"During the past week I have been twice down the river to Flying By's Village to attend their mid-week prayer meeting and Sunday morning service, and also to the Agency. My people seem to be active and earnest. Some of them are thinking they had better enlarge the little building they put up last year. A number of the people there are learning, teaching each other to read; and they are asking for a women's missionary society to be formed there. Catch-the-Enemy, who is active in the young men's society, said to me the other day that there were fifteen members at Flying By's Village. Their quarterly dues are ten cents, but the others have nothing with which to pay, and so he paid them all.
"David, dear, good, gentle David, was here to-day from Thunder Hawk's. I judge that he is getting on well there. As a teacher, I think he can not but be a success, he is so gentle, patient and good, and bright, too. A week ago we had a pleasant little visit from Mr. Reed over Sunday."
From this letter it will be seen that large opportunities are opening at this Indian mission, and most hopeful results are already being gathered. The Christian Indians are more and more realizing their own responsibility for carrying on Christian work, and are meeting it bravely. They are also responding to appeals for gifts to missionary work outside of their own tribes with self-sacrificing devotion. The collection of the Pilgrim Church at Santee, mentioned in the April magazine, increased to $241. This was to meet the debt on the treasury of the American Missionary Association.
Miss Collins, so well known to our readers, is now in the East in behalf of these needy Indian missions. Before leaving the prairies, she visited Oahe and Santee, and various missions aside from her own, that she might have the most recent information of the whole field. The object of her coming is to give the information, which she possesses so thoroughly, to the people and so stir them up adequately to support this field of Indian missions which is suffering so painfully for the lack of funds. There can not be any further retrenchment of the Indian work if it lives at all. It has been cut down two years in succession, and greatly suffered. Further curtailment would mean crucifixion.
MRS. ADELAIDE RIDEOUT RIGGS.
A beautiful life has gone out from our work, taking from it one who was loved and admired by the Indian people as well as by her fellow-workers.
Mrs. Riggs was born in 1867 in Dorset, Vt., graduating in 1887 from the Western Reserve Seminary, and after spending two years in Bradford Academy, Mass., she came as a teacher to the Santee School, Nebraska, where she made herself exceedingly useful and was afterward employed by Dr. Riggs as his secretary. In 1893 she was married to Mr. Frederick B. Riggs and took a trip with him upon the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations, camping out and sharing the hardship of such travel. Failing health led to the employment of the best medical advice, and in November, 1894, she went to New Mexico to escape the rigors of the climate of Nebraska, where it seemed impossible that she could live through the winter. But in spite of all that could be done, Mrs. Riggs passed away March 12, 1895. She was admirably fitted for her work and full of enthusiasm for it. It seemed[pg 170] as if her usefulness had just begun, but God had prepared her for another and more glorious field.
The funeral service of Mrs. Riggs was held on Sunday afternoon, March 24, at Santee, Neb. The simple exercises were conducted by Rev. Mr. Dwin, Superintendent of the Government School, and Pastor Ehnamani. The latter is the venerable Indian pastor of the church at Santee. He referred feelingly to Mrs. Riggs giving her life to the work among his people and of her desire to be buried among those whom she loved.