Chapter XXVII: Appendix: Monographs (4)

A whole year passed, and we came back to the land of the Dakotas, to make a new home at Traverse des Sioux, to experience our first great sorrow, and to consecrate our Allon-bach-uth for the noble brother Thomas Lawrence Longley. That was a garden of roses, but a village of drinking and drunken Sioux; and more of trial came into our life of a little more than three years spent there than in any other equal portion. There our _Wanskay_ was born, and started in life under difficulties. Our family of _five_ had now become _six_. Provisions of a good quality were not easily obtained. But it happened that wild rice and Indian sugar were abundant, and the laws of heredity visited the sins of the parents on our third little lady child. But, with all the disadvantages of the start, the little "urchin" grew, and grew, like the others.

SENT BACK TO LAC-QUI-PARLE.

Trouble and sorrow baptize and consecrate. The many trials attendant upon commencing our station at Traverse des Sioux and the oaks of weeping there had greatly endeared the place to the mother; and when, in September of 1846, the mission voted that we should go back to Lac-qui-parle, she could not see that it was duty, and went without her own consent. It was a severe trial. In a few months she became satisfied that the Lord had led us. What of character the boy _Hake_, who was born in the next June, inherited from these months of sadness, I know not, but as he came along up, we called him a "Noble Boy." The family had then reached the sacred number _seven_.

In the year that followed we built a very comfortable frame-house--indeed, two of them--one for Mr. Jonas Pettijohn's family--comfortable, except that the snow would drift in through the ash shingles. Some of the older children can, perhaps, remember times when there was _more snow inside than outside_. We were up on the hill, and not under it, where Dr. Williamson and Mr. Huggins had built a dozen years before; and consequently the winter winds were fiercer, though we all thought the summers were pleasanter. In this house our _sixth_ child was born, who has no Dakota cognomen. We shall call him Ishakpe. The half-dozen years in which we made that house our home were full of work, broken in upon by a year spent in the East--myself in New York City chiefly. Henry, who could say to enquirers, "I was two years old last September," and Isabella were with their mother in Massachusetts and Brooklyn--Martha and Anna in the capital of Minnesota, and Thomas at the mission station of Kaposia; Alfred, I believe, was at Galesburg, Ill.

EDUCATING THE CHILDREN.

It has been a question that we often discussed, "How shall we get our children educated?" The basis of allowance from the treasury of the board had been on the principle of the Methodist circuit riders. The $250 with which we commenced was increased $50 for each child. So that at this time our salary was either $500 or $550. It was never greater than the last sum until after the outbreak in 1862. We lived on it comfortably, but there was very little margin for sending children away to school. And now we were reaching that point in our family history when a special effort must be made in that direction. Before we went on East in 1851, the mother and I had talked the matter over--perhaps some good family would like to take one of the children to educate. And so it was, more than one good offer was received for the little boy Henry. But our hearts failed us. Mrs. Minerva Cook of Brooklyn said to me, "You are afraid we will make an Episcopalian of him." So near was he to being a bishop!

MISSION HOUSE BURNED.

Many remembrances have to be passed over. The last picture I have of those mission houses at Lac-qui-parle is when, on the 3d of March, 1854, they were enveloped in fire. The two little boys had been down cellar to get potatoes for their mother, and, holding the lighted candle too near to the dry hay underneath the floor, the whole was soon in a conflagration, which our poor efforts could not stop. The houses were soon a heap of ashes, and the meat and many of the potatoes in the cellar were cooked. The adobe church was then our asylum, and the family home for the summer.

BUILD AT HAZELWOOD.

While occupying the old church and making preparations to rebuild, Secretary S. B. Treat visited us. After consultation, our plans were changed, and we erected our mission buildings at Hazelwood, twenty-five miles further down the Minnesota, and near to Dr. Williamson's and the Yellow Medicine Agency. During the eight years spent there, many things connected with the family life transpired. First among them worthy to be noted was the rounding out of the number of children to _eight_--"Toonkanshena," so called by the Indians--just why, I don't know--and Octavia the Hakakta. In those days our Family Education Society had to devise ways and means to keep _one_ always, and sometimes _two_, away at school. By and by, Zitkadan-Washta graduated at Knox College, and Hapan and Hapistinna at the Western Female Seminary and College Hill respectively. How we got them through seems even now a mystery. But I remember one year we raised a grand crop of potatoes, and sold 100 barrels to the government for $300 in gold. That was quite a lift. And so the Lord provided all through--then and afterward. Nothing was more remarkable in our family history for twenty-five years than its general health. We had very little sickness. I remember a week or so of doctoring on myself during our first residence at Lac-qui-parle. Then, the summer after our return there, the fever and ague took hold of two or three of the children. The mother also was taken sick suddenly in the adobe church, and Dr. Williamson and I had a night ride up from Hazelwood. At this place (Hazelwood) the baby boy _Toonkanshena_ was sick one night, I remember, and we gave him calomel and sent for the doctor. But the most serious sickness of all these years was that of my "urchin" and Henry, both together of typhoid fever. I have always believed that prayer was a part of the means of their recovery.

QUARTER OF A CENTURY.

When the summer of 1862 came, it rounded out a full quarter of a century of missionary life for us. Alfred had completed his seminary course, and in the meantime had grown such a heavy black beard that when he and I sat on the platform together, in a crowded church in Cincinnati, the people asked which was the father and which the son.

While waiting in Ohio for the graduating day of Hapistinna to come, I ran up to Steubenville, where I was born, and walked out into the country to the old farm where my boyhood was spent. The visit was not very satisfactory. Scarcely any one knew me. Everything had greatly changed.

THE OUTBREAK.

The memories of August 18, 1862, and the days that followed, are vivid, but must in the main be passed over. I can not forbear, however, to note what a sorry group we were on that island on the morning of the 19th. How finally the way appeared, and we filed up the ravine and started over the prairie as fugitives! How the rain came on us that afternoon, and what a sorry camping we made in the open prairie after we had crossed Hawk River! How the little Hakakta girl, when bed-time came, wanted to go home! How, when the rain had leaked down through the wagon-bed all night upon them, Mrs. D. Wilson Moore thought it would be about as good to die as to live under such conditions! How Hapistinna and Wanskay wore off their toes walking through the sharp prairie-grass! How we stopped on the open prairie to kill a cow and bake bread and roast meat, with no pans to do it in! And how, while the process was going on, we had our picture taken! How many scares we passed through the night we passed around Fort Ridgely! How thus we escaped, like a bird from the snare of the fowler,--the snare was broken, and we escaped. How, when the company came to adjust their mutual obligations, nobody had any money but D. Wilson Moore! How those women met us on the top of the hill by Henderson, and were glad to see us because we had white blood in us! How on the road we met our old friend Samuel W. Pond, who welcomed our family to his house at Shakopee!

FAMILY IN ST. ANTHONY.

The memories of the campaign of the next three months may be passed over, as having little connection with the family. But I remember the night when, with more than _three hundred condemnations_ in my carpet-bag, I had a long hunt at midnight for the little hired house in which the mother and children had re-commenced housekeeping. The three years in St. Anthony were ones of varied experiences. Wanskay had gone down to Rockford. Hapan and Hapistinna taught school and kept house for the mother by turns. The three boys went to school.

The War of the Rebellion was not over, but it was nearing its end, as we soon knew, when one day the noble boy Thomas brought in a paper for me to sign, giving my permission for his enlistment. I had heard and read so much of boys of sixteen going almost at once into the hospital that I threw the paper in the fire.

WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO?

The missionary work among the Dakotas was so broken up, the clouds hung so heavily over it, that I very seriously entertained the question of giving up my commission as a missionary of the American Board, and turning my attention to work among white people. In my correspondence with Secretary Treat I proposed a kind of half-and-half work, but that was not approved. Finally I wrote a letter of withdrawal, and sent it on to Boston. But the prudential committee were slow to act upon it. In the meantime, Rev. G. H. Pond came over and gave me a long talk. He believed I should do no such thing; that the clouds would soon clear away; that the need of work such as I could give would be greater than ever before. And so it was. To me Mr. Pond was a prophet of the Lord, sent with a special message. I wanted to know the way. And the voice said, "This is the way; walk in it." With new enthusiasm I then entered upon the work of meeting the increasing demand for school-books and for the Bible.

At the very beginning of the year 1865, having completed my three months' work at the Bible House in New York, in reading the proof of the entire New Testament in Dakota, and other parts of the Bible, as well as other books, I returned to our home in St. Anthony to find the mother away at the water-cure establishment. We remember that as a year of _invalidism_, of _sickness_. But the skilful physician and the summer sun wrought such a cure that in the autumn we removed to Beloit. Here, with comparative health, she had three and a half years of added life.

THE MOTHER CALLED AWAY.

Among the new things that took place in Beloit in the year 1866 was the marriage of Hapan and Hapistinna, the one starting off for the far-off land of the Celestials, so-called, and the other to the frontier of Minnesota. Wanskay was then our housekeeper, and the three boys were in school. By and by the time came for the mother to be called away. It was a brief sickness, and she passed from us into the Land of Immortal Beauty. It was a comfort to us that our first-born, Zitkadan-Washta, was residing near by that winter and spring of 1869. As I remember it, three children were far away, and five gathered around the mother's grave. Now, looking back over the ten years passed since that time, I seem to say:--

"My thoughts, like palms in exile,
Climb up to look and pray
For a glimpse of that heavenly country,
That seems _not_ far away."

This is a good point to close and seal up the Memories. For the rest, a few words may be sufficient. Manifestly, as a family, God has been with us all the way, and the blessings of the Lord Jehovah have been upon us. Forty-two years ago we went out--two alone--into the wilderness of prairie; and now we have become _one_, _two_, _three_, _four_, _five_, _six_, or more bands.

* * * * *

Sabbath, September 7, wound up the precious weeks; and Sabbath evening was the transfiguration of the whole. May its blessed memories tenderly abide in all our hearts! For a year or more, we had looked forward to the family meeting that was to be; but now we look back and remember with growing pleasure the meeting that was. As the wagons clattered away on Monday morning, they broke the charmed spell, but each one went his own way richer than he came. A. L. R.