Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux. Stephen Return Riggs
formed not an uninteresting group. The marriage ceremony was in French and Dakota, and was soon over. Then the bridegroom rose, shook hands with his wife’s relations, and kissed her mother, and the bride also kissed all her father’s family.
“When supper was announced as ready, we repaired to a table amply supplied with beef and mutton, potatoes, bread, and tea. Though some of them were not prepared as they would have been in the States, they did not seem so singular as a dish that I was unable to determine what it could be, until an additional supply of blood was offered me. I do not know how it was cooked, though it might have been fried with pepper and onions, and I am told it is esteemed as very good. The poor Indians throw nothing away, whether of beast or bird, but consider both inside and outside delicious broiled on the coals.”
“April 5.
“Yesterday afternoon Mrs. Pond and myself walked to ‘the lodges.’ As the St. Peter’s now covers a large part of the bottom, we wound our way in the narrow Indian path on the side of the hill. An Indian woman, with her babe fastened upon its board at her back, walked before us, and as the grass on each side of the foot-path made it uncomfortable walking side by side, we conformed to Dakota custom, one following the other. For a few moments we kept pace with our guide, but she, soon outstripping us, turned a corner and was out of sight. As we wished for a view of the lake and river, we climbed the hill. There we saw the St. Peter’s, which in the summer is a narrow and shallow stream, extending over miles of land, with here and there a higher spot peeping out as an island in the midst of the sea. The haze prevented our having a good view of the lake.
“After counting thirty lodges stretched along below us, we descended and entered one, where we found a sick woman, who said she had not sat up for a long time, lying on a little bundle of hay. Another lodge we found full of corn, the owners having subsisted on deer and other game while absent during the winter.
“When we had called at Mr. Renville’s, which was a little beyond, we returned through the heart of the village, attended by such a retinue as I have never before seen, and such strange intermingling of laughing and shouting of children and barking of dogs as I never heard. Amazed, and almost deafened by the clamor, I turned to gaze upon the unique group. Some of the older girls were close upon our heels, but as we stopped they also halted, and those behind slackened their pace. Boys and girls of from four to twelve years of age, some wrapped in their blankets, more without, and quite a number of boys almost or entirely destitute of clothing, with a large number of dogs of various sizes and colors, presented themselves in an irregular line. As all of the Indians here have pitched their lodges together, I suppose there might have been thirty or forty children in our train. When we reached home, I found little Alfred happy and quiet, in the same place on the bed I had left him more than two hours previous, his father having been busy studying Dakota.
“This evening two Indian women came and sat a little while in our happy home. One of them had a babe about the age of Alfred. You would have smiled to see the plump, undressed child peeping out from its warm blanket like a little unfledged bird from its mossy nest.”
Mr. Pond had long been yearning to see inside of an Indian. He had been wanting to be an Indian, if only for half an hour, that he might know how an Indian felt and by what motives he could be moved. And so when the early spring of 1838 came, and the ducks began to come northward, a half-dozen families started out from Lac-qui-parle to hunt and trap on the upper part of the Chippewa River, in the neighborhood of where is now the town of Benson, in Minnesota. Mr. Pond went with them, and was gone two weeks. It was in the first of April, and the streams were flooded, and the water was cold. There should have been enough of game easily obtained to feed the party well. So the Indians thought. But it did not prove so. A cold spell came on, the ducks disappeared, and Mr. Pond and his Indian hunters were reduced to scanty fare, and sometimes to nothing, for a whole day. But Mr. Pond was seeing inside of Indians, and was quite willing to starve a good deal in the process. However, his stay with them, and their hunt for that time as well, was suddenly terminated.
It appears that during the winter some rumors of peace visits from the Ojibwas had reached the Dakotas, so that this hunting party were somewhat prepared to meet Ojibwas who should come with this announced purpose. The half-dozen teepees had divided. Mr. Pond was with Round Wind, who had removed from the three teepees that remained. On Thursday evening there came Hole-in-the-day, an Ojibwa chief, with ten men. They had come to smoke the peace-pipe, they said. The three Dakota tents contained but three men and ten or eleven women and children. But, while starving themselves, they would entertain their visitors in the most royal style. Two dogs were killed and they were feasted, and then all lay down to rest. But the Ojibwas were false. They arose at midnight and killed their Dakota hosts. In the morning but one woman and a boy remained alive of the fourteen in the three teepees the night before, and the boy was badly wounded. It was a cowardly act of the Ojibwas, and one that was terribly avenged afterward. When Mr. Pond had helped to bury the dead and mangled remains of these three families, he started for home, and was the first to bring the sad news to their friends at Lac-qui-parle. To him quite an experience was bound up in those two weeks, and the marvel was, why he was not then among the slain. To Mary and me it opened a whole store-house of instruction, as we listened to the wail of the whole village, and especially when the old women came with dishevelled heads and ragged clothes, and cried and sang around our house, and begged in the name of our first-born. We discovered all at once the power of a name. And if an earthly name has such power, much more the Name that is above every name—much more the Name of the Only Begotten of the heavenly Father.
Lac-qui-parle was in those days much shut out from the great world. We were two hundred miles away from our post-office at Fort Snelling. We seldom received a letter from Massachusetts or Ohio in less than three months after it was written. Often it was much longer, for there were several times during our stay at Lac-qui-parle when we passed three months, and once five months, without a mail. We used to pray that the mail would not come in the evening. If it did, good-by sleep! If it came in the early part of the day, we could look it over and become quieted by night. Our communication with the post-office was generally through the men engaged in the fur-trade. Some of them had no sympathy with us as missionaries, but they were ever willing to do us a favor as men and Americans. Sometimes we sent and received our mail by Indians. That was a very costly way. The postage charged by the government—although it was then twenty-five cents on a letter—was no compensation for a Dakota in those days. It is fortunate for them that they have learned better the value of work.
Once a year, at least, it seemed best that one of ourselves should go down to the mouth of the Minnesota. Our annual supplies were to be brought up, and various matters of business transacted. I was sent down in the spring of 1838, and I considered myself fortunate in having the company of Rev. S. W. Pond. This was Mr. Pond’s second visit to Lac-qui-parle on foot. The first was made over two years before, in midwinter. That was a fearful journey. What with ignorance of the country, and deep snows, and starvation, and an ugly Indian for his guide, Mr. Pond came near reaching the spirit land before he came to Lac-qui-parle.
This second time he came under better auspices, and, having spent several weeks with us, during which many questions of interest with regard to the language and the mission work were discussed, he and I made a part of Mr. Renville’s caravan to the fur depot of the American Fur Company at Mendota, in charge of H. H. Sibley, a manly man, since that time occupying a prominent position in Minnesota.
To make this trip I was furnished by the mission with a valuable young horse, gentle and kind, but not possessed of much endurance. At any rate, he took sick while I was away, and never reached home. The result may have been owing a good deal to my want of skill in taking care of horses, and in travelling through the bogs and quagmires of this new country. I could not but be profoundly sorry when obliged to leave him, as it entailed upon me other hardships for which I was not well prepared. Reaching the Traverse des Sioux on foot, I found Joseph R. Brown, even then an old Indian trader, coming up with some led horses. He kindly gave me the use of two with which to bring up my loaded cart. That was a really Good Samaritan work, which I have always remembered with gratitude.
When the first snows were beginning to fall in the coming winter, and not till then, Dr. Williamson was ready to make his trip to Ohio. The Gospel