Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

While waiting in Ohio for the graduating day of Hapistinna to come, I ran up to Steubenville, where I was born, and walked out into the country to the old farm where my boyhood was spent. The visit was not very satisfactory. Scarcely any one knew me. Everything had greatly changed.

THE OUTBREAK.

The memories of August 18, 1862, and the days that followed, are vivid, but must in the main be passed over. I can not forbear, however, to note what a sorry group we were on that island on the morning of the 19th. How finally the way appeared, and we filed up the ravine and started over the prairie as fugitives! How the rain came on us that afternoon, and what a sorry camping we made in the open prairie after we had crossed Hawk River! How the little Hakakta girl, when bed-time came, wanted to go home! How, when the rain had leaked down through the wagon-bed all night upon them, Mrs. D. Wilson Moore thought it would be about as good to die as to live under such conditions! How Hapistinna and Wanskay wore off their toes walking through the sharp prairie-grass! How we stopped on the open prairie to kill a cow and bake bread and roast meat, with no pans to do it in! And how, while the process was going on, we had our picture taken! How many scares we passed through the night we passed around Fort Ridgely! How thus we escaped, like a bird from the snare of the fowler,—the snare was broken, and we escaped. How, when the company came to adjust their mutual obligations, nobody had any money but D. Wilson Moore! How those women met us on the top of the hill by Henderson, and were glad to see us because we had white blood in us! How on the road we met our old friend Samuel W. Pond, who welcomed our family to his house at Shakopee!

FAMILY IN ST. ANTHONY.

The memories of the campaign of the next three months may be passed over, as having little connection with the family. But I remember the night when, with more than three hundred condemnations in my carpet-bag, I had a long hunt at midnight for the little hired house in which the mother and children had re-commenced housekeeping. The three years in St. Anthony were ones of varied experiences. Wanskay had gone down to Rockford. Hapan and Hapistinna taught school and kept house for the mother by turns. The three boys went to school.

The War of the Rebellion was not over, but it was nearing its end, as we soon knew, when one day the noble boy Thomas brought in a paper for me to sign, giving my permission for his enlistment. I had heard and read so much of boys of sixteen going almost at once into the hospital that I threw the paper in the fire.

WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO?

The missionary work among the Dakotas was so broken up, the clouds hung so heavily over it, that I very seriously entertained the question of giving up my commission as a missionary of the American Board, and turning my attention to work among white people. In my correspondence with Secretary Treat I proposed a kind of half-and-half work, but that was not approved. Finally I wrote a letter of withdrawal, and sent it on to Boston. But the prudential committee were slow to act upon it. In the meantime, Rev. G. H. Pond came over and gave me a long talk. He believed I should do no such thing; that the clouds would soon clear away; that the need of work such as I could give would be greater than ever before. And so it was. To me Mr. Pond was a prophet of the Lord, sent with a special message. I wanted to know the way. And the voice said, “This is the way; walk in it.” With new enthusiasm I then entered upon the work of meeting the increasing demand for school-books and for the Bible.

At the very beginning of the year 1865, having completed my three months’ work at the Bible House in New York, in reading the proof of the entire New Testament in Dakota, and other parts of the Bible, as well as other books, I returned to our home in St. Anthony to find the mother away at the water-cure establishment. We remember that as a year of invalidism, of sickness. But the skilful physician and the summer sun wrought such a cure that in the autumn we removed to Beloit. Here, with comparative health, she had three and a half years of added life.

THE MOTHER CALLED AWAY.