Among the Sioux | Page 7

and become members of this church, they replied that the church was
made up of squaws. Did the missionaries suppose the braves would
follow the lead of squaws? Ugh! Ugh!!
For the first seven years, at Lac-qui-Parle, mission work was
prosecuted, with marked success in spite of many grave hindrances.
But for the four years following--1842-46--the work was seriously
retarded. The crops failed and the savages charged their misfortunes to
the missionaries. They became very ugly, and began a series of petty
yet bitter persecutions against the Christian Indians and the
missionaries. The children were forbidden to attend school; the women

who favored the church had their blankets cut to pieces and were shut
away from contact with the mission. The cattle and horses of the
mission were killed, and for a season the Lord's work was stayed at
Lac-qui-Parle. Discouraged, but not dismayed His servants were
watchful for other opportunities of helpful service.
In 1846, the site of the present, prosperous city of St. Paul, was
occupied by a few shanties, owned by "certain lewd fellows of the
baser sort," sellers of rum to the soldiers and the Indians. Nearby,
scattered over the bluffs, were the teepees of Little Crow's band,
forming the Sioux village of Kaposia. In 1846, Little Crow, their
belligerent chieftain, was shot by his own brother, in a drunken revel.
He survived the wound, but apparently alarmed at the influence of
these modern harpies over himself and his people, he visited Fort
Snelling and begged a missionary for his village. The United States
agent stationed there forwarded this petition to Lac-qui-Parle with the
suggestion that Dr. Williamson be transferred to Kaposia. The
invitation was accepted by the doctor, so in November, 1846, he
became a resident of Kaposia (now South St. Paul). To this new station,
he carried the same energy, hopefulness and devotion, he had shown at
the beginning. Here he remained six years, serving not only the Indians
of Little Crow's band, but also doing great good to the white settlers,
who were then gathering around the future Capital City of Minnesota.
Here in 1848, he organized an Indian church of eight members. It
increased to fifteen members, in 1851, when the Indians were removed.
Then followed the treaty of 1851, which was of great import, both to
the white man and to the red man. By this treaty, the fertile valley of
the Minnesota was thrown open for settlement to the whites. This took
away from the Sioux their hunting-grounds, their cranberry marshes,
their deer-parks and the graves of their ancestors. So the Dakotas of the
Mississippi and lower Minnesota packed up their teepees, their
household goods and gods, some in canoes, some on ponies, some on
dogs, some on the women, and slowly and sadly took up their line of
march towards the setting of the sun.
No sooner did the Indians move than Dr. Williamson followed them

and established a new station at Yellow Medicine, on the West bank of
the Minnesota river and three miles above the mouth of the Yellow
Medicine river. The first winter there, was a fight for life. The house
was unfinished; a very severe winter set in unusually early, the snows
were deep and the drifts terrible; the supply-teams were snowed in; the
horses perished, the provisions were abandoned to the wolves and the
drivers reached home in a half-frozen condition. But God cared for His
servants. In this emergency, the Rev. M. N. Adams, of Lac-qui-Parle,
performed a most heroic act. In mid-winter, with the thermometer
many degrees below zero, he hauled flour and other provisions for the
missionaries, on a hand sled, from Lac-qui-Parle to Yellow Medicine, a
distance of thirty-two miles. The fish gathered in shoals, an unusual
occurrence, near the mission and both the Indians and the missionaries
lived through that terrible winter. Here, an Indian church of seventeen
members was organized by Dr. Williamson. It increased to a
membership of thirty in the next decade.
In March, 1854, the mission houses at Lac-qui-Parle were destroyed by
fire. A consolidation of the mission forces was soon after effected. Dr.
Riggs and other helpers were transferred from Lac-qui-Parle to a point
two miles distant from Yellow Medicine and called Omehoo
(Hazelwood). A comfortable mission home was erected. The native
Christians removed from Lac-qui-Parle and re-established their homes
at Hazelwood. A boarding school was soon opened at this point by Rev.
M. N. Adams. A neat chapel was also erected. A church of thirty
members was organized by Mr. Riggs. It grew to a membership of
forty-five before the massacre. These were mainly from the the
Lac-qui-Parle church which might be called the mother of all the
Dakota churches.
There were now gathered around the mission stations, quite a
community of young men, who