p-books.com
Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas
by R. J. Creswell
Previous Part     1  2
Home - Random Browse

The young man was unable to answer this unmistakable statement of facts and it became apparent that he had sought to revenge himself for her repulse.

"Woo! Woo! Carry him out!" was the order of the Chief of the Indian police, and the audacious youth was hurried away into the nearest ravine to be chastised.

The young woman who had thus established her good name returned to the circle and the feast was served. The "maidens' song" was sung, and four times they danced in a ring around the altar.

Each maid, as she departed, took her oath to remain pure until she should meet her husband.



II

GRANDMOTHER POND.

Grandmother Pond is one of the rarest spirits, one of the loveliest characters in Minnesota. She is the last living link between the past and the present—between that heroic band of pioneer missionaries who came to Minnesota prior to 1844, and those who joined the ranks of this glorious missionary service in more recent years. Her life reads like a romance.

Agnes Carson Johnson Pond is a native of Ohio—born at Greenfield in 1825. She was the daughter of William Johnson, a physician and surgeon of Chillicothe, Ohio. By the death of her father she was left an orphan at five years of age. Her mother married a worthy minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, Rev. John McDill. She had superior educational and social advantages and made good use of all her opportunities. She was educated at a seminary at South Hanover, Indiana. There she met her future husband, Robert Hopkins. He, as well as she, was in training for service on mission fields. They were married in 1843. He had already been appointed as a missionary teacher for the Sioux Indians. The young wife was compelled to make her bridal tour in the company of strangers, by boat and stage and private conveyance from Ohio to the then unknown land of the upper Mississippi. It required thirty days then, instead of thirty hours, as now, to pass from Ohio to the Falls of St. Anthony. The bride-groom drove his own team from Galena, Illinois, to Fort Snelling.



HER HUSBAND DROWNED.

Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins were first stationed at Lac-qui-Parle. After one year they were transferred to Traverse des Sioux, near the present site of St. Peter, Minnesota. Here they gave seven years of the most faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing toil for the lost and degraded savages around them. They built a humble home and established and maintained a mission school. Five children were born to them there. Two of these were early called to the celestial home on high. Their life at Traverse des Sioux was a strenuous, isolated, but a fruitful and happy one. It was destined, however, to a speedy and tragic end.

Early in the morning of July 4, 1851, Mr. Hopkins entered the river for a bath. He was never seen alive again. A treacherous swirl in the water at that point suddenly carried him to his death. His wife waited long the carefully prepared morning meal, but her beloved came not again. He went up through the great flood of waters from arduous service on the banks of the beautiful Minnesota to his glorious rewards on the banks of the still more beautiful River of Life.

Broken-hearted, the young wife, only twenty-six years of age, laid him to rest on the banks of the river whose treacherous waves had robbed her of her life companion. Sadly she closed her home in Minnesota and, with her three little fatherless children, returned to her old home in far-distant Ohio.

Rev. Robert Hopkins enjoyed the full confidence of his colleagues and was greatly beloved by the Indians. His untimely death was an irreparable loss to the mission work among the Sioux.

SECOND BRIDAL TOUR TO THE WEST.

Shortly after the tragedy at Traverse des Sioux, Mrs. Sarah Poage Pond, wife of Rev. Gideon H. Pond, died at Oak Grove Mission of consumption. In 1854 Mr. Pond visited Ohio, where he and Mrs. Hopkins were united in marriage. She made a second bridal tour from Ohio to Minnesota, and toiled by his side till his death in 1878.

In every relation in life in which she has been placed, Mrs. Pond has excelled. While she long ago ceased from active service in mission fields, she ever has been, and still is untiring in her efforts to do good to all as she has opportunity. She is strong and vigorous at the age of eighty. She still resides at the Oak Grove Mission house, her home since 1857, universally beloved and regarded as the best woman in the world by about one hundred descendants.



OAK GROVE MISSION HOUSE.

This old land mark is located in Hennepin County, Minnesota, twelve miles southwest of Minneapolis. Here in 1843, Gilbert H. Pond established his headquarters as a missionary to the Sioux Indians. He erected a large log building in which he resided, taught school and preached the gospel. Here, in 1848, the Presbytery of Dakota convened, and ordained Mr. Pond and Robert Hopkins to the Presbyterian ministry. For many years it was the sole source of social, moral, and spiritual light for a wide region for both races. It was also the favorite gathering place of the Indians for sport. In 1852, a great game of ball was played here. Good Road and Grey Iron joined their followers with Cloudman's band of Lake Calhoun in opposition to Little Six and his band from Shakopay. Two hundred and fifty men and boys participated in the game, while two hundred and fifty others were deeply interested spectators. The game lasted for three days and was won by Cloudman and his allies. Forty-six hundred dollars in ponies, blankets and other such property changed hands on the results.

In 1856, the present commodious residence was erected of brick manufactured on the premises. For twenty-one years it was the residence of Rev. Gideon Hollister Pond. He was for twenty years, also, pastor of the white Presbyterian church of Oak Grove. He was a member of the first territorial legislature; the editor of the "The Dakota Friend" the first religious journal published in the state, and he was also the first preacher of the gospel in the city of Minneapolis.

In whatever position he was placed in life, he ever proved himself to be a wise, conscientious, consecrated Christian gentleman. None knew him, but to love him; none knew him, but to praise. He was born in Connecticut, June thirtieth, 1810, and on the twentieth of January, 1878, he passed from his Oak Grove Mission Home through the gates of the celestial city, to go no more out. They laid him to rest in the midst of the people, whom he had loved and served so well for four and forty years and by whom he was universally beloved and admired. None were more sincere in their demonstrations of sorrow than the little company of Dakotas to whom he had been a more than father.



III

ANPETUSAPAWIN

A Legend of St. Anthony Falls

Long ere the white man's bark had seen These flower-decked prairies, fair and wide, Long ere the white man's bark had been Borne on the Mississippi's tide, So long ago, Dakotas say, Anpetusapawin was born, Her eyes beheld these scenes so gay First opening on life's rosy morn.

—S. W. Pond.

In the long ago, a young Indian brave espoused as his wife this Indian maiden of whom the poet sings. With her he lived happily for a few years, in the enjoyment of every comfort of which a savage life is capable. To crown their happiness, they were blessed with two lovely children on whom they doted. During this time, by a dint of activity and perseverance in the chase, he became signalized in an eminent degree as a hunter, having met with unrivaled success in the pursuit and capture of the wild denizens of the forest. This circumstance contributed to raise him high in the estimation of his fellow savages and drew a crowd of admiring friends around. This operated as a spur to his ambitions.

At length some of his newly acquired friends suggested to him the propriety of taking another wife, as it would be impossible for one woman to manage the affairs of his household and properly wait upon the many guests his rising importance would call to visit him. They intimated to him that in all probability he would soon be elevated to the chieftainship. His vanity was fired by the suggestion. He yielded readily and accepted a wife they had already selected for him.

After his second marriage, he sought to take his new wife home and reconcile his first wife to the match in the most delicate manner possible. To this end he returned to his first wife, as yet ignorant of what had occurred, and endeavored, by dissimulation, to secure her approval.

"You know," said he, "I can love no one as I love you; yet I see your labors are too great for your powers of endurance. Your duties are daily becoming more and more numerous and burdensome. This grieves me sorely. But I know of only one remedy by which you can be relieved. These considerations constrain me to take another wife. This wife shall be under your control in every respect and ever second to you in my affections." She listened to his narrative in painful anxiety and endeavored to reclaim him from his wicked purpose, refuting all his sophistry by expressions of her unaffected conjugal affection. He left her to meditate. She became more industrious and treated him more tenderly than before. She tried every means in her power to dissuade him from the execution of his vile purpose. She pleaded all the endearments of their former happy life, the regard he had for her happiness and that of the offspring of their mutual love to prevail on him to relinquish the idea of marrying another wife. He then informed her of the fact of his marriage and stated that compliance on her part would be actually necessary. She must receive the new wife into their home. She was determined, however, not to be the passive dupe of his duplicity. With her two children she returned to her parental teepee. In the autumn she joined her friends and kinsmen in an expedition up the Mississippi and spent the winter in hunting. In the springtime, as they were returning, laden with peltries, she and her children occupied a canoe by themselves. On nearing the Falls of St. Anthony she lingered in the rear till the others had landed a little above the falls.

She then painted herself and children, paddled her canoe into the swift current of the rapids and began chanting her death song, in which she recounted her former happy life, with her husband, when she enjoyed his undivided affection, and the wretchedness in which she was now involved by his infidelity. Her friends, alarmed at her imminent peril, ran to the shore and begged her to paddle out of the current before it was too late, while her parents, rending their clothing and tearing their hair, besought her to come to their arms of love; but all in vain. Her wretchedness was complete and must terminate with her existence! She continued her course till her canoe was borne headlong down the roaring cataract, and it and the deserted, heartbroken wife and the beautiful and innocent children, were dashed to pieces on the rocks below. No traces of the canoe or its occupants were found. Her brothers avenged her death by slaying the treacherous husband of the deserted wife.

They say that still that song is heard Above the mighty torrent's roar, When trees are by the night-wind stirred And darkness broods on stream and shore.



IV

AUNT JANE

The Red Song Woman

Miss Jane Smith Williamson, the subject of this sketch, was one of the famous missionary women in our land in the nineteenth century. She was widely known among both whites and Indians as "Aunt Jane." The Dakotas also called her "Red Song Woman." She was born at Fair Forest, South Carolina, March 8, 1803. Through her father she was a lineal descendant of the Rev. John Newton and Sir Isaac Newton. Her father was a revolutionary soldier.

Her mother was Jane (Smith) Williamson. They believed that negroes had souls and therefore treated the twenty-seven slaves they had inherited like human beings. Her mother was fined in South Carolina, for teaching her slaves to read the Bible. Consequently, in 1804, in her early infancy, her parents emigrated to Adams county, Ohio, in order to be able to free their slaves and teach them to read the Word of God and write legibly.

The story of Aunt Jane's life naturally falls into three divisions.

I—PREPARATION FOR HER GREAT LIFE WORK.

This covered forty years. She grew up in an atmosphere of sincere and deep piety and of devotion to Christian principles. Her early educational advantages were necessarily limited, but she made the most of them. She became very accurate in the use of language, wrote a clear round hand and was very thorough in everything she studied. She was a great reader of good and useful books, possessed an excellent memory and a lively imagination and very early acquired a most interesting style of composition.



From her ancestors she inherited that strong sympathy for the colored race, which was a marked characteristic of her whole life. In her young womanhood, she taught private schools in Adams county, Ohio. The progress made by her pupils was very rapid and her instruction was of a high order. She sought out the children of the poor and taught them without charge. She admitted colored pupils as well as whites. For this cause, many threats of violence were made against her school. But she was such an excellent teacher that her white pupils remained with her; and a guard of volunteer riflemen frequently surrounded her school house. She calmly pursued the even tenor of her way.

In 1820, when she was only 17 years of age, she and her brother rode on horseback all the way from Manchester, Ohio, to South Carolina and back again, and brought with them two slaves they had inherited. They could have sold them in the South for $300 each, and stood in great need of the money; but instead, they gave to these two poor colored persons the priceless boon of liberty. Miss Williamson's slave was a young woman of her own age, called Jemima. She was married to another slave named Logan. She was the mother of two children. Logan was a daring man, and rendered desperate by the loss of his young wife, he determined to be free and follow her. He fled from South Carolina, and after passing through many adventures of the most thrilling character, he found his wife in Ohio, and lived and died a free man. He was fully determined to die rather than return to slavery. Jemima lived to a great age, surviving her husband, who was killed accidently in the fifties. They left a family highly respected.

During all these years "Aunt Jane" was a very active worker in Sabbath schools, prayer meetings and missionary societies. In her own day schools, she made religious worship and Bible study a prominent feature of the exercises. In 1835, when her brother, Dr. Williamson, went as a missionary to the Dakotas, she strongly desired to accompany him. But her duty required her to remain at home and care for her aged father, who died in 1839, at the age of 77. She did not join her brother, however, until 1843, at the age of forty.

II—HER WORK AMONG THE DAKOTAS.

This covers one-third of a century. The missionary spirit was a part of her life,—born with her,—a heritage of several generations. The blood of the Newtons flowed in her veins. When she arrived in Minnesota, she went to work without delay and with great energy and with untiring industry greatly beyond her strength. She was very familiar with the Bible. She taught hundreds of Indians, perhaps fully one thousand, to read the Word of God, and the greater part of them to write a legible letter. She visited all the sick within her reach, and devoted much of her time to instructing the Dakota women in domestic duties. She conducted prayer meetings and conversed with them in reference to the salvation of their souls. Many of them, saved by the Holy Spirit's benediction upon her self-denying efforts, are now shining like bright gems in her crown of glory on high.

Lac-qui-Parle,—the Lake-that-speaks,—two hundred miles west of St. Paul, was her first missionary home. There she gathered the young Indians together and taught them as opportunity offered. The instruction of the youth—especially the children, of whom she was ever a devoted lover, was her great delight.

It was more than a year before any mail reached her at this remote outpost. She was absent in the Indian village when she heard of the arrival of her first mail. She, in her eagerness to hear from her friends in Ohio, ran like a young woman to her brother's house. She found the mail in the stove-oven. The carrier had brought it through the ice, and it had to be thawed out. That mail contained more than fifty letters for her and the postage on them was over five dollars. In 1846, she removed with her brother to Kaposia, Little Crow's village (now South St. Paul), and in 1852 to Yellow Medicine, thirty-two miles south of Lac-qui-Parle. The privations of the missionaries were very great. White bread was more of a luxury to them then, than rich cake ordinarily is now. Their houses and furnishings were of the rudest kind. Their environments were all of a savage character.

Their trials were many and sore, extreme scarcity of food in mid-winter, savage threats and bitter insults. They were "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, of robbers, by the heathen and in the wilderness." All this she endured contentedly for Christ's sake and the souls of the poor ignorant savages around for the evangelization and salvation of the degraded Dakotas,—lost in sin.

She possessed great tact and was absolutely fearless. In 1857, during the Inkpadoota trouble, the father of a young-Indian, who had been wounded by the soldiers of Sherman's battery, came with his gun to the mission house to kill her brother. Aunt Jane met him with a plate of food for himself and an offer to send some nice dishes to the wounded young man. This was effectual. The savage was tamed. He ate the food and afterwards came with his son to give them thanks. Scarcely was the prison-camp, with nearly four hundred Dakota prisoners, three-fourths of them condemned to be hanged, established at Mankato, when Aunt Jane and her brother came to distribute paper and pencils and some books among them.

When their lives were imperilled, by their savage pursuers, during the terrible massacre, Aunt Jane calmly said; "Well if they kill me, my home is in Heaven." The churches were scattered, the work apparently destroyed, but nothing could discourage Aunt Jane. She had, in the midst of this great tragedy, the satisfactory knowledge that all the Christian Sioux had continued at the risk of their own lives, steadfast in their loyalty, and had been instrumental in saving the lives of many whites. They had, also, influenced for good many of their own race.

III—THE CLOSING YEARS OF HER LIFE.

After that terrible massacre the way never opened for her to resume her residence among the Dakotas; but she was given health and strength for nineteen years more toil for the Master and her beloved Indians. Her home was with her brother, Dr. Williamson, near St. Peter, until his death in 1879, and she remained, in his old home several years after his death. During this period, she accomplished much for the education of the Indians around her and she kept up an extensive and helpful correspondence with native Christian workers. All the time she kept up the work of self-sacrifice for the good of others. In 1881 she met a poor Indian woman, suffering extremely from intense cold. She slipped off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a severe illness, which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness from which she never recovered. In 1888 she handed the writer a $5 gold coin for the work among the freedmen with this remark: "First the freedman; then the Indian." Out of a narrow income she constantly gave generously to the boards of the church and to the poor around her. She spent most of her patrimony in giving and lending to needy ones.

The closing years of her life were spent with her nephew the great Indian missionary the Rev. John P. Williamson D.D. at Greenwood, South Dakota. There at noon of March 24, 1895, the light of eternity dawned upon her and she entered into that sabbatic rest, which remains for the people of God. Such is the story of Aunt Jane, modest and unassuming—a real heroine, who travelled sixteen hundred miles all the way on horseback and spent several months that she might rescue two poor colored persons whom she had never seen or even known.

Without husband or children, alone in the world, she did not repine, but made herself useful, wherever she was, in teaching secular learning and religious truth, and in ministering to the sick and afflicted, the down-trodden and oppressed. She never sought to do any wonderful things,—but whatever her hand found to do, she did it with her might and with an eye to the honor and glory of God. Hers was a very long and most complete Christian life. Should it ever be forgotten? Certainly not, while our Christian religion endures.

"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works do follow them."

—Rev. 14: 13.



V

ARTEMAS, THE WARRIOR PREACHER

He was one of the fiercest of the Sioux warriors. He fought the Ojibways in his youth; danced the scalp-dance on the present site of Minneapolis, and waged war against the whites in '62. He was converted at Mankato, Minnesota, in the prison-pen, and for thirty-two years, he was pastor of the Pilgrim Congregational church at Santee, Nebraska.

Artemas Ehnamane was born in 1825, at Red Wing, Minnesota, by the mountain that stands sentinel at the head of Lake Pepin. "Walking Along" is the English translation of his jaw-breaking surname. As a lad, he played on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. As a youth, he hunted the red deer in the lovely glades of Minnesota and Wisconsin. He soon grew tall and strong and became a famous hunter. The war-path, also, opened to him in the pursuit of his hereditary foes, the Chippewas. He danced the scalp-dance on the present site of Minneapolis, when it was only a wind-swept prairie.

While in his youth, his tribe ceded their ancestral lands along the Mississippi and removed to the Sioux Reservation on the Minnesota River. But not for long, for the terrible outbreak of 1862, scattered everything and landed all the leading men of that tribe in prison. Artemas was one of them. He was convicted, condemned to death, and pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. While in the prison-pen at Mankato, he came into a new life "that thinketh no evil of his neighbor." The words of the faithful missionaries, Pond and Williamson and Riggs, sank deep into his heart. His whole nature underwent a change. Artemas once explained his conversion thus:

"We had planned that uprising wisely and secretly. We had able leaders. We were well organized and thoroughly armed. The whites were weakened by the Southern war. Everything was in our favor. We had prayed to our gods. But when the conflict came, we were beaten so rapidly and completely, I felt that the white man's God must be greater than all the Indians' gods; and I determined to look Him up, and I found Him, All-Powerful and precious to my soul."

Faithfully he studied his letters and learned his Dakota Bible, which became more precious to him than any record of traditions and shadows handed down from mouth to mouth by his people. He soon became possessed of a great longing to let his tribe know his great secret of the God above. So when the prisoners were restored to their families in the Missouri Vally in Nebraska, Artemas was soon chosen one of the preachers of the reorganized tribe. His first pastorate was that of the Pilgrim Congregational Church at Santee, Nebraska, in 1867. It was also his last, for he was ever so beloved and honored by his people, that they would not consider any proposal for separation.

No such proposition ever met with favor in the Pilgrim Church for Artemas firmly held first place in the affections of the people among whom he labored so earnestly. He served this church for thirty-two years and passed on to take his place among the Shining Ones, on the eve of Easter Sabbath, 1902.

Artemas seldom took a vacation. In fact there is only one on record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They were strong and hostile.

He had tact as well as courage. He invited those savage warriors to a feast. His kettle was brimming, and as the Indians filled their mouths with the savory meat, he filled their ears with the story of the gospel, and gave them their first view of that eternal life, purchased by the blood of Christ.

The deer-hunt became a soul-hunt. The wild Sicaugu grunted their amicable "Hao" as they left his teepee, their mouths filled with venison and their hearts planted with the seeds of eternal truth.

Again he went on a deer-hunt, when he crossed another trail, that of hunters from another hostile tribe. In the camp he found a sick child, the son of Samuel Heart, a Yankton Sioux. But let Heart tell the story himself in his simple way:

"I was many days travel away in the wilderness. My child was very sick. I felt much troubled. A man of God came to my tent. I remember all he said. He told me not to be troubled, but to trust in God, and all would be well. He prayed; he asked God to strengthen the child so I could bring him home. God heard him. My child lived to get home. Once my heart would have been very sad, and I would have done something very wicked. I look forward and trust Jesus."

This is how Rev. Artemas Ehnamane spent his vacations, hunting for wild souls instead of wild deer.

He was a scriptural, personal and powerful preacher.

Faith in a risen Saviour, was the keynote of his ministry. As he said: "Who of all the Saviours of the Indian people has risen from the dead? Not one." "Our fathers told us many things and gave us many customs, but they were not true." "I grew up believing in what my father taught me, but when I knew of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I believed in Him and put aside all my ways." It was to him in truth, the coming out of darkness into light. "Sins are like wolves," he said. "They abound in the darkness and destroy men. When we enter the way, Jesus watches over us. Be awake and follow Him. All over the world men are beginning to follow Christ. The day is here." "Repent, believe, obey."

He loved to sing:

"Saved, by grace, alone; That is all my plea; Jesus died for all mankind; Jesus died for me."

The twenty grand-children of the old Sioux—all of school age—are diligently prosecuting their studies in order to be prepared to meet the changed conditions which civilization has made possible for the Indians. One of his grand-sons is a physician now, in a fair practice among his own people.

This man President Lincoln wisely pardoned, knowing full well what a great influence for good such a man could wield over his turbulent people. And the President was not disappointed. One of his sons has been a missionary among the Swift Bear tribe at the Rose Bud Agency for twenty years; another son has been a missionary at Standing Rock, on the Grand River, and is now pastor of an Indian congregation on Basile Creek, Nebraska, and is also an important leader of his tribe. The Rev. Francis Frazier, one of his sons, was installed September 10, 1902, as his father's successor in the pastorate of Pilgrim church at Santee.

His married daughter is also very earnest in the woman's work in the church. Seventy-seven years of age at his death, Rev. Artemas Ehnamane had filled to overflowing with good deeds to offset the first half, when he fought against the encroachments of the whites and the advance of civilization with as much zeal as later he evinced in his religious and beneficent life. Abraham Lincoln pardoned Ehnamane and the old warrior never forgot it. But it was another pardon he prized more highly than that. It was this pardon he preached and died believing.



VI

TWO FAMOUS MISSIONS.

Lake Harriet and Prairieville

In the spring of 1835, the Rev. Jedediah Dwight Stevens, of the Presbyterian Church, arrived at Fort Snelling under the auspices of the American Board of Missions. He established a station on the northwestern shore of Lake Harriet. It was a most beautiful spot, west of the Indian village, presided over by that friendly and influential chieftain Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky. He erected two buildings—the mission-home, first residence for white settlers, and the school house—the first building erected exclusively for school purposes within the present boundaries of the State of Minnesota.

Within a few rods of the Pavilion, where on the Sabbath, multitudes gather for recreation, and desecration of God's holy day, is the site, where, in 1835, the first systematic effort was made to educate and Christianize Dakota Indians. It is near the present junction of Forty-second Street, and Queen Avenue (Linden Hills).

In July, Mr. Stevens, and his interesting family, took possession of the mission house. With the co-operation of the Pond brothers, this mission was prosecuted with a fair measure of success till the removal of the Indians farther west, in 1839, when it was abandoned, and the connection of Mr. Stevens with the work of the Dakota mission ceased.

Here on the evening of November 22, 1838, a romantic wedding was solemnized by Rev. J. D. Stevens. The groom was Samuel Pond of the Dakota mission. The groomsman was Henry H. Sibley, destined in after years to be Minnesota's first delegate to Congress, her first state executive, and in the trying times of '62, the victorious General Sibley. The bride was Miss Cordelia Eggleston; the bridesmaid, Miss Cornelia Stevens; both amiable, lovely and remarkably handsome.

It was a brilliant, starry evening, one of Minnesota's brightest and most invigorating. The sleighing was fine, and among the guests, were many officers, from Fort Snelling, with their wives. Dr. Emerson and wife, the owners of Dred Scott, the subject of Judge Taney's infamous decision, were present. The doctor was, then, post-surgeon at the fort, and the slave Dred, was his body-servant. The tall bridegroom and groomsman, in the vigor and strength of their young manhood; the bride and bridesmaid, just emerging from girlhood, with all their dazzling beauty, the officers in the brilliant uniforms, and their wives, in their gay attire, must have formed an attractive picture in the long ago. After the wedding festivities, the guests from the fort were imprisoned at the mission for the night, by a blizzard, which swept over the icy face of Lake Harriet.

In the previous November, at Lac-qui-Parle, the younger brother was united in marriage to Miss Sarah Poage, by the Rev. Stephen R. Riggs. It was a unique gathering. The guests were all the dark-faced dwellers of the Indian village, making a novel group of whites, half-breeds and savage Indians. Many of the latter were poor, maimed, halt and blind, who thoroughly enjoyed the feast of potatoes, turnips, and bacon so generously provided by the happy bridegroom.

PRAIRIEVILLE.

In 1846, Shakpe or Little Six, extended an urgent invitation to Samuel Pond to establish a mission at Tintonwan—"the village on the prairies"—for the benefit of his people. He was chief of one of the most turbulent bands of Indians in the valley of the Minnesota. He was a man of marked ability and one of the ablest and most effective orators in the whole Dakota nation. Yet withal, Shakpe was a petty thief, had a "forked tongue," a violent temper, was excitable, and vindictive in his revenge. These characteristics led him to the scaffold. He was hanged at Fort Snelling, in 1863 for participation in the bloody massacre of '62. He and his followers were so noted for their deception and treachery, that Mr. Pond doubted their sincerity and the wisdom of accepting their invitation. But after weeks of prayerful deliberation, he accepted and began preparations for a permanent establishment at that point. He erected a commodious and substantial residence into which he removed, with his household, in November 1847.

This station, which Mr. Pond called Prairieville, was fourteen miles southeast of Oak Grove mission, on the present site of Shakopee. The mission home was pleasantly located on gently rising ground, half a mile south of the Minnesota River. It was surrounded by the teepees of six hundred noisy savages. Here, for several years they toiled unceasingly for the welfare of the wild men, by whom they were surrounded.

In 1851, Mr. and Mrs. Pond were compelled, by her rapidly failing health, to spend a year in the east. She never returned. She died February 6, 1852, at Washington, Connecticut. Thus after fourteen years of arduous missionary toil, Cordelia Eggleston Pond, the beautiful bride of the Lake Harriet mission house, was called from service to reward at the early age of thirty-six.

Mr. Pond returned to Prairieville and toiled on for the Indians until their removal by the government, in 1853. He himself, remained and continued his labors for the benefit of the white community of Shakopee, which had grown up around him. In 1853, a white Presbyterian church was organized and, in 1856, a comfortable church edifice was erected, wholly at the expense of the pastor and his people. The congregation still exists and the mission house still stands as monuments of the wisdom, faith and fortitude of the heroic builder. After thirteen years of faithful service, he laid the heavy burdens down for younger hands, but for a quarter of a century longer he remained in his old home.

During these last years, his chief delight was in his books, which lost none of their power to interest him in advancing age; especially was this true of the Book of books. He was never idle. The active energy, which distinguished his youth, no less marked his advancing years. His mind was as clear, his judgment as sound, and his mental vision as keen at eighty-three, as they were at thirty-three. His was a long and happy old age. He lingered in the house his own hands had builded, content to go or stay, till he was transferred, December twelfth, 1891, to the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.



VII

THE PRINCE OF INDIAN PREACHERS.

Without disparagement to any of his brethren in the ministry, this title can be properly applied to the Rev. John Baptiste Renville, of Iyakaptapte, (Ascension) South Dakota, who recently passed on to join the shining ranks of the saved Sioux in glory.

Timid as a little child, yet bold as a lion, when aroused; shy of conversation in private, yet eloquent in the pulpit and in the council-chamber; yielding yet firm as a rock, when duty demanded it; a loving husband, a kind father, a loyal citizen, a faithful presbyter—a pungent preacher of the gospel, a soul-winner—a courteous, cultured Christian gentleman; such a man was this Indian son of a Sioux mother, herself the first fullblood Sioux convert to the Christian faith.

He was the youngest son of Joseph Renville, a mixed blood Sioux and French, who was a captain in the British army in the War of 1812 and the most famous Sioux Indian in his day. After the war, he became a trader and established his headquarters at Lac-qui-Parle, where he induced Dr. Thomas S. Williamson to locate his first mission station in 1835.

John Baptiste was one of the first Indian children baptized by Dr. Williamson and he enjoyed the benefits of the first school among the Sioux. He was rather delicate, which hindered his being sent east to school as much as he otherwise would have been. However, he spent several years in excellent white schools, and he acquired a fair knowledge of the elementary branches of the English language. The last year he spent at Knox College, Galesburgh, Illinois, where he wooed and won Miss Mary Butler, an educated Christian white woman, whom he married and who became his great helper in his educational and evangelistic work.

JOHN P. WILLIAMSON, D.D. DANIEL RENVILLE JOHN EASTMAN CHARLES R. CRAWFORD

All Indian Ministers Except Dr. Williamson]

[1] Died Dec. 19, 1904



He was the first Sioux Indian to enter the ministry. In the spring of 1865, he was licensed to preach, by the presbytery of Dakota, at Mankato, Minnesota, and ordained in the following autumn. When he entered the ministry, the Sioux Indians were in a very unsettled state, and his labors were very much scattered; now with the Indian scouts on some campaign; again with a few families of Indians gathered about some military post, and anon with a little class of Indians, who were trying to settle down to civilized life.

In 1870, he became the pastor of Iyakaptapte, (Ascension) a little church in what subsequently became the Sisseton reservation. Both physically and in mental and spiritual qualities, he was best adapted to a settled pastorate. His quiet and unobtrusive character required long intercourse to be appreciated. However, in the pulpit, his earnestness and apt presentation of the truth ever commanded the attention even of strangers. Under his ministry, the church increased to one hundred and forty members. More than half a dozen of them became ministers and Ascension was generally the leading church in every good work among the Dakota Indians. No one among the Christian Sioux was more widely known and loved than Mr. Renville. In the councils of the church, though there were seventeen other ministers in the presbytery before his death, he was ever given the first place both for counsel and honor. He twice represented his presbytery in the general Assembly, and he was ever faithful in his attendance at Synod and Presbytery and active in the discharge of the duties devolving upon him.

Mary Butler, the white wife of his youth, died several years ago. Their daughter Ella, a fine Christian young lady passed away at twenty years of age. She was active in organizing Bands of Hope among the children of the tribe. She sleeps, with her parents on the brow of Iyakaptapte overlooking the church to which all their lives were devoted. Josephine, the Indian wife of his old age, survives him and remains in the white farm house on the prairie in which John Baptiste Renville spent so many years of his long, happy useful life. He died December 19, 1904, in the seventy-third year of his age.



VIII

AN INDIAN PATRIARCH.

Chief Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, was one of the strongest characters among the natives on the headwaters of the Mississippi in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. He was one of the leading chiefs of the Santee band of Sioux Indians. He was born about 1780. He was brave in battle, wise in council, and possessed many other noble qualities, which caused him to rise far above his fellow chieftains. He possessed a large fund of common sense. Years prior to the advent of the white man in this region, he regarded hunting and fishing as a too precarious means to a livelihood, and attempted to teach his people agriculture and succeeded to a limited extent.

It was a strange circumstance that prompted the chief to this wise action. On a hunting tour in the Red River country, with a part of his band, they were overtaken by a drifting storm and remained, for several days, under the snow, without any food whatsoever. While buried in those drifts, he resolved to rely, in part, upon agriculture, for subsistence, if he escaped alive, and he carried out his resolution, after the immediate peril was passed. His band cultivated small fields of quickly maturing corn, which had been introduced by their chief in the early 30's. He was respected and loved by his people and quite well obeyed.



Before the coming of the missionaries he taught and enforced, by his example, this principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted this human policy.

His own band lived on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, within the present limits of Minneapolis. On the present site of lovely Lakewood—Minneapolis' most fashionable cemetery—was his village of several hundred savages, and also an Indian burial place. This village was the front guard against the war parties of the Ojibways—feudal enemies of the Sioux—but finally as their young men were killed off in battle, they were compelled to remove and join their people on the banks of the Minnesota and farther West. He located his greatly reduced band at Bloomington, directly west of his original village. This removal occurred prior to 1838.

He was never hostile to the approach of civilization, or blind to the blessings it might confer on his people.

He was one of the first of his tribe to accept the white man's ways and to urge his band to follow his example. This fact is confirmed by the great progress his descendants have made.

He was the first Sioux Indian of any note to welcome those first pioneer missionaries, the Pond brothers. As early as 1834 he encouraged them to erect their home and inaugurate their work in his village. In all the treaties formed between the government and the Sioux, he was ever the ready and able advocate of the white man's cause. He threw all the weight of his powerful influence in favor of cession to the United States government of the military reservation on which Fort Snelling now stands. He died at Fort Snelling in 1863, and was buried on the banks of the Minnesota in view of the fort.

He was the father of seven children, all of whom are dead, except his son David Weston, his successor in the chieftainship, who still lives at Flandreau, South Dakota, at the age of seventy-eight years. He was for many years a catechist of the Episcopal Church. His two daughters were called Hushes-the-Night and Stands-like-a-Spirit. They were once the belles of Lake Harriet, to whom the officers and fur traders paid homage. Hushes-the-Night married a white man named Lamont and became the mother of a child called Jane. She had one sister, who died childless, in St. Paul, in 1901. Jane Lamont married Star Titus, a nephew of the Pond brothers. They became the parents of three sons and two daughters. Two of these sons are bankers and rank among the best business men of North Dakota. They are recognized as leaders among the whites. The other son is a farmer near Tracy, Minnesota. Stands-Like-a-Spirit was the mother of one daughter, Mary Nancy Eastman, whose father, Captain Seth Eastman, was stationed at Fort Snelling—1830-36. Mary Nancy married Many Lightnings, a fullblood, one of the leaders of the Wahpeton-Sioux. They became the parents of four sons and one daughter. After Many Lightnings became a Christian, he took his wife's name, Eastman, instead of his own, and gave all his children English names. John the eldest, and Charles Alexander, the youngest son, have made this branch of the Cloudman family widely and favorably known.

John Eastman, at twenty-six years of age, became a Presbyterian minister, and for more than a quarter of a century has been the successful pastor of the First Presbyterian church of Flandreau, South Dakota. He was for many years a trusty Indian agent at that place. He is a strong factor in Indian policy and politics. He has had a scanty English education in books, but he has secured an excellent training, chiefly by mingling with cultured white people.

His proud statement once was; "every adult member of the Flandreau band is a professing Christian, and every child of school age is in school." During the "Ghost Dance War," in 1890, his band remained quietly at home, busy about their affairs. In the spring of 1891, they divided $40,000 among themselves.

Charles Alexander Eastman was born in 1858, in Minnesota, the ancestral home of the Sioux, and passed the first fifteen years of his life in the heart of the wilds of British America, enjoying to the full, the free, nomadic existence of his race. During all this time, he lived in a teepee of buffalo skins, subsisted upon wild rice and the fruits of the chase, never entered a house nor heard the English language spoken, and was taught to distrust and hate the white man.

The second period (third) of his life was spent in school and college, where after a short apprenticeship in a mission school, he stood shoulder to shoulder, with our own youth, at Beloit, Knox, Dartmouth and the Boston university. He is an alumnus of Dartmouth of '87 and of Boston University, department of medicine, of '90.

During the last fifteen years, he has been a man of varied interests and occupations, a physician, missionary, writer and speaker of wide experience and, for the greater part of the time, has held an appointment under the government.

At his birth he was called "Hakadah" or "The Pitiful Last," as his mother died shortly after his birth. He bore this sad name till years afterwards he was called Ohiyesa, "The Winner," to commemorate a great victory of La Crosse, the Indian's favorite game, won by his band, "The Leaf Dwellers," over their foes, the Ojibways. When he received this new name, the leading medicine man thus exhorted him: "Be brave, be patient and thou shalt always win. Thy name is "Ohiyesa the Winner."" The spirit of his benediction seems to follow and rest upon him in his life-service.

His grandmother was "Stands-Like-a-Spirit," the second daughter of the old chief Cloudman. His full-blooded Sioux father was a remarkable man in many ways and his mother, a half-blood woman, was the daughter of a well-known army officer. She was the most beautiful woman of the "Leaf Dwellers" band. By reason of her great beauty, she was called "Demi-Goddess of the Sioux." Save for her luxuriant, black hair, and her deep black eyes, she had every characteristic of Caucasian descent. The motherless lad was reared by his grandmother and an uncle in the wilds of Manitoba, where he learned thoroughly, the best of the ancient folk lore, religion and woodcraft of his people. Thirty years of civilization have not dimmed his joy in the life of the wilderness nor caused him to forget his love and sympathy for the primitive people and the animal friends, who were the intimates of his boyhood.



He is very popular as a writer for the leading magazines. "His Recollections of Wild Life" in St. Nicholas, and his stories of "Wild Animals" in Harper, have entertained thousands of juvenile as well as adult readers. His first book, "Indian boyhood," which appeared in 1902, has passed through several editions, and met with hearty appreciation. "Red Hunters and the Animal People," published in 1904, bids fair to be, at least, equally popular.

During the last two years, he has lectured in many towns from Maine to California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs, laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual, trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly do. He brings out strongly the red man's wit, music, poetry and eloquence. He also explains graphically from facts gained from his own people, the great mystery of the battle of the Little Big Horn in which the gallant Custer and brave men went to their bloody death.

He was married in 1891 at New York City, to Miss Elaine Goodale, a finely cultured young lady from Massachusetts, herself a poetess and prose writer of more than ordinary ability.

They have lived very happily together ever since and are the parents of five lovely children. They have lived in Washington and St. Paul and are now residents of Amherst, Massachusetts. Whether in his physician's office, in his study, on the lecture platform, in the press or in his own home, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman is a most attractive personality.



IX

JOHN

The Beloved of the Sioux Nation

Rev. John P. Williamson, D.D., of Greenwood, South Dakota, was born in the month of October, 1835, in one of Joseph Renville's log cabins, with dirt roof and no floor; and was the first white child born in Minnesota, outside of the soldier's families at Fort Snelling. His father, the Rev. Thomas S. Williamson. M.D., was the first ordained missionary appointed to labor among the Sioux Indians. He came out to the new Northwest on an exploring expedition in 1834, visiting the Indian camps at Wabawsha, Red Wing, Kaposia, and others.

He returned in the spring of 1835, with his family and others who were appointed.

After the arrival of this missionary party, Dr. Williamson and his colleagues, lived and labored continuously among the Indians the remainder of their lives. Their work for the Master has not suffered any interruption, but is still carried on successfully and vigorously by their successors.

John P. Williamson grew up in the midst of the Indians. He mastered the Sioux language in early boyhood. As a lad, he had the present sites of Minneapolis and St. Paul for his playgrounds and little Indian lads for his playmates. Among these, was Little Crow, who afterwards became infamous in his savage warfare, against the defenseless settlers in western Minnesota, in 1862.

He was early dedicated to the work of the gospel ministry. In his young manhood he was sent to Ohio, for his education. In 1857, he graduated at Marietta College, and in 1860, at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. In 1859 he was licensed by Dakota (Indian) Presbytery, and ordained, by the same body, in 1861. The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by Yankton, (S.D.) college in 1890. He recognized no call to preach the gospel save to the Sioux Indians, and for forty-six years, he has given his whole life zealously to this great work. He has thrown his whole life unreservedly into it. And he has accomplished great things for the Master and the tribe to which he has ministered.

In 1860 he established a mission and organized a Presbyterian church of twelve members at Red Wood Agency on the Minnesota. These were both destroyed in the outbreak two years later. He spent the winter of 1862-3, in evangelistic work, among the Sioux, in the prison-camp at Fort Snelling, where 1,500 were gathered under military guard. An intense religious interest sprung up amongst them and continued for months. Young Dr. Williamson so ministered unto them, that the whole camp was reached and roused, and the major part of the adults were led to Christ. Many, including scores of the children of the believers, were baptized. A Presbyterian congregation of more than one hundred communicants was organized. This church was afterwards united with the church of the Prison-pen, at Crow Creek, Nebraska.

In 1883, he was appointed superintendent of Presbyterian missions among the Sioux Indians. He has ever abounded in self-sacrificing and successful labors among this tribe. He has organized Nineteen (19) congregations and erected twenty-three (23) church edifices. In twenty-three years he has traveled two hundred thousand miles in the prosecution of these arduous labors. The number of converts cannot be reckoned up.

In 1866, he was married to Miss Sarah A. Vannice. To them there have been born four sons and three daughters, who are still living. In 1869 he established the Yankton mission, which has ever since been a great center, moral and spiritual, to a vast region. At the same time he established his home at Greenwood, South Dakota, and from that, as his mission headquarters, he has gone to and from in his great missionary tours throughout the Dakota land.

He has, also, abounded in literary labors. For sixteen years he was the chief editor of "Iapi Oayi," an Indian weekly. In 1864, he published "Powa Wow-spi," an Indian Spelling Book, and in 1865, a collection of Dakota Hymns. His greatest literary work, however, was an edition of the "Dakota Dictionary," in 1871, and other later editions.

He has won the affections of the whole Sioux nation. They bow willingly to his decisions, and follow gladly his counsels. To them, he is a much greater man than President Roosevelt. While he has passed the limit of his three-score years and ten—forty-six of them in frontier service—his bow still abides in strength, and he still abounds in manifold labors. He is still bringing forth rich fruitage in his old age.

Every white dweller among the Indians is known by some special cognomen. His is simply "John." And when it is pronounced, by a Sioux Indian as a member of the tribe always does it so lovingly, all who hear it know he refers to "John, the Beloved of the Sioux Nation."



X

THE MARTYRS OF OLD ST. JOE.

One of the most touching tragedies recorded in the annals of the new Northwest, was enacted in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century, on the borders of Prince Rupert's Land and the Louisiana purchase (now Manitoba and North Dakota). It is a picturesque spot, where the Pembina river cuts the international boundary line in its course to the southeast to join the Red River of the North in its course to Hudson's bay.

Sixty years ago, in this place, encircled by the wood-crowned mountain and the forest-lined river and prairies, rich as the gardens of the gods, there stood a village and trading post of considerable importance, named after the patron saint of the Roman Catholic church, in its midst—St. Joseph—commonly called St. Joe. It was a busy, bustling town, with a mixed population of 1,500. Most of these dwelt in tents of skin. There were, also, two or three large trading posts and thirty houses, built of large, hewn timbers mudded smoothly within and without and roofed with shingles. Some of these were neat and pretty; one had window-shutters. It was the center of an extensive fur trade with the Indian tribes of the Missouri river. Many thousands of buffalo and other skins were shipped annually to St. Paul in carts. Sometimes a train of four hundred of these wooden carts started together for St. Paul, a distance of four hundred miles.

But old things have passed away. The village of old St. Joe is now marked only by some cellar excavations. It possesses, however, a sad interest as the scene of the martyrdom of Protestant missionaries on this once wild frontier, then so far removed from the abodes of civilization.

James Tanner was a converted half-breed, who with his wife labored, in 1849, as a missionary at Lake Winnibogosh, Minnesota. His father had been stolen, when a lad, from his Kentucky home, by the Indians. Near the close of 1849 he visited a brother in the Pembina region. He became so deeply interested in the ignorant condition of the people there, that he made a tour of the East in their behalf. He visited New York, Washington and other cities, and awakened considerable interest in behalf of the natives of this region. While east he became a member of the Baptist Church. He returned to St. Joe, in 1852, accompanied by a young man named Benjamin Terry, of St. Paul, to open a mission among the Pembina Chippewas and half breeds under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society. Terry was very slight and youthful in appearance, quiet and retiring in disposition and was long spoken of, by the half-breeds, as "Tanner's Boy." They visited the Red River (Selkirk) settlement (now Winnipeg). While there, Terry wooed and won one of the daughters of the Selkirk settlers, a dark-eyed handsome Scotch lass, to whom he expected to be married in a few months. But, alas, ere the close of summer, he was waylaid, by a savage Sioux, shot full of arrows, his arm broken and his entire scalp carried away. Mr. Tanner secured permission to bury him in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the corner reserved for suicides, heretics and unbaptized infants. Thus ended in blood, the first effort to establish a Protestant mission in the Pembina country.

June 1, 1853, a band of Presbyterian missionaries arrived at St. Joe. It was composed of the Reverends Alonzo Barnard and David Brainard Spencer, their wives and children. They came in canoes and in carts from Red and Cass lakes, Minnesota, where for ten years, they had labored as missionaries among the Chippewas. They removed to St. Joe, at the earnest request of Governor Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota, and others familiar with their labors and the needs of the Pembina natives. Mrs. Barnard's health soon gave way. Her husband removed her to the Selkirk settlement, one hundred miles to the north, for medical aid. Her health continued to fail so rapidly that by her strong desire they attempted to return to St. Joe. The first night they encamped in a little tent on the bleak northern plain in the midst of a fierce windstorm. The chilling winds penetrated the folds of the tent. All night long the poor sufferer lay in her husband's arms, moaning constantly: "Hold me close; oh, hold me close." They were compelled to return to the settlement, where after a few days more of intense suffering, she died, Oct. 22, 1853, of quick consumption, caused by ten years exposure and suffering for the welfare of the Indians.

Mrs. Barnard was first interred at the Selkirk settlement, in Prince Rupert's Land (now Manitoba). In the absence of other clergymen, Mr. Barnard was compelled to officiate at his wife's funeral himself. In obedience to her dying request, Mrs. Barnard's remains were removed to St. Joe and re-interred in the yard of the humble mission cabin, Dec. 3, 1853.

In 1854, Mr. Barnard visited Ohio to provide a home for his children. On his return, at Belle Prairie, Minnesota, midway between St. Paul and St. Joe, he met Mr. Spencer and his three motherless children, journeying four hundred miles by ox-cart to St. Paul. There in the rude hovel in which they spent the night, Mr. Barnard baptized Mr. Spencer's infant son, now an honored minister of the Congregational church in Wisconsin. On his arrival at St. Joe Mr. Barnard found another mound close by the grave of his beloved wife.

The story of this third grave is, also, written in blood. It was Aug. 30, 1854. The hostile Sioux were infesting the Pembina region. Only the previous month, had Mrs. Spencer written to a far distant friend in India: "Last December the Lord gave us a little son, whose smiling face cheers many a lonely hour." On this fatal night, she arose to care for this darling boy. A noise at the window attracted her attention. She withdrew the curtain to ascertain the cause. Three Indians stood there with loaded rifles and fired. Three bullets struck her, two in her throat and one in her breast. She neither cried out nor spoke, but reeling to her bed, with her babe in her arms, knelt down, where she was soon discovered by her husband, when he returned from barricading the door. She suffered intensely for several hours and then died. And till daybreak Mr. Spencer sat in a horrid dream, holding his dead wife in his arms. The baby lay in the rude cradle near by, bathed in his mother's blood. The two elder children stood by terrified and weeping. Such was the distressing scene which the neighbors beheld in the morning, when they came with their proffers of sympathy and help. The friendly half-breeds came in, cared for the poor children and prepared the dead mother for burial. A half-breed dug the grave and nailed a rude box together for a coffin. Then with a bleeding heart, the sore bereaved man consigned to the bosom of the friendly earth the remains of his murdered wife.

Within the past thirty years civilization has rapidly taken possession of this lovely region. Christian homes and Christian churches cover these rich prairies. The prosperous and rapidly growing village of Walhalla (Paradise) nestles in the bosom of this lovely vale and occupies contentedly the former site of Old St. Joe.

June 21, 1888, one of the most interesting events in the history of North Dakota occurred at the Presbyterian cemetery, which crowns the brow of the mountain, overlooking Walhalla. It was the unveiling of the monument erected by the Woman's Synodical Missionary Society of North Dakota, which they had previously erected to the memory of Sarah Philena Barnard and Cornelia Spencer, two of the three "Martyrs of St. Joe." The monument is a beautiful and appropriate one of white marble. The broken pieces of old stone formerly placed on Mrs. Barnard's grave, long scattered and lost, were discovered, cemented together and placed upon her new grave. The Rev. Alonzo Barnard, seventy-one years of age, accompanied by his daughter, was present. Standing upon the graves of the martyrs, with tremulous voice and moistened eyes, he gave to the assembled multitude a history of their early missionary toil in the abodes of savagery. It was a thrilling story, the interest intensified by the surroundings. The half-breed women who prepared Mrs. Spencer's body for the burial and who washed and dressed the little babe after his baptism in his mother's blood, were present. The same half-breed who dug Mrs. Spencer's grave in 1854 dug the new grave in 1888. Several pioneers familiar with the facts of the tragedy at the time of its occurrence were also present.

"The Martyr's Plot," the last resting place of these devoted servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a beautiful spot, on the hillside, in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Walhalla. It is enclosed by a neat fence, and each of these three martyr's graves is marked by a white stone, with an appropriate inscription.

The Rev. Alonzo Barnard retired to Michigan, where he gave five years of missionary toil to the Chippewas at Omene and many other years of helpful service to the white settlers at other points in that state. In 1883 he retired from the work of the active ministry and spent the remainder of his days with his children.

He died April 14, 1905, at Pomona, Michigan, at the home of his son, Dr. James Barnard, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. There is a large and flourishing Episcopal Indian church at Leech Lake, Minnesota, the scene of Mr. Barnard's labors from 1843-52.

The rector is the Rev. Charles T. Wright, a full-blood Chippewa. He is the eldest son of that famous chieftain, Gray Cloud and is now himself, chief of all the Chippewas. "Thus one soweth and another reapeth."

THE END

Previous Part     1  2
Home - Random Browse