Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

By all these means our interest in Fort Berthold and its people grew, and we became impatient of delay. But step by step we were led by the hand of the Lord, until at the meeting of the American Board in Chicago in the autumn of 1875, after an animated discussion on Indian Missions, and the debt of the Board was lifted by a special effort, Secretary S. B. Treat arose and said: “We are ready to send a man to Fort Berthold.” The man and the woman, Charles L. Hall and Emma Calhoun, were ready, and the next spring they were commissioned to make their home among the Mandans, Arickarees and Hidatsa.

On leaving Berthold in May, 1874, I proceeded down the Missouri to Bismarck, where I was subjected to considerable delay; and then stopping a few days with Thomas at Hope Station, and making a short call at the Yankton agency, I went to the Santee to attend our annual meeting of the Dakota Conference, which commenced its sessions with the Pilgrim Church on the 18th of June.

A. L. Riggs had put up in large characters the motto of the meeting—1834-1874. Thus we were reminded that forty years had passed since the brothers Pond had made their log cabin on the banks of Lake Calhoun. These gray-headed men were expected to have been present on this occasion, but were not. T. L. Riggs and wife could not come down. Otherwise the attendance of whites and Indians was good. The presence of Rev. Joseph Ward of Yankton, and of Mrs. Wood, the mother of Mrs. Ward, and also of Rev. De Witt Clark of Massachusetts, greatly added to the interest. The question discussed by the native brethren with the most eagerness was, “Shall the eldership receive any money compensation?” This had come up to be a question solely because such native church helpers were receiving compensation among the Episcopalians. But our folks decided against it by an overwhelming vote.

So full an account has been given of the like meeting held a year previous, that this, which was in most respects equally interesting, may be passed over. Of the school here during the winter past, the Word Carrier had contained this notice: “The Normal School of the Dakota Mission at Santee agency has had a prosperous winter session, notwithstanding the dark days last fall, when its doors were closed, and many of its former pupils removed beyond the reach of earthly training by the small-pox.” The whole number of scholars for the winter three months was eighty-five.

After this meeting closed, I spent six weeks with the churches in my own part of the field on the Sisseton reservation. I found the people at Ascension church, J. B. Renville pastor, in the midst of church building. Their log church had become too small, and they had for a year been preparing to build a larger and better house of worship. Mr. Adams took a great interest in this enterprise, and helped them much by obtaining contributions and otherwise. The Dakota men and women also took hold of it as their own work, and the house went up, and was so far finished before the winter that its dedication took place about the middle of December. The cost of the house was then given at $1500. Two or three hundred more were afterward used in its internal completion. This was a great step forward. Dakota Christians build, with but little help, their own house of worship!

About the middle of August I left Sisseton to complete my work of visiting Indian agencies, which I had undertaken to do for the American Missionary Association. At St. Paul I was joined by Rev. Edward Payson Wheeler, who was just from Andover Seminary. He was the son of the missionary Wheeler who had spent his life with the Ojibwas, at Bad River. He had learned the language in his boyhood, and I was only too happy to have as my companion of the journey one who was at home among the Ojibwas.

From St. Paul we went up the Lake Superior Road until we reached the Northern Pacific, on which we traveled westward to Brainerd, and then took stage seventy miles to Leech Lake. There we found white friends and Ojibwas, to whom we preached, Mr. Wheeler trying the language he had not used for years. We then proceeded by private conveyance, over a miserable road through the pine woods, to Red Lake. Rev. Mr. Spees and wife, who were there doing work under the American Missionary Association, and Agent Pratt received us kindly. My friend Wheeler talked with the Indians—the old men remembered his father, and seemed to warm very much toward the son. It appeared to me that there was a grand opening for an educational work and preaching the Gospel. When we left Red Lake, I fully believed that E. P. Wheeler would return there as a missionary before the snow fell. But I was disappointed. The American Missionary Association was heavily in debt, and had no disposition whatever to enlarge work among the Indians.

We then returned by the way we came, and went on to Duluth, where we took a steamer on the Gitche Gumme (Lake Superior) for Bayfield. On the downlake steamer we formed the acquaintance of Rev. John McDougall, a Methodist minister, who, with his family, was going to the Canadian Conference, from the far-off country of the Saskatchawan. For more than a quarter of a century he had been a missionary among the Crees and Bloods and Piegans.

But what interested me most was the account he gave of a small band of about seven hundred Indians called Stoneys. They talk the Dakota language, and, as their name indicates, they are evidently a branch of the Assinaboines.