Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

Since a little previous to the outbreak in 1862, he had been preaching to white people; first at Lockport, Ill., where he was ordained and continued with the church five years, and then for a year at Centre, Wis., and now at Woodstock, Ill. But all this time he seemed to be only waiting for the Dakota work to assume such a shape as to invite his assistance. For some time he had been especially acquainting himself with the most approved methods of education, that he might fill a place which, year by year, was becoming more manifestly important to be filled.

As in the progress of modern missions a large and increasing share of the new recruits are the children of missionaries, it will be interesting to know, from one of themselves, how they grow up in and into the Missionary Kingdom.

“My first serious impression of life was that I was living under a great weight of something; and as I began to discern more clearly, I found this weight to be the all-surrounding, overwhelming presence of heathenism, and all the instincts of my birth and all the culture of a Christian home set me at antagonism to it at every point. The filthy savages, indecently clad, lazily lounging about the stove of our sitting-room, or flattening their dirty noses on the window-pane, caused such a disgust for everything Indian that it took the better thought of many years to overcome the repugnance thus aroused. Without doubt, our mothers felt it all as keenly as we, their children, but they had a sustaining ambition for souls, which we had not yet gained.

“This feeling of disgust was often accompanied with, and heightened by, fear. The very air seemed to breathe dangers. At times violence stalked abroad unchallenged, and dark, lowering faces skulked around. Even in times when we felt no personal danger, this incubus of savage life all around weighed on our hearts. Thus it was, day and night. Even those hours of twilight, which brood with sweet influences over so many lives, bore to us on the evening air only the weird cadences of the heathen dance or the chill thrill of the war-whoop.

“Yet our childhood was not destitute of joy. Babes prattle beside the dead. So, too, the children of the mission had their plays like other children. But it was lonesome indeed when the missionary band was divided, to occupy other stations, and the playmates were separated. Once it was my privilege to go one hundred and twenty miles—to the nearest station—to have a play-spell of a week, and a happy week it was.

“Notwithstanding our play-spells, ours was a serious life. The serious earnestness of our parents in the pursuit of their work could not fail to fall in some degree on the children. The main purpose of Christianizing that people was felt in everything. It was like garrison life in time of war. But this seriousness was not ascetical or morose. Far from it. Those Christian missionary homes were full of gladness. With all the disadvantages of such a childhood was the rich privilege of understanding the meaning of cheerful earnestness in Christian life. Speaking of peculiar privileges, I must say that I do not believe any other homes can be as precious as ours. It is true every one thinks his is the best mother in the world, and she is to him; but I mean more than this; I mean that our missionary homes are in reality better than others. And there is reason for it. By reason of the surrounding heathenism, the light and power of Christianity is more centred and confined in the home. And then, again, its power is developed by its antagonism to the darkness and wickedness around it. For either its light must ever shine clearer, or grow more dim until it expires.

“Next to our own home, we learned to love the homeland in ‘the States,’ whence our parents came. A longing desire to visit it possessed us. We thought that there we should find a heaven on earth. This may seem a strange idea; but as you think of us engulfed in heathenism and savage life, it will not seem so strange. It was like living at the bottom of a well, with only one spot of brightness overhead. Of course, it would be natural to think that upper world all brightness and beauty. Thus all our glimpses of another life than that of heathenism came from ‘the States.’ There all our ideas of Christianized society were located. The correspondence of our parents with friends left behind, the pages of the magazines and papers of the monthly mail, and the yearly boxes of supplies, were the tangible tokens which in our innocent minds awakened visions of the wonderful world of civilization and culture in ‘the East.’

“These supplies were in reality, perhaps, very small affairs, but we thought them of fabulous value. Indeed they were everything to us. With the opening of the new year the list of purchases began to be arranged. Each item was carefully considered, and the wants of each of the family remembered. This was no small task when you had to look a year and a half ahead. What debates as to whether B could get on with one pair of shoes, or must have two; or whether C would need some more gingham aprons, or could make the old ones last through. And, then, it was so hard to remember mosquito bars and straw hats in January; but if they were forgotten once, the next January found them first on the list. It was fun to make up the lists, but not so exhilarating when, on summing up the probable cost, it was found to be too much, and then the cruel pen ran through many of our new-born hopes. Then the letter went on its way to Boston, or maybe to Cincinnati, and we waited its substantial answer. Sometimes our boxes went around by lazy sloops from Boston to New Orleans; thence the laboring steamboat bore them almost the whole length of the Father of Waters; then the flat-boatmen sweated and swore as they poled them up the Minnesota to where our teams met them to carry them for another week over the prairies. Now it was far on into rosy June. After such waiting, no wonder that everything seemed precious—the very hoops of the boxes and the redolent pine that made them; even the wrappers and strings of the packages were carefully laid away. And, thanks to the kind friends who have cared for this work at our several purchasing depots, our wants were generally capitally met; and yet sometimes the packer would arrange it so that the linseed oil would give a new taste to the dried apples, anything but appetizing, or turn the plain white of some long-desired book into a highly ‘tinted’ edition.

“When the number of our years got well past the single figures, then we went to ‘the States,’ to carry on the education begun at home. Then came the saddest disappointment of all our lives. We found we were yet a good way from heaven. For me, the last remnant of this dream was effectually dispelled when I came to teach a Sabbath-school in a back country-neighborhood, where the people were the drift-wood of Kentucky and Egyptian Illinois. Thenceforth the land of the Dakotas seemed more the land of promise to me. From that time the claims of the work in which my parents were engaged grew upon my mind.

“Of late years the children of missionaries have everywhere furnished a large portion of the new reinforcements. This is both natural and strange. It is natural that they should desire to stay the hands of their parents, and go to reap what they have sown. On the other hand, they go out in face of all the hardships of the work, made vividly real to them by the experience of their childhood. They are attracted by no romantic sentiment. The romance is for them all worn off long ago. For instance, those of us on this field know the noble red man of the poet to be a myth. We know the real savage, and know him almost too well. Thus those who follow in the work of their missionary fathers do not do it without a struggle—often fearful. On the one hand stands the work, calling them to lonesome separation, and on the other the pleasant companionship of civilized society. But if the word of the Lord has come to them to go to Nineveh, happy are they if they do not go thither by way of Joppa.