Among the Sioux | Page 8

had to a great extent, become civilized.
With civilization came new wants--pantaloons and coats and hats.
There was power also in oxen and wagons and brick-houses. The white
man's axe and plow and hoe had been introduced and the red man was
learning to use them. So the external civilization went on.

But the great and prominent force was in the underlying education and
especially in the vitalizing and renewing power of Christian truth. So
far as the inner life was changed, civilized habits became permanent;
otherwise they were shadows. Evangelization was working out
civilization. It is doing its permanently blessed work even yet.
About this time occurred the formation of the Hazelwood Republic.
This was a band of Indians somewhat advanced in civilization, who
were organized chiefly by the efforts of Dr. Riggs, under a written
constitution and by-laws. Their officers were a President, Secretary and
three judges, who were elected by a vote of the membership for a term
of two years each. Paul Maza-koo-ta-mane was the first president and
served for two terms. This was an interesting experiment, in the series
of efforts, by the missionaries, to change this tribe of nomads from their
roving teepee life to that of permanent dwellers in fixed habitations.
The rude shock of savage warfare, which soon after revolutionized the
whole Sioux nation, swept it away before its efficiency could be
properly tested. Surely it was a novelty--an Indian band, regulated by
written laws and governed by officers, elected by themselves for a term
of years. It now exists only in the memory of the oldest of the
tribesmen or the missionaries.
In 1843, a new station was established at Traverse des Sioux (near St.
Peter, Minnesota,) by the Rev. Stephen R. Riggs. This station was
doomed to a tragic history. July 15, 1843, Thomas Longley, the
favorite brother of Mrs. Mary Riggs, was suddenly swallowed up in the
treacherous waters of the Minnesota and laid to rest under what his
sister was wont to call the "Oaks of weeping"--three dwarf oaks on a
small knoll. In 1844, Robert Hopkins and his young bride joined the
workers here. In 1851, July 4, Mr. Hopkins was suddenly swept away
to death by the fatal waves of the Minnesota and his recovered body
was laid to rest under the oaks where Thomas Longley had slept all
alone for seven years. Thus the mission at Traverse des Sioux was
closed by the messenger of death. It was continued, however, in the
nearby frontier town of St. Peter, whose white settlers requested the
Rev. M. N. Adams, one of the missionaries to the Sioux, to devote his

time to their spiritual needs. He complied and founded a white
Presbyterian church and it is one of the strong Protestant organizations
of Southern Minnesota.
In 1843, also the Pond brothers established a station at Oak Grove,
twelve miles west of the Falls of St. Anthony. It was never abandoned.
For many years it was the center of beneficent influences to both races
for miles around. It developed into the white Presbyterian church of
Oak Grove, which still stands as a monument to the many noble
qualities of its founder, Rev. Gideon Hollister Pond. On the Sabbath
scores of his descendants worship within its walls. The surrounding
community is composed largely of Ponds and their kindred.
In 1846, a mission was established at Red Wing by the Reverends J. F.
Aiton and J. W. Hancock, and another in 1860, at Red Wood by Rev.
John P. Williamson.
In 1858, a church was organized at Red Wing with twelve members.
This was swept away by the outbreak in 1862.
Dr. John P. Williamson, who was born in 1835, in one of the mission
cabins on the shores of Lac-qui-Parle, who has spent his whole life
among the Sioux Indians, and who with a singleness of purpose,
worthy of the apostle Paul, has devoted his whole life to their temporal
and spiritual uplift, thus vividly sketches missionary life among the
Sioux in his boyhood days: "My first serious impression of life was that
I was living under a great weight of something, and as I began to
discern more clearly, I found this weight to be the all-surrounding
overwhelming presence of heathenism, and all the instincts of my birth
and culture of a Christian home set me at antagonism to it at every
point.
"This feeling of disgust was often accompanied with fear. At times,
violence stalked abroad unchallenged and dark lowering faces skulked
about. Even when we felt no personal danger this incubus of savage life
all around weighed on our hearts. Thus it was day and night. Even
those hours of twilight, which brood with sweet influences over so
many lives, bore to us, on the evening air, the weird