Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

When the materials were on the ground, but little money was left for their erection. But, with one carpenter and two or three young men to assist, I pushed forward the work, and by the middle of September the houses were up, and ready to be occupied, though in an unfinished state.

During this time there were some things transpired which deserve to be noticed.

Before commencing to build, I had received the written approval of the agent. In regard to the locality we differed. He wished me to build in the immediate vicinity of the agency, while I, for very good reasons, selected a place nearly two miles away. But that, I think, could have made no difference in his feeling toward the enterprise. However, soon after I commenced, I was visited by Gabriel Renville, who was recognized as the head man on the reservation. He did not forbid my proceeding, but wanted to know whether I had authority to do so. I replied that I had the approval of Agent Daniels, which I regarded as sufficient. When I reported this to Mr. Daniels, he advised me to write to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and obtain a permit, which, he said, might save me trouble.

Accordingly, I wrote immediately to the Department of the Interior, stating the life-long connection we had had with these Indians, and the work we had done among them, and that now I was authorized by the A. B. C. F. M. to erect mission buildings among them, and asking that our plan be approved.

After three or four weeks, when I was in the very middle of my work of building, there came an order from Washington that I should suspend operations until they would settle the question to what religious denomination that part of the field should be assigned. That subject was then under advisement, they said.

Should I obey? If I did so, much additional expense would be incurred, and my summer’s work, as planned, would be a failure. Really no question could be raised about it. The American Board had been doing missionary work among those Indians for a third of a century, and no other denomination or missionary board pretended to have any claim on the field. It was unreasonable, under the circumstances, that we should be asked to suspend, and thus suffer harm and loss. So I placed my letter safely away and went on with my work. No human being there knew that I had received such a command.

By the return mail I wrote to Secretary Treat, rehearsing the whole case, and asking him, without delay, to write to the authorities at Washington. I told him I had concluded to disregard the taboo, and would not in consequence thereof drive a nail the less. When the summer months were passed, and my houses were both up, I received a letter from the commissioner commending my work, and telling me to go forward.

In the latter end of August there came to me a letter, written in a strange hand, saying that Anna was lying sick at Mr. Carr’s, of typhoid fever. The intention of the letter evidently was not to greatly alarm me, but it conveyed the idea that she was very sick, and the result was doubtful. Ten or twelve days had passed since it was written. My affairs were not then in a condition to be left without much damage, and so I determined to await the coming of another mail. When I heard again, a week later, there was no decided change for the better. So the letter read. But in the meantime this word had come to me—“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” It came to me like a revelation. I seemed to know it. It quieted my alarm. All anxiety was not taken away, but my days passed in comparatively quiet trust. About the middle of September I started down with my own team, and, on reaching St. Peter and Mankato, I received letters from Anna written with her own hand. She had come up gradually, but a couple of months passed before she was strong.

Before I commenced building at Good Will, which was the name we gave to our new station, the understanding was that Anna would be married in the coming autumn, and she and her husband would take charge of the mission work there. Anna seemed to have grown up into the idea that her life-work was to be with the Dakotas. But it was otherwise ordered. In the October following, when we all again met in Beloit, she was married to H. E. Warner, who had lost an arm in the War of the Rebellion, and they have since made their home in Iowa.

Martha Taylor Riggs had been married to Wyllys K. Morris, in December, 1866. For a time they made their home in Mankato, Minn., and then removed to a farm twenty miles from town. Life on the extreme frontier they found filled with privations and hardships, and so were quite willing to accept the new place; and before the winter set in they were removed to Good Will. Robert, who had gone up after his mother’s death, and spent a year with Martha at Sterling, Minn., returned to Beloit, and entered the preparatory department of the college. Cornelia went with us to Good Will, and remained two years.