IN THE LAND OF THE DAKOTAS
Hiawatha—Stephen and Mary Riggs—The Sioux Indians—Indian teepees—"Eagle Help"—The scalping-party—A sad experience—The return of the bison—The Indian rising—A dreadful flight—The Dakota prisoners—Preaching in the prisoners' camp—A transformation on the prairies.
THE title of the present chapter will remind those who have read Longfellow's Hiawatha of one of the most frequently recurring lines in that poem of melodious repetitions—repetitions which are intended to suggest the steady "rushing of great rivers," and the waterfall's monotonous music
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley.
But Longfellow's picture of the Dakotas and their country, though beautiful as poetry, is very misleading as to the realities of life among the uncivilized Indians of the Western States. He deliberately put their cruelty and squalor out of his mind, and set himself to weave their legends and traditions into a song of pure romance. The tale we have to tell in the following pages may justly claim to be a story of romance. It takes us to the land of Hiawatha and Minnehaha, the land of lakes and prairies and primeval forests, where "the curling smoke of wigwams" is seen rising through the trees. But it is in the first place a story of sheer reality. The merely imaginative side of the romance quite disappears, in the presence of Indian life as it was actually lived in the land of the Dakotas little more than half a century ago; and the true romance is seen to lie in the heroism and self-sacrifice of the young American missionary and his wife, who went out to the Far West in connection with the American Board of Foreign Missions to spend their days in the midst of those fierce savages. Their life was one of constant toil, of frequent alarms, of hope long deferred. But they had the courage of faith, and also its quiet patience. And one of them at least was spared to see a transformation among the Dakotas which went beyond anything for which they had looked.
It was in the year 1837 that the Rev. Stephen Riggs and his wife Mary left their home in the Eastern States and started westwards to begin work among the Sioux, the leading branch of the great Dakota family of Red Indians. Their first destination was Fort Snelling, a lonely military outpost at the junction of the Minnesota River with the Mississippi, not far from the laughing Falls of Minnehaha, and on the very site of the future city of Minneapolis. It is strange to think that less than seventy years ago the spot which is now the center of the commercial life of the North-Western States was then an outpost in the wilderness, more difficult of access than most places in Central Africa are to-day. The greater part of the journey of 3000 miles they were able to make by water—first down the Ohio River and then up the Mississippi. But so slow was travelling at that time, especially on the Upper Mississippi that it was not till three months after leaving Massachusetts that they reached Fort Snelling.
Not far from the Fort there was a Mission station, soon afterwards to be broken up by a furious and bloody war between the Sioux on the one side and the Ojjibeways and Chippeways on the other. Here the Riggses stayed for a few months to learn a little of the Dakotas and their language, and then set out with a wagon across the prairies towards a lake known as Lac-qui-parle, "The Speaking Lake," which lay some 200 miles farther to the west and near the border line between the present States of Minnesota and Dakota. For thirteen days they pushed steadily towards the setting sun, and at length reached the lake with the mysterious name, suggestive of the presence of some haunting spirit. There they joined another pioneer missionary, Dr. Williamson, and had a room assigned them in a log cabin which he had built in the midst of the teepees or wigwams of the Sioux nation.
Their first task was to seek the acquaintance of the inmates of those teepees which were scattered along the shores of Lac-qui-parle. Approaching a Dakota village of that time, one saw a number of conical tents made of buffalo skins, with smoke issuing from holes left at the top. Lifting the little door of skin, the only shelter of the inmates against a temperature which in winter often sank to twenty degrees below zero, the visitor found himself in a cold, smoky lodge about twelve feet in diameter, where, besides a dirty lounging warrior with his pipe, there might be "a mother and her child, a blanket or two, a skin, a kettle, and possibly a sack of corn.”
The Indians did not give the white men any welcome. On the contrary, they regarded them as intruders into their country, from whom it was legitimate to steal everything they could lay their hands on. They resented, too, any attempts to interfere with their ancestral habits, and especially with their deadly feuds and murderous attacks upon the Indians of other tribes. There was a notable chief called "Eagle Help," a war prophet and war leader among the Dakotas, a man of unusual intelligence, and the very first of all the Sioux nation who learned from Mr. Riggs to read and write his own language. But when the lust of battle came upon him, as it periodically did, he was the most bloodthirsty of savages. Once when he was about to lead out a war-party against the Ojjibeways for the purpose of slaying and scalping the men and carrying off the women as captives, Mr. Riggs argued with him in vain, and finally said that if the Sioux went on the war-trail he would pray that they might not be successful. This so offended the chief that just before starting he and his men killed and ate two cows that belonged to the Mission. And when they returned from their expedition, after a long tramp during which they had not fallen in with a single Ojjibeway, he attributed this failure entirely to the white man's charms, and held himself justified accordingly in killing and eating another cow which still remained.
After spending five years at Lac-qui-parle in hard and unpromising labor, Mr. Riggs decided to push out still farther into the wilderness, and so removed to a district called Traverse des Sioux, where no missionary had ever been before. But if his experiences at Lac-qui-parle had been trying, those which he now had to encounter were tenfold worse. Accompanied by his wife's brother, a fine young man of twenty-two, by whom they had been joined, he went on in advance and pitched his tent among the Traverse Indians. Many of them objected to his coming, and even tried to drive him away by threats. But his mind was made up to stay, and with the help of his companion he began to cut and haul logs to build a little cabin. The Indians did not interfere with this; but as soon as the two men had felled their logs and painfully dragged them to the spot where they proposed to build, they came down in force demanding payment for the wood taken from the forest, and Mr. Riggs was obliged to give up some of his scanty stock of provisions.
Before the cabin was finished Mrs. Riggs and the children arrived, and their arrival was marked by an incident which left a deep and painful impression on the lady's mind. She was attended by three young Dakota Indians who had become Christians. Some distance from Traverse the road crossed the Chippewa River, and at this point, as one of the three Indians, whose Christian name was Simon, was riding on ahead of the little company, a war-party of Ojjibeways suddenly emerged from the forest, carrying two fresh and bleeding scalps. They came up to Simon and flourished their trophies in his face, but did him no harm, probably because they saw that he was in the company of white people, and vanished across the river as suddenly as they had appeared. Two miles farther on the road, Mrs. Riggs and her escort met a band of maddened Dakotas in wild pursuit of the Ojjibeways. They told Simon that one of the two scalps he had just seen was that of his own brother; and when they learned that the Ojjibeways were now beyond their reach, they turned their fury on Mrs. Riggs and her three Indian companions for not having tried to kill or stop the scalping-party. Brandishing their muskets in the air, they clustered with savage faces and angry cries round the waggon in which the lonely white woman sat with a child in her arms. Finally, they shot one of the two horses that composed the team, so that she had to get out and walk the rest of the way in the heat of the broiling sun, carrying her little girl in her arms. This was Mrs. Riggs' introduction to Traverse des Sioux, and it was only one of various similar episodes which helped to turn her dark hair prematurely grey.
A few days after, her brother was drowned while bathing in the swift river which flowed in front of the cabin. He was a youth of a joyful Christian spirit, and all that morning, while hard at work on the unfinished house, had been singing again and again a couplet from a simple but very appropriate hymn—
Our cabin is small and coarse our fare,
But love has spread our banquet here.
By and by he went down to the stream and plunged in for a swim before dinner, but took cramp, and was carried away by the current and drowned. And now in the midst of her weeping for the dead brother, Mrs. Riggs had to take his place in the task of finishing the log-house, working with her husband at the other end of the cross-cut saw, because there was no one else who could be got to do it.
It was a sad beginning to life in the new sphere, the forerunner, too, of many another hard experience, but the devoted pair never lost heart. The Dakotas killed their cows and horses, stole their goods, and sometimes threatened their lives. But they worked patiently on, doing their best to live down enmity and opposition. Gradually they made friends with one and another through the power of kindness, but found it difficult to get even the most friendly to become Christians. A redskin might acknowledge that Christianity was true, but the Christian commandments were too much for him. He could not give up his killing and stealing and polygamy. Or if he promised to live a Christian life and actually made a start upon the straight path, a visit to some white trader's settlement where whisky was to be had was enough to turn him into an incarnate devil once again, ready for the worst of his old evil ways, and using vile and insulting language even to the white lady who had done so much for his own women and children.
At length, after several years had been spent at Traverse, the departure of Dr. Williamson to another station made it necessary in the general interests of the Mission to the Dakotas that the Riggses should return to Lacqui-parle. Their trials and hardships, however, did not cease with the change. The Indians robbed them as before, though sometimes, it must be confessed, the thieves had the excuse that they and their children were almost starving. Fortunately this excuse for stealing was taken away not long after their return. For several years the vast herds of bison, on which the Indians chiefly depended for their subsistence, had migrated farther and farther to the west, seeming to justify the complaint of the Dakotas that a curse fell upon their country with the coming of the white man's foot. But now the bison came back again, and all around Lac-qui-parle the hunters might be seen armed with bow and arrow and riding forth over the prairie to shoot down the noble game. For two years the Dakotas reveled in fresh buffalo meat, and were content to leave the white man's horse and cow alone. The children playing around the teepees grew sleek and fat. The very dogs got plump, and peace and contentment reigned on every hand.
But by and by the buffaloes began to move westwards again—a circumstance which the Dakotas might very well have attributed to their own deadly arrows rather than to the white man's foot. The redskin thieves resumed their work in the dark nights; and of all the forms of theft which they practiced none was more trying than the spoliation of the gardens of the palefaces. It was hard to sow and plant, to weed and water, and after weeks of toil and months of watching to rise some morning and find that a clean sweep had been made of all the fruits and vegetables during the night. It almost seemed an allegory of what had been going on for years in the larger sphere of missionary labor. "We have sown our seed in toil and tears," Mr. Riggs and his wife said to each other, "but where is the fruit?" And yet it was just when the hope of much fruit was almost disappearing that fruit came most abundantly, though not in any anticipated way.
In the autumn of 1862 a body of 4000 Dakota Indians had gathered at an agency called Yellow Medicine to receive certain annuities from the Government to which they were entitled. But through some mismanagement at headquarters (not greatly to be wondered at, seeing that the tremendous struggle with the Southern States was absorbing all the energies of President Lincoln's administration at that very time) the annuity money had not come, and the agent could not say when it would arrive. He wished the Indians in the meantime to disperse again to their homes. But as their homes in many cases lay at a distance of a week's journey or more, they refused to go back, and they also demanded that while they were kept waiting they should be fed. By and by they grew unmanageable, and began to attack the stores and help themselves to provisions. Resistance being offered, they became violent, and several white men were killed. As soon as word of this outbreak reached the nearest fort, an officer of the United States Army hurried off' with fifty men, hoping to quell the rising. But the Indians met this little company with alacrity, and easily defeated it. Half of the soldiers were killed, and the rest had difficulty in making good their escape. This victory over the regulars set the prairie on fire. All over the land of the Dakotas the red men rose against the whites.
Fortunately for the missionaries, the Indians who knew them best proved friendly towards them at this crisis, and did what they could to shelter them from the storm of savagery which had burst over the country. The Riggses were smuggled stealthily to an island in the Minnesota River, where for a time they lay concealed. But their situation there was too precarious, and flight to the east was decided on. A terrible flight it was, especially for the women and children. The nearest place of safety was the town of Henderson, far down the Minnesota. They had to make their way cautiously, often in the dead of night, through the long grass of the trackless prairie, grass that was heavy and sodden with water, for it rained incessantly for nearly a week. Starvation stared the fugitives in the face again and again, but they found food more than once in cabins which had been hurriedly deserted by white settlers, and once, coming upon a cow left in a stable, they did not hesitate to kill it and cook themselves a hearty meal. All the time, by day and by night, there lay heavy upon their hearts the horror of the Red Indian pursuer with his tomahawk and scalping-knife. But they reached Henderson safely at last, where they were received by the inhabitants as persons alive from the dead. "Why, we thought you were all dead!" was the first greeting they received. And they found that a telegram had come from Philadelphia saying, "Get the bodies at any cost.”
The Sioux rebels were defeated at last in a pitched battle, and 400 of them were taken prisoners. When brought before a military commission, 300 of these were found guilty of having deliberately taken up arms against the U.S. Government, and were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, however, who had the right of reviewing the findings of the commission, leaned towards clemency, and gave instructions that in the meantime only those should be executed who were proved to have taken part in individual murders or in outrages upon white women. These special crimes were brought home to thirty-eight of the prisoners, and an arrangement was made by which they were all hanged simultaneously in full view of the camp by the cutting of a single rope.
Through the crevices in the walls of their log prison-house the rest of the captives saw their comrades hanged. And the sight produced a profound impression upon them, an impression not only of fear, but in many cases of guilt. Mr. Riggs and Dr. Williamson, who had been present in the camp as interpreters from the first at the request of the commanding officer, found their time fully occupied in dealing with the prisoners, who listened to their message of the love of God and salvation through Christ for the sinful as no Indians had ever listened to them before. Formerly, even in church on the Lord's Day, the Dakotas had heard the most earnest preaching with an air of stolid indifference. They would never rise to their feet at any part of the service, and they continued smoking all the time. Now their whole demeanor was changed. And as the days passed, a wonderful wave of conversion passed through the camp, in which there were now gathered, in addition to the prisoners, some 1500 other Dakotas who were anxious about the fate of their friends. It was not long till 300 adult Indians in that camp made public profession of their faith in Christ, and were baptized into the communion of the Church. Eventually the prisoners were pardoned by the President and allowed to return to their homes. But the work begun by the missionaries under such strange circumstances at the close of the war still went on, and resulted in the Christianization of the greater part of the Dakotas.
A few years after the Sioux war was over brave Mary Riggs passed away, worn out by labors and sorrows. Her husband, however, was spared to see his name become an honored one in America, and not only among the friends of Christian missions, but in academic circles as well. For this bold pioneer of the Church militant had also the instincts of an original scholar. Through all his years of frontier toil and peril, often with no better study than a room which served at the same time for kitchen, bedroom, and nursery, and no better desk than the lid of the meal-barrel, he had carried on laborious researches into the language of the Indians, which resulted at last in his Dakota Grammar and Dakota Dictionary, and brought him the well-deserved degrees of D.D. and LL.D. But his highest honors were written not in the records of Universities, but in the changed lives of the Dakota people. In his old age, looking back over forty years of service, he could trace a wonderful contrast between then and now. In 1837, when he came to the Far West, he was surrounded by the whole Sioux nation in a state of ignorance and barbarism. In 1877 the majority of the Sioux had become both civilized and Christianized. Then in the gloaming his young wife and he had seen the dusky forms of Indian warriors flitting past on their way to deeds of blood. Now the same race was represented not only by sincere believers, but by native pastors in the churches and native teachers in the schools. And on the same prairies where the war whoop of the savage had once been the most familiar sound, the voice of praise and prayer might be heard to rise with each returning Day of Rest from Indian cabins as well as Indian sanctuaries.
The story told in this chapter is drawn from Mr. Riggs' book, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux (Chicago: W. G. Holmes).