REV. GIDEON H. POND.
A SUCCESSFUL LIFE.
Born and brought up in Litchfield county, in a town adjoining Washington, Connecticut, Rev. George Bushnell visited that hill country in his youth, and was deeply impressed with the manifest and pervading religious element in the community. Taken there by a special providence, more than a quarter of a century ago, and enjoying the privilege of a visit in some of the families, it seemed to me that it had been a good place to raise men. This was on the line of the impression made upon me years before that. When I first met, in the land of the Dakotas, the brothers Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond, they were both over six feet high, and “seemed the children of a king.”
In this hill town of Washington, on the 30th of June, 1810, Gideon Hollister, the younger of the two brothers, was born. His parents were Elnathan Judson and Sarah Hollister Pond. Gideon was the fifth child, and so was called by the Dakotas Hakay. Of his childhood and youth almost nothing is known to the writer. He had the advantage of a New England common-school education; perhaps nothing more. As he grew very rapidly and came to the size and strength of man early, he made a full hand in the harvest field at the age of sixteen. To this ambition to be counted a man and do a man’s work when as yet he should have been a boy, he in after life ascribed some of his infirmities. This ambition continued with him through life, and occasional over-work at last undermined a constitution that might, with care and God’s blessing, have continued to the end of the century.
He came to the land of the Dakotas, now Minnesota, in the spring of 1834. The older brother, Samuel, had come out as far as Galena, Ill., in the summer previous. The pioneer minister of that country of lead was Rev. Aratus Kent, who desired to retain Mr. Pond as an adjutant in his great and constantly enlarging work; but Mr. Pond had heard of the Sioux, or Dakotas, for whose souls no one cared, and, having decided to go to them, he sent for his brother Gideon to accompany him.
When they reached Fort Snelling, and made known their errand to the commanding officer of the post, Major Bliss, and to the resident Indian agent, Major Taliaferro, they received the hearty approval and co-operation of both, and the agent at once recommended them to commence work with the Dakotas of the Lake Calhoun village, where some steps had already been taken in the line of civilization. There, on the margin of the lake, they built their log cabin. Last summer Mr. King’s grand Pavilion, so called, was completed on the same spot, which gave occasion for Mr. Gideon H. Pond to tell the story of this first effort in that line:
“Just forty-three years previous to the occurrence above alluded to, on the same beautiful site, was completed an humble edifice, built by the hands of two inexperienced New England boys, just setting out in life-work. The foundation-stones of that hut were removed to make place for the present Pavilion, perchance compose a part of it. The old structure was of oak logs, carefully peeled. The peeling was a mistake. Twelve feet by sixteen, and eight feet high, were the dimensions of the edifice. Straight poles from the tamarack grove west of the lake formed the timbers of the roof, and the roof itself was of the bark of trees which grew on the bank of what is now called ‘Bassett’s Creek,’ fastened with strings of the inner bark of the bass wood. A partition of small logs divided the house into two rooms, and split logs furnished material for a floor. The ceiling was of slabs from the old government saw-mill, through the kindness of Major Bliss, who was in command of Fort Snelling. The door was made of boards split from a log with an axe, having wooden hinges and fastenings, and was locked by pulling in the latch-string. The single window was the gift of the kind-hearted Major Lawrence Taliaferro, United States Indian agent. The cash cost of the building was one shilling, New York currency, for nails used in and about the door. ‘The formal opening’ exercises consisted in reading a section from the old book by the name of Bible, and prayer to Him who was its acknowledged author. The ‘banquet’ consisted of mussels from the lake, flour and water. The ground was selected by the Indian chief of the Lake Calhoun band of Dakotas, Man-of-the-sky, by which he showed good taste. The reason he gave for the selection was that ‘from that point the loons would be visible on the lake.’
“The old chief and his pagan people had their homes on the surface of that ground in the bosom of which now sleep the bodies of deceased Christians from the city of Minneapolis, the Lake Wood cemetery, over which these old eyes have witnessed, dangling in the night breeze, many a Chippewa scalp, in the midst of horrid chants, yells, and wails, widely contrasting with the present stillness of that quiet home of those
‘Who sleep the years away.’
That hut was the home of the first citizen settlers of Hennepin county, perhaps of Minnesota, the first school-room, the first house for divine worship, and the first mission station among the Dakota Indians.”
The departure of Mr. Pond called forth from Gen. Henry H. Sibley so just and beautiful a tribute, that I can not forbear inserting a portion, from the Pioneer Press of St. Paul:—
“When the writer came to this country, in 1834, he did not expect to meet a single white man, except those composing the garrison at Fort Snelling, a few government officials attached to the department of Indian affairs, and the traders and voyageurs employed by the great fur company in its business. There was but one house, or, rather, log cabin, along the entire distance of nearly 300 miles between Prairie du Chien and St. Peters, now Mendota, and that was at a point below Lake Pepin, near the present town of Wabashaw. What was his surprise then to find that his advent had been preceded in the spring of the same year by two young Americans, Samuel W. Pond and Gideon H. Pond, brothers, scarcely out of their teens, who had built for themselves a small hut at the Indian village of Lake Calhoun, and had determined to consecrate their lives to the work of civilizing and Christianizing the wild Sioux. For many long years these devoted men labored in the cause, through manifold difficulties and discouragements, sustained by a faith that the seed sown would make itself manifest in God’s good time. The efforts then made to reclaim the savages from their mode of life, the influence of their blameless and religious walk and conversation upon those with whom they were brought in daily contact, and the self-denial and personal sacrifices required at their hands, are doubtless treasured up in a higher than human record.”
General Sibley mentions an incident belonging to this period of their residence at Lake Calhoun, which never before came to my knowledge:—
“Gifted with an uncommonly fine constitution, the subject of this sketch met with an accident in his early days, from the effects of which it is questionable if he ever entirely recovered. He broke through the ice at Lake Harriet in the early part of the winter, and as there was no one at hand to afford aid, he only saved his life after a desperate struggle, by continuing to fracture the frozen surface until he reached shallow water, when he succeeded in extricating himself. His long immersion and exhaustive efforts brought on a severe attack of pneumonia, which for many days threatened a fatal termination.”
My own personal acquaintance with Mr. Pond commenced in the summer of 1837. He was then, and had been for a year previous, at Lac-qui-parle. In September my wife and I joined that station, and the first event occurring after that, which has impressed itself upon my memory, was the marriage of Mr. Pond and Miss Sarah Poage, sister of Mrs. Dr. Williamson. This was the first marriage ceremony I had been called upon to perform; and Mr. Pond signalized it by making a feast, and calling, according to the Saviour’s injunction, “the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind.” And there was a plenty of such to be called in that Dakota village. They could not recompense him, but “he shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”
Mr. Pond had long been yearning to see what was inside of an Indian. He sometimes said he wanted to be an Indian, if only for a little while, that he might know how an Indian felt, and by what motives he could be moved. When the early spring of 1838 came, and the ducks began to come northward, a half-dozen Dakota families started from Lac-qui-parle to hunt and trap on the upper part of the Chippewa River, in the neighborhood of where the town of Benson now is. Mr. Pond went with them and was gone two weeks. It was in the month of April, and the streams were flooded and the water was cold. There should have been enough of game easily obtained to feed the party. But it did not prove so. A cold spell came on, the ducks disappeared, and Mr. Pond and his Indian hunters were reduced to scanty fare, and sometimes they had nothing for a whole day. But Mr. Pond was seeing inside of Indians and was quite willing to starve a good deal. However, his stay with them, and their hunt for that time as well, was suddenly terminated, by the appearance of the Ojibwa chief Hole-in-the-Day and ten men with him. They came to smoke the peace-pipe, they said. They were royally feasted by three of the families, who killed their dogs to feed the strangers, who, in turn, arose in the night and killed the Dakotas. As God would have it, Mr. Pond was not then with those three tents, and so he escaped.
No one had started with more of a determination to master the Dakota language than Gideon H. Pond. And no one of the older missionaries succeeded so well in learning to talk just like a Dakota. Indeed, he must have had a peculiar aptitude for acquiring language; for in these first years of missionary life, he learned to read French and Latin and Greek, so that the second Mrs. Pond writes: “When I came, and for a number of years, he read from the Greek Testament at our family worship in the morning. Afterward he used his Latin Bible, and still later his French Testament.”
In this line of literary work General Sibley’s testimony is appreciative. He says:—
“Indeed, to them, and to their veteran co-laborers, Rev. T. S. Williamson and Rev. S. R. Riggs, the credit is to be ascribed of having produced this rude and rich Dakota tongue to the learned world in a written and systematic shape, the lexicon prepared by their joint labors forming one of the publications of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington City, which has justly elicited the commendation of experts in philological lore, as a most valuable contribution to that branch of literature.”
While Mr. Pond was naturally ambitious, he was also peculiarly sensitive and retiring. When the writer was left with him at Lac-qui-parle, Dr. Williamson having gone to Ohio for the winter, although so much better master of the Dakota than I was at that time, he was unwilling to take more than a secondary part in the Sabbath services. “Dr. Williamson and you are ministers,” he would say. And even years afterward, when he and his family had removed to the neighborhood of Fort Snelling, and he and his brother had built at Oak Grove, with the people of their first love, Gideon H. could hardly be persuaded that it was his duty to become a preacher of the Gospel. I remember more than one long conversation I had with him on the subject. He seemed to shrink from it as a little child, although he was then thirty-seven years old.
In the spring of 1847, he and Mr. Robert Hopkins were licensed by the Dakota presbytery, and ordained in the autumn of 1848. We were not disappointed in our men. Mr. Hopkins gave evidence of large adaptation to the missionary work; but in less than three years he heard the call of the Master, and went up through a flood of waters. Mr. Pond, notwithstanding his hesitation in accepting the office, became a most acceptable and efficient and successful preacher and pastor.
After the treaties of 1851, these Lower Sioux were removed to the Upper Minnesota. White people came in immediately and took possession of their lands. Mr. Pond elected to remain and labor among the white people. He very soon organized a church, which in a short time became a working, benevolent church—for some years the banner Presbyterian church of Minnesota in the way of benevolence. When, in 1873, Mr. Pond resigned his pastorate, he wrote in his diary, “I have preached to the people of Bloomington twenty years.” He received home mission aid only a few years.
We are very glad to have placed at our disposal so much of the private journal of the late Rev. G. H. Pond as relates to the wonderful work of God among the Dakotas in prison at Mankato, Minn., in the winter of 1862-63. The facts, in the main, have been published before; but the story, as told so simply and graphically by Mr. Pond, may well bear repeating. Mr. Pond arrived at Mankato Saturday, January 31, 1863, and remained until the afternoon of Tuesday, February 3:—
“There are over three hundred Indians in prison, the most of whom are in chains. There is a degree of religious interest manifested by them, which is incredible. They huddle themselves together every morning and evening in the prison, and read the Scriptures, sing hymns, confess one to another, exhort one another, and pray together. They say that their whole lives have been wicked—that they have adhered to the superstitions of their ancestors until they have reduced themselves to their present state of wretchedness and ruin. They declare that they have left it all, and will leave all forever; that they do and will embrace the religion of Jesus Christ, and adhere to it as long as they live; and that this is their only hope, both in this world and in the next. They say that before they came to this state of mind—this determination—their hearts failed them with fear, but now they have much mental ease and comfort.
“About fifty men of the Lake Calhoun band expressed a wish to be baptized by me, rather than by any one else, on the ground that my brother and myself had been their first and chief instructors in religion. After consultation with Rev. Marcus Hicks of Mankato, Dr. Williamson and I decided to grant their request, and administer to them the Christian ordinance of baptism. We made the conditions as plain as we could, and we proclaimed there in the prison that we would baptize such as felt ready heartily to comply with the conditions—commanding that none should come forward to receive the rite who did not do it heartily to the God of heaven, whose eye penetrated each of their hearts. All, by a hearty—apparently hearty—response, signified their desire to receive the rite on the conditions offered.
“As soon as preparations could be completed, and we had provided ourselves with a basin of water, they came forward, one by one, as their names were called, and were baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, while each subject stood with his right hand raised and head bowed, and many of them with the eyes closed, with an appearance of profound reverence. As each one passed from the place where he stood to be baptized, one or the other of us stopped him and addressed to him, in a low voice, a few words, such as our knowledge of his previous character and the solemnities of the occasion suggested. The effect of this, in most cases, seemed to very much deepen the solemnity of the ceremony. I varied my words, in this part of the exercises, to suit the case of the person; and when gray-haired medicine-men stood literally trembling before me, as I laid one hand on their heads, the effect on my mind was such that at times my tongue faltered. The words which I used in this part of the service were the following, or something nearly like them in substance: ‘My brother, this is the mark of God which is placed upon you. You will carry it while you live. It introduces you into the great family of God, who looked down from heaven, not upon your head, but into your heart. This ends your superstition, and from this time you are to call God your Father. Remember to honor him. Be resolved to do his will.’ It made me glad to hear them respond, ‘Yes, I will.’
“When we were through, and all were again seated, we sung a hymn appropriate to the occasion, in which many of them joined, and then prayed. I then said to them, ‘Hitherto I have addressed you as friends; now I call you brothers. For years we have contended together on this subject of religion; now our contentions cease. We have one Father—we are one family. I must now leave you, and probably shall see you no more in this world. While you remain in this prison, you have time to attend to religion. You can do nothing else. Your adherence to the Medicine Sack and the Wotawe has brought you to ruin. Our Lord Jesus Christ can save you. Seek him with all your heart. He looks not on your heads nor on your lips, but into your bosoms. Brothers, I will make use of a term of brotherly salutation, to which you have been accustomed in your medicine dance, and say to you, Brothers, I spread my hands over you and bless you.’ The hearty answer of three hundred voices made me feel glad.
“The outbreak and events which followed it have, under God, broken into shivers the power of the priests of devils, which has hitherto ruled these wretched tribes. They were before bound in the chains and confined in the prison of Paganism, as the prisoners in the prison at Philippi were bound with chains. The outbreak and its attendant consequences have been like the earthquake to shake the foundation of their prison, and every one’s bonds have been loosed. Like the jailer, in anxious fear they have cried, ‘Sirs, what must we do to be saved?’ They have been told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, who will still save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him. They say they repent and forsake their sins—that they believe on him, that they trust in him, and will obey him. Therefore they have been baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, three hundred in a day.”
In the spring of 1853, Mrs. Sarah Poage Pond departed, after a lingering illness of eighteen months, and left a “blessed memory.” There were seven children by this marriage, all of whom are living, and have families of their own, but George, who died while in the Lane Theological Seminary. In the summer of 1854, Mr. Pond was married to his second wife, Mrs. Agnes C. J. Hopkins, widow of Rev. Robert Hopkins. The second Mrs. Pond brought her three children, making the united family of children at that time ten. Six have been added since. And there are twenty-two grandchildren, six of whom are members of the Church of Christ, together with all the children and their companions. Is not that a successful life? Counting the widowed mother and those who have come into the family by marriage, there are, I understand, just fifty who mourn the departure of the patriarch father. A little more than two-score years ago, he was one; and now behold a multitude!
Mary Frances Hopkins, who came into the family when a girl, and afterward married Edward R. Pond, the son, writes thus: “To me he was as near an own father as it is possible for one to be who is so by adoption, and I shall always be glad I was allowed to call him father.”
The members of the synod of Minnesota will remember with great pleasure Mr. Pond’s presence with them at their last meeting at St. Paul, in the middle of October. For some years past, he has frequently been unable to be present. This time he seemed to be more vigorous than usual, and greatly entertained the synod and people of St. Paul with his terse and graphic presentation of some of the Lord’s workings in behalf of the Dakotas.
During the meeting I was quartered with Mrs. Governor Ramsay. On Saturday I was charged with a message to Mr. Pond, inviting him to come and spend the night at the governor’s. We passed a profitable evening together, and he and I talked long of the way in which the Lord had led us; of the great prosperity he had given us in our families and in our work. Neither of us thought, probably, that that would be our last talk this side the golden city. The next day, Sabbath, he preached in the morning, for Rev. D. R. Breed, in the House of Hope, which, probably, was his last sermon. In the evening he was with us in the Opera House, at a meeting in the interest of home and foreign missions.
“His health gradually failed,” Mrs. Pond writes, “from the time of his return from synod, though he did not call himself sick until the 11th of January, 1878, and he died on Sabbath, the 20th, about noon.” She adds: “His interest in the Indians, for whom he labored so long, was very deep, and he always spoke of them with loving tenderness, and often with tears. One of the last things he did was to look over his old Dakota hymns, revised by J. P. W. and A. L. R., and sent to him for his consent to the proposed alterations.”
“His simple faith in the Lord Jesus caused him all the time to live a life of self-denial, that he might do more to spread the knowledge of Jesus’ love to those who knew it not.” The love of Christ constrained him, and was his ruling passion.
Of his last days the daughter says:—
“He really died of consumption. The nine days he was confined to bed he suffered much; but his mind was mostly clear, and he was very glad to go. I think the summons was no more sudden to him than to Elijah. He was to the last loving and trustful, brave and patient. To his brother Samuel, as he came to his sick bed, he said: ‘So we go to see each other die.’ Some time before he had visited Samuel when he did not expect to recover. ‘My struggles are over. The Lord has taken care of me, and he will take care of the rest of you. My hope is in the Lord,’ he said.
“Toward the last it was hard for him to converse, and he bade us no formal farewell. But the words, as we noted them down, were words of cheer and comfort: ‘You have nothing to fear, for the present or the future.’ And so was given to him the victory over death, through faith in Jesus.”
Is that dying? He sleeps with his fathers. He has gone to see the King in his beauty, in a land not very far off.
As loving hands ministered to him in his sickness, loving hearts mourned at his death. On the Wednesday following he was buried. A half a dozen brothers in the ministry were present at his funeral, and, fittingly, Mr. Breed of the House of Hope preached the sermon.
This is success.
S. R. R.