Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

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.