Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

The name Assinaboine means Stone Sioux, and is a compound of French and Ojibwa. The last part is Bwan, which is the name the Ojibwas give the Dakotas or Sioux.

These Stoneys are said to be all Christians. They have their school-house and church, and Rev. John McDougall, son of the old gentleman, is their missionary. They live on Bow River, which, I suppose, is a branch of the Saskatchawan, about two hundred miles north-west from Fort Benton, and one hundred north of the Canada line. To us who labor among the Dakotas, it is very cheering to know that this small outlier of the fifty thousand Dakota-speaking people have all received the Gospel. We clap our hands for joy.

Landing at Bayfield, we were kindly received by the Indian agent Dr. Isaac Mahan.

Nestled among the hills, and looking out into the bay filled with the Apostle Islands, this town has rather a romantic position. And just out a little way, on Magdalen Island, is La Pointe, the old mission station. We passed around it in a sail-boat on our way to Odanah.

Very soon after reaching Bayfield, we found a boat going over to Odanah, which, I understand, is the Ojibwa for town or village, and which is the name by which the mission station on Bad River has long been known. As I entered the boat, Mr. Wheeler introduced me to the Ojibwa men who were to take us over. When I shook hands with one of them, he said, “My father, Mr. Riggs.” Was he calling me his father, or was it the Indian? I wondered which, but asked no questions. Two or three days after, I learned that adoption was one of the Ojibwa customs, and that when Mr. Wheeler was a little boy this man lost his boy. He came to the mission and said to the missionary, “My boy is gone; you have a great many boys; let me call this one mine.” And so they said he might so call him; and from that time Edward Payson Wheeler became the adopted child of an Ojibwa.

Now, after he had been gone ten years, going away a boy and coming back a man, they all seemed to regard him like a son and a brother. It was very interesting for me to see how they all warmed toward him. They came to see him, and wanted him to go to their houses. They all wanted to talk with him; and when we came to leave, they all flocked to the mission to shake hands, and to have a last word and a prayer; and they gave him more muckoks of manomin (wild rice) than he could bring away with him.

For four days we were the guests of the boarding-school which is in charge of Rev. Isaac Baird. We became much interested in the school and the teachers—Mrs. Baird, Miss Harriet Newell Phillips, Miss Verbeek, Miss Dougherty, and Miss Walker. Naturally, I should be prejudiced in favor of the Dakotas, but I was obliged to confess that I had not seen anywhere twenty-five boys and girls better-looking and more manly and womanly in their appearance than those Ojibwas. The whole community gave evidence of the good work done by the school in past years—many of the grown folks being able to talk English quite well.

But there was one impression that came to me without bidding—it was that civilization had been pressed farther and faster than evangelization. While houses and other improvements attested a great deal of labor expended, the native church is quite small, only now numbering about twenty-eight, and the metawa, their sacred heathen dance, was danced while we were there, within a stone’s-throw of the church. My spirit was stirred within me, and I said to the members of that native church that they ought so to take up the work of evangelizing their own people in good earnest that the dancing of the metawa thus publicly would become an impossibility.

My visit to various points in the Ojibwa country has interested me very greatly. From what I have seen and heard, the conviction grew upon me that the whole Ojibwa field, comprising thirteen or fourteen thousand people in the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, is now open to the Gospel as it never has been before. The old laborers sowed the good seed, but they saw little fruit. No wonder they became discouraged. For years the field was almost entirely given up. But, although the servants retired, the Master watched the work, and here and there the seed has taken root and sprung up. This appears in the new desire prevailing that they may again have schools and missionaries. Shall we not take advantage of this favorable time to tell them of Jesus the Saviour?