REV. GIDEON H. POND.
A SUCCESSFUL LIFE.
Born and brought up in Litchfield county, in a town adjoining Washington, Connecticut, Rev. George Bushnell visited that hill country in his youth, and was deeply impressed with the manifest and pervading religious element in the community. Taken there by a special providence, more than a quarter of a century ago, and enjoying the privilege of a visit in some of the families, it seemed to me that it had been a good place to raise men. This was on the line of the impression made upon me years before that. When I first met, in the land of the Dakotas, the brothers Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond, they were both over six feet high, and “seemed the children of a king.”
In this hill town of Washington, on the 30th of June, 1810, Gideon Hollister, the younger of the two brothers, was born. His parents were Elnathan Judson and Sarah Hollister Pond. Gideon was the fifth child, and so was called by the Dakotas Hakay. Of his childhood and youth almost nothing is known to the writer. He had the advantage of a New England common-school education; perhaps nothing more. As he grew very rapidly and came to the size and strength of man early, he made a full hand in the harvest field at the age of sixteen. To this ambition to be counted a man and do a man’s work when as yet he should have been a boy, he in after life ascribed some of his infirmities. This ambition continued with him through life, and occasional over-work at last undermined a constitution that might, with care and God’s blessing, have continued to the end of the century.
He came to the land of the Dakotas, now Minnesota, in the spring of 1834. The older brother, Samuel, had come out as far as Galena, Ill., in the summer previous. The pioneer minister of that country of lead was Rev. Aratus Kent, who desired to retain Mr. Pond as an adjutant in his great and constantly enlarging work; but Mr. Pond had heard of the Sioux, or Dakotas, for whose souls no one cared, and, having decided to go to them, he sent for his brother Gideon to accompany him.
When they reached Fort Snelling, and made known their errand to the commanding officer of the post, Major Bliss, and to the resident Indian agent, Major Taliaferro, they received the hearty approval and co-operation of both, and the agent at once recommended them to commence work with the Dakotas of the Lake Calhoun village, where some steps had already been taken in the line of civilization. There, on the margin of the lake, they built their log cabin. Last summer Mr. King’s grand Pavilion, so called, was completed on the same spot, which gave occasion for Mr. Gideon H. Pond to tell the story of this first effort in that line:
“Just forty-three years previous to the occurrence above alluded to, on the same beautiful site, was completed an humble edifice, built by the hands of two inexperienced New England boys, just setting out in life-work. The foundation-stones of that hut were removed to make place for the present Pavilion, perchance compose a part of it. The old structure was of oak logs, carefully peeled. The peeling was a mistake. Twelve feet by sixteen, and eight feet high, were the dimensions of the edifice. Straight poles from the tamarack grove west of the lake formed the timbers of the roof, and the roof itself was of the bark of trees which grew on the bank of what is now called ‘Bassett’s Creek,’ fastened with strings of the inner bark of the bass wood. A partition of small logs divided the house into two rooms, and split logs furnished material for a floor. The ceiling was of slabs from the old government saw-mill, through the kindness of Major Bliss, who was in command of Fort Snelling. The door was made of boards split from a log with an axe, having wooden hinges and fastenings, and was locked by pulling in the latch-string. The single window was the gift of the kind-hearted Major Lawrence Taliaferro, United States Indian agent. The cash cost of the building was one shilling, New York currency, for nails used in and about the door. ‘The formal opening’ exercises consisted in reading a section from the old book by the name of Bible, and prayer to Him who was its acknowledged author. The ‘banquet’ consisted of mussels from the lake, flour and water. The ground was selected by the Indian chief of the Lake Calhoun band of Dakotas, Man-of-the-sky, by which he showed good taste. The reason he gave for the selection was that ‘from that point the loons would be visible on the lake.’
“The old chief and his pagan people had their homes on the surface of that ground in the bosom of which now sleep the bodies of deceased Christians from the city of Minneapolis, the Lake Wood cemetery, over which these old eyes have witnessed, dangling in the night breeze, many a Chippewa scalp, in the midst of horrid chants, yells, and wails, widely contrasting with the present stillness of that quiet home of those
‘Who sleep the years away.’
That hut was the home of the first citizen settlers of Hennepin county, perhaps of Minnesota, the first school-room, the first house for divine worship, and the first mission station among the Dakota Indians.”
The departure of Mr. Pond called forth from Gen. Henry H. Sibley so just and beautiful a tribute, that I can not forbear inserting a portion, from the Pioneer Press of St. Paul:—
“When the writer came to this country, in 1834, he did not expect to meet a single white man, except those composing the garrison at Fort Snelling, a few government officials attached to the department of Indian affairs, and the traders and voyageurs employed by the great fur company in its business. There was but one house, or, rather, log cabin, along the entire distance of nearly 300 miles between Prairie du Chien and St. Peters, now Mendota, and that was at a point below Lake Pepin, near the present town of Wabashaw. What was his surprise then to find that his advent had been preceded in the spring of the same year by two young Americans, Samuel W. Pond and Gideon H. Pond, brothers, scarcely out of their teens, who had built for themselves a small hut at the Indian village of Lake Calhoun, and had determined to consecrate their lives to the work of civilizing and Christianizing the wild Sioux. For many long years these devoted men labored in the cause, through manifold difficulties and discouragements, sustained by a faith that the seed sown would make itself manifest in God’s good time. The efforts then made to reclaim the savages from their mode of life, the influence of their blameless and religious walk and conversation upon those with whom they were brought in daily contact, and the self-denial and personal sacrifices required at their hands, are doubtless treasured up in a higher than human record.”
General Sibley mentions an incident belonging to this period of their residence at Lake Calhoun, which never before came to my knowledge:—