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.