. William Williamson and Mary Smith, and was born in Union District, South Carolina, in March, 1800.
William Williamson commenced classical studies when quite young; but the school he attended was broken up by the appointment of the teacher as an officer in the Revolutionary army. When about sixteen years of age, while on a visit to an uncle’s on the head-waters of the Kanawha, in Virginia, several families in the neighborhood were taken captive by the Indians, and he joined a company of volunteers which was raised to go in pursuit. After more than a week’s chase, they were entirely successful, and lost only one of their own number.
When not yet eighteen years old, he was drafted into the North Carolina militia, and accompanied Gates in his unfortunate expedition through the Carolinas. After the war was over and the family had removed to South Carolina, William resumed his studies and was graduated at Hampton Sidney College—studied theology, and was ordained pastor of Fair Forest Church, in April, 1793.
The grandfather of Thomas Smith Williamson was Thomas Williamson, and his grandmother’s maiden name was Ann Newton, a distant relative of Sir Isaac and Rev. John Newton. They were both raised in Pennsylvania, but removed first to Virginia and then to the Carolinas, where they became the owners of slaves, the most of whom were purchased at their own request to keep them from falling into the hands of hard masters.
Thus Rev. William Williamson was born into the condition of slaveholder. By both his first and second marriage also, he became the owner of others, which, by the laws of South Carolina, would have been the property of his children. For the purpose of giving them their liberty, he removed, in 1805, from South Carolina to Adams County, Ohio. Before her marriage, Mary Smith had taught a number of the young negroes to read. And of their descendants quite a number are now in Ohio. It should be remembered that the Smiths and Williamsons of the eighteenth century thought it right, under the circumstances in which they were, to buy and hold slaves, but not right to sell them. They never sold any.
Thomas Smith Williamson inherited from his father a love for the study of God’s Word, and a practical sympathy for the down-trodden and oppressed, which were ever the distinguishing characteristics of his life. He was also blessed with a godly mother and with five earnest-working Christian sisters, four of whom were older than himself. He was converted during his stay at Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pa., where he graduated in 1820. Soon after, he began reading medicine with his brother-in-law, Dr. William Wilson of West Union, Ohio, and, after a very full course of reading, considerable practical experience, and one course of lectures at Cincinnati, Ohio, completed his medical education at Yale, where he graduated in medicine in 1824. He settled at Ripley, Ohio, where he soon acquired an extensive practice, and April 10, 1827, was united in marriage with Margaret Poage, daughter of Col. James Poage, proprietor of the town. Perhaps no man was ever more blessed with a helpmeet more adapted to his wants than this lovely, quiet, systematic, cheerful, Christian wife, who for forty-five years of perfect harmony encouraged him in his labors.
They thought themselves happily settled for life in their pleasant home, but God had better things in store for them. His Spirit began whispering in their ears the Macedonian cry. At first, they excused themselves on account of their little ones. They felt they could not take them among the Indians, that they owed a duty to them. They hesitated. God removed this obstacle in his own way—by taking the little ones home to himself. As this was a great trial, so was it a great blessing to these parents. This was one of God’s means of so strengthening their faith that, having once decided to go, neither of them ever after for one moment regretted the decision, doubted that they were called of God to this work, or feared that their life-work would prove a failure.
In the spring of 1833, Dr. Williamson placed himself under the care of the Chillicothe Presbytery, and commenced the study of theology. In August of that year he removed with his family to Walnut Hills, and connected himself with Lane Seminary. In April, 1834, in the First Presbyterian Church of Red Oak, he was licensed to preach by the Chillicothe Presbytery.
Previous to his licensure, he had received from the American Board an appointment to proceed on an exploring tour among the Indians of the Upper Mississippi, with special reference to the Sacs and Foxes, but to collect what information he could in regard to the Sioux, Winnebagoes, and other Indians. Starting on this tour about the last of April, he went as far as Fort Snelling, and returned to Ohio in August. At Rock Island he met with some of the Sacs and Foxes, and at Prairie du Chien he first saw Dakotas, among others Mr. Joseph Renville of Lac-qui-parle. On the 18th of September he was ordained as a missionary by the Chillicothe Presbytery, in Union Church, Ross County, Ohio.
A few months afterward he received his appointment as a missionary of the A. B. C. F. M. to the Dakotas; and on the first day of April, 1835, Dr. Williamson, with his wife and one child, accompanied by Miss Sarah Poage, Mrs. Williamson’s sister, who afterward became Mrs. Gideon H. Pond, and Alexander G. Huggins and family, left Ripley, Ohio, and on the 16th of May they arrived at Fort Snelling. At this time, the only white people in Minnesota, then a part of the North-west Territory, were those connected with the military post at Fort Snelling, the only post-office within the present limits of the State; those connected with the fur-trade, except Hon. H. H. Sibley, were chiefly Canadian French, ignorant of the English language; and Messrs. Gideon H. and Samuel W. Pond, who came on their own account as lay teachers of Christ to the Indians in 1834.
While stopping there for a few weeks, Dr. Williamson presided at the organization, on the 12th of June, of the First Presbyterian Church—the first Christian church organized within the present limits of Minnesota. This was within the garrison at Fort Snelling, and consisted of twenty-two members, chiefly the result of the labors of Major Loomis among the soldiers.
Having concluded to accompany Mr. Joseph Renville, Dr. Williamson’s party embarked on the fur company’s Mackinaw boat on the 22d of June; reached Traverse des Sioux on the 30th, where they took wagons and arrived at Lac-qui-parle on the 9th of July. There, on the north side of the Minnesota River, and in sight of the “Lake that speaks,” they established themselves as teachers of the religion of Jesus.
Of the “Life and Labors” pressed into the next forty-four years, only the most meager outline can be given in this article. It is now almost two round centuries since Hennepin and Du Luth met in the camps and villages of the Sioux on the Upper Mississippi. Then, as since, they were recognized as the largest and most warlike tribe of Indians on the continent. Until Dr. Williamson and his associates went among them, there does not appear to have been any effort made to civilize and Christianize them. With the exception of a few hundred words gathered by army officers and others, the Dakota language was unwritten. This was to be learned—mastered, which was found to be no small undertaking, especially to one who had attained the age of thirty-five years. While men of less energy and pluck would have knocked off or been content to work as best they could through an interpreter, Dr. Williamson persevered, and in less than two years was preaching Christ to them in the language in which they were born. He never spoke it easily nor just like an Indian, but he was readily understood by those who were accustomed to hear him.
It was by a divine guidance that the station at Lac-qui-parle was commenced. The Indians there were very poor in this world’s good, not more than a half-dozen horses being owned in a village of 400 people. They were far in the interior, and received no annuities from the government. Thus they were in a condition to be helped in many ways by the mission. Under its influence and by its help, their corn-patches were enlarged and their agriculture improved. Dr. Williamson also found abundant opportunities to practise medicine among them. Not that they gave up their pow-wows and conjuring; but many families were found quite willing that the white Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-we-chash-ta (Grass Root Man) should try his skill with the rest. For more than a quarter of a century his medical aid went hand in hand with the preaching of the Gospel. By the helpfulness of the mission in various ways, a certain amount of confidence was secured. And through the influence of Mr. Renville, a few men, but especially the women, gathered to hear the good news of salvation.
Here they were rejoiced to see the Word taking effect early. In less than a year after their arrival, Dr. Williamson organized a native church, which, in the autumn of 1837, when I joined the mission force at Lac-qui-parle, counted seven Dakotas. Five years after the number received from the beginning had been forty-nine. This was a very successful commencement.
But in the meantime the war-prophets and the so-called medicine-men were becoming suspicious of the new religion. They began to understand that the religion of Christ antagonized their own ancestral faith, and so they organized opposition. The children were forbidden to attend the mission school; Dakota soldiers were stationed along the paths, and the women’s blankets were cut up when they attempted to go to church. Year after year the mission cattle were killed and eaten. At one time, Dr. Williamson was under the necessity of hitching up milch-cows to haul his wood—the only animals left him.
These were dark, discouraging years—very trying to the native church members, as well as to the missionaries. As I look back upon them, I can but admire the indomitable courage and perseverance of Dr. Williamson. My own heart would, I think, have sometimes failed me if it had not been for the “hold on and hold out unto the end” of my earthly friend.
As Mr. Renville could only interpret between the Dakotas and French, Dr. Williamson applied himself to learning the latter language. Through this a beginning was made in the translation of the Scriptures into the Dakota. Late in the fall of 1839 the Gospel of Mark and some other small portions were ready to be printed, and Dr. Williamson went with his family to Ohio, where he spent the winter. The next printing of portions of the Bible was done in 1842-43, when Dr. Williamson had completed a translation of the book of Genesis. We had now commenced to translate from the Hebrew and Greek. This was continued through all the years of his missionary life. So far as I can remember, there was no arrangement of work between the doctor and myself, but while I commenced the New Testament, and, having completed that, turned to the Psalms, and, having finished to the end of Malachi, made some steps backward through Job, Esther, Nehemiah, and Ezra, he, commencing with Genesis, closed his work, in the last months of his life, with Second Chronicles, having taken in also the book of Proverbs.
Before leaving the subject of Bible translation, let me bear testimony to the uniform kindness and courtesy which Dr. Williamson extended to me, through all this work of more than forty years. It could hardly be said of either of us that we were very yielding. The doctor was a man of positive opinions, and there were abundant opportunities in prosecuting our joint work for differences of judgment. But, while we freely criticised each the other’s work, we freely yielded to each other the right of ultimate decision.
In the autumn of 1846, Dr. Williamson received an invitation, through the agent at Fort Snelling, to establish a mission at Little Crow’s Village, a few miles below where St. Paul has grown up, and he at once accepted it, gathering from it that the Lord had a work for him to do there. And indeed he had. During the five or six years he remained there, a small Dakota church was gathered, and an opportunity was afforded him to exert a positive Christian influence on the white people then gathering into the capital of Minnesota. Dr. Williamson preached the first sermon there.
When, after the treaties of 1851, the Indians of the Mississippi were removed, he removed with them—or, rather, went before them, and commenced his last station at Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-zee, Yellow Medicine. There he and his family had further opportunities “to glory in tribulations.” The first winter was one of unusual severity, and they came near starving. But here the Lord blessed them, and permitted them to see a native church grow up, as well as at Hazelwood, the other mission station near by. It was during the next ten years that the seeds of civilization and Christianity took root, and grew into a fruitage, which, in some good manner, bore up under the storm of the outbreak in 1862, and resulted in a great harvest afterward.
Twenty-seven years of labor among the Dakotas were past. The results had been encouraging—gratifying. Dr. Williamson’s eldest son, Rev. John P. Williamson, born into the missionary kingdom, had recently come from Lane Seminary, and joined our missionary forces. But suddenly our work seemed to be dashed in pieces. The whirlwind of the outbreak swept over our mission. Our houses and churches were burned with fire. The members of our native churches—where were they? Would there ever be a gathering again? But nothing could discourage Dr. Williamson, for he trusted not in an arm of flesh, but in the all-powerful arm of God. He found that he at least had the consolation of knowing that all the Christian Indians had continued, at the risk of their own lives, steadfast friends of the whites, that they had succeeded in saving more than their own number of white people, and that those of them who were unjustly imprisoned spent much of the time in laboring for the conversion of the heathen imprisoned with them.
It required just such a political and moral revolution as this to break the bonds of heathenism, in which these Dakotas were held. It seems also to have required the manifest endurance of privations, and the unselfish devotion of Dr. Williamson and others to them in this time of trouble, to fully satisfy their suspicious hearts that we did not seek theirs but them. The winter of 1862-63, Dr. Williamson, having located his family at St. Peter, usually walked up every Saturday to Mankato, to preach the Gospel to the 400 men in prison. “That,” said a young man, “satisfied us that you were really our friends.” Sometimes it seems strange that it required so much to convince them! History scarcely furnishes a more remarkable instance of divine power on human hearts than was witnessed in that prison. For a particular account of this the reader is referred to the monograph on Rev. G. H. Pond.
Ever since the outbreak, Dr. Williamson has made a home for his family in the town of St. Peter and its vicinity. For two years of the three in which the condemned Dakotas were imprisoned at Davenport, Iowa, he gave his time and strength chiefly to ministering to their spiritual needs. Education never progressed so rapidly among them as during these years. They almost all learned to read and write their own language; and spent much of their time in singing hymns of praise, in prayer, and in reading the Bible. They were enrolled in classes, and each class placed under the special teaching of an elder. This gave them something like a Methodist organization, but it was found essential to a proper watch and care. This experience in the prison and elsewhere made it more and more manifest that, to carry forward the work of evangelization among this people, we must make large use of our native talent.
The original Dakota presbytery was organized at Lac-qui-parle in the first days of October, 1844. Dr. Williamson and myself brought our letters from the presbytery of Ripley, Ohio, and Samuel W. Pond brought his from an Association in Connecticut. The bounds of this presbytery were not accurately defined, and so for years it absorbed all the ministers of the Gospel of the Presbyterian and Congregational orders who came into the Minnesota country. By and by the presbyteries of St. Paul and Minnesota were organized; but the Dakota presbytery still covered the country of the Minnesota River.
At a meeting of this presbytery at Mankato in the spring of 1865, when our first Dakota preacher, Rev. John B. Renville, was licensed, an incident took place which illustrates the meekness and magnanimity of Dr. Williamson’s character. On its own adjournment the presbytery had convened and was opened with a sermon by Dr. Williamson, in the evening, in the Presbyterian church. He took occasion to present the subject of our duties to the down-trodden races, the African and the Indian. Doubtless some who heard the discourse did not approve of it. But no exceptions would have been taken if the Jewett family, out a few miles from the town, had not been killed that night by a Sioux war-party. Men were so unreasonable as to claim that the preaching and the preacher had some kind of casual relation with the killing. The next day, Mankato was in a ferment. An indignation meeting was held, and a committee of citizens was sent to the Presbyterian church to require Dr. Williamson to leave their town. Some of the members of the presbytery were indignant at this demand; but the good doctor chose to retire to his home at St. Peter, assuring the excited and unreasonable men of Mankato that he could have had no knowledge of the presence of the war-party, and certainly had no sympathy with their wicked work.
In years after this, I traveled hundreds of miles, often alone with Dr. Williamson, and while we conversed freely of all our experiences, and of the way God had led us, I do not remember that I ever heard him refer to this ill treatment of the people of Mankato. Like his Master, he had learned obedience by the things he suffered.
Never brilliant, he was yet, by his capacity for long-continued, severe exertion, and by systematic, persevering industry, enabled to accomplish an almost incredible amount of labor. His life was a grand one, made so by his indomitable perseverance in the line of lifting up the poor and those who had no helper.
From the beginning he had an unshaken faith in his work. He fully believed in the ability of the Indians to become civilized and Christianized. He had an equally strong and abiding faith in the power of the Gospel to elevate and save even them. Then add to these his personal conviction that God had, by special providences, called him to this work, and we have a threefold cord of faith, that was not easily broken.
No one who knew him ever doubted that Dr. Williamson was a true friend of the red man. And he succeeded wonderfully in making this impression upon the Indians themselves. They recognized, and, of late years, often spoke of, his life-long service for them. With a class of white men, this was the head and front of his offending, that, in their judgment, he could see only one side—that he was always the apologist of the Indians—that in the massacres of the border in 1862, when others believed and asserted that a thousand or fifteen hundred whites were killed, Dr. Williamson could only count three or four hundred. He was honest in his beliefs and honest in his apologies. He felt that necessity was laid upon him to “open his mouth for the dumb.” They could not defend themselves, and they have had very few defenders among white people.
In the summer of 1866, after the release of the Dakota prisoners at Davenport, Dr. Williamson and I took with us Rev. John B. Renville, and journeyed up through Minnesota and across Dakota to the Missouri River, and into the eastern corner of Nebraska. On our way, we spent some time at the head of the Coteau, preaching and administering the ordinances of the Gospel to our old church members, and gathering in a multitude of new converts, ordaining elders over them, and licensing two of the best qualified to preach the Gospel. When we reached the Niobrara, we found the Christians of the prison at Davenport and the Christians of the camp at Crow Creek now united; and they desired to be consolidated into one church of more than 400 members. We helped them to select their religious teachers, which they did from the men who had been in prison. So mightily had the Word of God prevailed among them that almost the entire adult community professed to be Christians. Rev. John P. Williamson was there in charge of the work.
For four successive summers, it was our privilege to travel together in this work of visiting and reconstructing these Dakota Christian communities. We also extended our visits to the villages of the wild Teeton Sioux along the Missouri River. Dr. Williamson claimed that Indians must be more honest than white people; for he always took with him an old trunk without lock or key, and in all these journeys he did not lose from a thread to a shoe-string.
For thirty-six years the doctor was a missionary of the American Board. But after the union of the assemblies, and the transfer of the funds contributed by the New School supporters of that board to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, the question of a change of our relations was thoughtfully considered and fully discussed. He was too strong a Presbyterian not to have decided convictions on that subject. But there were, as we considered it, substantial reasons why we could not go over as an entire mission. And so we agreed to divide, Dr. Williamson and his son, Rev. John P. Williamson, transferring themselves to the Presbyterian Board, while my boys and myself remained as we were. The division made no disturbance in our mutual confidence, and no change in the methods of our common work. Rather have the bonds of our union been drawn more closely together, during the past eight years, by an annual conference of all our Dakota pastors and elders and Sabbath-school workers. This has gathered and again distributed the enthusiasm of the churches; and has become the director of the native missionary forces. With one exception, Dr. Williamson was able to attend all these annual convocations, and added very much to their interest.
While the synod of Minnesota was holding its sessions in St. Paul in October, 1877, the good doctor was lying at the point of death, as was supposed, with pneumonia. Farewell words passed between him and the synod. But his work was not then done, and the Lord raised him up to complete it. At the next meeting of the synod, he presented a discourse on Rev. G. H. Pond; and during the winter following he finished his part of the Dakota Bible. Then his work appeared to be done, and he declined almost from that day onward.
On my way up to the land of the Dakotas, in the middle of May, 1879, I stopped over a day with my old friend. He was very feeble, but still able to walk out, and to sit up a good part of the day. We talked of many things. He then expressed the hope that as the warm weather came on he might rally, as he had done in former years. But the undertone was that, as the great work of giving the Bible to the Dakotas in their own language was completed, there was not much left for him to do here. He remarked that, during the last forty-four years, he had built several houses, all of which had either gone to pieces, or were looking old, and would not remain long after he was gone. But the building up of human souls that he had been permitted to work for, and which, by the grace of God, he had seen coming up into a new life, through the influence of the Word and the power of the Holy Ghost, he confidently believed would remain.
When I spoke of the near prospect of his dissolution to his Dakota friends, there arose in all the churches a great prayer cry for his recovery. This was reported to him, and he sent back this message, by the hand of his son Andrew: “Tell the Indians that father thanks them very much for their prayers, and hopes they will be blessed both to his good and theirs. But he does not wish them to pray that his life here may be prolonged, for he longs to depart and be with Christ.” And the testimony of Rev. G. F. McAfee, pastor of the Presbyterian church in St. Peter, who often visited and prayed with him in his last days, is to the same effect: “He absolutely forbade me to pray that he might recover, but that he might depart in peace.”
And so his longing was answered. He died on Tuesday, June 24, 1879, in the morning watch.
He had no ecstasies, but he looked into the future world with a firm and abiding faith in Him whom, not having seen, he loved. Of his last days, John P. Williamson writes thus:—
“He seemed to be tired out in body and mind, with as much disinclination to talk as to move, and apparently as much from the labor of collecting his mind as the difficulty of articulation. I think he talked very little from the time I was here going home from General Assembly (June 1) till his death, and for some time was perhaps unconscious.
“You may know that father had a special distaste for what are called death-bed experiences. Still, we thought that perhaps, at the last, when the bodily pains ceased, there might be a little lingering sunshine from the inner man, but such was not the case; and perhaps it was most fitting that he should die as he had lived, with no exalted feelings or bright imagery of the future, but a stern faith, which gives hope and peace in the deepest waters.”
He lived to see among the Dakotas ten native ordained Presbyterian ministers and about 800 church members, besides a large number of Episcopalians, a success probably much beyond his early anticipations.
On the farther shore he has joined the multitude that have gone before. Of his own family there are the three who went up in infancy. Next, Smith Burgess, a manly Christian boy, was taken away very suddenly. Then Lizzie Hunter went in the prime of womanhood. The mother followed, a woman of quiet and beautiful life. And then the sainted Nannie went up to put on white robes. Besides these of his family, a multitude of Dakotas are there, who will call him father. I think they have gathered around him and sung, under the trees by the river, one of his first Dakota hymns:—
“Jehowa Mayooha, nimayakiye,
Nitowashta iwadowan.”
“Jehovah, my Master, thou hast saved me,
I sing of thy goodness.”
My friend—my long-life friend—my companion in tribulation and in the patience of work, I almost envy thee thy first translation.
S. R. R.