Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

On reaching the Santee, I met by appointment Thomas L. Riggs, who had come on from Chicago at the end of his second seminary year. Together we proceeded up to Fort Sully, where we spent a good part of the summer that remained. But this, with what came of our visit, will be related in a following chapter. In the autumn I returned to Good Will, and the winter was one of work, on the line which we had been following.

During the early part of this winter, 1871-72, a change was made of agents at Sisseton; Dr. J. W. Daniels resigned, and Rev. M. N. Adams came in his place. Dr. Daniels was Bishop Whipple’s appointee, and, as the Episcopalians were not engaged in the missionary work on this reservation, it was evidently proper, under the existing circumstances, that the selection should be accorded to the American Board. As, many years before, Mr. Adams had been a missionary among a portion of these people, he came as United States Indian agent, with an earnest wish to forward in all proper ways the cause of education and civilization and the general uplifting of the whole people. He met with a good deal of opposition, but continued to be agent more than three years, and left many memorials of his interest and efficiency, in the school-houses he erected, as well as in the hearts of the Christian people.

The object that had been paramount in taking our family to Beloit in 1865 was but partly accomplished when Mary died in the spring of 1869. Since that time three years had passed. Robert had gone back to Beloit to school, and was now ready to enter the freshman class of the college. Cornelia was in her fourteenth year, and her education only fairly begun. It was needful that she should have the advantages of a good school. To accomplish my desire for their education it seemed best to reoccupy our vacant house. That spring of 1872, I was commissioner from the Dakota Presbytery to the General Assembly, which met in Detroit. At the close of the assembly, I went down to Granville, Ohio, and, in accordance with an arrangement previously made, I married Mrs. Annie Baker Ackley, who had once been a teacher with us at Hazelwood, and more recently had spent several years in the employ of the American Missionary Association, in teaching the freedmen. We at once proceeded to the Good Will mission station, where the summer was spent, and then in the autumn opened our house in Beloit.

The meeting of the ministers and elders and representatives of the Dakota churches, which was held with the River Bend church on the Big Sioux, had been found very profitable to all. At that time a like conference had been arranged for, to meet on the 25th of June, 1872, with the church of Good Will, on the Sisseton reservation. The announcement was made in the April Iapi Oaye. In the invitation nine churches are mentioned, viz.: The Santee, Yankton, River Bend, Lac-qui-parle, Ascension, Good Will, Buffalo Lake, Long Hollow, and Kettle Lakes. It was said that subjects interesting and profitable to all would be discussed; and especially was the presence of the Holy Spirit desired and prayed for, since, without God present with us, the assembly would be only a dead body.

In the green month of June, when the roses on the prairie began to bloom, then they began to assemble at our Dakota Conference. Dr. T. S. Williamson came up from his home at St. Peter—200 miles. John P. Williamson, from the Yankton agency, and A. L. Riggs, from Santee, brought with them Rev. Joseph Ward, pastor of the Congregational Church in Yankton. As they came by Sioux Falls and Flandreau, their whole way would not be much under 300 miles. Thomas L. Riggs, who had commenced his new station in the close of the winter, came across the country from Fort Sully on horseback, a distance of about 220 miles, having with him a Dakota guide and soldier guard. They rode it in less than five days. From all parts came the Dakota pastors and elders and messengers of the churches. The gathering was so large that a booth was made for the Sabbath service. It was an inspiration to us all. It was unanimously voted to hold the next year’s meeting with the Yanktons at the Yankton agency.

At the Sisseton agency, in the month of September, a semi-treaty was made by Agents M. N. Adams and W. H. Forbes, and James Smith, Jr., of St. Paul, United States commissioners, with the Dakota Indians of the Lake Traverse and Devil’s Lake reservations, by which they relinquish all their claim on the country of North-eastern Dakota through which the Northern Pacific Railroad runs. By this arrangement, education would have been made compulsory, and the men would have been enabled to obtain patents for their land within some reasonable time; but the Senate struck out everything except the ceding of the land and the compensation therefor. Our legislators do not greatly desire that Indians should become white men.

When Thanksgiving Day came this year, Mr. Adams dedicated a fine brick school-house, which he had that summer erected, in the vicinity of the agency. Of this occasion he wrote, “It was indeed a day of thanksgiving and praise with us, and to me an event of the deepest interest. And I hope that good and lasting impressions were made there upon the minds of some of this people.”

In the work of Bible translation, I had been occupied with the book of Daniel in the summer, and, in the winter that followed, my first copy of the Minor Prophets was made. When the spring came, I hied away to the Dakota country. This time my course was to the Missouri River. Thomas had been married in Bangor, Me., to Nina Foster, daughter of Hon. John B. Foster, and sister of Mrs. Charles H. Howard of the Advance. They came west, and, as the winter was not yet past, Thomas went on from Chicago alone, and Nina remained with her sister until navigation should open. And so it came to pass that she and I were company for each other to Fort Sully.

As we left Yankton in the stage for Santee, where we were to stop a few days and wait for an up-river boat, an incident occurred which must have been novel to the girl from Bangor. The day was just breaking when the stage had made out its complement of passengers, except one. There were six men on the two seats before us, and Nina and I were behind. At a little tavern in the suburbs of the town, the ninth passenger was taken in. As he came out we could see that he was the worse for drinking. I at once shoved over to the middle of the seat, and let him in by my side. He turned out to be a burly French half-breed, or a Frenchman who had a Dakota family. We had gone but a little distance, when he said he was going to smoke. I objected to his smoking inside the stage. He begged the lady’s pardon a thousand times, but said he must smoke. By this time he had hunted in his pockets, but did not find his pipe. “O mon pipe!” The stage-driver must turn around and go back—it cost $75. He worked himself and the rest of us into quite an excitement. By and by he said to me: “Do you know who I am?” I said I did not. He said, “I am Red Cloud, and I have killed a great many white men.” “Ah,” said I, “you are Red Cloud? I do not believe you can talk Dakota”—and immediately I commenced talking Dakota. He turned around and stared at me. “Who are you?” he said. From that moment he was my friend, and ever so good.