Chapter VI (2)

In 1870, he became the pastor of Iyakaptapte, (Ascension) a little church in what subsequently became the Sisseton reservation. Both physically and in mental and spiritual qualities, he was best adapted to a settled pastorate. His quiet and unobtrusive character required long intercourse to be appreciated. However, in the pulpit, his earnestness and apt presentation of the truth ever commanded the attention even of strangers. Under his ministry, the church increased to one hundred and forty members. More than half a dozen of them became ministers and Ascension was generally the leading church in every good work among the Dakota Indians. No one among the Christian Sioux was more widely known and loved than Mr. Renville. In the councils of the church, though there were seventeen other ministers in the presbytery before his death, he was ever given the first place both for counsel and honor. He twice represented his presbytery in the general Assembly, and he was ever faithful in his attendance at Synod and Presbytery and active in the discharge of the duties devolving upon him.

Mary Butler, the white wife of his youth, died several years ago. Their daughter Ella, a fine Christian young lady passed away at twenty years of age. She was active in organizing Bands of Hope among the children of the tribe. She sleeps, with her parents on the brow of Iyakaptapte overlooking the church to which all their lives were devoted. Josephine, the Indian wife of his old age, survives him and remains in the white farm house on the prairie in which John Baptiste Renville spent so many years of his long, happy useful life. He died December 19, 1904, in the seventy-third year of his age.

VIII

AN INDIAN PATRIARCH.

Chief Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, was one of the strongest characters among the natives on the headwaters of the Mississippi in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. He was one of the leading chiefs of the Santee band of Sioux Indians. He was born about 1780. He was brave in battle, wise in council, and possessed many other noble qualities, which caused him to rise far above his fellow chieftains. He possessed a large fund of common sense. Years prior to the advent of the white man in this region, he regarded hunting and fishing as a too precarious means to a livelihood, and attempted to teach his people agriculture and succeeded to a limited extent.

It was a strange circumstance that prompted the chief to this wise action. On a hunting tour in the Red River country, with a part of his band, they were overtaken by a drifting storm and remained, for several days, under the snow, without any food whatsoever. While buried in those drifts, he resolved to rely, in part, upon agriculture, for subsistence, if he escaped alive, and he carried out his resolution, after the immediate peril was passed. His band cultivated small fields of quickly maturing corn, which had been introduced by their chief in the early 30's. He was respected and loved by his people and quite well obeyed.

Before the coming of the missionaries he taught and enforced, by his example, this principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted this human policy.

His own band lived on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, within the present limits of Minneapolis. On the present site of lovely Lakewood--Minneapolis' most fashionable cemetery--was his village of several hundred savages, and also an Indian burial place. This village was the front guard against the war parties of the Ojibways--feudal enemies of the Sioux--but finally as their young men were killed off in battle, they were compelled to remove and join their people on the banks of the Minnesota and farther West. He located his greatly reduced band at Bloomington, directly west of his original village. This removal occurred prior to 1838.

He was never hostile to the approach of civilization, or blind to the blessings it might confer on his people.

He was one of the first of his tribe to accept the white man's ways and to urge his band to follow his example. This fact is confirmed by the great progress his descendants have made.

He was the first Sioux Indian of any note to welcome those first pioneer missionaries, the Pond brothers. As early as 1834 he encouraged them to erect their home and inaugurate their work in his village. In all the treaties formed between the government and the Sioux, he was ever the ready and able advocate of the white man's cause. He threw all the weight of his powerful influence in favor of cession to the United States government of the military reservation on which Fort Snelling now stands. He died at Fort Snelling in 1863, and was buried on the banks of the Minnesota in view of the fort.

He was the father of seven children, all of whom are dead, except his son David Weston, his successor in the chieftainship, who still lives at Flandreau, South Dakota, at the age of seventy-eight years. He was for many years a catechist of the Episcopal Church. His two daughters were called Hushes-the-Night and Stands-like-a-Spirit. They were once the belles of Lake Harriet, to whom the officers and fur traders paid homage. Hushes-the-Night married a white man named Lamont and became the mother of a child called Jane. She had one sister, who died childless, in St. Paul, in 1901. Jane Lamont married Star Titus, a nephew of the Pond brothers. They became the parents of three sons and two daughters. Two of these sons are bankers and rank among the best business men of North Dakota. They are recognized as leaders among the whites. The other son is a farmer near Tracy, Minnesota. Stands-Like-a-Spirit was the mother of one daughter, Mary Nancy Eastman, whose father, Captain Seth Eastman, was stationed at Fort Snelling--1830-36. Mary Nancy married Many Lightnings, a fullblood, one of the leaders of the Wahpeton-Sioux. They became the parents of four sons and one daughter. After Many Lightnings became a Christian, he took his wife's name, Eastman, instead of his own, and gave all his children English names. John the eldest, and Charles Alexander, the youngest son, have made this branch of the Cloudman family widely and favorably known.

John Eastman, at twenty-six years of age, became a Presbyterian minister, and for more than a quarter of a century has been the successful pastor of the First Presbyterian church of Flandreau, South Dakota. He was for many years a trusty Indian agent at that place. He is a strong factor in Indian policy and politics. He has had a scanty English education in books, but he has secured an excellent training, chiefly by mingling with cultured white people.

His proud statement once was; "every adult member of the Flandreau band is a professing Christian, and every child of school age is in school." During the "Ghost Dance War," in 1890, his band remained quietly at home, busy about their affairs. In the spring of 1891, they divided $40,000 among themselves.

Charles Alexander Eastman was born in 1858, in Minnesota, the ancestral home of the Sioux, and passed the first fifteen years of his life in the heart of the wilds of British America, enjoying to the full, the free, nomadic existence of his race. During all this time, he lived in a teepee of buffalo skins, subsisted upon wild rice and the fruits of the chase, never entered a house nor heard the English language spoken, and was taught to distrust and hate the white man.

The second period (third) of his life was spent in school and college, where after a short apprenticeship in a mission school, he stood shoulder to shoulder, with our own youth, at Beloit, Knox, Dartmouth and the Boston university. He is an alumnus of Dartmouth of '87 and of Boston University, department of medicine, of '90.

During the last fifteen years, he has been a man of varied interests and occupations, a physician, missionary, writer and speaker of wide experience and, for the greater part of the time, has held an appointment under the government.

At his birth he was called "Hakadah" or "The Pitiful Last," as his mother died shortly after his birth. He bore this sad name till years afterwards he was called Ohiyesa, "The Winner," to commemorate a great victory of La Crosse, the Indian's favorite game, won by his band, "The Leaf Dwellers," over their foes, the Ojibways. When he received this new name, the leading medicine man thus exhorted him: "Be brave, be patient and thou shalt always win. Thy name is "Ohiyesa the Winner."" The spirit of his benediction seems to follow and rest upon him in his life-service.

His grandmother was "Stands-Like-a-Spirit," the second daughter of the old chief Cloudman. His full-blooded Sioux father was a remarkable man in many ways and his mother, a half-blood woman, was the daughter of a well-known army officer. She was the most beautiful woman of the "Leaf Dwellers" band. By reason of her great beauty, she was called "Demi-Goddess of the Sioux." Save for her luxuriant, black hair, and her deep black eyes, she had every characteristic of Caucasian descent. The motherless lad was reared by his grandmother and an uncle in the wilds of Manitoba, where he learned thoroughly, the best of the ancient folk lore, religion and woodcraft of his people. Thirty years of civilization have not dimmed his joy in the life of the wilderness nor caused him to forget his love and sympathy for the primitive people and the animal friends, who were the intimates of his boyhood.

He is very popular as a writer for the leading magazines. "His Recollections of Wild Life" in St. Nicholas, and his stories of "Wild Animals" in Harper, have entertained thousands of juvenile as well as adult readers. His first book, "Indian boyhood," which appeared in 1902, has passed through several editions, and met with hearty appreciation. "Red Hunters and the Animal People," published in 1904, bids fair to be, at least, equally popular.

During the last two years, he has lectured in many towns from Maine to California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs, laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual, trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly do. He brings out strongly the red man's wit, music, poetry and eloquence. He also explains graphically from facts gained from his own people, the great mystery of the battle of the Little Big Horn in which the gallant Custer and brave men went to their bloody death.

He was married in 1891 at New York City, to Miss Elaine Goodale, a finely cultured young lady from Massachusetts, herself a poetess and prose writer of more than ordinary ability.

They have lived very happily together ever since and are the parents of five lovely children. They have lived in Washington and St. Paul and are now residents of Amherst, Massachusetts. Whether in his physician's office, in his study, on the lecture platform, in the press or in his own home, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman is a most attractive personality.

IX

JOHN

_The Beloved of the Sioux Nation_

Rev. John P. Williamson, D.D., of Greenwood, South Dakota, was born in the month of October, 1835, in one of Joseph Renville's log cabins, with dirt roof and no floor; and was the first white child born in Minnesota, outside of the soldier's families at Fort Snelling. His father, the Rev. Thomas S. Williamson. M.D., was the first ordained missionary appointed to labor among the Sioux Indians. He came out to the new Northwest on an exploring expedition in 1834, visiting the Indian camps at Wabawsha, Red Wing, Kaposia, and others.

He returned in the spring of 1835, with his family and others who were appointed.

After the arrival of this missionary party, Dr. Williamson and his colleagues, lived and labored continuously among the Indians the remainder of their lives. Their work for the Master has not suffered any interruption, but is still carried on successfully and vigorously by their successors.

John P. Williamson grew up in the midst of the Indians. He mastered the Sioux language in early boyhood. As a lad, he had the present sites of Minneapolis and St. Paul for his playgrounds and little Indian lads for his playmates. Among these, was Little Crow, who afterwards became infamous in his savage warfare, against the defenseless settlers in western Minnesota, in 1862.

He was early dedicated to the work of the gospel ministry. In his young manhood he was sent to Ohio, for his education. In 1857, he graduated at Marietta College, and in 1860, at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. In 1859 he was licensed by Dakota (Indian) Presbytery, and ordained, by the same body, in 1861. The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by Yankton, (S.D.) college in 1890. He recognized no call to preach the gospel save to the Sioux Indians, and for forty-six years, he has given his whole life zealously to this great work. He has thrown his whole life unreservedly into it. And he has accomplished great things for the Master and the tribe to which he has ministered.

In 1860 he established a mission and organized a Presbyterian church of twelve members at Red Wood Agency on the Minnesota. These were both destroyed in the outbreak two years later. He spent the winter of 1862-3, in evangelistic work, among the Sioux, in the prison-camp at Fort Snelling, where 1,500 were gathered under military guard. An intense religious interest sprung up amongst them and continued for months. Young Dr. Williamson so ministered unto them, that the whole camp was reached and roused, and the major part of the adults were led to Christ. Many, including scores of the children of the believers, were baptized. A Presbyterian congregation of more than one hundred communicants was organized. This church was afterwards united with the church of the Prison-pen, at Crow Creek, Nebraska.

In 1883, he was appointed superintendent of Presbyterian missions among the Sioux Indians. He has ever abounded in self-sacrificing and successful labors among this tribe. He has organized Nineteen (19) congregations and erected twenty-three (23) church edifices. In twenty-three years he has traveled two hundred thousand miles in the prosecution of these arduous labors. The number of converts cannot be reckoned up.

In 1866, he was married to Miss Sarah A. Vannice. To them there have been born four sons and three daughters, who are still living. In 1869 he established the Yankton mission, which has ever since been a great center, moral and spiritual, to a vast region. At the same time he established his home at Greenwood, South Dakota, and from that, as his mission headquarters, he has gone to and from in his great missionary tours throughout the Dakota land.

He has, also, abounded in literary labors. For sixteen years he was the chief editor of "Iapi Oayi," an Indian weekly. In 1864, he published "Powa Wow-spi," an Indian Spelling Book, and in 1865, a collection of Dakota Hymns. His greatest literary work, however, was an edition of the "Dakota Dictionary," in 1871, and other later editions.

He has won the affections of the whole Sioux nation. They bow willingly to his decisions, and follow gladly his counsels. To them, he is a much greater man than President Roosevelt. While he has passed the limit of his three-score years and ten--forty-six of them in frontier service--his bow still abides in strength, and he still abounds in manifold labors. He is still bringing forth rich fruitage in his old age.

Every white dweller among the Indians is known by some special cognomen. His is simply "John." And when it is pronounced, by a Sioux Indian as a member of the tribe always does it so lovingly, all who hear it know he refers to "John, the Beloved of the Sioux Nation."

X

THE MARTYRS OF OLD ST. JOE.

One of the most touching tragedies recorded in the annals of the new Northwest, was enacted in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century, on the borders of Prince Rupert's Land and the Louisiana purchase (now Manitoba and North Dakota). It is a picturesque spot, where the Pembina river cuts the international boundary line in its course to the southeast to join the Red River of the North in its course to Hudson's bay.

Sixty years ago, in this place, encircled by the wood-crowned mountain and the forest-lined river and prairies, rich as the gardens of the gods, there stood a village and trading post of considerable importance, named after the patron saint of the Roman Catholic church, in its midst--St. Joseph--commonly called St. Joe. It was a busy, bustling town, with a mixed population of 1,500. Most of these dwelt in tents of skin. There were, also, two or three large trading posts and thirty houses, built of large, hewn timbers mudded smoothly within and without and roofed with shingles. Some of these were neat and pretty; one had window-shutters. It was the center of an extensive fur trade with the Indian tribes of the Missouri river. Many thousands of buffalo and other skins were shipped annually to St. Paul in carts. Sometimes a train of four hundred of these wooden carts started together for St. Paul, a distance of four hundred miles.

But old things have passed away. The village of old St. Joe is now marked only by some cellar excavations. It possesses, however, a sad interest as the scene of the martyrdom of Protestant missionaries on this once wild frontier, then so far removed from the abodes of civilization.

James Tanner was a converted half-breed, who with his wife labored, in 1849, as a missionary at Lake Winnibogosh, Minnesota. His father had been stolen, when a lad, from his Kentucky home, by the Indians. Near the close of 1849 he visited a brother in the Pembina region. He became so deeply interested in the ignorant condition of the people there, that he made a tour of the East in their behalf. He visited New York, Washington and other cities, and awakened considerable interest in behalf of the natives of this region. While east he became a member of the Baptist Church. He returned to St. Joe, in 1852, accompanied by a young man named Benjamin Terry, of St. Paul, to open a mission among the Pembina Chippewas and half breeds under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society. Terry was very slight and youthful in appearance, quiet and retiring in disposition and was long spoken of, by the half-breeds, as "Tanner's Boy." They visited the Red River (Selkirk) settlement (now Winnipeg). While there, Terry wooed and won one of the daughters of the Selkirk settlers, a dark-eyed handsome Scotch lass, to whom he expected to be married in a few months. But, alas, ere the close of summer, he was waylaid, by a savage Sioux, shot full of arrows, his arm broken and his entire scalp carried away. Mr. Tanner secured permission to bury him in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the corner reserved for suicides, heretics and unbaptized infants. Thus ended in blood, the first effort to establish a Protestant mission in the Pembina country.

June 1, 1853, a band of Presbyterian missionaries arrived at St. Joe. It was composed of the Reverends Alonzo Barnard and David Brainard Spencer, their wives and children. They came in canoes and in carts from Red and Cass lakes, Minnesota, where for ten years, they had labored as missionaries among the Chippewas. They removed to St. Joe, at the earnest request of Governor Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota, and others familiar with their labors and the needs of the Pembina natives. Mrs. Barnard's health soon gave way. Her husband removed her to the Selkirk settlement, one hundred miles to the north, for medical aid. Her health continued to fail so rapidly that by her strong desire they attempted to return to St. Joe. The first night they encamped in a little tent on the bleak northern plain in the midst of a fierce windstorm. The chilling winds penetrated the folds of the tent. All night long the poor sufferer lay in her husband's arms, moaning constantly: "Hold me close; oh, hold me close." They were compelled to return to the settlement, where after a few days more of intense suffering, she died, Oct. 22, 1853, of quick consumption, caused by ten years exposure and suffering for the welfare of the Indians.

Mrs. Barnard was first interred at the Selkirk settlement, in Prince Rupert's Land (now Manitoba). In the absence of other clergymen, Mr. Barnard was compelled to officiate at his wife's funeral himself. In obedience to her dying request, Mrs. Barnard's remains were removed to St. Joe and re-interred in the yard of the humble mission cabin, Dec. 3, 1853.

In 1854, Mr. Barnard visited Ohio to provide a home for his children. On his return, at Belle Prairie, Minnesota, midway between St. Paul and St. Joe, he met Mr. Spencer and his three motherless children, journeying four hundred miles by ox-cart to St. Paul. There in the rude hovel in which they spent the night, Mr. Barnard baptized Mr. Spencer's infant son, now an honored minister of the Congregational church in Wisconsin. On his arrival at St. Joe Mr. Barnard found another mound close by the grave of his beloved wife.

The story of this third grave is, also, written in blood. It was Aug. 30, 1854. The hostile Sioux were infesting the Pembina region. Only the previous month, had Mrs. Spencer written to a far distant friend in India: "Last December the Lord gave us a little son, whose smiling face cheers many a lonely hour." On this fatal night, she arose to care for this darling boy. A noise at the window attracted her attention. She withdrew the curtain to ascertain the cause. Three Indians stood there with loaded rifles and fired. Three bullets struck her, two in her throat and one in her breast. She neither cried out nor spoke, but reeling to her bed, with her babe in her arms, knelt down, where she was soon discovered by her husband, when he returned from barricading the door. She suffered intensely for several hours and then died. And till daybreak Mr. Spencer sat in a horrid dream, holding his dead wife in his arms. The baby lay in the rude cradle near by, bathed in his mother's blood. The two elder children stood by terrified and weeping. Such was the distressing scene which the neighbors beheld in the morning, when they came with their proffers of sympathy and help. The friendly half-breeds came in, cared for the poor children and prepared the dead mother for burial. A half-breed dug the grave and nailed a rude box together for a coffin. Then with a bleeding heart, the sore bereaved man consigned to the bosom of the friendly earth the remains of his murdered wife.

Within the past thirty years civilization has rapidly taken possession of this lovely region. Christian homes and Christian churches cover these rich prairies. The prosperous and rapidly growing village of Walhalla (Paradise) nestles in the bosom of this lovely vale and occupies contentedly the former site of Old St. Joe.

June 21, 1888, one of the most interesting events in the history of North Dakota occurred at the Presbyterian cemetery, which crowns the brow of the mountain, overlooking Walhalla. It was the unveiling of the monument erected by the Woman's Synodical Missionary Society of North Dakota, which they had previously erected to the memory of Sarah Philena Barnard and Cornelia Spencer, two of the three "Martyrs of St. Joe." The monument is a beautiful and appropriate one of white marble. The broken pieces of old stone formerly placed on Mrs. Barnard's grave, long scattered and lost, were discovered, cemented together and placed upon her new grave. The Rev. Alonzo Barnard, seventy-one years of age, accompanied by his daughter, was present. Standing upon the graves of the martyrs, with tremulous voice and moistened eyes, he gave to the assembled multitude a history of their early missionary toil in the abodes of savagery. It was a thrilling story, the interest intensified by the surroundings. The half-breed women who prepared Mrs. Spencer's body for the burial and who washed and dressed the little babe after his baptism in his mother's blood, were present. The same half-breed who dug Mrs. Spencer's grave in 1854 dug the new grave in 1888. Several pioneers familiar with the facts of the tragedy at the time of its occurrence were also present.

"The Martyr's Plot," the last resting place of these devoted servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a beautiful spot, on the hillside, in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Walhalla. It is enclosed by a neat fence, and each of these three martyr's graves is marked by a white stone, with an appropriate inscription.

The Rev. Alonzo Barnard retired to Michigan, where he gave five years of missionary toil to the Chippewas at Omene and many other years of helpful service to the white settlers at other points in that state. In 1883 he retired from the work of the active ministry and spent the remainder of his days with his children.

He died April 14, 1905, at Pomona, Michigan, at the home of his son, Dr. James Barnard, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. There is a large and flourishing Episcopal Indian church at Leech Lake, Minnesota, the scene of Mr. Barnard's labors from 1843-52.

The rector is the Rev. Charles T. Wright, a full-blood Chippewa. He is the eldest son of that famous chieftain, Gray Cloud and is now himself, chief of all the Chippewas. "Thus one soweth and another reapeth."