Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux. Stephen Return Riggs
scene. The rest of our missionary band sat near those of our number who were about to enter into the new and sacred relationship, while most of the room was filled with our dark-faced guests, a blanket or a buffalo robe their chief ‘wedding garment,’ and coarse and tawdry beads, brooches, paint, and feathers their wedding ornaments. Here and there sat a Frenchman or half-breed, whose garb bespoke their different origin. No turkey or eagle feathers adorned the hair, or parti-colored paint the face, though even their appearance and attire reminded us of our location in this wilderness.
“Mr. Riggs performed the marriage ceremony, and Dr. Williamson made the concluding prayer, and, through Mr. Renville, briefly explained to the Dakotas the ordinance and its institution. After the ceremony, Mr. Renville and family partook with us of our frugal meal, leaving the Indians to enjoy their feast of potatoes, turnips, and bacon, to which the poor, the lame, and the blind had been invited. As they were not aware of the supper that was provided, they did not bring their dishes, as is the Indian custom, so that they were scantily furnished with milk-pans, etc. This deficiency they supplied very readily by emptying the first course, which was potatoes, into their blankets, and passing their dishes for a supply of turnips and bacon.
“I know not when I have seen a group so novel as I found on repairing to the room where these poor creatures were promiscuously seated. On my left sat an old man nearly blind; before me, the woman who dipped out the potatoes from a five-pail boiler sat on the floor; and near her was an old man dividing the bacon, clenching it firmly in his hand, and looking up occasionally to see how many there were requiring a share. In the corner sat a lame man eagerly devouring his potatoes, and around were scattered women and children.
“When the last ladle was filled from the large pot of turnips, one by one they hastily departed, borrowing dishes to carry home the supper, to divide with the children who had remained in charge of the tents.”
CHAPTER III.
1837–1839.—The Language.—Its Growth.—System of Notation.—After Changes.—What We Had to Put into the Language.—Teaching English and Teaching Dakota.—Mary’s Letter.—Fort Renville.—Translating the Bible.—The Gospels of Mark and John.—“Good Bird” Born.—Dakota Names.—The Lessons We Learned.—Dakota Washing.—Extracts from Letters.—Dakota Tents.—A Marriage.—Visiting the Village.—Girls, Boys, and Dogs.—G. H. Pond’s Indian Hunt.—Three Families Killed.—The Village Wail.—The Power of a Name.—Post-Office Far Away.—The Coming of the Mail.—S. W. Pond Comes Up.—My Visit to Snelling.—Lost my Horse.—Dr. Williamson Goes to Ohio.—The Spirit’s Presence.—Prayer.—Mary’s Reports.
To learn an unwritten language, and to reduce it to a form that can be seen as well as heard, is confessedly a work of no small magnitude. Hitherto it has seemed to exist only in sound. But it has been, all through the past ages, worked out and up by the forges of human hearts. It has been made to express the lightest thoughts as well as the heart-throbs of men and women and children in their generations. The human mind, in its most untutored state, is God’s creation. It may not stamp purity nor even goodness on its language, but it always, I think, stamps it with the deepest philosophy. So far, at least, language is of divine origin. The unlearned Dakota may not be able to give any definition for any single word that he has been using all his life-time—he may say, “It means that, and can’t mean any thing else,”—yet, all the while, in the mental workshop of the people, unconsciously and very slowly it may be, but no less very surely, these words of air are newly coined. No angle can turn up, but by and by it will be worn off by use. No ungrammatical expression can come in that will not be rejected by the best thinkers and speakers. New words will be coined to meet the mind’s wants; and new forms of expression, which at the first are bungling descriptions only, will be pared down and tucked up so as to come into harmony with the living language.
But it was no part of our business to make the Dakota language. It was simply the missionary’s work to report it faithfully. The system of notation had in the main been settled upon before Mary and I joined the mission. It was, of course, to be phonetic, as nearly as possible. The English alphabet was to be used as far as it could be. These were the principles that guided and controlled the writing of Dakota. In their application it was soon found that only five pure vowel sounds were used. So far the work was easy. Then it was found that x and v and r and g and j and f and c, with their English powers, were not needed. But there were four clicks and two gutturals and a nasal that must in some way be expressed. It was then, even more than now, a matter of pecuniary importance that the language to be printed should require as few new characters as possible. And so n was taken to represent the nasal; q represented one of the clicks; g and r represented the gutturals; and c and j and x were used to represent ch, zh, and sh. The other clicks were represented by marked letters. Since that time, some changes have been made: x and r have been discarded from the purely Dakota alphabet. In the Dakota grammar and dictionary, which was published fifteen years afterward, an effort was made to make the notation philosophical, and accordant with itself. The changes which have since been adopted have all been in the line of the dictionary.
When we missionaries had gathered and expressed and arranged the words of this language, what had we to put into it, and what great gifts had we for the Dakota people? What will you give me? has always been their cry. We brought to them the Word of Life, the Gospel of Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, as contained in the Bible. Not to preach Christ to them only, that they might have life, but to engraft his living words into their living thoughts, so that they might grow into his spirit more and more, was the object of our coming. The labor of writing the language was undertaken as a means to a greater end. To put God’s thoughts into their speech, and to teach them to read in their own tongue the wonderful works of God, was what brought us to the land of the Dakotas. But they could not appreciate this. Ever and anon came the question, What will you give me? And so, when we would proclaim the “old, old story” to those proud Dakota men at Lac-qui-parle, we had to begin with kettles of boiled pumpkins, turnips, and potatoes. The bread that perisheth could be appreciated—the Bread of Life was still beyond their comprehension. But by and by it was to find its proper nesting-place.
It was very fortunate for the work of education among the Dakotas that it had such a staunch and influential friend as Joseph Renville, Sr., of Lac-qui-parle. It was never certainly known whether Mr. Renville could read his French Bible or not. But he had seen so much of the advantages of education among the white people, that he greatly desired his own children should learn to read and write, both in Dakota and English, and through his whole life gave his influence in favor of Dakota education. Sarah Poage, afterward Mrs. G. H. Pond, had come as a teacher, and had, from their first arrival at Lac-qui-parle, been so employed. Mr. Renville had four daughters, all of them young women, who had, with some other half-breeds, made an English class. They had learned to read the language, but understood very little of it, and were not willing to speak even what they understood. All through these years the teaching of English, commenced at the beginning of our mission work, although found to be very difficult and not producing much apparent fruit, has never been abandoned. But for the purposes of civilization, and especially of Christianization, we have found culture in the native tongue indispensable.
To teach the classes in English was in Mary’s line of life. She at once relieved Miss Poage of this part of her work, and continued in it, with some intervals, for several years. Often she was greatly tried, not by the inability of her Dakota young lady scholars, but by their unwillingness to make such efforts as to gain the mastery of English.
Teaching in Dakota was a different thing. It was their own language. The lessons, printed with open type and a brush on old newspapers, and hung round the walls of the school-room, were words that had a meaning even to a Dakota child. It was not difficult. A young man has sometimes come in, proud and unwilling to be taught, but, by sitting there and looking and listening to others, he has started up with the announcement, “I am able.” Some small books had already been printed. Others were afterward provided. But the work of works, which in some sense took precedence of all others, was then