Among the Sioux Part 6

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN P. WILLIAMSON, D.D., Superintendent of Presbyterian Sioux Missions.

Forty-five years a missionary to the Sioux.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. ANTHONY FALLS.]

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 partic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 chieftains.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.sive 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e.

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 G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUNT JANE, Or, The Red Song Woman.]

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 pa.s.sing 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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.