When he had thus started the work, leaving it to be cared for and carried on by Henry M. Riggs and Edmund Cooley and the native teachers, Thomas went down to the States to consummate a marriage engagement with Cornelia Margaret Foster (known as Nina Foster), daughter of Hon. John B. Foster of Bangor, Me. It was winter, and not considered advisable for Mrs. Riggs to return with her husband to his home among the Teetons. She made a visit with her sister, Mrs. C. H. Howard, at Glencoe, in the vicinity of Chicago, and in the spring month of May I accompanied her up the Missouri. We had a particularly long voyage of eleven days, on the Katie Koontz, between the Santee agency and Fort Sully; so long that we picked up Thomas on the way, coming to meet us in his little skiff.
Thomas and Nina returned to Sully after our mission meeting at the Yankton agency, and then, in September, went to the meeting of the board at Minneapolis.
Sully was a far-off station. There were many reasons why a white woman should not be there alone. Miss Lizzie Bishop’s election to go back with them, together with her beautiful life and early death, have been detailed in a preceding chapter.
She had fallen out of the working ranks, but others were ready to step to the front. In the previous spring, Secretary Treat had told me that there were two young ladies in Iowa who were anxious to engage in mission work. They preferred to go to the Indians, as they desired to labor together. It was a David and Jonathan love that existed between Miss Mary C. Collins and Miss J. Emmaretta Whipple. They were immediately sent out by the Woman’s Board of the Interior to labor at Bogue Station.
This place, selected in 1873, had for various reasons become in 1874 the home station—thenceforward Hope was only an out-station. Bogue Station is on Peoria bottom, about fifteen miles below Fort Sully, and on the same side of the Missouri, called by the Indians “Tee-tanka-ohe,” meaning “The place of a large house,” so called from a house built years ago by an Indian. General Harney selected this bottom as the place for an agency, or rather, perhaps, where a scheme of civilization should be tried, and built upon it several log houses, which became the dwellings of Yellow Hawk and his people. The bottom has several advantages—considerable cottonwood timber, plenty of grass for hay, and as good land for cultivation as there is in this often “dry and thirsty land.”[9]
[9] Now named Oahe.
The first winter Oyemaza, or James Red Wing, and his wife lived here with Henry M. Riggs, and taught a school. The second winter Thomas and Nina, with Miss Bishop, made it their abode. So that it was not quite a new place to which Miss Collins and Miss Whipple came, and yet new enough. The mission dwelling is made of logs—one series of logs joined to another, so as to make four rooms below, one of which has served as a school-room through the week and a chapel for the Sabbath. Additions have been made in the rear. The school-room has for a long time back overflowed on the Sabbath, and the women and children have been packed into the room adjoining, which is the family room. Hence a great and growing want of this station has been a chapel and larger school-room. The name of Bogue was given to the station for Mrs. Mary S. Bogue, a special friend of Thomas while he was in the seminary, who has gone to her rest. It was at one time expected that Mr. Bogue would furnish the means to erect a chapel; but the shrinkage in values and financial losses made him a broken reed. And so the desired building has been postponed from year to year. But a small contribution of fourteen cents, made by little Bertie Howard, was the nucleus around which larger contributions gathered, chiefly from Nina’s native Bangor. About $400 of special contributions were thus received, and the prudential committee made a loan, which was afterward made a gift, of $500 toward it. The building is going up—August, 1877—a neat and substantial frame, the material of which was brought up from Yankton by boat. It is forty by twenty feet, and will have a bell-tower in one corner.
Let me now go back and take up the threads of the narrative which were dropped two years ago. The two young ladies who desired to work together in some Indian field found themselves here in Yellow Hawk’s village. They entered into the labors of those who had been here longer. They grew into the work. The day schools in books and sewing, together with the night school, employed all hands, during the winter especially. A number have learned to read and write in their own language. Besides the school carried on at the home station, the two out stations have been occupied by native helpers. Edwin Phelps, from the Sisseton agency, with his mother, Elizabeth Winyan, have been valuable assistants for two winters past. Also for the winter of 1876-7, David Gray Cloud, one of the native pastors at the head of the Coteau, did valuable service both in teaching and preaching. He was sent to Standing Rock by the native missionary society, but, not being able to get a footing there, he came down here to preach to these Teetons salvation by Jesus Christ. In the spring, when he was leaving for Sisseton, they begged him to stay, or at least to promise to come back again.
The Word, during these years, has not been preached in vain. While in the main it has been seed-sowing,—only seed-sowing—breaking up the wild prairie-land of these wild Dakota hearts, and planting a seed here and there, which grows, producing some good fruit, but in most cases not yet the best fruit of a pure and holy life,—still, in the summer of 1876, one young man, the first fruits among the Teetons, David Lee (Upijate) by name, came out as a disciple of Jesus. This was the signal for the organization of a church at this station, which was effected in August. Another native convert, the brother of the first, was added in the autumn following; and still more a year or so afterward.
For two winters past, several boys and young men, who have made a good commencement in education in these schools, have been sent down to enjoy the advantages of A. L. Riggs’ High School at Santee. The Sioux war of the summer of 1876 produced a great excitement at all the agencies on the Upper Missouri. The Indians in these villages were more or less intimately connected with the hostiles. Many of those accustomed to receive rations here were during the summer out on the plains. Some of them were in the Custer fight. They say that Sitting Bull’s camp was not large—only about two hundred lodges. The victory they gained was not, as the whites claimed, owing to the overwhelming number of the Dakotas, but to the exhausted condition of Custer’s men and horses, and to their adventuring themselves into a gorge where they could easily be cut off.