Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux. Stephen Return Riggs
the Bible into the language of the Dakotas.[3]
[3] Completed in 1879.
“Nov. 18, 1837.
“I make very slow progress in learning Dakota, and could you hear the odd combinations of it with English which we allow ourselves, you would doubtless be somewhat amused, if not puzzled to guess our meaning, though our speech would betray us, for the little Dakota we can use we can not speak like the Indians. The peculiar tone and ease are wanting, and several sounds I have been entirely unable to make; so that, in my case at least, there would be ‘shibboleths’ not a few. And these cause the Dakota pupils to laugh very frequently when I am trying to explain, or lead them to understand some of the most simple things about arithmetic. Perhaps you will think them impolite, and so should I if they had been educated in a civilized land, but now I am willing to bear with them, if I can teach them any thing in the hour which is allotted for this purpose.
“As yet I have devoted no time to any except those who are attempting to learn English, and my class will probably consist of five girls and two or three boys. Two of the boys, who, we hope, will learn English, are full Dakotas, and, if their hearts were renewed, might be very useful as preachers of the Gospel to their own degraded people.”
Fort Renville, as it was sometimes called, was a stockade, made for defence in case of an invasion by the Ojibwas, who had been from time immemorial at war with the Sioux. Inside of this stockade stood Mr. Renville’s hewed-log house, consisting of a store-house and two dwellings. Mr. Renville’s reception-room was of good size, with a large open fireplace, in which his Frenchmen, or “French-boys,” as they were called by the Indians, piled up an enormous quantity of wood of a cold day, setting it up on end, and thus making a fire to be felt as well as seen. Here the chief Indian men of the village gathered to smoke and talk. A bench ran almost around the entire room, on which they sat or reclined. Mr. Renville usually sat on a chair in the middle of the room. He was a small man with rather a long face and head developed upward. A favorite position of his was to sit with his feet crossed under him like a tailor. This room was the place of Bible translating. Dr. Williamson and Mr. G. H. Pond had both learned to read French. The former usually talked with Mr. Renville in French, and, in the work of translating, read from the French Bible, verse by verse. Mr. Renville’s memory had been specially cultivated by having been much employed as interpreter between the Dakotas and the French. It seldom happened that he needed to have the verse re-read to him. But it often happened that we, who wrote the Dakota from his lips, needed to have it repeated in order that we should get it exactly and fully. When the verse or sentence was finished, the Dakota was read by one of the company. We were all only beginners in writing the Dakota language, and I more than the others. Sometimes Mr. Renville showed, by the twinkle of his eye, his conscious superiority to us, when he repeated a long and difficult sentence and found that we had forgotten the beginning. But ordinarily he was patient with us, and ready to repeat. By this process, continued from week to week during that first winter of ours at Lac-qui-parle, a pretty good translation of the Gospel of Mark was completed, besides some fugitive chapters from other parts. In the two following winters the Gospel of John was translated in the same way.
Besides giving these portions of the Word of God to the Dakotas sooner than it could have been done by the missionaries alone, these translations were invaluable to us as a means of studying the structure of the language, and as determining, in advance of our own efforts in this line, the forms or moulds of many new ideas which the Word contains. In after years we always felt safe in referring to Mr. Renville as authority in regard to the form of a Dakota expression.
During this first year that Mary and I spent in the Dakota country, there were coming to us continually new experiences. One of the most common, and yet one of the most thrilling and abiding, was in the birth of our first-born. In motherhood and fatherhood are found large lessons in life. The mother called her first-born child Alfred Longley, naming him for a very dear brother of hers. The Dakotas named this baby boy of ours Good Bird (Zitkadan Washtay). They said that it was a good name. In those days it was a habit with them to give names to the white people who came among them. Dr. Williamson they called Payjehoota Wechasta—Medicine man, or, more literally, Grass-root man—that is, Doctor. To Mr. G. H. Pond they gave the name Matohota, Grizzly-bear. Mr. S. W. Pond was Wamdedoota, Red-eagle. To me they gave the name of Tamakoche, His country. They said some good Dakota long ago had borne that name. To Mary they gave the name of Payuha. At first they gutturalized the h, which made it mean Curly-head—her black hair did curl a good deal; but afterward they naturalized the h, and said it meant Having-a-head.
The winter as it passed by had other lessons for us. For me it was quite a chore to cut and carry up wood enough to keep our somewhat open upper room cosey and comfortable. Mary had more ambition than I had to get native help. She had not been accustomed to do a day’s washing. It came hard to her. The other women of the mission preferred to wash for themselves rather than train natives to do it. And indeed, at the beginning, that was found to be no easy task. For, in the first place, Dakota women did not wash. Usually they put on a garment and wore it until it rotted off. This was pretty much the rule. No good, decent woman could be found willing to do for white people what they did not do for themselves. We could hire all the first women of the village to hoe corn or dig potatoes, but not one would take hold of the wash-tub. And so it was that Mary’s first washer-women were of the lowest class, and not very reputable characters. But she persevered and conquered. Only a few years had passed when the wash-women of the mission were of the best women of the village. And the effort proved a great public benefaction. The gospel of soap was indeed a necessary adjunct and outgrowth of the Gospel of Salvation.
“Dec. 13.
“My first use of the pen since the peculiar manifestation of God’s loving kindness we have so recently experienced shall be for you, my dear parents. That you will with us bless the Lord, as did the Psalmist in one of my favorite Psalms, the 103d, we do not doubt; for I am sure you will regard my being able so soon to write as a proof of God’s tender mercy. I have been very comfortable most of the time during the past week. As our little one cries, and I am now his chief nurse, I must lay aside my pen and paper and attend to his wants, for Mr. Riggs is absent, procuring, with Dr. W. and Mr. Pond, the translation of Mark, from Mr. Renville.”
“Dec. 28.
“Yesterday our dear little babe was three weeks old. I washed with as little fatigue as I could expect; still, I should have thought it right to have employed some one, was there any one to be employed who could be trusted. But the Dakota women, besides not knowing how to wash, need constant and vigilant watching. Poor creatures, thieves from habit, and from a kind of necessity, though one of their own creating!”
“Jan. 10.
“The Dakota tent is formed of buffalo-skins, stretched on long poles placed on the ground in a circle, and meeting at the top, where a hole is left from which the smoke of the fire in the centre issues. Others are made of bark tied to the poles placed in a similar manner. A small place is left for a door of skin stretched on sticks and hinged with strings at the top, so that the person entering raises it from the bottom and crawls in. At this season of the year the door is protected by a covered passage formed by stakes driven into the ground several feet apart, and thatched with grass. Here they keep their wood, which the women cut this cold weather, the thermometer at eighteen to twenty degrees below zero. And should you lift the little door, you would find a cold, smoky lodge about twelve feet in diameter, a mother and her child, a blanket or two, or a skin, a kettle, and possibly in some of them a sack of corn.”
“Thursday Eve., Jan. 11.
“Quite unexpectedly, this afternoon we received an invitation to a wedding at Mr. Renville’s, one of his daughters marrying a Frenchman. We gladly availed ourselves of an ox-sled, the only vehicle we could command, and a little before three o’clock we were in the guest-chamber. Mr. Renville, who is part Dakota, received us with French politeness, and soon after the rest of the family entered. These, with several Dakota men and women seated on