Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

Trouble and sorrow baptize and consecrate. The many trials attendant upon commencing our station at Traverse des Sioux and the oaks of weeping there had greatly endeared the place to the mother; and when, in September of 1846, the mission voted that we should go back to Lac-qui-parle, she could not see that it was duty, and went without her own consent. It was a severe trial. In a few months she became satisfied that the Lord had led us. What of character the boy Hake, who was born in the next June, inherited from these months of sadness, I know not, but as he came along up, we called him a “Noble Boy.” The family had then reached the sacred number seven.

In the year that followed we built a very comfortable frame-house—indeed, two of them—one for Mr. Jonas Pettijohn’s family—comfortable, except that the snow would drift in through the ash shingles. Some of the older children can, perhaps, remember times when there was more snow inside than outside. We were up on the hill, and not under it, where Dr. Williamson and Mr. Huggins had built a dozen years before; and consequently the winter winds were fiercer, though we all thought the summers were pleasanter. In this house our sixth child was born, who has no Dakota cognomen. We shall call him Ishakpe. The half-dozen years in which we made that house our home were full of work, broken in upon by a year spent in the East—myself in New York City chiefly. Henry, who could say to enquirers, “I was two years old last September,” and Isabella were with their mother in Massachusetts and Brooklyn—Martha and Anna in the capital of Minnesota, and Thomas at the mission station of Kaposia; Alfred, I believe, was at Galesburg, Ill.

EDUCATING THE CHILDREN.

It has been a question that we often discussed, “How shall we get our children educated?” The basis of allowance from the treasury of the board had been on the principle of the Methodist circuit riders. The $250 with which we commenced was increased $50 for each child. So that at this time our salary was either $500 or $550. It was never greater than the last sum until after the outbreak in 1862. We lived on it comfortably, but there was very little margin for sending children away to school. And now we were reaching that point in our family history when a special effort must be made in that direction. Before we went on East in 1851, the mother and I had talked the matter over—perhaps some good family would like to take one of the children to educate. And so it was, more than one good offer was received for the little boy Henry. But our hearts failed us. Mrs. Minerva Cook of Brooklyn said to me, “You are afraid we will make an Episcopalian of him.” So near was he to being a bishop!

MISSION HOUSE BURNED.

Many remembrances have to be passed over. The last picture I have of those mission houses at Lac-qui-parle is when, on the 3d of March, 1854, they were enveloped in fire. The two little boys had been down cellar to get potatoes for their mother, and, holding the lighted candle too near to the dry hay underneath the floor, the whole was soon in a conflagration, which our poor efforts could not stop. The houses were soon a heap of ashes, and the meat and many of the potatoes in the cellar were cooked. The adobe church was then our asylum, and the family home for the summer.

BUILD AT HAZELWOOD.

While occupying the old church and making preparations to rebuild, Secretary S. B. Treat visited us. After consultation, our plans were changed, and we erected our mission buildings at Hazelwood, twenty-five miles further down the Minnesota, and near to Dr. Williamson’s and the Yellow Medicine Agency. During the eight years spent there, many things connected with the family life transpired. First among them worthy to be noted was the rounding out of the number of children to eight—“Toonkanshena,” so called by the Indians—just why, I don’t know—and Octavia the Hakakta. In those days our Family Education Society had to devise ways and means to keep one always, and sometimes two, away at school. By and by, Zitkadan-Washta graduated at Knox College, and Hapan and Hapistinna at the Western Female Seminary and College Hill respectively. How we got them through seems even now a mystery. But I remember one year we raised a grand crop of potatoes, and sold 100 barrels to the government for $300 in gold. That was quite a lift. And so the Lord provided all through—then and afterward. Nothing was more remarkable in our family history for twenty-five years than its general health. We had very little sickness. I remember a week or so of doctoring on myself during our first residence at Lac-qui-parle. Then, the summer after our return there, the fever and ague took hold of two or three of the children. The mother also was taken sick suddenly in the adobe church, and Dr. Williamson and I had a night ride up from Hazelwood. At this place (Hazelwood) the baby boy Toonkanshena was sick one night, I remember, and we gave him calomel and sent for the doctor. But the most serious sickness of all these years was that of my “urchin” and Henry, both together of typhoid fever. I have always believed that prayer was a part of the means of their recovery.

QUARTER OF A CENTURY.

When the summer of 1862 came, it rounded out a full quarter of a century of missionary life for us. Alfred had completed his seminary course, and in the meantime had grown such a heavy black beard that when he and I sat on the platform together, in a crowded church in Cincinnati, the people asked which was the father and which the son.