MANDAN HUT, DAKOTA.
THE HISTORY AND OUTLOOK OF THE INDIAN WORK TRANSFERRED TO THE A. M. A.
PROF. ALFRED L. RIGGS.
Just fifty years ago two Congregational young men from Connecticut, the Messrs. Samuel and Gideon Pond, pressed on into the heart of the then unknown continent to see what they could do for the Indian. They landed at Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, and began their volunteer mission among an Eastern branch of the Dakota or Sioux nation.
One year later the American Board sent out the Rev. Dr. Williamson on a tour of exploration, and the next year after that a mission was regularly established. The organized work gathered in the volunteers, and, moreover, according to the fashion of the times, Congregational relations disappeared and work was started on the Presbyterian basis.
For years it was a slow, hard lift against the weight of heathenism and pride of race. Nowhere is race pride stronger than among the Indians. As is often the case, those who have least to be proud of vaunt themselves the most. So, while the Indian has to acknowledge that the white man is possessor of gifts that class him with the gods (the Dakota name for white man being the same as that he applies to his gods), and thus for the sake of his mysterious power he fears him, yet personally he despises him as different from himself and effeminate.
And heathenism! Some would have us believe that it did not exist; that the Indian naturally was as good a Christian as need be. The courtesy of the Indian perhaps leads to this deceptive view. He will assent to everything you say rather than be so impolite as to contradict you. Then, too, his pantheism easily makes room for another god. So the white man’s god soon had his banner set up at their sacred rites together with the Stone god, the Day god, the Night god, the Thunder god, and the god of the North.
But when Christ claims the whole of their worship, and belief in him is seen to require the giving up of their other faiths, and the casting away of their charms and incantations, then the antagonism of the unregenerate heart breaks out here as everywhere. And the magicians and “medicine men” are stirred up to bitter and unremitting warfare as soon as they discover that their craft is in danger.
As if here were not enough obstacles to meet, there comes in the opposition begotten of the selfishness and dissoluteness of unprincipled white men. For years the fur trade was almost as much the enemy of missions as was the slave trade. The agents of this great enterprise were bound to keep the Indians hunters and trappers in order that their warehouses might be filled with furs. The fur trade also controlled the government, and even to-day its power is felt through laws made then for its benefit and that yet remain on the statute book. Hence in its day the fur trade was a foe to be dreaded, for it could exert its power in a thousand secret ways. It could break up schools, scare people away from religious meetings, and put a ban on the Christian teacher, if content to leave him alive.
After thirty years of patient labor the reward seemed about to come. Christianity was proving its power to disintegrate heathenism, break down prejudice and survive the enmity of unprincipled white men.