The opening of the season of 1868 found me starting from Sioux City on a gray pony, which I rode across to Minnesota. But first I spent some weeks with the Santees. They had partly removed from Bazille Creek down to the bottom where the agency is now located. A long log house had been prepared for a church and school-house. The Episcopalians were building extensively and expensively, while our folks contented themselves with very humble abodes. The work of education had progressed very finely, Mr. Williamson and Mr. Pond giving much time to it, while Mrs. Pond and Mrs. Williamson greatly helped the women in their religious home-life.
This summer John P. Williamson and I took Artemas Ehnamane, the senior native minister of the Pilgrim Church, and crossed over to Fort Wadsworth, where Dr. Williamson and John B. Renville met us. On the way, we made a short stop at the Yankton agency, which we had visited two years before. Now it was opening up as a field of promise to Mr. Williamson, and he proceeded to occupy it soon afterward. We made another stop, for preaching purposes, at Brule and Crow Creek, where the pastor of Santee showed himself able to gain the attention of the wild Sioux. Our ride across the desert land was enlivened by conversation on Dakota customs and Dakota songs. In both these departments of literature, this former hunter and warrior from Red Wing was an excellent teacher.
This annual gathering at the head of the Coteau was held at Dry Wood Lake, where Peter Big-Fire had settled. It was the most remarkable of all those yearly camp-meetings. On this occasion about sixty persons were added to our church list. It was a sight to be remembered, when, on the open prairie, they and their children stood up to be baptized.
At the close of this meeting we held another at Buffalo Lake, in one of their summer houses, which was full of meaning. The recently organized church of Long Hollow, which then extended to Buffalo Lake, had selected Solomon to be their religious teacher. And this after meeting was held to ordain and install him as pastor of that church. He was a young man of Christian experience and blameless life, and has since proved himself to be a very reliable and useful native pastor.
Since the marvels of grace wrought among the Dakotas in the prison and camp, we had received numerous invitations to prepare some account thereof for the Christian public. Several of these requests came from members of the Dakota Presbytery, which then covered the western part of Minnesota. Accordingly, I had taken up the idea, and endeavored to work it out. Some chapters had been submitted for examination to a committee of the Presbytery, and commended by them for publication. In the autumn and winter of 1868, the manuscript began to assume a completed form. It was submitted to Secretary S. B. Treat for examination, who made valuable suggestions, and agreed to write an introduction to the book. This he did, in a manner highly satisfactory.
The manuscript I first offered to the Presbyterian Board of Publication. But the best that Dr. Dulles could do was to offer me a hundred dollars for the copy-right. Friends in Boston thought I could do better there. And so “Tahkoo Wakan,” or “The Gospel Among the Dakotas,” was brought out by the Congregational Publishing Society, in the summer of 1869. In the preparation of the book Mary had taken the deepest interest, although not able to do much of the mental work. The preface bears date less than three weeks before her death.
Authors whose books do not sell very well, I suppose, generally marvel at the result. This little volume was, and is still, so intensely interesting to me that I wonder why everybody does not buy and read it. But over against this stands the fact that hitherto less than two thousand copies have been disposed of. Pecuniarily, it has not been a success. But neither has it been an entire failure. And perhaps it has done some good in bringing a class of Christian workers into more intelligent sympathy and co-operation in the work of Indian evangelization; and so the labor is not lost.
Since we left Minnesota, Mary had apparently been slowly recovering from the invalidism of the past. She enjoyed life. She could occasionally attend religious meetings. The society of Beloit was very congenial. Sometimes she was able to attend the ministers’ meetings, and enjoyed the literary and religious discussions and criticisms. The last winter—that of 1868-69—she became exceedingly interested in a book called “The Seven Great Hymns of the Mediæval Church.” She read and re-read the various translations of Dies Iræ. But she was attracted most to the Hora Novissima of Bernard of Cluni. Such a stanza as the 26th:—
“Thou hast no shore, fair ocean!
Thou hast no time, bright day!