Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

Some memories of former days were revived for the older children, and imparted to the younger ones, by the Father’s Paper:—

I REMEMBER.

As one grows old, memory is, in some sense, unreliable. It does not catch and hold as it once did. But many things of long ago are the things best remembered. Often there is error in regard to dates. The mind sees the things or the events vividly, but the surroundings are dim and uncertain. What is aimed at in this paper is to gather up, or rather select, some events lying along the family line and touching personal character.

The family commences with the mother. I remember well my first visit to Bethlehem, Ind., where I first met Mary, with whom I had been corresponding, having had an introduction through Rev. Dyer Burgess. That was in the spring. My second visit to the same place was in the autumn of 1836, when the school-mistress and I went on to New England together.

FIRST VISIT TO MASSACHUSETTS.

Of that journey eastward, and the winter spent in Hawley, I should naturally remember a good many things: How when the stage from Albany and Troy put us down in Charlemont, we hired a boy with a one-horse wagon to carry us six miles to Hawley. But when we came to going up the steep, rough, long hill, such as I had never climbed before, the horse could only scramble up with the baggage alone. How we reached the Longley homestead in a real November storm, only a few days before Thanksgiving, and were greeted by the grandparents, ninety years old, and by the father and mother and brothers and sisters—all of whom, except Moses, have since gone to the other side. How only a day after our arrival I was waited upon by a committee of the West Hawley church, and engaged to preach for them during the winter. How every Saturday I walked down to Pudding Hollow and preached on Sabbath, and usually walked up on Monday, when I did not get snowed in. How the first pair of boots I ever owned, bought in Ohio, proved to be too small to wade in snow with, and had to be abandoned. How the old family horse had a knack of turning us over into snow-drifts. How on our first visit to Buckland, the grandfather Taylor, then about ninety-five years old, when he was introduced to Mary Ann’s future husband, a young minister from the West, asked, “Did you ever think what a good horseman Jesus Christ was? Why, he rode upon a colt that had never been broke.” How the old meeting-house on the hill, with its square pews and high pulpit, creaked and groaned in the storm of our wedding day, February 16, 1837. How we left in the first days of March, when the snow-drifts on the hills were still fifteen feet deep.

March, April, May passed, and the first day of June we landed at Fort Snelling, in the land of the Dakotas.

When another three moons were passed by, and we had seen St. Anthony and Minnehaha, and made some acquaintance with the natives, I remember we took passage, with our effects, on board a Mackinaw boat for Traverse des Sioux. The boat was in command of Mr. Prescott, who accommodated us with tent-room on the journey, and made the week pass comfortably for us. From Traverse des Sioux to Lac-qui-parle we had our first experience of prairie traveling and camping. It was decidedly a new experience. But we had the company of Dr. Williamson and Mr. G. H. Pond, while we commenced to learn the lesson.

AT LAC-QUI-PARLE.

The long, narrow room, partly under the roof, of Dr. Williamson’s log house, which became our home for nearly five years from that September, is one of the memories that does not fade.

On the 6th of December I remember coming home from Mr. Renville’s, where we had been all the afternoon obtaining translations. Then there was hurrying to and fro, and the first baby came into our family of two. From that time on we were three, and the little Zitkadan-Washta, as the Indians named him, grew as other children grow, and did what most children don’t do, viz., learn to go down stairs before he did up, because we lived upstairs, and all children can manage to go away from home, when they can’t or won’t come back of themselves.