Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

But now we decided that it would be more economical to make boards by horse and ox power than by man power alone; and so the committee at Boston authorized the purchase of a small circular saw-mill. This proved quite a help in our civilized community. It enabled us to put up in the next season a house for a small boarding-school, and also a neat church building. This latter was erected and finished at a cost of about $700, only $200 of which was mission funds. At this time the Indians were receiving money annuities. It was paid them in gold, about $10 for each individual. So that the men received from thirty to fifty dollars. At a propitious time I made a tea-party, which was attended by our civilized men largely, and the result was that, with some assistance from white people, they were able to raise about five hundred dollars. It was a success beyond my most sanguine expectations.

We had now such a respectable community of young men, who had cut off their hair and exchanged the dress of the Dakotas for that of the white man, and whose wants now were very different from the annuity Dakotas generally, that we took measures to organize them into a separate band, which we called the Hazelwood Republic. They elected their President for two years, and other needed officers, and were, without any difficulty, recognized by the agent as a separate band. A number of these men were half-breeds, who were, by the organic law of Minnesota, citizens. The constitution of the State provided that Indians also might become citizens by satisfying a court of their progress in civilization.

A few years after the organization of this civilized community, I took eight or ten of the men to meet the court at Mankato, but, the court deciding that a knowledge of English was necessary to comply with the laws of the State, only one of my men was passed into citizenship.

A part of the plan of our new community was a mission boarding-school. Almost from the beginning, we had been making trial of educating Dakota children in our own families. Mary had a little girl given her the first fall after we came to Lac-qui-parle; she was the daughter of Eagle Help, my Bible reader; but after she had washed and dressed her up she stayed only a month, and then ran away. The Messrs. Pond raised one or two in their families. Dr. Williamson had several Dakota children when at Kaposia, and afterward at Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze. Mr. Adams had at one time a boarding-school of a half-dozen at Lac-qui-parle, and we had two or three in our family. Now the work was to be attempted on a larger scale.

The Hazelwood boarding-school was for a while cared for by Miss Ruth Pettijohn, and afterward by Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Cunningham. Counting those in Dr. Williamson’s family and our own, the boarding scholars amounted to twenty. This was the extent of our ambition in that line at that time. A large boarding-school demands a large outlay for buildings, as well as for its continual support. The necessities of our mission work did not then demand the outlay, nor could it have been easily obtained from the funds of the Board. Connected with this school, as teachers, were Mrs. Annie B. Ackley and Miss Eliza Huggins and Isabella B. Riggs.

We had reached the time, in 1854, when it became necessary to enter upon some plan to educate our children beyond what we could give them in our Indian home. Three years before this, Alfred had been at school in Illinois, but that was only a temporary arrangement; now he was seventeen years old and prepared to enter college. Mary and I often discussed the question of ways and means. It was our desire to give our children as good an education as we possessed ourselves—at least, to give them a chance of obtaining such an education. We did not feel that our position as missionaries should make this impossible, and yet how it was to be accomplished we could not see. We had neither of us any patrimony. In this respect we were on an equality. She received $100 from her father’s estate, and I but a little more than that, and we did not know of any rich friends to whom we could apply for aid. Our salary had been small from the beginning. We entered the mission work at a time when the Board was cutting down everywhere. So that we started on a salary or allowance of about $250, and for the first quarter of a century it did not materially differ from the basis of a Methodist circuit rider in the West of olden times; that is, $100 apiece, and $50 for each child. At this time, when our family numbered eight, we had an allowance of $500. We were both close calculators, and we never ran in debt. We could live comfortably with our children at home, each doing something to carry the burdens of life. But how could we support one or more away at school? A third of the whole family allowance would not suffice to pay the expenses of one, at the most economical of our colleges or schools. To begin, the work required faith. We determined to begin, by sending Alfred to Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois. From year to year, we were able to keep him there until he finished the course. Two years after sending Alfred, we sent Isabella to the Western Female Seminary, at Oxford, Ohio. This, however, we were enabled to do by the help which Mrs. Blaisdell and other Christian friends of the Second Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati gave.

With two away at the same time, “the barrel of meal did not waste, nor the cruse of oil fail.” In various ways the Lord helped us. One year our garden produced a large surplus of excellent potatoes, which the Indian agent bought at a very remunerative price. From year to year our faith was strengthened. “Jehovah Jireh” became our motto. He stood by us and helped us in the work of education all through the twenty-three years that have followed, until the last of Mary’s eight children has finished at the Beloit high school. We have redeemed our promise and pledge made to each other. We have given, by the Lord’s help, each and all of our children a chance to become as good or better scholars than their father and mother were.

The 3d of March was associated in our minds with calamity from the burning of our houses at Lac-qui-parle. But two years later, or in the spring of 1856, the 3d of March brought a great shadow over Dr. Williamson’s household. Smith Burgess Williamson was just coming up to young manhood. He was large of his age, a very manly boy. On this 3d of March he was engaged in hauling up firewood with an ox-team. He probably attempted to get on his loaded sled while the oxen were in motion, and, missing his step, fell under the runner. He was dragged home, a distance of some rods, and his young life was entirely crushed out. We were immediately summoned over from Hazelwood. Human sympathy could go but a little way toward reaching the bottom of such a trouble. It was like other sorrows that had come upon us, and we were prepared to sit down in silence with our afflicted friends, and help them think out, “It is the Lord”; “I was dumb because thou didst it.” The family had been already schooled in affliction, and this helped to prepare them better for the Master’s work.

During these passing years, the educational work among the Dakotas was progressing beyond what it had done previously. Our boarding-school at Hazelwood, in charge of H. D. Cunningham, was full and doing good service. Our civilized and Christian community had come to desire and appreciate somewhat the education of their children. At Dr. Williamson’s, also, several were taken into the family, and the day-school prospered. Miss Jane S. Williamson, a maiden sister of the doctor, had come to the land of the Dakotas when Mary and I returned in 1843. From the association and connection of her father’s family with slavery in South Carolina, she had grown up with a great interest in the colored people. She had taught colored schools in Ohio, when it was very unpopular, even in a free state, to educate the blacks. When she came to the Dakotas, her enthusiasm in the work of lifting up the colored race was at once transferred to the red men, and she became an indefatigable worker in their education.

She often carried cakes and nuts in her pocket, and had something to give to this and that one, to draw them to her school. The present race of Dakotas remember Aunt Jane, as we called her, or Dowan Dootawin, Red Song Woman, as they called her, with tender interest, and many of them owe more to her than they can understand.