This week on the Upper Mississippi was one of quiet joy. We had been nearly three months on our way from Mary’s home in Massachusetts. God had prospered us all the way. Wherever we had stopped we had found or made friends. The Lord, as we believed, had signally interfered in our behalf, and helped us to “remember the Sabbath day,” and to give our testimony to its sacred observance. The season of the year was inspiring. A resurrection to new life had just taken place. All external nature had put on her beautiful garments. And day after day—for the boat tied up at night—we found ourselves passing by those grand old hills and wonderful escarpments of the Upper Mississippi. We were in the wilds of the West, beyond the cabins of the pioneer. We were passing the battle-fields of Indian story. Nay, more, we were already in the land of the Dakotas, and passing by the teepees and the villages of the red man, for whose enlightenment and elevation we had left friends and home. Was it strange that this was a week of intense enjoyment, of education, of growth in the life of faith and hope? And so, as I said in the beginning, on the first day of June, 1837, Mary and I reached, in safety, the mouth of the Minnesota, in the land of the Dakotas.
CHAPTER II.
1837.—First Knowledge of the Sioux.—Hennepin and Du Luth.—Fort Snelling.—Lakes Harriet and Calhoun.—Three Months at Lake Harriet.—Samuel W. Pond.—Learning the Language.—Mr. Stevens.—Temporary Home.—That Station Soon Broken Up.—Mary’s Letters.—The Mission and People. Native Customs.—Lord’s Supper.—“Good Voice.”—Description of Our Home.—The Garrison.—Seeing St. Anthony.—Ascent of the St. Peters.—Mary’s Letters.—Traverse des Sioux.—Prairie Travelling.—Reaching Lac-qui-parle.—T. S. Williamson.—A Sabbath Service.—Our Upper Room Experiences.—Church at Lac-qui-parle.—Mr. Pond’s Marriage.—Mary’s Letters.—Feast.
About two hundred and forty years ago, the French voyagers and fur traders, as they came from Nouvelle, France, up the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, began to hear, from Indians farther east, of a great and warlike people, whom they called Nadouwe or Nadowaessi, enemies. Coming nearer to them, both trader and priest met, at the head of Lake Superior, representatives of this nation, “numerous and fierce, always at war with other tribes, pushing northward and southward and westward,” so that they were sometimes called the “Iroquois of the West.”
But really not much was known of the Sioux until the summer of 1680, when Hennepin and Du Luth met in a camp of Dakotas, as they hunted buffalo in what is now north-western Wisconsin. Hennepin had been captured by a war-party, which descended the Father of Waters in their canoes, seeking for scalps among their enemies, the Miamis and Illinois. They took him and his companions of the voyage up to their villages on the head-waters of Rum River, and around the shores of Mille Lac and Knife Lake. From the former of these the eastern band of the Sioux nation named themselves Mdaywakantonwan, Spirit Lake Villagers; and from the latter they inherited the name of Santees (Isanyati), Dwellers on Knife.
These two representative Frenchmen, thus brought together, at so early a day, in the wilds of the West, visited the home of the Sioux, as above indicated, and to them we are indebted for much of what we know of the Dakotas two centuries ago.
The Ojibwas and Hurons were then occupying the southern shores of Lake Superior, and, coming first into communication with the white race, they were first supplied with fire-arms, which gave them such an advantage over the more warlike Sioux that, in the next hundred years, we find the Ojibwas in possession of all the country on the head-waters of the Mississippi, while the Dakotas had migrated southward and westward.
The general enlistment of the Sioux, and indeed of all these tribes of the North-west, on the side of the British in the war of 1812, showed the necessity of a strong military garrison in the heart of the Indian country. Hence the building of Fort Snelling nearly sixty years ago. At the confluence of the Minnesota with the Mississippi, and on the high point between the two it has an admirable outlook. So it seemed to us as we approached it on that first day of June, 1837. On our landing we became the guests of Lieutenant Ogden and his excellent wife, who was the daughter of Major Loomis. To Mary and me, every thing was new and strange. We knew nothing of military life. But our sojourn of a few days was made pleasant and profitable by the Christian sympathy which met us there—the evidence of the Spirit’s presence, which, two years before, had culminated in the organization of a Christian church in the garrison, on the arrival of the first missionaries to the Dakotas.