At this season of the year, it was not possible for Nina to accompany her husband to Fort Sully, and so he left her at Gen. C. H. Howard’s, near Chicago, to come on in the early spring. This was my first opportunity of becoming acquainted with “Mitakosh Washta,” as I soon learned to call her. General Howard accompanied her to Sioux City, and then I became her escort by railroad and stage to Santee agency, and thence by steamboat to Sully. The boat was nearly two weeks on the way, and we took on two companies of United States troops at Fort Randall. The officers soon manifested a marked admiration for the beauty and culture of the Bangor lady; so that afterward, in alluding to this little episode, I used playfully to say to Nina that I was rejoiced when Thomas, coming down the Missouri in his skiff, met us and took charge of his bride.
We had but a few weeks to spend at Fort Sully, until we should start down to the meeting of our annual Conference, which was held in June that year, at the Yankton agency. But those weeks were full of pleasure to Nina. Everything was new and strange. She was devoid of fear when she sat in the iron skiff, and crossed the Big Muddy with her husband at the helm. The time came to go down. It was nearly noon on Monday when we were ready to start; but, by hard driving, we were able to reach Rev. John P. Williamson’s—more than 200 miles—by the afternoon of Thursday. Secretary S. J. Humphrey, from Chicago, was there, and afterward wrote that for T. L. Riggs and the father, who were accustomed to hard traveling and sleeping on the ground, it was nothing very strange; but for one reared as Nina had been, it was simply wonderful.
This was the first meeting of Martha Riggs Morris with her new sister. When the latter had gone beyond our ken, Martha wrote an appreciative article for the Word Carrier: “Let me give something,” she wrote, “of the little glimpses I have had of her brave, cheery life. I may first go back to the time when we first heard of Nina Foster—who thought enough of T. L. Riggs and the Indian work to help him in it. That was in the spring-time. A few months later, Thomas had a hard ride across from Fort Sully to Sisseton on horseback, accompanied by a soldier for guard and an Indian for guide. He came to attend the annual Conference of the Dakota churches, and he showed us a picture of the young lady herself. A beautiful face, we all thought it was. And from what we heard of Nina Foster, we were all prepared to take her into our hearts, as we did when we saw her afterward.
“It was in June of the year following that I had my first glimpse of her. I had myself taken a tedious journey of some three hundred miles, and the years as well as the journey had worn upon me. So I felt some trepidation about meeting the blooming bride. But, on seeing her, that soon vanished, and I had nothing left but admiration for the beautiful sister. She told so merrily how they had strapped her in, to keep her from falling out of the wagon, and other incidents of her unaccustomed journey. There was an evident determination to make the best of every experience.”
A little while after this Mrs. Morris was called to lay away her blue-eyed boy out of sight. Then Nina’s letter was very comforting. “I have wept,” she says, “with you for the dear little baby form laid away from your arms to its last sleep; and I think of your words, ‘Nothing to do any more.’ Ah! my dear sister, He will not so leave you comfortless. He who forgot not, in the last hours of his earthly life, to give to the aching mother-heart a new care and love, will not forget, I think, to bestow on your emptied hands some new duty which shall grow to be a joy.”
At the meeting of the American Board at Minneapolis in the autumn of 1873, Mrs. Nina Riggs was present, and addressed the ladies of the Woman’s Board, asking for a young lady companion in her far-off field. To this call Miss Lizzie Bishop of Northfield responded, and gave the remainder of her bright, true life to help on the work at Fort Sully. Nina visited her sister in Chicago, and charmed them all by reciting her strange experiences of the summer. “Her buoyant spirits and faculty for seeing the droll side of everything helped to make the sketch a bright one. Her sense of humor and keen wit has lightened many a load for herself and others; the more forlorn and hopeless the situation, the more elastic her spirits. How often have those of her own household, wearied with severe labor and weighed down with care, been compelled to laugh, almost against their will, by her irresistible drollery, and thus the current of thought was turned and the burden half thrown aside.”
In the summer of 1874 baby Theodore was born, and none from Fort Sully came to our annual meeting. On my way from a visit to Fort Berthold, down the Missouri River, I stopped off for a few days. They were then occupying Hope Station, across the river from the fort. Both Miss Bishop and Mrs. Nina Riggs I found very enthusiastic over their work for the Teeton women.
When another year had been completed, Lizzie Bishop had gone home to die, and Nina Riggs made a visit to her friends in the East. The Board met in Chicago that autumn, and Mrs. Riggs again addressed the ladies. “Two years ago,” she said, “at a meeting in Minneapolis, I made a request which was promptly answered. I asked for a young lady to go back with me to the mission work. I find her name is not on the rolls. But if ever a brave life should be recorded, and the name of an earnest woman be loved and remembered by all, it is that of Miss Lizzie Bishop of Northfield, Minn. We had hoped that she might return, but the Lord has not seen fit to allow that. He calls her to himself soon. For the past two years I have been at different stations. I was at Hope Station, on the west side of the Missouri. Now I am at Bogue Station, fifteen miles below Fort Sully, on the east side. Since I have been there, I have met a great many women. At first they all seemed to me very degraded; but I have come not only to feel interested in many of them, but to love some of them with a very deep love.” So spake Nina; and when she sat down, a telegram was read that the good and brave Lizzie Bishop had already entered in through the gates of pearl, into “Jerusalem the golden.”
Two others, Miss Mary C. Collins and Miss Emmaretta Whipple, were ready to start back with Mrs. Riggs. So the vacant place was more than filled, and they all girded themselves for a hard winter’s work.
A little before this time, Nina sent to the Word Carrier a short bit of poetry, which seems to embody her own wrestling with doubt in others. The last stanza reads:—